What are some mundane pointless bigoted things (MPBTTYMS) that you have stored in your memories that you must share? Are you considered a minority to whatever degree in your country? Has anybody said anything bigoted against you? Did you forgive that person and make up for the apologies? Why do you think the bigot said the bigoted phrase? Was it an accident (something that sounded bigoted but due to some regional differences, it’s really not), or was it intentional and that person deliberately want to hurt your feelings? Can you list some here?
I consider myself fortunate that I have never really experienced bigotry myself, so I would like to read some really bigoted phrases. They may be useful someday in my career.
I’m Irish but have lived abroad and don’t have a local accent, which has resulted in my being openly insulted.
Which is amusing when the person finds out I’m actually Irish. The look on their face is priceless “you’re Mary’s cousin, how?!?!” :eek: duh, her mother and my mother were sisters.
My mother retained her accent despite all the moves, and the notion that I’m her daughter leaves some people reeling in shock. One woman who used to blatantly refuse to serve me in a shop is now behaving like I’m her long lost best ever friend.
I lived in Scotland for a while and the presumption is if you’re Irish you’re a Catholic. That was not a fun place to live under those circumstances and I’ll happily admit to disliking the Scots. If I was asked about my name I’d say it was an Irish name and watch their faces cloud over and the foul language/anger to start up.
Oh and don’t let on to the Scots that you’re English - they’re very touchy about that and like to bang on about 1314 and whenever the last time England were beaten at the rugby or football or any time an English sports person failed to win something. Tim Henman would be considered a joke, Andy Murray is the Greatest Tennis Player Ever, who has been bloody unlucky at Wimbledon (so far)
The Irish don’t like the English much, but there’s The Famine to consider there.
Oddly the English seem to quite like everyone else.
No one seems to like the French.
I encounter what might be construed as bigotry because of my height (~6ft), excess height = stupid.
Well, I was called a “gypsy” once, in a way which was clearly intended as an insult - and I took it as such, which I guess implies that, I, too, am prejudiced against gypsies?
Hmmm… Thinking about it some here, suddenly here comes a gypsy-related childhood flashback: As a child, I once saw a gypsy woman cleaning her husband’s dirty feet while he berated her, and for some reason (calling Dr. Freud?) it made me feel enormously uncomfortable! I think I have nurtured an irrational dislike of gypsies ever since.
I was accused of being a bigot by a black woman I worked with years ago. I was in Jacksonville, FL at the time and I was assigned as the mentor to a newly hired engineer from Puerto Rico. Despite being in Florida, Jacksonville can get cold - in the 18 years I lived there, it actually snowed twice!! (OK, it all melted by noon, but still…)
Anyway, Roberto started work in the winter and was complaining about the cold. Naturally, I had to rag on him about his thin Puerto Rican blood. He knew I was kidding and could give as good as he got, but the woman who heard me giving him grief accused me of being a bigot! I don’t know what brought it on - up until that point, I thought she and I were friends, at least workplace friends. In any event, Roberto didn’t seem to be bothered - he and I remained friends till I moved away. Maybe she was just having a bad day…
I remember in my TN high school back in the eighties any girl who showed interest in a black guy was a “nigger lover”. It was like one of the worst things you could be, even a step below lesbian. We didn’t really even talk about homosexuality but calling someone a nigger lover was standard. It was rare that black and white kids hung out together, and we had all the separate homecoming and graduation titles like the king and queen and “most likely to succeed.” My yearbook has one black and one white for every title. I don’t know if the black kids had a nasty name for the blacks who showed interest in white people of the opposite sex, but I imagine they did.
Thinking back on it now it’s just bizarre. I know there’s still a lot of racism in this country but young people have no idea how far we’ve progressed.
Or maybe we’ve just found a common enemy to bring us together in the Mexicans and the Muslims.
Oh and recently there’s a older black man I work with who just plain told me “I like white women. They make some pretty babies. I pay a hundred dollars extra a month for my white babies”.
I am afraid to delve deeper into his story. I just don’t think I want to know.
