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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

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

199 replies

tallwivglasses · 31/12/2010 11:37

I need a new porch (about £3,500-worth of work Sad ) 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?

OP posts:
GrimmaTheNome · 31/12/2010 18:29

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

'they'??

nuff said.

TandB · 31/12/2010 18:31

Classydiva - if there is any showing of true colours you just showed yours.

'They'. Who are 'they'? The tight Asian landlords no doubt.

mutznutz · 31/12/2010 18:33

The saying 'Asian people take care of their own' is certainly not a positive comment when it comes to business - family yes, but business no...in other words it means they would rather do business with other Asians, rather then give their money to anyone else. This practise is actually openly racist and has been going on for years...before Asians settled here, this practise was normally seen amongst Jewish traders.

TandB · 31/12/2010 18:37

I was referring to the comment about looking after their extended family actually.....

IAmReallyFabNow · 31/12/2010 18:37

I complained about some post going missing and the post office staffer said "it is the asians". I was too shocked to say anything but wish I had.

Besom · 31/12/2010 18:42

Lenak - or it could be because the food is not suitable for certain minorities? I'm not an academnic but my understanding from training is that the idea that certain minority ethnic groups 'look after their own' doesn't necessarily hold true any more.

As a professional providing a service I've been told to be very careful about making this assumption, because it may lead me to fail to make my service responsive to particular groups.

donnie · 31/12/2010 18:47

mutz - are you daftpunk in disguise?

to the OP - of course it was a racist comment. Good on ya.

scoobytoo · 31/12/2010 18:48

I agree with you, while prospective buyers were viewing my old house one asked "how many coloureds lived on the street"?
Shock
I was so angry that I asked him to leave and told him why. Strangely I had never even thought about it but realised if I had answered I would have said one somalian family, one Indian, one Jamaican/English, one African and us (White British). All great neighbours. I eventually sold to a Thai couple!!

YANBU horrid expectation of him!

M2011yRoger · 31/12/2010 18:48

oh taxi drivers...our town is very 'white m/c'. There is an huge empty building near us, been empty for years and now falling into diserapir.. a taxi drivier told me, ''them bloody muslims want it for a synagogue (Sic)''
I said, you mean mosque and surely this was a good thing! He went off on a paranoid, ill-informed rant which took in Eastern European, muslims, blacks, and just about everyone else who wasn't a white British heteosexual male.
The worst thing is, he made me feel like I was the unreasonable one for not agreeing with him.

mutznutz · 31/12/2010 18:51

donnie Fri 31-Dec-10 18:47:20
mutz - are you daftpunk in disguise?

If daftpunk is another poster then no. I joined here yesterday...my name's Marie - pleased to meet ya Smile

scoobytoo · 31/12/2010 18:52

Mutz even if that is your experience of some Indian landlords it doesn't make the builder right for saying racists comments does it?

mutznutz · 31/12/2010 18:55

Sorry scooby I'm not with you. If what is my experience of Asian LL's?

scoobytoo · 31/12/2010 18:58

Sorry Mutz it was me that was confused not you Confused

mutznutz · 31/12/2010 19:00

Haha welcome to my world Confused Grin

lenak · 31/12/2010 19:02

Kungfupanda 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.

-----

Yes it does - it has implied negativity for other ethnic groups. If you are saying that Asian families take care of their own, by singling out their ethnicity you are implying that Black or White families don't take care of their own.

That is why it is important to have the evidence to back up the claims - my problem is I cannot get as far as gathering the evidence because as soon as it is raised as an hypothesis it is slapped down as stereotyping / borderline racism.

Besom - no, they do have menu's suitable for all of our local minorities, and if not, they have to source them from other providers.

It is not just meals - there are many other services that would also point to the assumption. I agree with having to be careful about making the assumption in case it makes the service less responsive, but the opposite is also true - if you have a service that is not being used representatively by a particular ethnic group, imo it is important to find out why - so that you can make the service responsive to that group.

AliGrylls · 31/12/2010 19:22

lenak, I completely agree with what you say. There are statistics that suggest all sorts of things, for example, black people are better runners and have more muscle mass than caucassians.

I repeated this fact a while ago to a friend and was told I was racist for making that assumption however, it is a proven fact that people of african descent are better runners.

I am sure there are more of these types of generalisations that are true, although I would not want to go down the route of suggesting any ethnic minority was more prone to criminal / dishonest tendencies than another.

