Joseph Conlon wrote: ↑Fri Jun 11, 2021 2:57 pm
JustinHorton wrote: ↑Fri Jun 11, 2021 9:52 am
Without a proper accounting with past events, no lessons are learned and no changes are made for the future. I'm quite sure for instance that the Times and Spectator have no intention of changing the attitudes and practices that led to them employing and protecting this absurd and unethical figure for so long. I don't care too much about that, because those publications are trash. But I do care about English chess, and I would like it to do better.
Couldn't disagree more. When countries or cultures still simmer deep with resentment over events from hundreds of years ago (and they certainly exist), it is not healthy.
No it is not, but it is less healthy to simply try and bury the events that took place, to hold nobody responsible and to try as far as possible not even to discuss it. As it goes the country I live in is perhaps the best contemporary example that we have. (Of course, both my comparison and yours may be seen as a bit over-heated.)
Joseph Conlon wrote: ↑Fri Jun 11, 2021 2:57 pm
And I actually think the Spectator is well written, with a diversity of views
It is our media's main dispensary of persistent racist poison.
Joseph Conlon wrote: ↑Fri Jun 11, 2021 2:57 pm
In terms of failures in English chess: absolutely the biggest ones were those involving the sexual abuse of junior players. I remember one of the first chess books I got was one which, in the introduction, thanked all the children who had helped with the material (said author then sent to prison for sexual abuse of children).
Far, far bigger issues than anything RDK did.
This is definitely and I trust uncontroversially true and absolutely should be said more often. Three small points I would make:
(a) it is not as if discussing Ray in some way prevents us from discussing those scandals
(b) it is not as if we exactly got to the bottom of, for instance, the Brian Eley scandal either
(c) as I have been trying to say, we are talking about a problem of culture in the English chesss community which Ray's career illuminates, and that culture has contributed to all kinds of other scandals including the ones you refer to. Put in that way, perhaps you can see some of the reasons why I think the question of how he has been able to get away with so much is not simply a historical matter.