To be pissed off that strangers assume I'm racist?

[tallwivglasses]

I need a new porch (about £3,500-worth of work ) and a builder came and looked at it this morning.

As some of the wood on next door's adjoining porch is rotting, he asked me if the neighbours would be amenable to paying for the repair of their side. I replied it was a rented house and the landlord had ignored me in the past but wasn't too bad. 'Ah', he sneered, 'Indian, Asian by any chance?'

I replied 'Yes, but I'm not racist and I don't employ racists. Goodbye'.

So he lost the work. Idiot. It's the same with a lot of taxi drivers - harder to escape from those unfortunately but they don't get a tip.

Why do people automatically assume I'm going to agree with their hateful, bigotted views?

Mainly - not if it were a 'fact' that Asian Landlords had a bad reputation surely? Would it not be natural..but a little ignorant assumption rather than racism?

I'm not saying they do have a bad rep in that area because I don't even know what area we are talking about...but perhaps the builder does?

Anyway, I look like I'm splitting hairs here now Lol. The OP says he 'sneered' so yep, he probably was being racist and not factual

"I replied 'Yes,"

So he was! So the man said was he Indian, you confirmed he was, and then you got angry?

I imagine this is more of a stereotype than a racist comment...
and if the boot fits...

yanbu. i get this sort of tripe from local cab drivers quite often in plymouth where there are many east european drivers and i suppose they get a bit narky about it.

i make conversation with the non british drivers because they are very helpful and kind when i struggle with dd's pram etc. i ask where they are from sometimes (they usually tell me because i have a very slavic name)because i'm curious and i like to find out what plymouth is like from an outsiders perspective - no motive just interested, and i have seen them visibly flinch - i presume expecting a load of grief for 'taking our jobs blah blah'.

sixpercenttruejedi Fri 31-Dec-10 12:49:28
The assumption that bad/indifferent landlord = obviously Indian/Asian is very obviously racist.
Do you make similar comments mutznutz? Is that why you don't want to see the racism?

No I don't. If you take time to read what I've typed, you'll see that I misread the OP and thought she was making an assumption

Well done, OP.

DH had a taxi driver in Edinburgh ask him how he coped with "all the pakis" when he found out DH was a midlander

bupckaes - oh god i get that all the time when i tell people i am from leicester. sadly my fil was the worst - though he knows better now!

Sorry, about this (I'm not racist):

Do watch to the end, though.

My gran is a blatant racist. She swears she isn't but anyone who starts a sentence with "I'm not racist, but...." usually are. She doesn't say anything hateful per se (plenty of sweeping generalisations though) so I tend to ignore what she says. We agree to disagree.

I get all kinds of racist taxi drivers. One last year (muslim) started with ..are you Jewish and when he safely knew I wasn't he launched in and then there are the white racist ones too. I think people should always say something.

One has to be careful though - its clear you picked up a racist comment here, but that doesn't necessarily mean it reflects true racism. In fact it could project respect - I have a great deal of respect for the sikh community leaders where I live who came to the UK with very little money, yet by being ultra disciplined have leapfrogged many of the selfish working class people who are 'indigenous' who feel entitled to a better life than all recent immigrants just because they are here (and white, usually).

I have many conversations with children whose parents had only one bar of soap in the house, didn't use shaving foam or other fripperies (!), lived cheaply on rice and home-cooked food, and did delay house repairs until their poorly paid jobs gave them enough spare to make a repair, and who now, because owning property is a way to progress a 'career' without racism getting in the way, have a stream of properties that they are maintaining on very little money, and that means delayed repairs - not necessarily because of contempt, but because cash flow is tight.

I have said 'asians?' when I am trying to point out how impressive these achivements are - this might be a little 'racist' in one sense, but it is certainly not from the burn them, send them back school - I see noticing these slight cultural quirks as being similar to saying '|Italians love their coffee' for example.

BUT I agree - I hate it when people think I am racist and will automatically agree with them because I look like them (sort of). its dumb. I think your spider sense was probably right here as you will have picked up on more than just the words.

I love saying to racist idiots 'yes I know! Isn't that a cool system' when they whinge ( as they do here) that 'asians aren't playing fair, they all help each other' - well if those idiots want to play an individual game against people who work together well - tough!

Hum - levels of professionalism are falling to pitiful levels - fancy telling a client this shit.

