[Astrocat]

Black, white, asian etc.

I asked how you would define race, not for some examples of what you think are races.
Those are examples of what you would consider to be races, but you have not said how you would define 'race'

For comparison, emotion could be described like this -
In psychology and common use, emotion is the language of a person's mental state of being, normally based in or tied to the person's internal (physical) and external (social) sensory feeling. Love, hate, courage, fear, joy, sadness, pleasure and disgust can all be described in both psychological and physiological terms (Wikipedia)

.... and from there, examples of emotion would be love, anger and hatred.

But saying "emotion is love, anger, hatred etc" does not describe what a person feels emotion is.

Of course, the term 'black' is an imperialist one, intended to emphasise the difference between pink and brown people by referring to them instead, as being 'black and white' .... it is like the term 'third world country' in that respect...

Saying that 'asian' is a race, is like saying that 'western' is a race.
Needless to say, many 'asians' are really offended by that.

Most people are of mixed descent..... so how brown does a person need to be before they are 'black' ? What shade of pink is considered to be 'white' ?

Most people are not 'purebreeds' , so what race do all of the mongrels have ?

The minimum wage was only introduced into Britain a few years ago. I hardly think that we are in a position to dictate to other nations how they should be governing their economies. We are right back to the patronising imperialism of us assuming that our governmental system is better than theirs and they should be forced to copy ours.

You are still pushing the 'us' and 'them' approach.... which i still don't have any truck with.

I did not take any part in organising the abysmal state of the UK economy, and have never voted for the political parties who have - so why should the state of the UK economy in any way relate to my ability to weigh up a situation in another country ?

It doesn't matter how I think race should be regarded; it is absolutely irrelevant. If you say 'race' to someone, 99.9% of people will assume it to mean white, black, asian, etc. That is the accepted use of the term. If we vary from that and then use alternative meanings in discussions like this it is bound to cause confusion.

To that i would say, that probably 99.9% of people think that vegans eat honey - but that doesn;t mean that vegans actually do eat honey.

Most people would probably do what you did and simply give examples of what they believe are races, rather than giving a clear definition of what they believe is defined by 'race' .... which to me implies that they don't actually know how they would define 'race', and so can't be assumed to necessarily be correct about it.

I would need to see evidence of a particular region of a particular African country that can demonstrate that the local economy has been significantly damaged by direct interference from a supermarket chain. I find it highly unlikely that such evidence exists. That doesn't prove that your theory is wrong, merely that it is very hard to prove beyond circumstantial evidence.

If the information in the reports is easy to disbelieve or seems inconclusive, then i reccommend to you a book called "Shopped : The Shocking Power of British Supermarkets"

I haven't brought up ancestry or race at all. Unless you are a citizen of a country, then your opinions are, without meaning to be rude, just interference in other people's affairs.

If a person were born in Africa then raised in the UK from birth , they are an African citizen. Why would that person be any more in a place to comment about this sort of thing, than I am ?

If by 'citizen' you mean 'person who lives there' , then what if i move to Africa briefly (say, for a month or two) then decide to move back ?
Then, should my right to be a fair trade activist (commenting about Africa, in this case) shoot through the roof while I am there, then drop rock bottom again once i move out of the country ?

If i moved there permanently, nothing would change as far as I am concerned, regarding my 'right' to comment on the situation there...... I can't see how the location of my house should affect my right or ability to make moral and ethical judgements about others' conduct.

As I have said, I support the idea of 'Fair Trade', I just don't think that it is fair to blame the supermarkets for everything when there are so many other groups involved, including consumers, governments, local workers and so on.

This is a moot point.

To go back to my example :

I would blame the people who buy the drugs from the kid, for a lot of the problem.
I would blame the mother slightly, for getting into the one-way situation.
I would put most blame on the mafia man.
I would put no blame on the kid, and would not blame them for the predicament by casually expecting them to appeal to the mafia man for better treatment, because i know that is likely to get them nowhere other than maybe 6 feet under, and so it's not reasonable to expect the kids to do that.

That is different from blaming the mafia guy for everything.
As a metaphor, I hope that you can see what I'm saying.

Africa has an AU. Instating fair trade legislation would be their juristiction i reckon, and it would seem to make far more sense to approach them than farting about writing to each individual government.

The minimum wage was only introduced into Britain a few years ago. I hardly think that we are in a position to dictate to other nations how they should be governing their economies. We are right back to the patronising imperialism of us assuming that our governmental system is better than theirs and they should be forced to copy ours.

I'm not sure why you're so adamant in putting forth points from a divisive 'us' and 'them' mindset, knowing that I don't have that mindset and find it to be an irrelevance.

At what point did I say that I think that any other country ought to be apeing the abysmal state of the UK governmental system ?
You have implied that I've said this numerous times now, but I never said any such thing.
I think that you might have assumed this because of being unable to get out of the 'us' and 'them' mindset.

If I thought that the UK governmental system is so incredibly amazing that I were trying to advocate imposing it on other nations, then why have i never voted for anyone who has been in government during my lifetime ?

If you consider yourself , UK society and the UK government to be 'we' and other nationalities and governments to be 'they' then okay, that is your call and i have no comment to make about it.... but please don't include me in that 'we'.... I want no part of this divisiveness.