To want to slap this woman into next Tuesday??

[Rosierubies]

I'm furious, mum at school when observing the father of a child in our childrens class parking up (in a very nice car) to collect 'oh look at his car,' glance away 'i'll just say it shall I, drug dealer' (exaggerated whisper) WTF!!! Incidently this guy is also the father of one of the few black children in our school, he also favours a casual clothing style...he is also really nice and my dh's barber. I can only think that this is stereotyping on racial grounds and I'm furious, it's alright for her to own a 600k house but not for him to have a 30k car. I want to report it as a racist incident at school and chuck something at her would that bu?

Deffo racist, in my view.
One of my white neighbours said something similar about a black neighbour. I'm mixed race, so by saying it to me she clearly thought it was so clearly incontrovertibly true I couldn't possibly object. She was suspicious because he always had nice cars. He also got up at the crack and left the house in a suit and mac to drive said flash cars to his City job, but that clearly made no impact with her. Black +nice cars= probably a crim.

And as for: but I think I might have been inclined to think (but not say) the same if I saw a barber driving a £30k car some of you (understandably) don't know a lot about black barbers.

They're packed. Constantly. A lot of them stay open past midnight on Fridays and Saturdays so the club kids can get a cut and a shave before going out (I go on Sunday mornings when its quiet with the other women and the old geezers). It's haircuts every ten days for teens/twenty-somethings who want to stay looking sharp. If you're really cleaver, you rent part of your space to a women's salon to earn even more. So a popular barbershop is a licence to print money. And requires little capital. My last barber drove a massive 4x4 and retired (early) to Jamaica.

I think you should have challenged it.

But in poorer areas I would wonder about any young person driving an expensive car, whether they were black or white. Different if people are older as I would assume that they had saved up for it or inherited money. But if you are young, under 25, and live in a poor area, then drug dealer or criminal is a fair thing to wonder about.

where we are a £30k car wouldn't raise an eyebrow whoever was driving it.

La di da eh?

An Audi A3 is hardly flashy so must be a drug dealer though is it?

Definitely sounds like she charged/tried and convicted him of the offence of DWB [driving while black]

Eldritch - It's true I don't have a lot of experience of black barbers, but my work has for the last 25 years required me to review the accounts of numerous kinds of businesses. I have never seen a barbers that did much more than breakeven (or at least that's what they declared!) and sadly, of the 4 black barbers/hairdressers I worked with, 3 closed when the owners went to prison for selling more than haircuts! I don't for a minute think this happens at all of them, but it probably has somewhat coloured my view here.

This woman sounds blatantly racist. Why did she say ''i'll just say it shall I, drug dealer''
Hmm.. this sounds like someone who knew exactly what they were saying...

On a different note, I don't understand people who say they wouldn't challenge racist comments. Why would you not?

create that depends on the reputation and skill of the barber and location. My family all use African/ Caribbean barber's and the men in my husbands family know the very best one's and even details about their comaparative skills and who's hair they cut (in terms of celebrities and the like).

Living in London if you have what it takes, you can be a mini celebrity yourself as a certain standard of barber (because of large minority population). It is a big thing in African/ Caribbean communities and what Eldritch said is spot on.

I also like the quiet Sunday slots or the barber shop can get too packed and you can end up having a substantial wait.