to wonder what IS racist?

[OracleInaCoracle]

So, had a row with dbs bil the other day over his FB status. He was saying that the rioters and looters were immigrants and shoud fuck off back to their own country. I told him they weren't, the majority were english to which he replied that they were all "pakis and rag heads", now this isn't the first time and I usually just ignore him because he doesn't normally appear on my feed. But I called him a racist cunt his replies were just lovely including I should be burnt alive, but I digress.

His daft wife got involved and hurled a load of abuse at me and the lovely mners who backed me up when she followed me onto my own page. I tried yesterday to draw a line under it for db and sil's sake, but she has been abusive again, hey ho. But when I said "look, I'm not arguing with some 20yr old little girl and her racist husband" she was still insistent that he's not racist.

How is someone who moans about p@kis and n*ggers not racist? How is it not racist to say that all muslims or "r@g heads" should go back to their own country? Or that the only english people are white and can trace their famillies back in england over a hundred years?

Wtf is wrong with some people?

The funny thing is, it was mostly muslim communities, (turkish and pakistani) that were the first to go out on the streets in numbers to stop the looters and protect their businesses and homes.

Thereby confounding the expectations of many racists who were hoping to have a new reason to complain about the pakis and the ragheads.

Read an article yesterday, where the author had seen the following ironic tweet message:

"Bloody immigrants. Coming over here, defending our boroughs & communities."

I've never, ever, ever, ever, ever, in the 4 years of being a mother and the 20 years of being an aunt seen a children's book or witnessed a rendition of "Baa Baa Black Sheep" that substituted the word "black" for "rainbow" or "other right wing urban myth".

Georgie22, do you mean the famous Winterval myth that gets bandied around every year (Chester and Luton have also been named) and is comprehensively dismantled in this here article?

OldMac, you can 'tell' me whatever you want - I don't tend to make wild assertions, so you'll normally find that I can back up what I say.

That might be your experience MsAnnThroppy, but doesn't negate the experiences of those who have.

DS's nursery sang BaaBaa white sheep. Which is ridiculous. I always thought the baa referred to the noise they made and black was either for the alliteration or due to the fact black sheep were rarer and therefore the wool worth more!

DD's nursery did Baa Baa Black sheep.

As was said previously on another thread a while back, Birmingham LA 'banned' Baa Baa Black Sheep but that this was later revoked. Anyone with any common sense could see it was ridiculous at the time though!

victor, I think you will find the op bil would say the same about himself

I bet he can back it all up, just like you. in his own tiny mind

They are idiots, I have deleted a air few idiots off my bookface in the last few days too.

Idiocy should be a crime imo

But you can't back up that 'Baa Baa Black Sheep' has been 'banned', so I doubt very much that racist twatface BIL can back up that racist terms are not racist terms and are in fact perfectly acceptable everyday English.

People are just stupid. I had a friend who turned out pretty racist. He insisted that everyone who had any sort of foreign blood in them should be sent "back home". I pointed out that his sister was half chinese - apparently this is "different" and she should be allowed to stay in the country... but everyone else should go

I didn't believe the whole black/white coffee thing was actually real, but my cousin is in college at the moment and is ignored in the canteen if she asks for a black/white coffee. She does it deliberately to wind them up

I used to live quite near to a large Muslim community and I know that (at least the people I spoke to) enjoyed xmas, even though they didn't celebrate it.

Anyway, OP, you sound lovely and you shouldn't feel that you have to waste one second of your time on these idiotic people. Cut them off and let them be deprived of your company.

Looks like DH (North African Muslim) and I (British Christian) have been doing it all wrong. I will henceforth:-

Refuse to buy DH and the kids an Eid pressies because it is an affront to my indigenous Britishness

Reject any Christmas pressies bought for me by DH and the kids so I can then stomp about being offended that they don't respect British culture.

Ban the kids from watching Peppa Pig then blame it on political correctness gone mad.

Or alternatively
Say bollocks to it and carry on living in a mixed cultural relationship where we respect each other.

Itsnearlysummer , the inverse of what you say can be summed up in the old proverb, "One swallow does not a summer make." Just because one or two idiotic private nurseries have changed the lyric does not mean that PC has "gorn mad" or that the world is going to hell in a handcart trying to placate the steaming left wing masses.

If you and the Daily Mail were right, every nursery rhyme book, every kids' CD, every children's programme would have changed the lyric. They haven't.

Baa Baa Black Sheep has nothing to do with race, it's about 13th Century wool taxes.

The following is from Wiki:

A controversy emerged over changing the language of 'Baa Baa Black Sheep' in Britain from 1986, because, it was alleged in the popular press, it was seen as racially dubious. This was, as Curran, Pently and Gaber indicate, based only on a rewriting of the rhyme in one private nursery as an exercise for the children there and not on any local government policy.[4] A similar controversy emerged in 1999 when reservations about the rhyme were submitted to Birmingham City Council by a working group on racism in children's resources, which were never approved or implemented.[5] Two private nurseries in Oxfordshire in 2006 altered the song to "Baa Baa Rainbow Sheep", with black being replaced with a variety of other adjectives, like "happy, sad, hopping" and "pink".[6] Commentators have asserted that these controversies have been exaggerated or distorted by some elements of the press as part of a more general campaign against political correctness.[4]

Victor this is the article that evidences baa baa black sheep was banned and that the ban was then revoked.

