What’s the worst racist incident you have experienced?

[Hope54321]

I’ve had quite a few:

Students in secondary school have pulled my hijab off.

After the 9/11 a group of boys threw paper balls at me and shouted “Taliban” at me.

The day after a terror attack in London, a man pulled his window down and called me a dumb whore. There was no one else around.

Walking back from school, a man told me, “Go back to your own country”.

On my way to college, I got on the bus and a woman said, “I don’t know why you would want to draw attention to yourself by wearing that”.

@sheepandcaravan

I think they meant to delete another post by the person I was replying to - @MNHQ you just deleted my post about what is racism and what isn’t, which I guess you didn’t mean to ?!

I said - For something to be racism it has to be backed by a system of power. So as a white person in a majority white country it’s very unlikely you will experience racism. You can experience racial prejudice. There is arguably the odd exception (eg some of the grooming gang cases), but they are rare.

I was called a 4 eyed paki and my boss/head when I reported it (primary school) told me the child didn’t understand what it meant and he wasn’t going to record it as a racist incident!
11 year old Y6 clearly did know as he was smirking when head spoke to him and he didn’t care - boss/head let it go, I moved on shortly after, I’ve never felt so let down.

Well when I was living in West Africa I was definitely targeted several times due to my colour but that apparently doesn't count.

@Luredbyapomegranate Wrong. None of the dictionary definitions (Oxford, Merriam-Webster
for example) mention a system of power. ‘Typically’ a minority group, but the key element is looking down on other people due to the perceived superiority of your own race.

That's heartbreaking :(

@Luredbyapomegranate we deleted your post as it telling other users to educate themselves or stay off the thread is not in the spirit of the site.

No, MW recently revised their definition as it was outdated. It now includes systemic oppression.

www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/racist

There aren't a lot of places where you would ""walking through a ‘no go area’ when visiting Manchester, without realising it.*

Central Manchester is mainly city rents - after the interwar slum clearances Manchester had very few residential buildings left. Now it is big posh private rent flats in warehouse conversion/ new blocks in the city centre with a ring of industrial around it. You have to walk a good 15 20 minutes before getting to the next residential area and they are racially diverse areas. The "predominantly Asian" areas are not walking distance. I am genuinely interested in where you encountered such abuse.

I think there have been studies showing the darker a person's skin colour, the more racism they face.

Bearing that in mind, there is a disproportionate number of white posters detailing an isolated racist incident they have experienced on this thread.

It doesn't mean what they suffered wasn't terribly wrong, it's just that people with less Caucasian skin tones and features experiemce far, far more racism. There are a few who seem to find this fact makes them defensive and angry. Even though it's true.

I cant imagine what it's like to experience these attitudes and injustices throughout your life. Making a child feel ashamed of themselves for existing makes me sick I'm hoping the number of people who act in this way is decreasing.

I reported 2 (white) boys in my class for telling me a vile racist joke about "Pa*is" and placed them both in immediate isolation. They were meant to stay for 1 hour after school, parents contacted, report filed with the LEA as per the school's code of conduct, which in turn would have meant them missing a team sports event that afternoon. I happened to be walking by the isolation room as the boys were both being let out by a then deputy head who was on duty (also white) and I heard him say something to them about 'winning tonight'. I spoke to that deputy privately and pointed out they'd be in a detention and not winning anything. He was all nudge nudge wink wink 'just a joke' about it. He'd gone over my head and decided not to report it as a racist comment/incident, no detention, no parental contact, fucking nothing, and he let them still play for the team that day. Disgusting. I left when that deputy was made Head shortly after this incident.

@DomPerignon12 At its most simplistic definition, racism is discrimination against another race or believing that one race is superior over others. However, anyone with even an ounce of critical thinking skills and knowledge of world history should be able to come to the conclusion that racism requires a power imbalance.

