Can white people ever experience racism?

[LittleRedCourgettes]

Following a discussion on this topic with some students, I was reading this article and am interested to hear your honest thoughts on this question.....

https://www.nas.org/blogs/article/wherediddwegetttheideaathatonlyywhitepeopleecanbeeracist

Yes, I went for a job in a West African country. I had been made a verbal offer and the hiring manager was going through some details over the phone. She asked a few questions about me, culminating in asking was I white? When I said 'yes', she said 'Well, that will be a challenge for us. I will need to reconsider the offer' and ended the call. Was not available to speak again, and did not answer my emails. There was no operational reason why the job would need a family link to the country.

I have also been called a 'white bitch' 'white slag' and told that 'caucasians are lazy' in the UK, that kind of thing.

I don't see how that could be described as anything other than racism. Not systemic, as I was able to find another job and can ignore or call out the type of person who makes that type of comment as it is not a regular occurrence.

However, racism does not have to be systemic. That is one important aspect, also the reason some races suffer more deeply. However, I agree that definition needs simplifying.There was a racial aspect to Rotherham, for instance, with the girls reporting racist abuse from the perpetrators (alongside huge elements of sexism and targeting vulnerable victims).

I think it is dangerous to suggest that only some groups are capable of, or can be victims of, a type of prejudice or behaviour due to the current structure of society as everyone needs to be equally protected from discrimination.

You can be white but you could be from the North and not liked by the Southerns. Happens in every country where there's a regional discrimination. It's not racism but it feels as bad.
In the UK and many Western European countries, people look down at the Eastern Europeans.
Class system is another example.
We are all humans, all equal and when applying for a job should be judged by our skills and our work permit of course but no, the employers have instructions to tick a few boxes.
Discrimination is everywhere these days.

Of course. Just as men can be victims of sexism.

I’m of mixed cultural heritage (one white parent and one “brown” parent) but look (and sound) completely Caucasian/ White and my “brown” relatives’ friends ALWAYS slag me off in the native language, which I am fluent in. One of my brown aunts doesn’t like my white parent, so a few brown cousins low-key hate on me. Consequently, I’ve stopped making an effort to make friends within my “brown” parent’s ethnic community. I married a guy from an unrelated “brown” culture and have White kids, and his sister-in-law (from a third “brown” country) has an issue with my race: always giving me back-handed compliments, snide comments about my kids, etc. I understand what she tells her kids about my family in her native language.

Sad but true: I now only actively make new friends with people who are fully White or half-white like me. Cant deal with everyone else’s low-key racism.

If its wrong for one group to discriminate against another for attributes they are born with, it is always wrong.

See 'the Holocaust' & 'Nazi Germany's Nuremberg Race Laws'.... for white on white genocide enshrined in law.
6 million Jews, at least 250 000 Roma were murdered in the name of race - also millions of Slavic people died many murdered deliberately.

I was in a relationship with a black man from the age of 17-21. His family hated me because I was white. His Father was actually mixed-race but seemed to loath the white side. My boyfriends' female siblings were opening racist against me for being white, this was said openly. This was in the '90s. I went to a very multicultural school and there were lots of negative remarks made about white people, saying they were shit at dancing, piss-taking, etc. It was quite normal in my school to be very afraid of the black girls in my school as if you looked at them the wrong way you would find yourself getting beaten up.
Basically, things were said that would not have been tolerated if it was white people saying it to black people (nor should it be) Yep, defo experienced racism as a white person.

@tatutata absolutely.
I think racism breeds racism. I'm 100% sure that what I encountered as a teen was a direct result of what the Pakistani community had encountered from white people. For a while what I in turn experienced jaded my own opinion of that community. When we grow up we (hopefully) realise that we judge people by their actions, not accent, appearance or pre judgement.

The film 'Dara of Jasenovac' focuses on Croatian genocide of Serbs during ww2.
And of course there was Serb genocide of Bosniaks during the Balkan Wars of the 90s. All white people.

Yes

Of course, some white BAME experience racism on a daily basis.
I'm an activist fighting against racism in England, we experience far more than anyone else, the difference is it's still acceptable and mostly unchallenged by society.

I am white and English speaking, but not British born. My white English neighbour told me to 'Fuck off back where you came from' and frequently refers to me as 'that fucking foreigner'. It feels like racism to me because I'm being singled out as 'white other' instead of 'white English'. Is it Nationalist discrimination? But I have British nationality (the same as my neighbour).

When I phoned the police to report what is happening to me, the police told me I was 'over sensitive' and 'didn't understand the English way' . I was told to 'just ignore' the neighbour. So from my experience the police do not take these sort of incidents seriously and don't understand the impact of someone on the receiving end of discriminatory abuse (I can't change where I was born any more than I can change the colour of my skin).

@Stompythedinosaur

I think that in cases yes, but it has to be discrimination with a backdrop of oppression e.g. being Irish/Jewish.

Most white people don't experience racism, even if they are treated differently, because there isn't that backdrop.

I agree with this.

So experiencing discrimination is possible for anyone.
You can been insulted for lots of entirely inappropriate reasons, as shown by the example of the English in Scotland, but racism is against a history and background of oppression, which is not experienced or understood by a group who have never been in that position.

So travellers, Romanies, Jews, etc have all experienced racism.
But I don;t think many/ most white people can really claim it.

