to think this is really quite racist?

[JosieRosie]

I am an NHS Early Years professional and (when not out and about visiting my million settings!) work in an office with 5 others. I work in East London and our caseload includes children whose parents come from all four corners of the globe and obviously lots and lots of them have non-White British names.

There are regular conversations between my colleagues along these lines -
A: Oh, I took a phone message for you today
B: Oh yes?
A: Yeah, it was from parent of (half-hearted non-attempt to pronounce child's name)
A&B: (much laughter of the 'aren't these names daft' variety )

AIBU to find it outrageous that they find a non-White British name absolutely hilarious? Racist? Extremely childish and/or unprofessional?

'My daughter goes to school with a girl called Farideh which I personally find hilarious'.

'Don't get too worked up, all australians are racist... ha ha'

'Existing in a perpetual state of offense, must be stressful to say the least'

Ok I'm just about done here. Thanks to those of you who made thoughtful comments about this post. To the rest of you, thank you for demonstrating that ignorance, rudeness and insensitivity are traits shared by people other than my colleagues mentioned in the OP

Yep Rosie, some depressing people on this thread. Makes me wonder sometimes what some people think of me when they know nothing else about me but that I am obviously forrin.

Some great people too. animula and some others, your posts rock. Animula are you familiar as in a serial namechanger?

SpringHeeledJack
what makes you think I an racist?

slhilly
dont judge everyone by your silly little standards
My name is a play on words with one of my favourite artists (Salvador Dali) and my favourite Dr Who monster (The Dalek)

Look them up online if you dont believe me ,they exist

and I am not worked up about the fact that the NHS spends 22 million on translaters. It is a fact I mentioned
I am not bothered about imigration so untwist your knickers and dont think anyone with an opinion other than yours is racist

YANBU.

Salvador, the challenge for you of arguing in writing is that your let's put it charitably inconsistencies are preserved for everyone to see.

So, while you claim that you simply "mentioned a fact", everyone is free to see that what actually happened was that you responded to a poster who said "There's a lot of hostility towards asylum seekers and anyone who doesn't speak great english too" by both mentioning a fact and offering an opinion via a rhetorical question. Because what you actually said was: "People who do not speak English are costing the NHS 22million pounds a year in translators so can you blame them". [my emphasis]

So you think that it is not blameworthy to be hostile to non-English speakers because they are costing the NHS 0.02% of its annual budget. And you think your opinion is non-racist. And you've claimed your choice of fact does not demonstrate you are "bothered" about immigration. And you think that I might not have heard of Salvador Dali. And you do not see a contradiction between holding the opinions you do, and using his name. Or between your opinions and having evil aliens as the other half of your handle.

And you've chosen to engage in ad hominem attacks ("silly little standards").

And you've done all this in public too! Ooops...

The TV presenter in NZ had to resign over those comments. He is an idiot. He also asked when we would have a Governor General who looked like a New Zealander. Our current one is kiwi born but ethnically Indian. There was quite an outcry about both incidents.

That is a shockingly large amount of money on translators. The amount for court and legal translators is also very high, I understand.

"And equally I'm troubled by posters who make knee-jerk assumptions based meagre anecdotes. Existing in a perpetual state of offense, must be stressful to say the least."

I can tell you that since I have been in the UK (about 15 years) I can count on one hand the times where I felt the comments made to me were racist , that is very few but still isn't a knee jerk reaction based on anecdote. The feeling you get from those comments , however silly they might appear to the person who says it or the "non forin" audience, they are not less hurtful to the person who hears them. Most examples I have "suffered" do not contain insults as such but the level of patronising is beyond what anyone would consider normal. it is not just someone making a clumsy comment and regretting it (I do not count these ones) but the ones who deliberately use the fact you are forin to put you down. Using a foreign name as an excuse to do that is racist.

People are complaining about the NHS having translators?!

What is your alternative? To not understand what the patients are saying? (And if you want to see it all in monetary terms, then this would be more expensive as incorrect diagnosis / treatments would cost the NHS money).

Or to send them all home perhaps

Some of the attitudes on this thread are really saddening. If you can't see that making fun of names because they are foreign-sounding is racist then you are pretty fucking stupid.

OP several people have asked whether you have challenged your colleagues, instead of posting on here and you haven't answered.

If it really bothered you, you'd speak to your colleagues about it and keep on speaking to them until they change their behaviour.

i must admit when i worked for a certain company in my early 20s we used to laugh at some of the manager's names and make silly jokes, it was just boredom and made the day go better.

One of them had a silly middle name so we shortened it and referred to him as this name when in the office. there were 4 of us and no one else was around.

this is a slightly different but sometimes i think it is due to boredom and human nature to laugh at someone elses expense.

Abr1de, why are you shocked? The NHS is a giant organisation with a £100bn budget, dealing with millions of people every day. The NHS budget averages £2,000 per head. So the translation services are paid for by the income associated with about 11,000 people out of about 50,000,000 (or about 60m, if the figure is UK-wide). That's 0.02%, ie the budget of 1 in every 4,500 people is paying for translation services as opposed to anything else. As I said earlier, there are far bigger sources of waste for the NHS to tackle.

YANBU. Their comments are rude, unprofessional and racist imo. In the unlikely event of this sort of thing happening where I work I'd be expected both to challenge such behaviour and report it.

I'm saddened but not altogether surprised that there are posters who defend attitudes like these.