Also, who do you think wrote the definitions in the bloody Oxford dictionary? White people do not get to dictate to ethnic minorities what racism is or is not. On every thread of this nature several posters pop up with the same bullshit argument of what the dictionary definition of racism is 🙄

MW is an American dictionary. It's not the British dictionary. MN is a UK site. I would assume that majority are British posters. MW is not relevant here. Unless the OED has also picked that up as a definition. Also an additional definition has been added. It hasn't replaced the other definitions. That definition rises from proponents of critical race theory and is intended to imply that racism is one directional. Ie whites to every one else. This is clearly not true and shuts down peoples ability to contribute to the discussion with their own experiences.

Being called a f-g white c- in London. Never had abuse about being white anywhere other than London but sad to say the racism isn’t infrequent there.
Being told to f-off back north on multiple occasions immediately post brexit, also in London.

Where in Manchester?

Me too! The only real 'no go' area for me is probably Piccadilly Gardens after dark if you're alone. The "predominantly Asian" areas I go through are a real mix of many different races and nationalities. I can't think of any area where the police would say that to anyone reporting an incident.

I am a white woman; I was walking in the street at 4pm with a Zimbabwean colleague in the supposedly civilised Hertfordshire town of Ware, when the mother of a child at the school where we both worked leaned out of her Land Rover and shouted: "N*f*r" at me.

I had previously reported her Year 11 son for describing, in graphic, disgusting detail, what he would do to "any asylum seeker I got my hands on". The then new head teacher was a good man, but one person alone could not at that point (in 2003) tackle the deep-seated level of racism in that town and its effects on the children. Several of the staff made it clear that they entertained similar views. The boy's pathetic form tutor was not prepared to even address what he had said, just saying: "He'll be leaving soon".

The attitudes in that town drove me back to North Hertfordshire where I had previously worked; I had never heard anything of the kind previously, and fortunately did not subsequently.

So making racist posts on this thread is fine; telling people to go and learn something about racism, not fine. Riiiiiiight.

Oh my goodness HumumaHey - I’m so sorry that happened to you. Of all the examples here for some reason this one made me the most sad…the idea of a little girl internalising that she shouldn’t be an angel is so wrong! 💔

But it's fine to shut down people's ability to self educate on a global issue by arbitrarily imposing on them a single definition written by people of one particular race from one little island?

Saw this on Twitter, couldn’t believe it.

But it's fine to shut down people's ability to self educate on a global issue by arbitrarily imposing on them a single definition written by people of one particular race from one little island

The irony. You actually fixating on one definition created by a small group of militant activists in a country 3000 miles away.

• Kids being surprised by which road I lived and asking if my dad was a drug dealer to be able to afford it (Primary school)
• Being spat at and called a p**I (I'm not even Asian)

-Having food thrown at me by passing car by a van of men -Being in the car with my dad when he got pulled over and interrogated by police not long after getting a nice car he'd worked and saved really hard for. -Doing the same level of work at school as the kids in the top group but not being allowed in top group and when I stayed behind one break time to ask if I could try moving up berated and mocked. Same teacher used to single me out and ritually humiliate me in front of the class (middle school)

• Being told not to bother applying to college to do A Levels.
• Camping with small DC and hearing young men talking about w**gs loud enough for me to hear in the tent next to ours

The list goes on.

I'm so sorry to read these stories. Absolutely infuriating that anyone has to endure this.

So many incidents that I don't wish to recount because and each and every comment has left a wound of some sort (fuck you racists) but the one that cut deep was when an Indian Sikh 'friend' told me that the biggest insult to her parents when considering a partner for marriage was a 'BMW'. When I asked what that meant she said "Black, Muslim or White" then added that White people were no longer a problem because mixed-race children looked like fair Indians so her parents wouldn't mind as much. Fucking hell...

Not much to me personally, because I'm white British. If someone were to wound me, it's usually over my looks. But I've had plenty of colleagues targeted because of their race. Working with the public tends to put you in the firing line. I always report it.