It is simlar to how women get really angry at Kaitlin Jenner talking about women- you can;t know as you didn't grow up experiencing it.

@Chookie89
There is NO comparability for Irish migrants. [ to African slavery]

I agree with you on this that what happened to the Irish and the West Africans cannot he compared. For the Africans it was slavery over many centuries. For the Irish it was two attempts at genocide done centuries apart.

The British enslaved or sold on 3.2million Africans between 1551 and 1825, so 325 years. Or a loss of around 10,000 people per year from a region with a population of 20-25 million.
www.slavevoyages.org/assessment/estimates

For the Irish, however, the British in 3 short years of 1649-1651 killed (Estimated on Wikipedia) 15,000–20,000 Irish militia as battlefield casualties, and over 200,000–600,000 civilian casualties (from war-related violence, famine or disease)[1] plus ~50,000 deported as indentured labourers[2][3]. The island was depopulated by 15-85% of all existing Irish with most historians agreeing that the real number is probably the average, or that only 1/3rd of the Irish race survived these 3 short years of what is recognised as genocide.

In addition, the potato famine 1845-1849 saw the British forcibley exporting food from Ireland and allowing 1 million Irish citizens to die of starvation. This killed 1/8th the population of Ireland which disportionately were the Irish themselves and not the British colonists. 1 million fled as refugees to the US in this time as well.

@Babdoc

Try being English in Scotland, OP! One of the consultant surgeons from my hospital had an SNP supporter spit in his face, shouting “Bloody English” - for daring to chat (to his own wife!) in an English accent in a shopping street in broad daylight. I have been intimidated by a Scottish van driver while campaigning against the independence referendum. I have been warned to stay silent by Scots friends, and hustled out of a cinema for my own safety during a screening of Braveheart, where the atmosphere was turning distinctly ugly. And when I was a newly qualified junior doctor, I overheard two of the nurses on my ward discussing me: “How’s the new doctor?” “ Well, she’s English.” Said in a tone of disgust. Before adding grudgingly: But she’s all right.” My DD had to report one of her high school teachers for anti English racism, and suffered regular abuse from pupils during the football world cup. So yes, white people can also suffer racism.

Yes. I have had all this. Systematic bullying by fellow pupils and teachers, over years, for ‘being English’ (or a Fucking English Bastard). People swearing at me in shops, on buses, etc and mocking me, continually. It’s affected my confidence for my whole life. And I’m not even actually English, I just don’t have a particularly Scottish accent.

It might be as bad the other way round, I don’t know. My DH is Scottish, with an identifiable accent, and we now live in England. Aside from one or two jokey comments, he hasn’t had anything like the same level of abuse.

I experienced verbal abuse when I lived in Scotland, I'm white I don't and didn't perceive it as racism. It's was anti English bigotry, I was told that my lot were involved with the Highland clearances, I was told to fuck off back to England. Those particular Scottish people were too thick and bigoted to recognise a Welsh accent.

Racism:

prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism by an individual, community, or institution against a person or people on the basis of their membership of a particular racial or ethnic group, typically one that is a minority or marginalized.
"a programme to combat racism"
Similar:
racial discrimination
racialism
racial prejudice/bigotry
xenophobia
chauvinism
bigotry
bias
intolerance
anti-Semitism
apartheid

• the belief that different races possess distinct characteristics, abilities, or qualities, especially so as to distinguish them as inferior or superior to one another.

"theories of racism"
Definitions from Oxford Languages

@ReggieKrait

Also I have been living and working in England for ten years. Never once have I experienced any sort of discrimination. The worst was probably being referred to as “Scotch”, but I think that person was still living in the 1800’s......

I didn't know that was discriminatory. It's still ok for whisk(e), I suppose?

Has anyone mentioned Scottish/Welsh/Irish people supporting whoever plays England at insert sport here as racism yet?

@Gwenhwyfar haha no I don’t think it’s particularly discriminatory, it’s just incredibly archaic language when used to describe a person. I’d never heard it used before.

typically one that is a minority or marginalized.

I take this to mean it typically happens (more) to minority or marginalised groups and not that it only happens to minority or marginalised groups.

especially so as to distinguish them as inferior or superior to one another.

I take this to mean if this distinction is being made in order to decide/justify inferiority or superiority and not just because you're casually comparing people as a group based on personal observation even if inaccurate (eg: white people can't dance, black people can't swim, etc).

racism is against a history and background of oppression, which is not experienced or understood by a group who have never been in that position

I don't agree with this as a core definition of racism. It is still possible for a member of any race to experience discrimination on the grounds of their race.

What they may not have experienced is for this to be a regular, structural occurrence affecting many or all areas of their life. They may not have experienced health inequalities due to their race, for instance.

As an equivalence, if a man was refused a job with children 'as men are more likely to be sex offenders', he would have experienced sexism, even though males are the oppressing sex worldwide.

I know white people who experienced racism in Japan. They had to live in a Westerners' quarter in Tokyo as Japanese people refused to live next door to dirty gaijin. One waitress screamed in horror when a white woman entered her cafe.

I agree @Monsteraobliqua

@WildOrchids67

The case of Kriss Donald is a tragic example of a young white male experiencing racism.

I’d never heard of this lad. How very sad.