Are people on Mumsnet secretly racist or what?

MN is probs one of the biggest UK based forums, so yes people will target it.

but they haven't yet figured out how to deal with the more sophisticated category

strongly agree

Yes

It’s not just racism. I see many posts on here that are prejudice on age, nationality, religion, social status etc.

People will have their opinions on all of the above on the boards on here. Personally I find some posts very nasty and I always report those posts. Not all are removed though if whatever Mod agrees that a post should stand. I don’t think I’ve ever seen the MN moderation policy.

I think part of it is that a lot of the racist posters have learnt how to say racist things while just about sticking within talk guidelines. They are clearly saying (or often implying) very racist things but they manage to evade moderation.

It's straight out of the Farage playbook. Whip up hate as much as you can but stay within the law.

In my experience, MNHQ are generally pretty good at dealing with the posts that are overtly and uncontroversially racist but they haven't yet figured out how to deal with the more sophisticated category.

I think we have a lot of 'infiltrators' at the moment on here posting political agitation posts- probably the Tufton st lot now being bunged by Farage etc

There’s someone who’s started a thread claiming that they’re not racist because they had posters of Chuck Berry on their wall as a teenager. Ignoring multilayered wrongness of that for a second, I don’t think that’s MN’s usual demographic.

I do try to challenge. I have spent hours on here challenging people. But sometimes you get exhausted by it and you need to have a break. There have been times in recent days when I have felt depressed and defeated by it, and I just haven't been able to muster the energy to keep arguing with people whose views are so deeply entrenched. It can feel futile at times. So I let some posts go for a while and hope that someone else will come along and challenge them...

And then I find the energy and start over again!

I’m reporting whole threads or posters to MN rather than challenging each individual post.

I’m sure there are racist MNers but there seems to have been an influx of brand new posters signing up to make these kind of comments in the past few days.

At this time of night posts won't be looked at if they are reported. It can be more effective to highlight a thread to the Night Watch instead by starting a thread about it in that section.

I have been surprised with what some people have been openly posting recently, and justifying it by claiming it's "free speech" and shouldn't be challenged or removed.

Freedom of speech and all that..

It's the time of day. All the mods are offline so trolls run rampant. That also brings out the people who agree with them! All banned by morning hopefully.

It’s like the twilight zone isn’t it

Are you reporting the posts, OP?

I report the worst ones and they generally get deleted. Sometimes it takes a lot longer than I think it should, but I appreciate that they have a tough job at the moment. They will take another look as well if you query a poor moderation decision. I think they're doing their best.

The rest of it, I just tend to challenge on the threads themselves. Impossible to report every racist post as there are so many of them.

I don't really understand the thing about keeping it secret though. I mean, it seems pretty open and explicit to me. Most people seem outraged if you actually call them racist, but they make no attempt to hide it so I don't suppose they really mind others knowing.

Yes I agree with this.

I think a lot of Brits like to think that racism is only extreme. So apartheid, segregation, police brutality etc. They think that because they always say please and thank you to that nice Mr Singh at the chemist, they can’t possibly be a racist.

It appears that the majority of those who comment here call anything which involves discussing an ‘other’ in anything but a positive light racist. It’s what people do when they don’t have the capacity to debate, so much easier to shut the topic down and then smugly claim victory.

Not very hidden sadly, judging from some of the ludicrous racist crap that's been posted over the last few days.