My best friend has been attacked today.

[Cadela]

She’s Brazilian and white, but because she has an accent whilst we were waiting for a taxi a group of very young, around 10-17 year olds white kids spat on her and started shouting fucking horrific abuse.

Police were there within a minute of our call THANK GOD and loads of people on the street stepped in to help, and if you were in Norwich today on Gentleman’s Walk. - THANK YOU for helping.

I cannot believe it has got to this point where my settled status friend is now having to give statements and recover after having a glass of wine and going home. What the fuck is this county?

I genuinely can't understand people being "shocked" at racist abuse.

Are you aware of the UKs history at all?

There has been loads of racist abuse in the UK.

For a long long time.

Look at the history books.

One of the times was when they used to put up signs in London that said

"No blacks. No Irish. No dogs"

That seems unfair. There have been hundreds and hundreds of arrests with fast tracked high sentences as a deterrent.
Like with any of the other recent violent protests the police have to be mindful of crowd control. Sometimes going in too hard at the wrong stage could actually worsen an already hard to manage situation and become more dangerous for the general public.

Spitting is such a sign of contempt. I will never forget being spat in the face by some random dude just going about my business getting to work. My apparent crime was being in England as a disabled foreigner. I don't look English, I guess.

This was almost 20 years ago. I want to shower every time I think about it.

I'm so sorry for your friend and for you, too. What's happening is abhorrent.

I'm so sorry this happened to your friend 🧡 I hope she is OK and being looked after.

So awful to hear it happened in Norwich. I live near the showground outside of the city and I'm mixed race (half Chinese), but now I'm pretty worried about going out around the city and local area more. Our community on our estate has seen a rise in general poor behaviour from the teens and kids more recently, with real reasons for local residents to be getting pretty concerned.

Nothing that involves racism as such as far as I know, but it's only a matter of time I guess.

I originally lived a very multicultural town in Bucks before I moved to Norwich a decade ago. The population there was a lot of Bangladeshi people, and my best friend from primary was the daughter of the owner of a local Indian restaurant, which did the most delicious curries. I dread to think how the Bangladeshi community there are faring.😞😪

My DH is Asian and we used to live in Norwich. He suffered a couple of racists incidents there. He was never physically attacked but suffered verbal abuse.
We used to live in Magdalen street where there are a lot of Indian restaurants. I saw racism directed at the Indian waiters a few times. One time I saw a gang of white thugs chasing a group of terrified Indian waiters up the street. This was in around 2005. Racism has always existed in Norwich like everywhere else.
We still go back to Norwich a few times a year. There are definitely more black and Asian people there now, but it's not multicultural compared to many places. We're now in a big city and 60% of the children in my children's school are from ethnic minorities. Norwich feels very white compared to that. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, it's just different.

Yes I've heard people say that before.

That Norwich is a very white city

Many years ago, in my last job (a law firm) we had a Spanish secretary briefly. A client spewed racist bile down the phone at her one day (the usual stuff about going back where she came from on hearing her accent). She was so shocked she dropped the phone, told us what had happened and then burst into tears. Another secretary picked up the phone and ripped him a new arsehole. Then the partner that represented him was informed, phoned this client back and told him the firm was no longer prepared to act for him.

Must have 25-30 years ago and you'd think things would have changed but here we still are.

True, what happened around 2016/ Brexit and now again with the riots is the ever present hate kind of reaches fever pitch and extends past the usual targets - Muslims & POC to reach some non-English whites.

I watched a bbc documentary with a Polish woman saying she was dismayed and shocked about Brexit as her friends and neighbours told her she wasn’t the type of immigrant people mind, so she was shocked the nation had turned on her as she saw it and basically voted to limit how many people came from her country.

I wish the interviewer had asked her to elaborate what her neighbours had meant, and how she had felt about that at the time pre-Brexit but I’m pretty sure we can all guess what she meant. People often don’t care until they’re in the firing line 🤷‍♀️

How awful, your poor friend. What on earth is happening in the UK at the moment?

At the moment?

Sure racism has always been here in the UK.

In my last job, I worked in a large office in a large UK city

We dealt with a lot of customers, and I answered calls.

A lot of foreign people worked in my office.

The amount of times I had people ringing me and saying : "oh I finally got through to someone that's from here that can speak English. Those Indian fuckers don't have a clue".

