So why are you raising objections when I say the UK is racist?
This is just the “few bad apples” argument. No, they need to be dealt with altogether, and the ‘baked in’ racism is actually the worst part. By far.
That’s what I thought. Exactly the same reasons why British people dislike immigrants.
More direct evidence, that makes sense. And if you go around quizzing people on their attitudes to race… do you really do that?
You said it was more racist than the US and SA. Also that racists are a big group with lots of influence, which I still think is just different definitions of racism.
What do you propose we do about it?
Please. “Exactly” implies that there isn’t another, rather glaring reason that’s way more prominent in the UK. Do you think anyone is that naïve? And it’s not just individuals, the racism in UK immigration is baked into the institutions, too.
No, I don’t “go around quizzing people”. But I do have frank conversations with all my friends and also other people I meet, at say parties or work, about these kinds of issues, in the course of which questions like that definitely do come up.
No, I didn’t. Go back and reread what I wrote again. You only got that half-right.
What proportion of your country voted for Brexit, again? Tell me that’s not a big group. I didn’t say they were the majority. Just very, very influential, and not a single-digit percentage.
Well, for one thing, you could start by listening when PoCs talk about their experience of racism. Not responding, not whatabouting, not none-of-my-friends-ing, none of that. Just listen.
Then, more people should start having these kinds of discussions with people they know - you will be surprised what comes out when you actually ask people their views, as opposed to just assuming.
Then, everyone should call out racism - loudly, and frequently. Including institutional racism.
Then, vote. Vote out racists, or nativists, or whatever they’re calling themselves. And vote with your purse as well - contribute to good causes that fight racism.
The recent surge in immigration has mostly been white people from Europe, and those are the exact things people complain about them, so yeah. It’s not technically racism, but it’s obviously the same principle, so I don’t get why you think it’s different.
And not everyone who voted for Brexit did so for racist reasons. Nationalism, poverty and general discontent had a lot more to do with it.
Maybe we should talk about this stuff more. I think a lot of people are afraid of saying something wrong, so it’s easier to avoid the subject.
As for voting, I do it out of a sense of duty, but it’s a waste of time due to FPTP. There’s no one I want to vote for anyway.
It’s been just as much about Brown people as it has been about White people. All those MENA refugees, for one thing. Sure, “technically” White. But not treated like it.
Of course it is. I’ve already covered how that’s still racist. I’ve seen the jokes about Polish gardeners and the like on TV shows. Racist as anything.
The xenophobia here isn’t based on an inherent perception of inferiority in foreigners, is the difference.
Why would they say something wrong if, as you say, they’re not racist?
I was talking about voting against.
You ain’t gonna like my answer :).
The racist policies of the 80s and 90s, stemming especially but not exclusively from the drug war, sent a hugely disproportionate number of Black Americans into the penal system. This was enormous, on the order of millions of lives directly ruined, and millions more indirectly damaged.
What do I want? I want our country to make it right. I want us to spend a shit-ton of our national capital to make right the ruining of lives.
First, we need to stop imprisoning so many people. Most nations on earth get by with a fraction of the prison population that the US has. We need to use alternatives to prison to deal with low-level crime. We need to eliminate private prisons that are motivated to reduce costs and increase inmates to maximize profits. We need to ensure that our smaller prison population get services they need, including top-line professional training, so that when they’re out of prison, the law-abiding path is available and appealing.
And we need to revisit what we’ve done to millions of Americans whose imprisonment was an unnecessary shit-show. How can we help them, and how can we help their families, fix what we broke?
I live in a town in the US that was 99.8% non-Hispanic White in 1990. In 2010 it was 97.2%. There was already a panic setting in when we moved in in 2012. At a school orientation event one parent sitting in the first row turned around looked at me and another Asian parent in the second row and said “People are moving into this town and changing the nature of it, and we aren’t going to allow it”. This was clearly within earshot of the principal and deputy superintendent as well as at least 20-30 parents, including our realtor and a couple of people who later became friends.
None of these people regarded what that parent said as racist, but I certainly did. They passed it off as resentment of people moving into town generally or immigrants generally.
But this year the co-valedictorians of the high school were a boy who emigrated here from Russia at age 12, who has a very thick Russian accent and a girl whose mother was adopted from Korea as an infant by white parents and who consequently was born in the USA and has eight great-grandparents all born in the USA. Someone went off on a rant on the town Facebook page about “foreigners who can’t speak English properly being promoted by the schools’ social engineering agenda”. He wasn’t talking about the Russian emigre, he was talking about the girl who is half-Asian. Post got many hundreds of likes. Most of the people challenging him on this were current HS students or recent graduates. They were promptly hammered by their elders as being naive and not appreciating the town they grew up in. The poster himself and most of his supporters are not old. They are in their 30s, 40s and 50s.
Again even friends we have made in town who are white do not see this as racism. Just some vague protectiveness of “semi-rural nature of the town” that is being threatened by “uncontrolled growth”. The town has been a generic suburb since the 1950s, and the population growth rate has been under 1%/year for the last 30 years. My conclusion is that this is 100% because of race. No one is threatened by Russian, French, Swedish or Irish immigrants. But they are threatened by DESCENDANTS of Indian, Chinese, Vietnamese and Peruvian immigrants.
