Are you racist?

[cloudni9e]

Watching a documentary called The Event: How Racist Are You with Jane Elliot.
And it is making me so angry how completely ignorant the white people on it are and it's reminding me of the thread I saw earlier on today on mumsnet. Please mumsnetters, check your white privilege if you are white and remember it's not enough to say you're not a racist. You need to be actively anti-racist or you are part of the problem. Racism IS violence.

You know what I'm going to be honest. I try my best not to be racist, but nobody ever gives a shit about racism towards travellers like me, so why should I spend my time trying to make life better for people of other races?

I honestly believe that we face racism and prejudice on an absolutely huge scale, compared to any other ethnicity in the UK today. Most white people will gladly show no form of racism towards POC, but think it's fine to aim it at us.

pinkyyy - Im assuming that's bacause the op stared the thread about racism towards black people. Maybe start your own thread?

@Back2Black the question in the OP was are you racist, and over the last couple of pages a few posters have discussed what I spoke about. I'm sharing my own opinion about the subject of this thread, I don't want to start my own. Don't really understand why you'd say that to be honest.

pinkyyy apologies, I watched the documentary & may have missed something.

@Back2Black I haven't seen the documentary in question. I'm just commenting on what's already being discussed on the thread. The OP said we need to be actively anti-racist and I said I would be, when that extended to my race too, not just blacks.

Are you a troll Op

@OhTheRoses try treating her the same. Also try watching others interactions with her. I’m not defending her but sometimes to understand why certain behaviours are happening we have to look at more than the symptoms. Are there particularly tricky customers who talk to her differently than you? I had a manager who noticed that one client base was particularly nasty to me and another who was difficult with everyone but me. As a good manager he gave me the latter customer every time and another colleague the former, it made my life a lot easier.
I think you need to rethink your stance on this colleague and positive discrimination as it just doesn’t happen and is detrimental to hard working people who get places through hard work. Treat this colleague like you would anyone else but that does mean ensuring you aren’t letting Martin do something you won’t let her do. If you are than you can smell the discrimination claim because you are actually discriminating.
On positive discrimination, black people have to work twice as hard to get half as far; just like women imagine being a black woman. I’ve worked places were there were people who wouldn’t speak to me until they needed my help. It was definitely a me thing as they would make quite the effort to greet my white colleague who was with me. I shrugged it off but had it been the same workplace where they’d discuss my heritage and tell me I wasn’t British because I wasn’t white and my grandparents spirits would guide me away from Britishness I might have been a little more abrupt than I would like.

I think I've got my head around white privilege. It means your life is not made harder because you're white. Right? The word privilege is a semantic nightmare.I think class privilege should be more prevalent. Far more damaging.

I think my issue with the word ‘white/class privilege’ is that it has a connotation of making someone feel bad for something they were born into. It’s a ‘state of being’ not something earned on merit. The person born into that situation found themselves there in the same way as the person who was born into a different situation. My issue with this is the same one I have about nationalism. How can you be proud of a country you found yourself born into and had no active choice in the matter?

We have to move beyond the classification of people and always focus on human rights and the eradication of oppression in any form based on race, religion, disability and gender.

By focusing on the privilege we are appearing to be highlighting a wrong whilst actually entrenching it.

As human nature says making it into a victim/oppressor situation always makes ‘the oppressors’ reject the idea more and in the rejection comes further avoidance and ignoring behaviour. As despite what Billie Eilish sings no one wants to be painted as ‘the bad guy’.

@Bumper1969 Can you clarify what you mean? It doesn't make sense

I meant white privilege has the word privilege in it so can seem to mean that being white is privileged when in fact lots of white people are not. So therefore the saying actually means, being white assumes your life has not been prohibited by being white. And I think class is Marxism is more an indication of privilege

Kosher slaughter?

Yes Amazonfromkent. For meat to be kosher it cannot be stunned first. Unlike halal slaughter, where in most cases it is stunned first.

Watch the Father Ted racist episode. "Shall we all be racist now Father?"

I'm not racist and don't hate anyone but I personally do not find non white attractive and never even been on a date with anyone like it.

I just don't fancy them

@cloudni9e

By the criteria of not fully appreciating my privilege I probably sadly qualify as racist, as I do not actively fight the injustice as fervently as I could.

I'm also male (and straight, I have all the privileges) and I always thought I wasn't sexist. Because it was 'easy' to say 'I agree' when I saw others campaigning for closing the gender pay gap, opposing domestic abuse etc. It didn't require anything of me. And I thought that was enough. It was really only when the #MeToo stuff exploded that I realised how inadequate that was - that despite disagreeing with misogyny, I was essentially being misogynistic and abusing my privilege through my inaction. I didn't challenge other men's misogyny enough when faced with it, for example. Every day I have to challenge myself to do better.

And it's the same with racism. I hate it. I hate bigotry full stop. I'm trying to challenge it. I could do more. It is VERY comfortable up on my privilege cloud. It is far too easy to pat myself on the back for the smallest things, or to see a small challenge to my privilege as a mighty act of compassion instead of the bare minimum that should be expected of a basic decent human.

I'm trying. I hope so much that enough people try that by example it comes more naturally to the younger generations. And I'm sorry that I haven't done well enough in the past.