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

You are allowed to criticise people of all shades and religions.. It is not racist.

Did you think that she should have been given a free pass? Well, do you? Why do you think she ignored him? Was she arrogant as well as ignorant?

He had to keep telling her? Why didn't you step in and tell her to come out from behind the stall? Do you think she had a right to harass him in this way?

Did she eventually fuck off? Did she pinch anything? You wouldn't know. She may very well have been a thief-she certainly played the part well.

What do you think would have happened to her if she had behaved in that manner at in a market in Saudi Arabia? Go on, have a guess.

Next time, help the stall holder against a potential thief. Do not waste your bleeding heart and fat tears on anti social behaviour, whether they are wearing a head covering or not.

This doesn't relate to the point of the thread, but a friend of mine who is an experienced car-boot seller says that when you park up, either stay in your car when you are surrounded by these "punters", or get out of your car, lock it, and walk away. Doing either of these, especially the latter, usually results in the throng getting fed up waiting and moving on. Genius!

My apologies, yeah I get you now!

Maybe it was a comment on the leniency of the justice system if he was worried about someone going behind the “counter”.

why was she going behind the table - surely it’s a well established norm - customers one side, person taking the money the other side.

I agree OP his comment was vile. Reminiscent of Nazis labelling Jews as vermin. Sadly quite a few PPs seem to think blatant racism is ok if an immigrant is a bit rude.

You don’t know it was racist though. My point was that there is plenty of real racism (including public unprecedented violence and threats towards the Jewish community) without worrying about some comment a random man made, not even to you.

The only mental gymnastics and comprehension problem I can see is this post and others like it.

Unless you live in a very multicultural city I.dont believe you could have never heard anyone use a phrase like "They're like rats, it might help if we stop giving them everything"" in relation to migrants/asylum seekers etc

I did a boot sale with a friend, our first time. We lost quite a bit of stuff as the minute we opened the boot of the car there were hands going everywhere. It was almost impossible to keep them away.

The next time (the last time) we did one, we sat in the car and read the paper and drank a coffee until the locusts had moved away, then we got out and unloaded the car without too much hindrance.

Does she know them then?

RE the rats term, cannot tell if you are ignorant or being deliberately obtuse... its also the use of the word 'them' which is racist and othering.

No I know that.
I was asking the poster who thought that it wasn’t a racist remark what that bit meant if it wasn’t about race.

How do you know? How do you know the man’s intent?

Why do you say that?

@familylawyer01392 Because SIL is from.the community. How do you know they werent? The eagerness to find a racial slur in a simple observation of intolerance.

Bigotry and intolerance works both ways.

The reference to rats to me was the same as the term tip rats. Not a nice terminology but not one applied to a person's race but a person's behaviour.

That doesn’t make sense. What did he mean about “giving them everything” if he was talking about people rudely going behind the stall? Who is he giving things to in that context? @JoyousEagle

The comment "it might help if we stop giving them everything" is refering to the belief that we as in the UK government gives immigrants/illegal immigrants (asylum seekers) "everything" such as phones, cars, money and houses.

Racism against Muslims is being gradually normalised now.

As a Muslim, it just makes me avoid people and stick with my own kind as much as I can.

I really doubt it was an Orthodox Jewish woman in a headscarf going behind the counter…

If you want to tackle overt racism op, there are weekly hate marches full of antisemitic slogans and speeches in every major city in the uk. We Jews are attacked and intimidated on a daily basis just for going about our business. My daughters are told to cover their uniform as it shows they go to a Jewish school and girls have been violently attacked by antisemites.

Join one of the organizations that stands with us against violent racism. Protest the hate marches and all those who support them (like Gary Linekar who actually posted something calling Jews rats). That would be much more effective than telling off a man who made a comment that you don’t know is racist or not.

Yes it is, I knew actually what the stall holder meant.
It was obviously a comment on the narrative that all the "illegal immigrants" get given cars, phones and houses.

I'm shocked at the level of faux innocence in this thread, I've never noticed how either naive, stupid or plainly racist some pp on mn can be.

Just because the woman was going behind the stall doesn't give licence to be racist either.

That doesn’t make sense. What did he mean about “giving them everything” if he was talking about people rudely going behind the stall? Who is he giving things to in that context?

I agree she was rude, and he’s justified in being annoyed. But he has expressed that in a racist way. If the person going behind the stall had been white, I imagine he’d still have shooed them away and still been annoyed, but wouldn’t have said anything about “rats” being given everything.