This happened to me at the weekend and I feel ashamed I did nothing - Racism

but only with people who agree with you

I agree with absolutely everything you say here, except "every criticism of a non white is racist". Unless I have badly misread the opening post, at no stage did the OP mention the race of the woman. Plenty of white women wear headscarves.

Edited to add - I missed a page - sorry. I see this has already been picked up. Apologies - did not mean for this to be a hectoring point.

@Changedusernameforthis2 Yes, well I've started the conversation by asking you some questions and you have chosen to hector us with your misplaced piety rather than continuing what could be interesting by answering those questions.

Of course you can't answer questions such as, "Do you think she had a right to KEEP harassing him in this way" because if you answer

• Yes, she did. Then the next question will be: why and it will start to get sticky for you.
• No, she didn't. Then the next question will be: then why did you think he didn't have the right, in his frustration at having to KEEP telling her, to call her a name-a rat, a cunt, whatever came to his mind.
• The only way out for you would be to answer: He did have the right but he shouldn't have called her a rat and said "we keep giving them anything because by his use of "them" he was othering, which is racist.
• Even that response doesn't get you off the accusation of false piety because an answer might be: he was being respectful of this person's pronouns and wasn't sure how they identified, so used the gender neutral-them." OR an alternative might be-as another poster has posted out-he could be referring to people of all races trying to get behind his stall.

I bet you wish you hadn't said that he kept telling her and she kept ignoring him. You didn't think it through-you intended by use of "kept" to show us how this person was harassed.

Instead, many of us see an ignorant person ignoring the stall holder and thinking she/he/they had a perfect right to do what she wanted while bleeding hearts ignored her behaviour and focus on the stallholder-who sounds pretty patient-eventually snapping and calling her a name.

So, that is why you won't answer the questions because you're on a sticky wicket.

Next time, stand up for someone who fears being robbed and stop dismally failing to display your sensitivity towards a potential thief who just happens to be wearing a head scarf.

Toodle Pip!

Fine OP, you're the one that was there and could hear tone etc, see exactly what happened. Next time speak up if you feel that is appropriate.

Reflect on what you could have done differently.

No point giving out here. People can only see what you wrote and interpret it as written.

If you regret not speaking up in the moment, that's on you.

Others here aren't the societal problem for not necessarily agreeing with your written interpretation.

From what you've written, the woman shouldn't have kept going behind the stall and the stall holder was within his rights to be frustrated by anyone doing that. Was his intent racist? Nobody here knows. You think l so because you heard his intonation and saw his expression. Fine. I take your word for it that he was. But you're the one who didn't speak up. Others here can only see the transcript which is ambiguous and could be about customers.

You're taking your frustration out on other posters for what exactly? What absolution do you want? Why not tell us what you would do differently next time?

You absolutely can police someone’s speech. Freedom of speech works both ways and isn’t freedom from the consequences as so many people seem to think it is.

If he wasn’t being racist and just happened to use two well known tropes to describe a woman in Islamic dress he’s still a bloody fool for speaking so thoughtlessly.

You forgot uncontrollable diarrhoea with sneezing fits at all important events in his life 😅

It's because virtue-signalling is obnoxious and annoying. Were you expecting a round of applause?

Also don’t feel guilty. Sometimes we just don’t want to escalate. When somebody has said something to me about others I have a clearly disapproving face. If aimed at me I tend to leave it. Racists are brain deficient so nothing you will say will change their mind.

Great list of curses!

What an awful man. I hope he gets paper cuts everyday for the rest of his life, that his pillow never has a cool side again, that he is never able to use the loo again without getting caught in his zipper, that every time he drops a slice of bread it falls butter side down etc.

(I would say worse but don’t want to get banned.)

sometimes if you just raise your eyebrows it signals disapproval quite strongly

OP, I know what you mean, I commented on someone’s overt racism (but when you see it you know it) and wish I’d done more, luckily another woman with way bigger balls than me confronted it outright and I felt a little ashamed I hadn’t done more. Sometimes it’s scary to confront these people so you’re not sure whether you might actually exacerbate the situation!

Thats quite a stretch to think its about Gary Linekars twitter.
Also a bit odd that youve seen a post about a racist comment against towards Muslims, but you think its because of 'anti semetic bigotry being so high'

Bizarre

Op you are definitely being gas lit, I cannot believe the mental gymnastics on this thread. Its really very simple

stallholder to annoying person- Oi, get away from my stall- you can't come here
stallholder to mate- OMG some people, can you believe the cheek of her
=NOT RACIST
vs
stallholder to mate - these people are like rats we should stop giving them things
=RACIST

for the hard of thinking its because-
he spoke about her as a member of an ethnic group, not an individual
he used the well known racist tactic of likening an ethnic group to vermin
he referred to the racist idea that 'we' are always giving 'them' everything

really not sure what any of this has to do with Gaza/Israel

I agree. It was her behaviour - not her race.

If she wasn’t behaving in that way he wouldn’t have said that.

This is how these threads go:

Someone posts about an obviously racist/Islamophobic/xenophobic comment or behaviour.

Other people respond downplaying it and giving examples of minorities behaving in undesirable ways by way of excusing it.

I'm depressed by the amount of bigotry on display on these boards these days. & I absolutely guarantee the venn diagram showing 'people who defend bigotry' and 'people who say racism is a problem are playing the race card' is a circle.

:-(

How do you know she doesn't stand up to racism in other way?

You wanted to make it about Jewish people so just say that. Of course racism and prejudice in general is despicable but this had nothing to do with antisemitism.

stop making racist assumptions about foreign women in headscarves. Then you won’t be unnecessarily offended by throw away comments

This perhaps? Don’t be so disingenuous….

Scroungers. Rude people. They're everywhere and every culture has them.

it’s about racism. I’m saying to op that we face serious overt explicit racism on a daily basis. If she is so keen to stand up to racists surely she should start there rather than worrying about an ambiguous comment made by a random stranger.

of course antisemitic racism is fashionable so many people don’t like to challenge it. It’s not like disapproving of white working class men for wrong speech which is much more acceptable in certain circles

How do you know they were Muslim?