AnnieLobeseder · 31/12/2010 19:26

"they don't like spending money" Racist much yourself, classydiva? Not much classy about being a racist, I'm afraid!

OP, I started a thread earlier this week about someone at my parent's house telling an 'amusing anecdote' about a Muslim being tricked into eating pork. While most people supported me there when I said I pulled the guy up for telling the tale, some people just didn't get the problem.

I don't often get involved in racism discussions on MN, funnily enough this is my 2nd this week, but I find it very worrying how some people on here don't see themselves are racist (and maybe they aren't), but are quite happy to let racism go on around them without them paying much attention or seeing any problem with it.

MissQue · 31/12/2010 19:28

Statistics are used to prove points though, not make solid generalisations. Usain Bolt is a good runner, but it doesn't mean that all black people are good runners, or everyone called Usain even! Stephen Hawking is a genius, but not all white men are, or every disabled person, it's just too wide to generalise.

goingmadinthecountry · 31/12/2010 19:41

A girl at the local primary (all white, very rural) complained to me once - I was supply teaching - that it was wrong to learn about other religions because "we're all white and Christian so we should learn about what matters to us". Scariest thing was that her mum used to run assemblies in the school....

lenak · 31/12/2010 19:52

Statistics are not used to prove points - they are used to indicate trends.

Usain Bolt being a good runner does not mean all black people are good runners, but the fact that there has not been a white 100m or 200m record holder in the past 50 years and that no white man has ever run the 100m in sub 10 seconds, would suggest that there is a genetic ethnic factor to it.

Just like the best sprinters tend to be of West African origin, Caribbean, Black-American or Black-British as this racial line has a higher percentage of 'fast-twitch' muscle fibres, the best long distance runners tend to come from highland East Africa as the high altitude means they have better lung capacity.

The reasons for this are genetic rather than ethnic, it is just that these traits tend to be found more in specific ethnicities and have had centuries to develop evoultionary speaking.

Because it is genetic, it is very different to the cultural arguments about one ethnic group being different to another.

lenak · 31/12/2010 19:53

*evolutionally

orangepoo · 31/12/2010 20:01

OK, the comment sounds really racist.

I am actually really surprised that you said that "you don't employ racists". I can see why you wanted to wake this bloke up and stop him being racist, but:

  1. A comment from you (a stranger) is not going to shake his views given that he doesn't appear to think very logically

and

  1. You could have risked your personal safety by antagonising someone like the person you have described.

If I had been in your situation, I would have just said "hmm" and not employed him. I really wonder about why so many people (particularly women, given that they are physically weaker) think that it is sensible wrt their personal safety to get into disagreements with strangers like this.

Perhaps it's just because I have been on the receiving end of violence as a child and learnt never to tangle with someone bad tempered and violent. But I would never consider making the comments that the OP did. Unless on anon internet forum Grin.

illgetyoubutler · 31/12/2010 20:20

That guy was wrong to say what he said, in the manner in which he said it.
Good on you OP for confronting him on it.

As an aside, I will say though, that I live in rented accomodation, as do many many of my friends in my area. All the properties belong to Asian/Bangladeshi/Paskistani Landlords, and the Landlords here have a DIRE reputation of being reluctant to spend money on the properties, when something has needed doing.

So, initially, when I read the poster who said, perhaps the guy said what he said as a result of working in an area where the majority of Asian Landlords do not maintain their properties, I agreed, and I thought maybe he's talking from experiance....
But then, even if that WAS the case, ( it certainly is in the particular area I live in), then it was still wrong for him to say what he did, in that manner that he did it.
So OP was right to pull the guy up on his comment.

I think anyway.

ensure · 31/12/2010 20:41

I have never come across a racist taxi driver. Maybe you are all perpetuating an untrue stereotype. Or maybe I have just been lucky!

Original poster
tallwivglasses · 31/12/2010 20:44

Woh, things have developed since I started this thread - been busy with NY stuff.

This is my first AIBU. I suppose I expected criticism and I'm not overly surprised by who dished it out. Thanks to those who backed me up more eloquently than I could have done.

Thanks to the local lady who recommended me a right-on builder (will PM you x) and I promise to read the thread properly as soon as I get the chance.

Hope everyone's enjoying a good New Year's evening...let's raise a glass to tolerance in 2011 [sgrin]

OP posts:
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