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?

I really do not take your point kelway and that is putting it mildly!

my point is that like it or not alot of close nit communities that are of a different culture do have (some of them) ways about them that are common within their community although lefty types will always dismiss this immediately as they dismiss anything that they think is not pc. i am pointing out that i was born into a religion and lives as part of the 'community' until i was a grown up and observed alot of the generalisations that apply to being jewish, and even though some of them do not sound nice i can see why these generalisations occur. i do not look jewish and have grown up hearing loads of not nice comments about jews, some really hurt BUT as much as i hate to admit it alot of jews (not all) do behave in a certain way to fuel people thinking these things. one of the reasons i stopped hanging around with jews as i found the ones where i lived to be flashy and loud and materialistic. i know clearly that not all jews are like this and i feel angered by the ones who behave like this as they fuel the antisemitic view that ALL jews are like this. it is not for me to list other cultures typical behavioural patterns but they do have them, i live in a majorly multicultural area and they have them....

i have often wondered by different religions/cultures have different features, going back to my nose thing. oddly enough i don't have a large nose although wouldn't care if it did, but really, i have no idea as to why alot of jewish people do. i often asked my mother but she would always get immediately defensive, really annoying. why do alot of scandinavians have blonde hair?.....i have often wondered this whenever i have been there, obviously they don't all have blonde hair but an unusually large amount of them do, and not of the bottled kind you see here in the uk!! :0)

Once again kelway I do not take your point.

Surely it is actions and behaviour that inform people of your character and not your race or culture.

or appearance?!

frustating about the tight jew thing, i have gone through my adult life always being overly generous in an attempt to comensate to the non jews who didn't know any jews, only the rumours, that we weren't tight. i would often be far more generous than non jews around me and yet if they were 'tight' they were always referred to as the tight jew which has always pissed me off. i am naturally generous, i enjoy giving. and my understanding of jews who are careful with their money from what i have observed growing up being around old jews (most of which are dead now) is that their frugalness comes from growing up in the war and wanting to have security, my grandparents came from the east in the early 30's, some were left behind and died. soome of this has passed off into me. my dh (non jew) has observed my need to always have a certain amount of security money away, i guess it is installed into me, i still have certain jewish traits, i don't drive a volvo though.....:0)

If a builder in Newcastle has 20 years experience with say Green people who never spend money on really fixing stuff or always employ other Green people would you blame him if he invested his time in trying to get business from purple people instead?

Jo, I have ignored you previous questions because they are stupid. Different means different. And cultural differences do mean differences over and above traditions, eg Chinese people lie according to our norms...for Chinese people it's more about saving face, so they often say yes when they mean no. Cultural difference has to be overcome in business all of the time, traditions are a reflection on the people that uphold them. Just look at the Japanese.

I agree with the OP and the guy was wrong to assume she would accept that kind of comment.

Just playing devils advocate though when I used to be a waitress we would all bee line for the American customers because they were great tippers and no-one ever wanted to serve German or Spanish because they would tip terribly. Is that racist? In the definition of generalising on race it is.

loads of people judge other cultures by how they look and behave. alot of other cultures do not mix that well with others outside of their clique either which was why i left mine. I look back to the crowds i hung and grew up with and it was really suffocating. we all dressed and behaved a certain way and i think i have always resented it. i would see the way other people looked at us and hear what they said, it made me ashamed, i got away as soon as i was old enough to go out into the world. i know that there are alot of other jews out there like me who do not fit the stereotype and we resent the ones who do, they fuel the bollocks.

I don't think it was a landlord!

Seriously if you lived in Leeds in Burliegh during the mid nineties I can assure you your LL would have been Asian (from a particularly impoverished area of Pakistan) and the house would have been shite.

People that do not recognise cultural identity are talking rubbish.

But (running with the colours) he wasn't investing his time in trying to get business from purple people. He was making comments about green people that he didn't personally know to another person he didn't know.

If he finds it profitable to go about actively seeking business from certain groups that's one thing. That isn't what the OP posted about though is it.

Taking your second point; how is saying something like Chinese people lie any different to saying women say no but mean yes. Some Chinese people may feel saving face is very important because of how they've been brought up. Some women may play games around consent because of how they've been brought up. There are cultural influences on the women and the people interpreting their 'No' as 'go on, pursuade me'. But repeating the sterotypes and buying into them purpetuates them. How is it helpful to anyone?

Well that's cleared that up then feministparent! I thought I was typing in invisible ink!!

I wasn't asking about what you meant about different(!) I was asking you to clarify what you meant by 'recognisable traits' which you have done.

at the time of WW11 there were alot of wealthy jews in germany but equally there were alot of terribly poor ones in the east but still the nazis made out all jews were rich. not sure what you are getting at with your comment about the rich ones not giving money to relatives in russia, perhaps they did, you could say why don't all the rich arab states give money to the palastinians. the problem with wealthy jews is that they let everyone around them know they have money but for every wealthy jew there will be loads of bloody poor ones. my aunty grew up in a council estate with no money and no food in the cupboards, my grandma grew up in a tiny flat with hardly any food etc etc. charity, this was of the norm'.

i think the point i was trying to make was simply that one of the things that stereo type jews is 'being tight' and as much as it hurts when i hear it said, some jews do behave in this way so i cannot dismiss it out of hand. although i have dug deep and know WHY they behave like this, goes deep into family history. my grandpa had a girlfriend (after my grandmother died), she had survived auschwitz, cannot remember her name, but she had this strange habbit of stuffing money into odd places in her flat (she didn't have much money, she was a seamstress above a shop in soho), anyhoo, i would go to her flat sometimes and you would find money in really weird places, she was 'tight' with money. my grandpa told us one day that he had asked her about it and she said quite plainly that it was there incase she ever had to escape again. sorry, i am waffling, the cooker is ommitting a foul stench and i think it has gone to my brain......

A spanish junior nurse colleague returned to uk from visiting spain last week, with complaints about muslims in spain 'wanting things their way' and saying 'kick them out of spain'. I reminded her that muslims have been in spain since medievel times (give or take a few wars / forced conversions).
I was shocked as it's not nice to see that side of a friend. I asked her how she would feel if people wanted her to leave the uk, and she did see my point.

Like OP found with the builder, she assumed we would all hold the same anti-muslim views. It's because although our other nursing colleagues on my unit are a mix of races + nationalities, non are muslims. The least tolerant women i know are christians (sorry).

I lived in Burley/Leeds 6 throughout the early '90s, as it happens, & had a succession of shit landlords.

The worst two were white.

...& where would we have been without Maumoniats, Nafees & the Corner Caff, eh - all successful local Asian run businesses .

Absolutely agree with the OP & would also have withheld my business.