CNN posted thisstory yesterday. Now I have not been back to the UK for nearly 3.5 years but some of it really really gave me pause.
For instance one Italian states that
[QUOTE=CNN]
Marcora doesn’t even have to talk in his mother tongue to spark a reaction: In his adopted hometown of Chatham in Kent, southeast of London, just speaking English with an Italian accent can be enough to provoke a reaction
[/QUOTE]
Seriously, they have become that xenophobic?
What do our UKDopers have to say? What are your experience.
In nearly a decade living and then spending inordinate amounts of time in the UK, I never experienced any overt racism or xenophobia. And, I am a non-white of South Asian origin. We use to joke that the only ones who had to worry about being racially abused were Americans (this is the height of Bush II).
And the people there are not usually low level workers, they are often educated long term professionals. Like I (and my groups) was,
I’m also a Brit who’s been out of the country approx 3.5 years.
I’m mixed race but can count on one hand the times I experienced racial taunts. That’s not to say that’s OK but I can live with it.
I have heard anecdotally that the vote has emboldened the racists as now they feel they’re part of the majority (even if, of course, that’s not what the vote was about).
So while I feel terribly homesick, I’m really not sure about going back to the UK…
Sorry I don’t have much of an answer to the OP, just thought I’d reply because of coincidence we’ve been away same duration
Which hs been my experience as well. I live in the south-east and there are many eastern european migrants here but I’ve heard no resentment or xenophobia in the run-up to, or aftermath of…the referendum.
I haven’t witnessed any direct examples of racism towards migrants, but it’s certainly getting reported in the news. I fear a small minority have felt emboldened by the Brexit result. Hopefully they’ll crawl back under their shells when they realise we aren’t about to kick out 1m Poles (who have been a huge asset to our country).
Yeah. There seems to have been an increase in the number of both violent and non-violent but outspoken racists since the referendum. Before June 2016, we’d have said blithely that Britain had a small minority of such people. Now we have to revise that estimate up. Which raises the question - how many more racists are out there that still don’t feel bold enough to share their views in public? Have *all *the previous shy racists come out post-referendum? Or are there still more out there who might tut at the *uncouthness *of ripping some poor girl’s hijab off, but share the underlying views that motivate such an attack?
Feeling uncertain about that is uncomfortable for me, a true-born white Brit. If non-native residents are reconsidering staying in the UK in the light of all this, it’s difficult to blame them.
There has been a rise in racist hate crime, unfortunately. But they are still racist hate crimes, and still widely condemned. We’ve not suddenly become a racist nation where that sort of behaviour is acceptable.
The local example is the owner of the kebab shop getting racist abuse from a drunken idiot when he didn’t get his kebab quick enough (and as you say over the pond, ‘you bet your ass’ the local newspapers called it out as a vile racist attack), but I’d put that as a drunk being aware of how one can be as offensive as possible at this current time, when looking for a fight. This is where there are two sides to all the media exposure the racist attacks are getting though - on the one hand, it keeps up the awareness of the problem and the message that it’s not acceptable. On the other, it seeds the idea in the minds of attention seeking idiots, and drunken fight-seeking idiots, so it’s the first thing they do.
On aggregate, from coast to coast, no. But there’s a case to be made that we’ve* suddenly found out that we’re a nation with surprisingly deep pockets of racism where that sort of behaviour is acceptable. You don’t walk up to a woman in the street and assault her, or scream at people to go home because they’ve been voted out, if you think that everyone you know would despise you for it.
*(I say we’ve suddenly found out. I suspect that there may be a few people with very different experiences from mine who would claim to have known this already.)
You were, IIRC, always in and around London, which is much more cosmopolitan and diverse than the country as a whole. If you’d been in Birmingham or Leicester you would have seen things rather differently.
In the West Country, things were a bit different. There was very little overt racism (the worst I ever saw was a public toilet with “wogs go home!” written on the wall repeatedly) and more of the “it’s such a colorful culture” sort of thing.
My dad used to have bricks chucked at him in the street in Liverpool, though that was in the bad old days and not so long after Enoch Powell was in office. And Kent is particularly well-known for racism, though I’m not sure why. Perhaps it’s because a lot of migrants pass through.
Granted, things seem to have changed inordinately beginning in the mid-90s (for the better). My brother is of South Asian origin and married to a white woman. His best friend is a white guy married to a South Asian woman. None of them have experienced much of significance racism-wise. When I was growing up, I would not have believed that was possible; even the most tolerant white Britons would have looked at a mixed-race couple squinty-eyed. I suspect what we’re seeing now is a backlash against what appeared to me to be amazing progress on racism in the UK between 1995 and 2015.
I don’t know about Birmingham, but Leicester is pretty diverse, with about 33% of the people foreign-born, 30% from South Asia, and 18% Muslim and 15% Hindu. (My source: the Wiki article)
Interesting point. Given the sheer number of people I’ve heard expressing frustration at “PC Gone Mad” and the huge backlash against the ‘left’ (especially with SJW now being a thing), I’m starting to worry that we haven’t made much progress over the past couple of decades after all - maybe it’s all an illusion where we’ve just covered it up by making it strongly socially unacceptable to *express *things like racism and xenophobia, without actually doing much to address those underlying issues and educate people on why to not be racist (and various other -ists and -phobias). There seems to be a bit of a pushback now where it’s becoming more and more socially unacceptable to display “PC” attitudes - though I do experience far more of the “you display slightly progressive views and therefore must be SJW cuck scum” on the internet than IRL…
As long things like racist hate crime remains illegal though we still have the upper hand with fighting against it.
You are right of course, although British racism always has been much less “upfront” than that of other countries. As for the West of England, I did spend a lot of time in the Bristol and Bath areas,( extremely white) and lived in Swindon (midlands). The one time I was nearly beaten up was in Liverpool, when in a pub I foolishly aired comment about wanting Australia to win a cricket match.
But you are right, maybe the tolerance of the last decade was a (passing) phase.
Birmingham too. But that’s the problem - there are enough South Asians there for them to be seen as a problem in some quarters, rather than just a curiosity.
The Conservative Party Conference has just finished. Some highlights:
Foreign doctors to stay only until we have trained up enough British ones.
Numbers of foreign students to be reduced in a “generous offer” to universities
Businesses employing “too many” foreigners to be named and shamed.
Landlords to be **jailed **for letting to illegal immigrants.
And these people will be shocked and appalled when a foreign doctor gets spat at in the street, or a Brit with olive skin and a “funny” name can’t find a place to live.
Why do I get the feeling that many remainders voted so because they were savvy enough to realize they did not want to need a visa every time they went to the continent?
Which could be until forever… do they think all those foreign-born doctors and nurses are there fighting the local ones claw and tooth for jobs?
it’s like how back in the early '90s American chemists were grouching about too many research managers being foreigners, until someone pointed out those jobs need PhDs and Americans weren’t applying to graduate school, or my aunt blaming her children’s bad or not-so-good jobs on uppity foreigners with degrees rather than considering both of my cousins are dropouts (8th and 12th grade; Ray only has a “certificate of attendance”).
