To think someone saying your hair is exotic & wanting to touch it is not racist?

[BoobleBeep]

I'm wondering about this, I have tried to link the articale by Hannah Pool in Grazia but can't find it online.

It was an article on casual racism in the UK and she cited an incident where she had been in the womens toilets and a white women had said how beautiful and exotic her hair was and asked if she could touch it (whilkst reaching out and touching it), Hannah Pool said no you can't and teh women said she was rude.

I lived in Japan for years and had blonde hair back then. Lots of people saidhow exotic my hair was and people liked to touch it sometimes, it didn't bother me at all. My daughter is mixed race and has gorgeous very thick black hair and I love touching it as it is so different to my own.

Unless Pool wants people to act as if she's no different from them (which would be seriously dishonest if they're white and she's black)

This is getting really daft now. What should Pool be doing? Be prepared to have a fucking boring conversation about being 'different' every single day of her life just in case she's accused of pulling the race card?? When I go down the pub with my mates I want to have a drink and a laugh - bit of chat, bit of goss, bit of did you see whatever on FB the other day - I do not want to spend it with ignorant idiots who want to 'celebrate our differences'. Jeez

For all those people who lived abroad 'once' and feel like they have experienced being treated as different. You did not experience racism, you experienced being treated as someone from overseas who has the extra novelty factor of being British (and therefore some kudos because those colonialistic feelings go way down deep - yes even in Japan)

Went to the Nottinghill Carnival a few years back. Got spat on.

I grew up in Shepherds Bush and was the victim of many a race hate incident

3rdOne
The point is, it was 'one day in a car'. I don't know about HP, but try it three times a week, with complete strangers, in buses, tubes, lavatories, pubs.
I once got stopped by the police to check out my bike, as soon as I took my crash helmet off, they all wanted to talk about my hair and skin.

No, I'm willing to be educated. I didn't say I think I'm perfect. As I said, I felt that what she experienced was boundary-crossing and I don't know if this more of a problem for black womean than for white women.

Since I felt the issue was more about the person's rudeness (such an individual would do the same to someone with amazing red hair, for eg) I can't say I agree that particular incident was racist.

Once again, I'm willing to be educated but pounding away at the idea that any personal slight must be racially motivated doesn't teach me much.

I once got stopped by the police to check out my bike, as soon as I took my crash helmet off, they all wanted to talk about my hair and skin.

That's weird!

garlicbutter - you're a feminist right?

If a woman believes she has experienced an example of casual sexism - do you think it is up to a man to tell her whether she was right, or instead, if what she experienced wasn't sexism at all?

TBH, i just remembered it and thought that the children were innocent about it. (i also lived there for 20 years and currently live on another continent where i'm an ethnic minority). It is not the same thing HP was talking about but i have some experience of not looking the same as the majority and here, in the GCC, being judged negatively for it.

The only thing i can ponder is somehow, as we get older we should keep those kind of impulses to ourselves to not offend the other person, not because we don't want to do it.

Also, Dawndonna, i suspect you're also very goodlooking to draw that kind of attention. An unattractive woman's hair and skin wouldn't be quite as interesting to others.

Blimey Warrant, the way you write makes me think you are a very angry individual which

is

I don't think Warrant sounds angry at all.

Just observant and analytical and not completely fuckwitted

Just because someone is aware of stuff, it doesn't mean they spend their whole life in a frenzy of fury.

Of course not up to the man to dismiss a woman's offence at his sexism, Slinking, neither up to a white person to dismiss a non-white person's offence at their racism or a young one to deny an older person's offence at their ageism (it goes on, of course: we could itemise bigotries all night.)

I assume fit, young black women get a double whammy. I still think it's wrong to ascribe all offensive behaviours to bigotry; not least because too much of that can damage a cause. If someone calls me an old bag, they're being sexist and ageist. If they ask how I keep my skin so nice at my age, they're being rude but not, in my opinion, bigoted.

Were you aiming that comment at me by any chance Eleanor.

Where in this whole thread have I used one derogatory word to try to put someone down, ie. stupid, idiot, fuckwitted, ignorant etc. like some.

Hmmmmm, is that not a sort of a, how can I put this, bullying tactic?

Bullying in my opinion is just as bad as racism.

Two wrongs don't make a right

No I wasn't aiming it at you, it was a general comment.

I do think that refusing to listen to people in groups which are marginalised when they are telling one something about their experience and more or less denying that racism still exists, is fuckwitted.

Eleanor - If they ask how I keep my skin so nice at my age, they're being rude but not, in my opinion, bigoted. - am I wrong here? Is this ageism (and possible sexism)? Am I overlooking bigotry that should be addressed?

Please note, those are questions not implied statements.

Thanks Eleanor :)

Not angry in least Fuzzy ... many of my closest friends are white (you do OTH sound furious and like you have had some horrible experiences though :( ) I don't go around being furious, I do however sometimes get bored with people (and slightly irritated) and then try to avoid them. Do you hang around with people who bore you?

