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”.

Institutional racism...having gone through legal appeal for a spousal visa, I was flabbergasted by the hard-wired attitudes of Home Office staff and their questions to myself as a white UK national. They even implied the evident pregnancy was unrelated to my husband when we went for a final interview as they failed to stop the spousal visa being granted by the appeal court. The officer asked me if the baby was his, and was the marriage real...as if it wouldn't be because I was a white highly qualified professional in her eyes, and he was a lowly Eastern European 'foreigner'.

On the other hand a few of my very underage friends at school were shagging a group of Pakistani students. They used to be plied with alcohol and weed, I remember one guy saying that he was going to have sex with my passed out friend. I told him that would be rape and over my dead body (I obviously didn't really appreciate the situation at the time).

I'm so thankful that even though tagging along with my friends I was a pretty sexless and uptight teen. One friends dad and brother found out about it all and it kicked right off.

Years ago, I was told to get out of Howard University (Historic Black uni in Washington DC) cafeteria because I was white and didn't belong there. I was called by some racial slurs while being told to get out. I was told to get out of a small black owned store. Lots more incidents.

My daughter has this happen in secondary school 4 years ago, she was in drama and they were put into groups, mixed boys and girls, one of the boys she and a friend were put with told them he “wouldn’t work with dirty white slags”

I agree. Some of these incidents, while insulting and upsetting, are not racist.

Being called a paki. I’m Spanish.
Beaten up by the NF in the seventies.
was asked after Brexit would the little foreign girl be going back. She was referring to Dd who has inherited my Olive skin.

100% agree

with @Daydreamsinsantafe

My DD was furious and told them to go put bananas in their ears and leave her friend alone. They carried on making monkey noises so 6 year old DD punched the much bigger girl (DD is tiny. She.was still in 3-4 year clothing at 6) and kicked the other girl in the shin.

@HerRoyalHappiness your DD is fabulous. Good for her.

I got called a dirty gypsy in primary school after talking about my great grandmother, who was Romany, during a family tree project. I had blonde hair, blue eyes, fair skin and had never even met my great grandmother. It was all a bit bizarre!

White people cannot experience racism. White people experience white privilege, end. of. Anyone who keeps trying to justify it is only minimising the experiences of minority groups who don't experience white privilege at all and have to deal with racism on the daily in every aspect of their lives - institutionally and personally. White people do not deal with institutional racism which tends to fuel general racism. Society favours white people, you cannot change the facts.

@afterthestormagain some white pps have experienced racism living in non white countries, surely that counts?

No. It. Doesn’t.

100% this. Well said.

Oh why do some posters persist in thread jacking 😞

I am white. I have precisely two experiences of being treated less favourably because of my skin colour. No, it doesn’t count.

I try to imagine how it must be to be judged by the colour of my skin every day but I know it’s something I will never truly appreciate. What I do is try to practice positive discrimination ie every time I have something to give away I choose a person of colour or a woman, preferably both. I also always let in drivers who are poc and just do whatever I can in very small ways to try to counter the heinous racism that is still rampant.

Why doesn’t it count, though? Surely racism is when a person is mistreated/treated unfairly due to their ethnicity. A member of DH’s family, for example, was treated appallingly by her fiancé’s family in Japan, because they didn’t want him to marry a white woman. Why isn’t that racism?

She had the sense to end the relationship.

I agree that this is racism. But - and it's a big but - this was perpetrated by a single family.

Systematic racism happens to people of colour regularly, by a large section of society.

I'd like you to try to imagine the effect that this has on a person of colour over a whole lifetime.

Hahahaha. Have you ever heard of Japan. 98.5% Japanese. On purpose! Now if that's not racism I'm not sure what is?

The issue for me is this definition of racism as inherently about power systems and not race in its broadest sense -perpetuates an ‘in/out’ view which is the same consciousness as racism.

And therefore stunts the discourse, frustrates those who have experienced racism on both sides and entrenches people more deeply into their own view.

What did the systemic discrimination of Catholic Nationalists in NI count as? The gerrymandering that controlled politics, the lack of housing & jobs? I always thought anti-Irish sentiment was racist? And gypsies & travellers are included in the Equality Act based on their ethnic origins aren't they? I thought the Pontins thing with the banned Irish surnames was classed as racism?

The original poster didn’t ask about systemic racism, did they? It’s a shame patronising know-it-alls feel the need to come on and educate the pesky white people who dare to speak up and completely ruin the thread …

A black guy and I got in the lift at Elephant and Castle tube station. A skinhead followed us in. As the doors closed he hot out a knife and held it pointing at the black guy's stomach. I really thought he was about to kill him. At the top he put the knife back in his pocket and walked away without a word. The black guy just said there was no point reporting it to the police. Probably correct as I could have described the knife in minute detail but I couldn't have described the skinhead.

My friend and I (both caucasians) were on a train and three students standing beside us were saying sth along the lines "all foreigners are disgusting, don't you think they smell like pigs" and laughing while looking at us. They thought we didn't understand Japanese, but we did.
Another thing I was told so many times back in my 20s is "Caucasian women are beautiful when they are young, but become so ugly and old-looking once they are 30".

DD lives in a country that is around 80% white, but attends a school that has 2% white students. 'White fuckers' is just one example of an expression she hears every day among her classmates.