Maybe the UK things were different. Here in the USA we still didn't allow black Americans to eat at the same G__D___ lunch table, and a woman was more likely to get a smack on the ass at work than meaningful consideration. (This is why, incidentally, some of us get so bent when we feel like a segment of the population actually seems to believe things were better then. They may have been - for a select part of the populace, but that's grossly ignorant of some parts of that society.)
By the way - is "hire-purchase" the same as "financing?"
I am sure it was a very different thing for many within the UK.
For starters, we didn't have any blacks that you'd notice until the Caribbean peoples came in, and with them a unique form of music, gangsterism and drugs. The only blacks most Brits saw were GIs who came with gum, cigarettes and access to nylons, great music; quickly and unexpectedly as they came they mostly departed. Straight after the war we had an influx of people from India and Pakistan - same reasons, basically: empire and its decline, with most attendant responsibilities honoured, but within a small land mass incapable of easy assimilation of the volume that wanted into it. That wasn't very noticeable up in Scotland, but southern England - the London area and just north of it, became a very alien place to many of the people who'd spent the war years there. The famous/infamous
Rivers of Blood speech wasn't made in a vacuum, where it would have held no relevance.
I find it quite extraordinary that a nation whose favourite meal out is curry, that frequents Italian, Spanish and - if it can afford it - French restaurants
at home in the UK - simultaneously finds itself capable of hatred through ballot, of the very same people. But there you go: the compartmentalizing of mind, deed and thought into mutually incompatible boxes.
Hire-purchase: that was where you put so much money down, and signed the next few years away with monthly payments at a fine rate of interest. My accountant always tried to get me to buy our cars that way, because it meant a better tax situation. However, I only did it twice, preferring to be able to put down a cheque and walk away, owning something outright. The two times I followed his advice I ran into the usual freelance problem of variable income. No, I didn't default, but neither did I enjoy the additional pressure brought about by debt at the very same time as work was getting shorter. It's really the personal experience that drives me to think that debt is never a good idea, not some theoretical consideration about it.
So in the States, the whites inherited the penalty for their previous sins, just as has Britain and much of Europe for the same reasons. Now, asking today's black people in America and Europe whether they'd welcome free repatriation isn't, I imagine, going to get a lot of takers. Which really illustrates just how complex and infinitely variable nationalism, roots and all of that stuff can be. Is it better a ghetto in LA than one in Africa? Of course, that's not to say that all black people live in dumps. I imagine we have as many whites in similar situations all over the globe. Would I feel any the more happy wandering alone through a rundown, white housing estate in some UK city than doing the same in America? I very much doubt it. The fear isn't colour; the fear is of the undeveloped, drugged mind of any instantaneously combustible personality that may decide it wants your shoes, and rather than asking, sticks a knife in your ribs.
And why is the black population within a white nation considered a problem? Because of visual differences, frequent physical superiority and its physical threat; widely mooted sexual prowess and the thought of one's own family getting into a marital combination with what many see as a different species of mankind. No, this isn't a pretty picture to paint or to view, but that doesn't mean it isn't there, that it is a flight of imagination. The music industry does little to help, either, with its videos of rappers making out with white/very pale-coloured female sex-slaves or "bitches". Whether this is to appeal to back buyers or to whites, I don't know. I have no way of knowing if back males really like white females any better than those of their own pigmentaion - in videos they are made to appear cheap, almost prostitute-like. Is it vengeance for lynchings past? Then there's crime: are the statistics stacked? Do blacks get stopped more often than whites, and if so, could it be because they have a higher likelihood of being caught carrying something illegal? More Middle Eastern-looking people get hassled at airports than the others; as they are the ones most likely to be jihadists, is it wrong on PC grounds to stop them more than other types?
Indeed, it could well be - it is - the case that the perfect Rockwell scenario applies not to everybody; it never has and never can if only becuase we humans are not machine-made. That's why we are all different and anything but equal. Some of us are geniuses and some total plonkers. I've know all sorts, and still have no real idea where, within that scheme if things, I really belong myself.
But the thing is, I feel little sense of responsibility for the fellow human who doesn't try. Trying and failing is not a disgrace; the disgrace is in not trying, and as consequence, blaming society for one's own shit. If anything, the nonsense disseminated by the PC/political crowd, that everybody is wonderful and equally worthy, is at the root of the problem because, when somebody tries and falls on their ass, they have already been conditioned to think themselves wonderful and so it has to be an unbeatable plot that's keeping them back and down. That can easily prevent them picking themselves up again, something also far easier to do in youth than later.
It used to be held that education was key. Well, for a long time it probably was, but what about the situation today where all graduates no longer find themselves holding the automatic key to a life of full employment - indeed, many remain unemployed long after they leave university. I believe that's partly due to the recent emphasis on further education which, ironically, seems to starve us of many tradespeople actually able to do what their job is meant to be. We need plumbers and electricians, carpenters and mechanics as much today as ever, but they are in short supply. Why? I believe because they are diverted into a fruitless pursuit of an education, and the classy jobs from that that they will never get.
When I stated working life I was one of hundreds of apprentices in a company group; I'm told that situation is almost extinct today, leading to shortages of skilled, native engineers, with the shortfall made good via the importation of foreign people who do have those missing skills. So are they welcomed? They end up hated, and turned into the devils that have brought us down.
So much for logic and common sense when nationality and politics can step in and make hay out of it all.
Rob