I thought that giving a few little anecodotes might help to enlighten the issue. Have tried to address the exotic issue, the-use-of language-issue, the entitled touching of hair issue, the I-lived-abroad-and-people-touched-me-and-I-wasn't-bothered issue but guess I've just got a huge big chip on my shoulder anyway eh? Oh well such is life. Never mind no more anecodes, wouldn't want to be accused of pounding-away. Will make note to discuss things in more academic third-person fashion in the future.

GN I don't think they're being bigoted but they are being bloody rude.

HAving said that, I have an aunt who is in her 80s with beautiful skin (hardly a wrinkle) and I asked her what skin cream she used because her skin is so amazingly good. (And she's drunk gin solidly for about sixty years, so I'm thinking of taking to the bottle, it seems to have worked for her.) But that's not rude because I have a relationship with her, which allows me to do that (and she'll ask me what shampoo blah di blah, I use as well, so it's reciprocal.) And I know that she was flattered, not offended, by my question.

It's all about context isn't it? Which is why I get so irritated by people who pretend that because at some point in time when something similar happened to them, they weren't offended, that means it's unreasonable for someone else, to whom something different happens in a different context with different people, they have no right to feel differently about it. It's just so pig-headed and unempathetic IMO.

I actually remember getting quite fed up with people commenting on me in Japan if I was having a bad day. Sometime sit felt a bit like I was constantly on show for people to disect my appearance, but who could blame them really? I was interesting to them. I remember saying to my BF after two Japanese girls walked past saying in Japanese, 'wow, look at her, do you think she's pretty?' that I was fucking sick of it and BF said well at least they aren't saying you're ugly!

I wonder if teh fact Hannah Pool was adopted by a white family has made her more conscious of feeling treated as an outsider or 'exotic'? I had a mixed race BF who was adopted by white parents (he had a white birth mother & African father) but was never accepted in the village where they lived and was never accepted by the afro caribbean community either, he was subjecte dto racial abuse for being 'African' and most white women either found him sexually attractive or scary...

Thanks for replying, Eleanor. Am heartened to hear that gin may be the secret of a beautiful decline (I was banking on that! )

It is about context, yes. With a family member you have looser boundaries than with a stranger. There's no doubt that personal remarks and touching are out of bounds between strangers. The fact that some people disrespect this struck me as a wider issue. They may have mental health problems, be socially or culturally maladjusted, be plain rude bastards or, indeed, be bigoted.

I thought it was OTT to assume racism in the OP story. The strength of feeling in this thread made me question my judgement - and the easiest way to do that is to bring it closer to home, hence my example about older skin. I can't say I'm a whole lot wiser but you have contributed to my ponderings on this, so thank you.

You're continuing to do it though, garlic - deciding for Hannah that the incident she experienced wasn't racist.

And the thing is, out of context, as an isolated incidence, it probably isn't really indicative of anything. But who knows what she, as a black woman, experiences every day of her life?

Because of her own life experiences she feels like it was an example of casual racism. Who is anyone not of her skin colour to dismiss that?

Seriously, wouldn't you be pissed off if, say, a man at your work kept saying that having page 3 girls on his office wall wasn't sexist and denied that problem you had with it was rooted in sexism?

I don't know why I'm banging on about this - I just find it astonishing that people who haven't been in her position are just brushing this aside as no big deal. Am leaving the thread now, as I think after 12 pages, no-one's changing their mind.

Sorry - cross-posted. :)

Glad to see you back OP and thanks for that. It's annoying isn't it?! There were a fair few people reckoning that they had been treated as exotic when they were abroad a while back and that it hadn't bothered them in the slightest. Everyone has a huge range of differing experiences. I had a friend of Nigerian ancestry who was constantly (and I mean constantly) being stopped by the police because he was black and driving a nice car. He was pretty angry. He wasn't adopted though.

Well, I hadn't decided for her Slinking (I hope the cross-post means you see I hadn't) and, since I didn't read the original article, have to take the story out of context. I'm not judging, I'm mulling!

FTR, I am fairly 'colour-blind' (stupid expression) having grown up in the racially-mixed industrial midlands, then lived in South London and Brazil. Brazil would shake up a few British ideas - there's no delineation of 'race' as the population is so mixed; it is usual for one family to be all colourations from blond to black. Blacker people are still more disadvantaged, though; there's a phenomenon there called 'economic blackening' in which poor people are considered Black, regardless of physical characteristics.

And Brazil is also where I've experienced genuine racial prejudice - in Salvador de Bahia, where I received all the minor & major racist slights against me, based purely on my appearance, from the mainly Afro-Brazilian population. It was pretty damn wearing. Also had this in one African city. I have got some idea but, naturally, it's easier for me to think about this from the perspective of ageism because that is my daily life.