I was allowed to hang up on people if they were being really racist about my other colleagues.

I was thinking "those "indians" that worked with me had masters degrees actually.

Anyone that was foreign who worked in the office, experienced racist abuse.

My colleague said to me thst she answered a call and the customer said "not another paki bitch"

Etc etc.
They were getting calls like that every week

I wont shut up about the UK's long racist history

Nope.

As a local I’m so sorry to hear this.i was not expecting it to be Norwich. I’ve personally not seen and racist behaviour but I’m white so I’m not the ones they would target.

I'm sorry allofaflutter , but I think its a bit silly for anyone to say that they weren't expecting racism to happen in their city.

Racism is everywhere in the UK.

Everywhere.

It would be like me saying "oh I wasn't expecting racism to happen in cambridge".

It seems naive and thoughtless.

Of course it happens

"A left wing education system". Just checking you'd noticed we've had a tory government for 14 year They're not known for their left wing policies. Maybe research the changes to education started by Gove. I have no words. This is a thread about racist attacks and the behaviour of children.

Fucking hell that's horrendous I hope that your friend is okay

Not sure what left education system is being referred to but I do agree it’s partly about lack of good parenting.

Did anyone see the video of the wee girl in Belfast shouting the P-word in one of the riots there and her mum or whichever adult was with her was obviously delighted?

www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/uk-riots-girl-skips-down-33412748.amp

I'm so sorry for what happened to your friend. A very similar incident occured in the town I live in - and the person (physically attacked by youths for having an accent) was hospitalised. It was a random incident - not part of a riot or protest.

I have no words for any of this. It's absolutely senseless and feels like we've gone back in time.

My SIL is young and comes from an ethnic minority and we were having conversations about recent events. I said that I thought we were past this, that the rise in social media especially has made us less racist as people watch and follow people from all over. I said especially in London it can’t be like that. It made me sad when she said I have no idea and she has experienced racism all her life IN London and described a few events. I think the more impoverished, ignorant ones take out all their frustrations on immigrants who appear to be doing better than them.

Indeed. There isn't a place in the uk that is free of racism. And am always surprised when people say: "am surprised you experience racism. I haven't seen it. Am white".
Of course they don't see it because it's not happening to them.
My in laws were so positive about this country these last 2 to 3 years. And would "politely" dismiss that I didn't share their optimism. I just stopped talking about it because theirs was the optism and naïveté only à white person can have. I wonder how they feel now. Probably forgotten about those discussions. They are shocked and sad but I wonder if they are reflecting on their naïveté

I am very sorry that this happened to your friend & I am so saddened to read the stories on this thread.

I am old enough to remember racist slogans on display in cities in the 70s-80s, also one of my non-British relatives around that time was called a 'bloody foreigner' in the street. I thought/hoped these kinds of attitudes had been left behind in the past, it is beyond depressing that there are still diehard bigots like these around.

They let us all down and should feel so ashamed of themselves.

Probably best if you re-read the post you've criticised. I think you've missed its main message.

I'm genuinely shocked that you thought that we as a country were "past racism". Are you living under a rock?

Like, how could you have thought that?

I was volunteering in a charity. We often used to have guest speakers in to talk about different relevant things.

One black woman who was the director of a different charity came in and gave us a talk. A very educated and established woman.

She told us that she was constantly told to "fuck off back to Nigeria". She said she remembered thinking sadly "but my parents aren't even from nigeria". She was getting racist abuse and the racist abuse wasn't even correct. Her parents were from a different part of Africa.

She told us that she was spat at om the street , hit, pushed over, called racist abuse, every month.

I think the white people on here who are saying that "I didn't expect racism would be in my city".

Or even crazier, the people who said,

"I didn't think that racism happened at all anymore , I thought we were past that".

Are a big part of the racism problem .

White people thinking that racism does not even exist, is part of the problem.

It's like when you try to talk to some men about all of the abuse and sexism that women go through in life.

And they dismiss it and the men say " ah that doesn't go on, sure its fine, women have it easy in life".

It doesn't happen to them, so they don't care about it, or even see it

Yes this 100%. When there’s a large crowd and things are simmering, it absolutely can make it go up and very quickly become out of control. Often police are outnumbered. These are carefully practiced tactics by specialist trained officers. They can always arrest later if needs be.