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Culture War Roundup for the week of August 21, 2023

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they don't represent real Londoners

They don't. The word 'represent' doesn't have to mean race. Tourists on a day trip do not represent real Londoners. And again, what about the almost exclusively white street scene?

Do you really think that they wrote 'this photo does not represent real Londoners' with the intention that the reader interpret this to mean 'these people look like tourists'. If they had wanted to say that the family looked like tourists, they could have written that. But they didn't, they wrote a caption which a normal person would interpret to mean that the photo has inadequate racial representation. If they meant what you're claiming they meant, they could have said that the caption was poorly worded. Instead they said it was 'added in error' whatever that means.

As for the street photo, I'm not sure which one you're referring to, but you answer your own question regardless. Mostly white is okay because this still has diversity, entirely white is bad because this photo is not diverse and therefore the people don't represent real Londoners.

Not necessarily tourists exactly, but yeah I do think they just meant generally don't look like ordinary people doing ordinary things. So either tourists or at least atypical Londoners. I suspect the 'in error' thing was to just shut the press up.

When I said 'mostly white' that was a bit misleading, what I meant is that the people you can see clearly are all white, its just that with any large street scene there are people you can't see clearly in the background whose race is ambiguous. But the people in the foreground are all white.