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.

Some of the white people in Camden are pretty exotic.

would you say to their face they are exotic?...be honest

No. But this is the bloke I'm talking about and I somehow don't think he'd mind that much if I did.

znaika, I know, I am a non-British-yet-white person.

....with a very exotic name.

Have you noticed British people becoming increasingly anti-foreign (whatever your skin colour)? I have been told, or heard, that people like me should "go back to where they came from" a few times this year.

There's a sweeping generalisation...

I wasn't generalising, I was just saying that I never experienced any of that 10 years ago, and now I have and wonder if it's just me?

It was a question.

Not a statement.

Must admit, DD has had this once or twice. She usually just says: "But I don't like Watford"

www.blackpeopleloveus.com/ quite apt really.

I have red hair. About 30 years ago in thailand I was in a remote area and all teh local women came running out to look at it and touch it. They wanted to wash it and so I let them. They washed it with fruit and ripe bananas(?) and left it gleaming and glossy. Weird but I wasn't in the least offended.

Until this thread I had not considered that some people might consider the word exotic to have anything other than positive or neutral connotations. What I find difficult is that what might be considered to have offensive connotations by some black or mixed race people is conversely considered complimentary by others.

So it is important to allow for the possibility that not only might a speaker be intending the word to be neutral or complimentary, but that it is quite reasonable to assume that the receiver might quite feasibly receive it that way.

I don't consider the use of exotic to be racist. I would however endeavour not to use terms likely to cause offence, if I could feasibly anticipate that they might.

Oh God. I swore I wasn't gong to say anything more on the topic (it's really boring trying to explain yourself to people who just don't get it.)

Ok. I give up. Please tell me I look exotic if it's that important to you and come and touch my hair. (FWIW I have never had the desire to touch the hair of a complete stranger and never will - so what's all that about??) I would rather anyone came up to me and told me that I looked exotic than all the guff coming out from some white Brits who have lived abroad for 5 mins swearing how somebody touched them or their children and they weren't offended in the slightest. This bit about the whole thread is just arrogant beyond belief. You have not got a clue. I have friends from all over the UK and Ireland .. the Northeast, the Midlands, the South West, Wales, Scotland, Dublin, Galway who have also not grown up in particularly multi-cultural areas and none of them would have a problem with this concept. It's really not that hard.

OldEnglishSpangles .. yep that's it in a nutshell (and no .. you don't need to have a chip on your shoulder to see the truisms in that link)

WORipley, I'd be mortified if I offended someone inadvertently by innocently using a term they disliked. I would however hope they would attempt to understand my true intent, and not ascribe negative undertones to my choice of terms if none existed. The benefit of the doubt, if you like. I'd then avoid using that term again for fear of upsetting someone.

But what to do if the term is not universally accepted to be offensive? I consider exotic to be a complimentary term. So does DH. We would be pleased to have that term used describing DH or our children. But DH is not British, his looks and accent give away his "otherness" and he is happy to celebrate his uniqueness in our culture. He enjoys his differences. He also has described himself as "coloured" on occasion, a term which many find offensive, although clearly he does not.

I suppose I am suggesting that there are many views held even within a racial group, and no consensus or absolutes when it comes to some words. Your views are valid, but others do disagree and their views hold equal weight.

Verylittlecarrot, I appreciate what you are saying but I think you are missing the point a little. WarrantOfficerRipley your post makes very valid points. I get the same frustration whenever topics like this come up. People should take the word exotic and put it into context. These alledgely complimentary, non racial, comments are made many times over many years. The 'ironic' link I posted is a sad reality for a lot of 'exotic' people.

Thanks oldenglish :)

Sorry for those of you who mentioned that white does not mean Anglo-saxon and privileged, I can understand that. Britain does seem to be going through a newly racist phase against people from Eastern Europe as well. If you have been experiencing more racism in the last 10 years than you had previously that's also not good. I would certainly not want to imply that just because you are white you don't understand the experience of racism. Hear what you're saying verylittlecarrot, my DH absolutely hates the term mixed race (!) so there you go!

Did not want to bang on .. just wanted to try and explain something but it seems to have got lost in the ether.

All this hoohaa has brought up a - in the current context, heart-warming - memory from when I was about 8 yrs old. I had gone to the loo at dinnertime and the dinner lady had said "where's that coloured girl?" There was no reason in the 1970s for any of my white friends to have a problem with the word coloured (well unless of course they had over-heard conversations/the news/who knows what). When I came back my little friends (who were 8 years old) said "you know that dinner lady called you that coloured girl". This was the mid 1970's, the concept of PC did not exist. My friends just did not see that that description described their friend. Because I was not "other" to them.

I currently live abroad and they have a thing for blonde hair a blue eyes. My dd is 2 and her hair is now nearly white thanks to the blazing summer we had. If people comment on it to me, fine. But if we go out to a busy place like the local sunday market I turn into a bodyguard for my baby girl because people just walk upto her and start stroking her face and hair. You wouldnt do it to an adult without asking so why people think its fine to just walk upto a child and start feeling their hair is beyond me.

WOR My 'arrogant guff' (thanks ) was not intended to tell you how you should feel. I was merely recounting what happens and has happened several times over the years with my children and telling eveyone (not just you, remember) how we felt. That's all.

I havre as much right to not be offened by it as you have to be offended. Your being offended does not make my feelings wrong. I do not expect you to share my feelings, and I am not remotely worried that you don't, ok?

I suppose what I am trying to say is that you took my post as a direct challenge to your feelings. It was not a challenge, just an anecdote. Think about it.

SouthStar I think in certain cultures they have a thing about touching and petting small children anyway - it's as if they are public property! They think they are being affectionate and friendly and it doesn't occur to them that more reserved and less demonstrative Norhtern Europeans might find this a bit odd! But this behaviour is particularly marked if your child is blonde and blue eyed as there is the huge novelty factor.

I would never ask to touch a stranger's hair, and even if for some bizarre reason I did, I certainly wouldn't get the hump if they didn't want me to! I can see how it would have made the writer feel really uncomfortable, especially the assumption that she should just meekly submit to some random woman's touch, and that she was 'rude' in not doing so.

But I suppose in order to truly be a novelty you need to be very much in the minority, and something 'other' and in the circumstances I mentioned my son has been. I guess that was what happened to African-Caribbean children all the time back in the 50's and 60's when they came to Britain, but not now so much. It would be a bit odd now, and the vast majority of people are over that 'novelty' thing. I agree that it was odd and a bit inappropriate for the woman in the OP to do that, but whether or not it was racist is down to each minority individual's perception of how they feel they fit in, and how they perceive they are treated by the majority in their surroundings.