Funny thing is I don’t see anything especially bigoted about that, he is most likely talking about child support. I find very few people are politically correct in their speech, but outright offensive shit is a different story.
When I was young, I knew a kid who thought it was hilarious to hold out his hand and say “Gimme five,” and then if you tried to, he would yank his hand back so that you missed it, at which point he would chant in a (sort of) rhyme, “You’re on the niggers’ side!”
I also knew a guy who joked, “I think black people are great. Everybody should own one!”
In my teens, I was once listening to some beebop by Manhattan Transfer, and an older man I knew said, “Eh, I never liked nigger music.” I’d really respected and admired him… up to then.
I once knew a sweet little old lady who was very nice. But this one time she was watching TV and black people were on. She said “You’d think that in this day and age they’d figure out a way to turn those people white.”
My late mother-in-law had the usual prejudices of the eastern European – not too fond of “colored people” or Jews. One time she glanced out the window while visiting and exclaimed, “Look! Should we call the police?” “What?” I saw nothing out of the ordinary. “There’s a colored boy out there! On a bicycle!” Yeah, so what. He’s visiting his aunt and uncle who live in the large house on the corner. The one that’s probably the best in the neighborhood. The one that makes the rest of us look trashy.
Another time, she told my daughters not to wear so much black clothing. “It makes you look Jewish.” WTF??
I was frequently written off initially by the male students in my university classes (and once by a professor, nothing provable though) based on my gender and size–fat chick. My major, Computer & Information Technology, had even fewer females than the college of engineering. We women always had to prove ourselves twice as hard, because we happened to be born with tits. But at the same time, because most of the professors were men, we had to work hard to avoid the appearance of being on the receiving end of special treatment. I always ended up proving myself, because I’m smart as fuck, but it was really awkward before getting to that point–and having to re-do it every time I was grouped up with a new partner? That shit is fucking exhausting.
I experienced a lot of gender dysphoria back then, because I just wanted to be taken seriously (sight unseen) like one of the guys. Eventually I fantasized about literally BEING one of the guys. But not because I hated my gender or anything, I just hated the way guys treated me. Once I left school, I got better.
At least I got the benefit of white privilege, though.
You were born with tits, rachel? You must have been a strange-looking baby.
I’m a member of a childfree-by-choice social group, and we have experienced bigotry because of it. The biggest example of this is restaurants that refused to take our reservation because of what kind of group we are. That is a very strange thing.
Another example of that happened just recently. One of the candidates in the race for the provincial election we’re currently in middle of doesn’t have kids.She was given a hard time about that until they found out that she was infertile. That took me aback a little bit - choosing not to have kids is not okay, but being infertile is. Got it.
My grandmother is an elderly white South African, so I suppose it’s not a huge surprise that she might harbour some racist attitudes. But something she said a few months ago left me not knowing quite what to say.
We were watching some documentary where they were interviewing an African-American scientist (it may have been Neil deGrasse Tyson, I don’t recall for certain) and suddenly she says, unprompted - and I am quoting her words exactly - “Their negroes are much more intelligent than ours.” - “them” meaning the USA and “us” meaning South Africa.
What do you even say in response to something like that?
I have black wavy hair and go quite brown if I’m in the sun. When cycling around south London I got cut up by a truck so signaled to the driver that I didn’t appreciate nearly being knocked off my bike, by which he replied “F*** off you bloody foreigner!”. I thought it was very amusing and stupid.
A bit like the sunny summer of 1976 when a couple of bratty kids on a campsite called me a “wog”. My hair is straight, but I could just about look Mexican when I work up a heavy tan; Indian or Pakistani, not so much. :dubious:
watching a movie wherein a black woman is dating a white man, and her black friend calls that ‘sleeping with the enemy’???
Really???:dubious::dubious::dubious:
add: I suppose I did when I was in Wales; I tripped on a rock and gashed my knee… so I made the bad joke that the rock had mistaken me for an Englishwoman it made the medic smile. (I am a San Franciscan :D)
it made the medic smile. (I am a San Franciscan :D)