Pipers in Brittany unite against American white supremacists
Yannick Martin
Hundreds of traditional musicians from Brittany’s top pipe bands, known as Bagadoù, convened on the town of Brest for the region’s most prestigious championships on Sunday.
They were joined by thousands of fans in showing their support for Yannick Martin, a 24-year old virtuoso of the bombard, a double reed instrument from the oboe family, who has twice been crowned Brittany’s champion player.
Mr Martin has been the target of a hate campaign by a Houston-based white supremacist website called Breiz Atao (Brittany Forever), the name of a Breton nationalist journal that supported Nazism in the second world war…
Mr Martin, born in Columbia but adopted and raised by a Breton family, has filed for charges of “racial discrimination”. His brother, adopted and raised by a different family is also a top pipe player. Both play in one of the region’s most acclaimed bands, Kemper, which competed in Brest yesterday.
Before the competition, Mr Martin said: “I’ve been judged by the colour of my skin by people who are totally out of touch with today’s Brittany. I feel entirely Breton and my response will be to continue to play.”
Sunday, around 2,000 players and fans wore the double ribbon sporting the Breton colours “gwen ha du” (black and white) in a poignant protest at the racist slur…
The Breton Democratic Union (UDB), the main autonomist and regionalist party in Brittany, denounced the attack. “The defence of the Breton cause has very unfortunately been hijacked by a minority of frustrated individuals with scandalous views about our Breton citizens of foreign origin. To be Breton has nothing to do with blood or the colour of your skin, it’s not a question of a Breton ‘race’ but of a Breton people rich in its diversity,” said the UDB.
One of the great “gifts” of American politics to Planet Earth since World War 2 has been the politics of racism.
Europeans, Brits, North Africans witnessed the Jim Crow policies of the American military – there to liberate Europe from Hitler’s fascism while ordering local communities to observe the policies of segregation brought along by occupation forces.
As Europeans watched the civil rights battles of the 50′s into the 70′s on television, they also learned all the racial slurs adopted by their emigres to American society. All the N-word stereotypes entered European languages courtesy of “letters to home”.
Now, we see the new expansion of bigotry that accompanies this decade’s populism offered to cultures outside the United States as the way to behave, to follow this American example of musical “purity”.
Holler at your Congress-critter to support Bernie Sanders' bill to 
One of the great “gifts” of American politics to Planet Earth since World War 2 has been the politics of racism.
I disagree. Racism has been present around the world long before and has continued long after America got involved in WWII. Even today, ask a Japanese what he thinks of a Korean, or a Vietnamese what he thinks of a Chinese, a Russian of a Ukrainian, a Turk about an Armenian, a German about a Frenchman, and any European about a Roma (Gypsy). The answers might be milder than they were 100 years ago, but they will still demonstrate a similar view.
In my opinion it was three events that killed Jim Crow. The first was the Holocaust and the very concept of mass murder of a people because of their heritage. The second was the integration of the Armed Services. The third was the global dissolution of European Empires and the host of new nations popping up around the world. All three, from 1945 to 1955, were to influence Johnson’s Civil Right’s Acts a decade later.
It was the courageous acts by Truman, Eisenhower, and Johnson that changed the tables on overt discrimination. It was the attitudes of Nixon, Reagan, and Bush II that allowed them to remain
Mr. Fusion
February 28, 2011 at 6:31 am
Only the United States through the period of the Civil War on through half the 20th century maintained racism as an essential part of the economy. It was part of the profit structure.
The rest of the world had abandoned slavery as essential to any aspect of a national economy centuries before – while the southern US maintained its economy with racism as critical to the economy and politics.
moss
February 28, 2011 at 7:07 am