A Asian-American (Vietnamese descent born in the US) colleague went out for lunch with our white boss. As soon as they walked outside the office they were set upon by a guy who called her a g** and a c****n and tod her to go back to China and take the COVID with her. The very next day, we had an HR session (this was at the height of the BLM protests in June) about racism we have witnessed or experienced. This same Asian American colleague testified that in her 30 years she had never experienced any racial discrimination or abuse. After the session a smaller group asked her why she said that after reporting the incident just the previous day. Her answer “Making white people uncomfortable and defensive is bad for your career” Our boss also dismissed the incident as the act of a deranged person, not really racially motivated. She was more concerned that the guy also used the c-word in his screed.
The ability of even well meaning white people to not see racism never fails to amaze me.
Your story is a pretty good illustration of the oblique ways racism shows up, with plausible deniability. But I’m pretty confused by “c****n.”
Typo for c****k.
A lot of white people (including my brothers and sisters in law) grew up with programming about people “playing the race card”, combating “reverse discrimination” etc. and are passing it down to my nieces and nephews who pass as white. It’s scary to me to see my siblings going along with this, either because they buy into it or to keep their in-laws happy.
Polish gardeners? Are you sure? Plumber or builder or something would be more plausible. I wouldn’t have said the xenophobia was here, either. I find that survey hard to believe. They should try asking the same question in SA about people from foreign countries.
It’s one of those subjects where you don’t know if it’ll offend someone more to talk about it or to ignore it. Not exactly suitable watercooler chat.
I do, but my vote still isn’t worth anything.
You might want to create some jobs first. Otherwise may as well save on the training and put them on disability like the poor white people.
OT, but sounds like ‘white-adjacency’ has been considerably oversold…
Actually I just thought of a possible example of racism. In a previous job there were lots of employees of different races, and lots of female employees, but the only ones I ever saw promoted were white males. Coincidence? It’s not the sort of thing you can prove.
Fair point. Let’s give them each millions of dollars, and then the GOP will realize they’re job creators.
Man, you are thinking only of sheet-wearing, cross-burning “RACISTS!”. Especially if you are having to look “down south” for racism. Northern racism is alive and well and subtle. Talk to any black person anywhere in America and they’ll provide a slew of examples of how they have run into this sort of racism in their lives.
It’s like seeing a termite walk across your deck and thinking “oh I guess we’ve got a couple of termites” when in reality you’re blissfully unaware that your whole house is infested with millions of bugs chomping away. It’s time to burn your house down.
Plumber, builder, gardener - you realize that’s completely besides the point? But thank you for providing an example of the kind of stereotyping that’s part of the underlying framework that sustains racism.
Given how much of it is tied to “Brown” people - seriously, did you not see the Leave “Breaking Point” posters? -, and knowing what I do about Whiteness’ opinions of non-White people in general, I somehow doubt that.
I found it unbelievable at first, too - the numbers looked waaay too low. But there they are, and I’m not going to argue with them.
What, whether “foreigners” are born harder working/lazy?
Depends on if you live in a culture of fear or not, I suppose.
Spoken like someone who has never put their life on the line to get to vote.
Look, this all started because you stated that by living in South Africa, I would know a disproportionate amount of racists. I think we’ve come around to the converse - you seem to know a disproportionately low amount of racists (that you see as racist).
Either you live in a very non-racist place, or you’re not seeing the racists there. I know which way I’d bet. But I’d also bet on you still thinking it’s somehow my perceptions that’s at fault. Because how many posts ago did I say “listen to PoCs, not respond”?
The only way this assumption about SA would make sense, ISTM, is if all one remembers about SA is “apartheid”, and when they imagine a South African, they imagine a white apartheid supporter. Perhaps many folks are unaware that the vast majority of South Africans are not white, much less supporters of apartheid. This probably qualifies as a form of unconscious racism.
Only if you’re stuck on certain modes of proof. To me, it’s obviously racist (and sexist). On its face, no further proof necessary. The onus should be on them to prove it’s not.
I have a die with six faces, numbered 1-6. Any of them could come up, but when I roll it, the only number I ever roll is 6.
Coincidence? It’s not the sort of thing you can prove.
But if you think it’s a fair die, you might also think that promotion practices at DemonTree’s old job were non-racist.
So is it racist to notice that certain types of people are more commonly found doing certain types of jobs? And WTF is ‘Whiteness’? And a culture of fear? I remember the ‘breaking point’ posters, and I did think those were racist at the time. As for people I know, it’s not that I live in a particularly non-racist place (probably the opposite), but who I know, plus, like I said earlier, a difference in what we each consider racism.
And my vote isn’t worth anything because I live in an extremely safe seat, there’s just no chance of influencing the outcome. I still do vote though.
Yeah, I was assuming if a South African knows a lot of racists it might well be because he knows a lot of white apartheid supporters.
Depends how many times you roll. It wasn’t enough for me to be sure.