MNHQ Racism policy

I'm not understanding what's being considered either.

I think that the fact its Northern Ireland muddies the waters. It makes people nervous.

Even people who mean no harm (in RL IME) can get it drastically wrong.

What's done is done, and there's no point breathing down their necks now. It won't get us anywhere. Its a shame that we are even discussing this, but it has to be done properly.

Im not understanding what is being condsidered by MNHQ. Are they taking time to form an apology or form a justification or what? What is being considered?

I think its fair enough to wait. Rome wasn't built in a day.

See I think it didn't need an hour to do it properly, for a start an organisation should as a matter if course know a bit about protected characteristics - not every employee perhaps, but overall. And not just think race = BME. And when a group of users of the site point out that they feel under attack due to their nationality, and further point out that nationality "counts" alongside race, then action should be taken at that point.
So while you may think taking time to consider your response is a good thing, to me (and others?) it seems further evidence that we are not being believed.

If MNHQ are having a review of their Racism policy then I would ask if they would look again at the way they approach posts regarding Gypsies and Travellers,whilst openly racist posts are deleted ,many that imply racism are allowed to stay,I didnt read the thread that this thread refers to but it seems to be a similar situation.

Julie. With all due respect. You wouldn't say that and be so wishy washy in your response if the posters who are complaining were "BAME" - black asian or minority ethnic. Would you? If the thread had told most black people to grow up or most chinese people to grow up or most would you say that? would you say hang on we can't decide we need a meeting when it suits us?

I remember being very strenuously searched and having a female security guard shove her fingers just about right in my fanny on a plane journey from London about 20 years ago.

And this thread takes me right back there.

I'm 39 and did leave home to study & work for a bit in my early 20s - I had people move away from me on the Tube - you know incase I had a bomb. I was also called various hate terms in a workplace but in a friendly way . MN & it's oopsie type response makes posters feel like shite but let's call a meeting when everyone has the time.

I don't know. I just can't understand how HQ can't see it clearly, easily and why it takes all this fucking debate and all these fucking hundreds of posts to say

RACISM OF ANY KIND AGAINST ANYONE OF ANY RACE, CREED, RELIGION, COLOUR, ETHNICITY IS WRONG AND WILL NOT BE TOLERATED HERE

The school holiday thing gets on my tits massively. The assumption is the op is either a hairy handed who has made a rookie error or a private schooler. Either party gets shit.

If someone posts about their lunch at midnight I think located in another hemisphere rather than TROLL!

I have never experienced these opinions first hand, mainly because I haven't left NI, but I am shocked and disappointed that the attitude displayed by that OP seems to be quite prevalent.

isni I feel so sorry that you are made to go through these feelings, you described your feelings as

And for me, it's not just the OP of the initial thread, the reaction of HQ and the comments they made on the thread are actually far far worse

sounds so much how people feel, who are re-victimised

seriously HQ's reaction is such a "re-visit" to times and areas where various kinds of social groups have had (and some of them still are) fight for equal rights and have to fight so hard to explain the latent forms of racism, that they are feeling but were constantly dismissed.

I still cannot understand why no-one from HQ is commenting anymore. Maybe should try an insult, that deletion of some posters' comments went fairly quickly...

Such a miracle how fast it all of the sudden works??? Strange.

Why can't MNHQ see what is the right thing to do? Why does it take a great big meeting when everyone is back at their desk?

Racism is racism and hairs were split on that other thread to make it not legal racism.

But what about doing the right thing?

Squirted I know exactly what you mean - I want to stop looking at this, but I find myself compelled somehow, like I can't help myself.

I'm old enough to know what it was like to go to the mainland and be treated like crap for being 'one of them' and whilst I've never experienced that in recent years, I certainly don't want to go back to it. I just want to be considered the equal of everyone else in the UK, and not be accused of being overly sensitive or feeling persecuted.

isni it's the same stance they used to take about disablism before the This Is My Child campaign.

It was up to those with disabled children or who were disabled themselves to stand up to disabilist rhetoric. And often be deleted for it.

Well that's now changed.

Time to change this. And we don't need a fucking campaign.

We just need MNHQ to stand up for what's right.

I am really really really pissed that my second deleted post was deleted. I did not say she was a racist. I said she acted and spoke like a racist.

Fine line? Perhaps. But one that should be kept.

It was a ridiculous response from MN, but it happens all the time on different areas of MN - from the sectarian attitudes to names on Baby names to the sheer stupidity of some of the posters on the the Feminist boards when discussing abortion. MN is exceptionally anglo centric & people are up in arms when you happen to state that you use another parenting websites local boards because they grasp the concept of different summer holidays etc.

Squirted I know exactly how you feel.

I cannot for the life of me get my head around that it's ok for me to feel so second rate and dismissed and be treated so offensively because I'm from Northern Ireland and not the mainland.

I have ranted and raved all night about this and I keep coming back to it - if I held any other ethnicity other than Irish/Northern Irish, if I was in the phrase Rowan used, BAME, then that thread and its tone would NOT have been allowed and HQ would NOT have taken the stance they did, that other posters had to be educated and we have to suck it up. That it was OK for us all to be offended, and that we just had to take it up with the poster in question.

I just cannot get my head round it at all.

I need to stop opening this thread.

But since I can't.. I know I can choose, in terms of passports and therefore nationality, to be either British or Irish or both at the same time.

My DH is English. Through and through. And has lived in NI more than the length of time he spent in England. He too, could apply for an Irish passport if he so desired.

But as wrong as the original post on that other thread was, MNHQ got it wrong too. I am not a lesser British citizen because I live in the province. Ah well, I pay way too many taxes for that. I take too much shit, sorry, took too much shit years ago from shop assistants on the mainland who would not take my money as legal tender as it was terrorist money.

It is insulting big time that the area of the UK that I was born and raised in is of a lesser importance than those who are in, for example, the capital city of England.

I'm hiding this now. It's doing my head in.

ThePig I feel a bit like that too. I mean, it's not as if it was just one of us, there's a whole load of us and we are just told, effectively, to suck it up it has to be discussed.

What's to discuss about racism? Why isn't it simple and clear and obviously unacceptable, no matter who it's directed to?

And for me, it's not just the OP of the initial thread, the reaction of HQ and the comments they made on the thread are actually far far worse.

^^ Agree

Yes, those characteristics are recognised in law and a tribunal will find in your favour, and yes HQ should be recognising racists attitudes based on these characteristics too, whether they are 'actionable' or not (eg the original OP wasn't 'legally' actionable as racist but, I'd suggest, had a racist motivator), and overall HQ should be better-developed when looking at posts that are discriminatory regarding GB/Irish profiles.