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/600470.stm

It's an 11 year old article because the whole thing happened 11 years ago, which explains why some people might not be aware of / remember it. Doesn't mean it didn't happen or that it wasn't annoying - to lots of people (both black and white!) at the time.

My DS is 12 and it did apply at his nursery.

Monoid I went out for a meal last night and asked for a black coffee after the meal. The waitress repeated "you want a filter coffee" I replied "yes, black please" and I was duly brought my coffee with a small jug of milk!

I don't mind people suggesting that these things are ridiculous, but to suggest they haven't happened when I have experienced it is a bit annoying!

Oh and I don't think the nursery rhyme ban was countrywide, just Birmingham which also explains why many people won't have been aware of it.

lissie, Isnt it blindingly obvious that people hold views because they believe in them and they dont think there is anything wrong with them

your whole point is incoherent. try again

Oldmac, with a simplistic response like that, its no surprise that you don't understand my point. I can give a hundred reasons I am in favour of immigration, and why I teach ds to respect others regardless of race, religion, colour or sex. And "because I believe it" isn't one. That's not a reason, its a statement.

Yes MsAnn, I know that, but then I (and please don't lump me in with the DM!) didn't make the rules!

It was a local decision, made by one local council that affected the schools governed my that local authority. It didn't come from central government.

It was more than one or two nurseries. But it doesn't happen any more so it's not really worth discussing anymore!

But it did happen to all the nurseries in one local authority.

itisnearlysummer From what I can see that article says that a council issued some well-meaning but dimwitted guidelines, which everyone thought were stupid and then they were dropped. The intention behind those guidelines, however - that racist dogma should not be peddled to our children - is totally sound.

As I said earlier, those who shout 'the Muslims are banning Christmas/black people don't want us to drink coffee' the loudest are usually not Muslim or black. As that article states, it was black parents who came straight out and said it was daft.

INS, sorry to lump you in with the DM, that is a heinous insult to anyone

Sorry to bang on, but a guideline (which the Wiki link claims was never approved or implemented), is not the same as a policy in compulsory implementation. The article you link is very craftily written, a nice balance of sensationalism (parent power, yay, loony council, boo) and truth. But read it again and the truth is clear from it: one inspector, in a one off incident, on a visit to one nursery referred to the written guidelines, which pissed off the parents and led to a complaint. As a result, the guideline was scrapped. A one off.

I totally agree Victor.

I think the general feeling at the time was that a bunch of silly white middle class men in suits had decided what other people might find offensive without actually asking them.

I can think of a few more examples which I won't quote here because I don't want to start something and don't have the evidence to back it up, but I don't recall any of these bans ever being in response to complaints from anyone muslim or black.

I don't think many people actually believe black/muslim/any other people have complained. I certainly don't and hope I haven't come across like that!

it is nearly summer what frustrated me reading this thread is that you have said it doesn't really happen any more so it's not worth discussing anymore. Why then did you raise this on your first post? Do you mention this example of PC gorn mad which happened 11 years ago every time racism is discussed with you?

But loads of people (not you itisnearlysummer) then take these sorts of things as an example of why it's perfectly a-ok to be shitty about other groups of people.

'I can't even burn a Koran in my front garden any more, because of these Muslims! Send them all back!' etc.

Sorry xpost not trying to gang up on
you it is nearly summer

Well I don't know MsAnn. I was considerably younger then than I am now! But my DS's nursery wasn't the one referred to in the guidelines and I have spoken to other parents/nurseries where they did ban it, but only for a while.

I agree that, as with the Winterval thing, it's been blown up by certain people to justify certain opinions and behaviours.

As I said in my last post, what annoys me is that these silly ideas are thought up by white middle class men, the media says it's so we don't offend xyz people, some people get irritated that their culture is being attacked, xyz people get irritated because they weren't offended and they know how it's going to be received by some and it doesn't benefit anyone.

Of course racist dogma should be removed but there are silly ideas that serve to increase racial tensions rather than calming them and I find that irritating.

And actually, I'd much rather some errors were made by councils and other groups, if the aim behind them is the eradication of racism, sexism and homophobia. But this is way off topic so I'll stop.

Ha that's ok squishy.

No just that it's often bandied around as an urban myth and it was infact a short lived unwelcome reality! However it's been exaggerated in the media, it was a real idea that Birmingham City council gave some credence to for a while.

Racist is when you judge someone on their race. Race includes nationality, colour, ethnicity and religion. So 'immigrants should all go home' IS racist because it doesn't judge the actions, skills and contributions of those immigrants. But 'immigrants who don't contribute should be deported' isn't racist as such, although its a bit simplistic (they might be the family of a migrant who is working, for example.)

I find I don't particularly want to be friends with people who say 'oh, it's political correctness gone mad innit' anyway to be honest. Anyone who complains about a society where people are treated equally and respected isn't someone I want to spend my time on.

OP I would have reported them to Facebook. Words and behaviour like that are just unacceptable. Words do hurt. I'm half Jewish and when I was at school and mentioned it in RE a girl took it upon herself to call me names like big nose (my nose is actually quite small!), tell me to go back to Israel (I've never been) and make comments about me hoarding money everywhere. I don't understand why people feel they have the right to use words like ngger and pki. If it insults the group it's directed at on racial grounds that should be a good enough reason not to do it.