I was buying a property and decided to use an online lawyer specialising in housing purchases. The estate agent who was a bitch from hell kept harrassing me at work saying we were delaying things. Actually, it was her and her client. She demanded my lawyer's number so I gave it (against my better judgement) and when she realised it was b'ham she went ballistic and launched forth about what the hell was I doing using a midlands company - was it of a certain ethncity as they are all terrorist up there and so on and so forth. I was reeling so I just put on speaker phone so the entire office could here. I was so mad that I really really wanted to go further the purchase and pull out at the last moment in revenge but sadly was never in the economic position to do that.

Second time was last year - guy fitting a new boiler felt it really important that I listen to this download he had on his phone - it was a piece of vitriolic shite masquerading as 'comedy' and about the community I'm from. Erm why? He really just didn't get it.

Oh my mutz you really need to find out what racism really is before posting here!!!

We once went to a letting agent who refused to show us, as a white couple, properties in certain areas of Glasgow because he assumed we wouldn't want to live in a place that was 'full of Pakis'. He also assumed that, as we were on a tight schedule, we'd end up renting one of his other properties. He was wrong.

To me, it's quite obvious that the comment is racially discriminating simply because he asked what the landlord's nationality is. It matters not, if he was being professional he might have asked if the OP had a contact number for the neighbour's landlord, or whether she could ask about sharing the cost of the repairs. His race shouldn't have come into it at all. Landlord is enough of a description of the house owner, no other detail is needed.

"'asians aren't playing fair, they all help each other' - well if those idiots want to play an individual game against people who work together well - tough!" - Heroine

To be fair on your 'selfish working class people who are 'indigenous'' Heroine - I think you are giving the asian communities a little too much benefit of the doubt on this one.

Where does 'working together' become the deliberate exclusion of anyone who isnt asian?

Its racism, pure and simple. You should be pulling them up on it if you are working with community leaders.

tallwivglasses i know a lovely builder in newcastle.john downing .he has done our kitchen extension ,loft conversion and more.he is small with a glass eye and a hoot!

Well done OP! Hope he went home and thought long and hard!

Riven, I wish I could have seen that taxi driver's face!

I am with you mutznutz i cannot see why this was racism.

Agree, given the sneering nature of said builders comments, he was probably racist.

However, generally, it can sometimes be such a fine line between general observation and racism.

In my line of work, I regularly have to look at statistics to do with the take up of certain services. There is a massive discrepancy between different ethnicities when it comes to different types of services.

However, when speculating as to the reasons, we often get told to be careful. For example, one of the service is to do with food. White people are massively over represented when it comes to this service, with Asian clients massively under-represented (compared with the ethnic make up of the population). My argument for this is that it is because Asian people commonly live in an extended family setting more so than white people and so do not have the need to food to be provided, as their family often takes care of that aspect of their well-being. It is an area that I would love to research more.

The problem if you make that kind of observation, some people take it to mean that you are stereotyping / bordering on being racist, even when the stats back it up. Whereas I feel I am using cultural observation to explain a statistical fact.

I think in this world of political correctness, people have lost sight of what real racism is and also fail to realise that stereotypes would not become stereotypes in the first place if there was not some truth to them somewhere along the line, even if the reason for them was due to a misunderstanding / ignorance.

I've often wondered about this. It always seems to happen to me on holiday. You'll be having a nice chat with someone and they suddenly want to rant at you about asylum seekers and just blindly assume that you're going to agree with them.

I once caused a ruckus over Christmas dinner by asking dh's uncle to stop telling racist jokes. But I was the one perceived to be rude by mil and everyone else (dh stuck up for me). They were gobsmacked that I'd said it!

I doubt he was being racist, he probably knows through experience they don't like spending money on having property brought up to standard.

Your assumption that he is racist shows your true colours to a t.

People are allowed opinions you know specially those garnered through experience.

Lenak...such a sensible post and exactly what I was getting at.

I do think 'racism' can be such an over used word...the same as 'bullying' is often over used and in the wrong context. Sometimes (and I do stress 'sometimes') people let the word 'racist' roll of their tongue without even engaging their brain and looking a little further into what the person is often trying to say.

Though as I've said before...in the OP's case I'd say the sneer gave it away.

You assume the builder is racist!! Why?

Because it suits you.

Get a grip.

I am surprised at some of the comments on this thread. Racist comments are really not that hard to spot. Generally they involve making a negative assumption based on someone's ethnicity. The OP involved someone hearing something negative about the landlord in question and assuming that he was Asian, thus making an obvious correlation that Asian people are bad landlords.

Positive comments about an ethnic group are not racist. So saying that Asian families take care of their own is not racist because it has no implied negativity. I suppose it could be seen as racial stereotyping, but generally people don't get upset about people saying nice things!

I sometimes wonder if people try to disagree with very clear cut OPs just to flex their intellectual muscles.....