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.

I have people being fascinated with my hair all the time, it is thick and very curly.

I'm part Arab, and have pale skin but dark features, so people often struggle to work out where I'm from. Plenty of people try to work it out, or struggle to ask without sounding rude, and also want to touch my hair. I have never had anyone touch without asking, and when they do ask, it's in the middle of lots of compliments about it. So I have never found it rude, it's quite the opposite, and I'm shocked so many people have had their haor touched without being asked.

But with all due respect, OP, so what?

Your experience doesn't negate Hannah's...? I'm a bit confused as to the point you're trying to make, in all honesty.

A white person's experience of casual racism is never going to be the same as a black person's.

DW was the only black kid in her village and the constant hair-touching (with and without asking) drove her mad.
She later met someone who'd had similar experiences and who now meets those requests with "Yes, if I can touch your tits."
Not many takers.

How is it never going to be the same? Racism is racism, or is it less important that I was rcailly abused because I am white? Do you not see any irony there?

If a black person had said given the same list of examples would you still say 'so what'?!

The reason I gave my experiences was in reply to a post further up which perhaps I should have added to mine, it said Gotta love people not on the receiving end of everyday racism coming on to say, 'oh no, that' not racist' instead of actually listening and maybe internalising what's being said and then just not doing it again.

i dont think it raciest my daughters mixed race too and everytime she goes out theres always peopletouching it she has lovely thick long curly hair and the textures amazing where as my hairs afro but not too tight when i was at school i used to get people touching my hair as the kids who were white just thoughtit was unusual because it was springy a bit like cotton wool and they never seen anything like it before this was in 80 s but i hated being called bush wacker then i was made aware that i was different and it made me self consious of my hair it made me have a love hate relationship with it.

Technically what you experienced in Japan was not racism but xenophobia (if they were saying 'foreigners' and not 'white people'). Sounds bloody awful though.

Not being 'deliberately obtuse' or 'a bit slow' thanks.

Just don't necessarily think that all comments that acknowledge a racial difference have to be seen as 'racist'.

I have witnessed actual racism and it's horrendous. Have seen the effects of racism and it's horrendous. Have been absolutely astounded by things that some people are prepared to say and don't see a problem with.

However, for people cry racsim because someone of a different race has dared to compliment them on an aspect of that difference is fucking pathetic!

But then technically Hannah Pool's hair was described as exotic, implying foreign or different so would that not be racism? Yes it was awful but even worse for my DH who was half Japanese half black, the racism was a lot worse for him.

So I expect I am going to get flamed for racially abusing my DD but I often tell her how beautiful and exotic she looks in comparison to me. I have two more DD's who are blonde & blue eyed who are equally as beautiful and to m,e it is important the differences are not brushed under the carpet but celebrated and they are all told who beautiful they are

It's the 'exotic' that's the problem. I think it was a crass thing to say.

i dont think id like the word exotic used on me just say its nice hair but then dont go up to the person in the first place touching there hair. it's quite personal if you dont no them.

Exotic is a very problematic word. It does not only imply foreign or different, because of the way it has been used over the past couple hundred years, in the context of imperialism and colonialism.

I don't think you're racially abusing your daughter, but I think you should just tell her she's beautiful and leave it at that.

slinkingoutside, in a way your last comment is racist.

You clearly have never experienced it. I think ALL racism is bad, not just racism towards Afro Caribbean people.

Going to Morocco and being treated as a whore (for being an "infidel" and a foreign woman) doesn't matter then, because of my skin colour ?

Are your really arguing that that is o.k.?!

Of course all racism is bad.

But, I have experienced similar treatment traveling in the Middle East. I don't think that's the same as living my entire life as a minority in a society where casual racism is rife.

Both bad, just different.

Calling someone 'exotic' is tantamount to telling them that they don't belong here, they will never really fit in, they will always be 'other'.

And what Eleanor said.

bohemian, white people have been enslaved too. It's not something that happened exclusively to black people.

I don't hold with all this collective guilt regarding slavery. Black people in Britain today are no more slaves than I am a slave owner. Go back a few years and as a woman, I would have had few rights and would have belonged to my father and then my husband. But that's not the case any more. I don't think you can go through life 'carrying history personally'. At some point you have a draw a line under the past and recognise that the both the victims and perpetrators of historical crime are dead and gone. Worry about all the shit going on in the world now because there are still people being murdered in the world and oppressed.

All people are capable of racism, not just white ones. I think you can only go through life acting how you personally feel is right. Everyone is upset and offended by different things and if you spend your whole life trying to predict what everyone else may or may not find offensive, you'll be scared to open your mouth.

That said, I think the woman was very rude in not respecting another person's personal space. I think of exotic as glamorous. So what if it also means 'other'. 'Other' is not bad. Personally, I'd rather be exotic than mediocre (which I am, unfortunately).

I've had the 'exotic' tag applied to me, usually by men, and it comes with a whole host of other, unwelcome associations, i.e. sexually available, easy, kinky. Applying that label to me seems to confer some sort of droit de seignuer on them. I'm assuming that other people object to 'exotic' precisely because of the semantic baggage attached to it.

I've also had the "where were you from...originally?" line, which is somewhat confusing, as I'm fair-haired, green eyed, and hail from Devon

A lot of women are interested in my hair (waist-length multicolour dreadlocks) but are very polite about it, mainly complimenting me on it, and asking where I got it done.

I disagree that calling someone exotic is tantamount to telling them they don't belong here.

I have recently become freinds with an Indian lady. In conversation, I told her that I think sari's look beautiful, and that some of the fabrics look really exotic. Was that racist?

Was it racist because I told her I'd never worn a sari and would love to try one on because it implies that they are not normal clothes and are something that I would effectively be playing dress up in? No, I don't think so.

Acknowleging different races and the features that come along with that does not automatically equal racism.

My sister has SN and has a embarassing habit of grabbing braided hair

just becasue its interesting. or going up to black people and touching their faces in disbelief sooooo embarassing was awful in america.

I am White and have been abused once for the colour of my skin by a black women at a bus stop. More pertinently I have been on the receiving end of comments every day due to my disability.

I don't think the majority of comments come from people who would discriminate against me on the grounds of my disability but they did come from people who lack insight to how inappropriate their comments can be, and who need to have greater insight into personal space.

But commenting on difference is not automatically racism and trying to makeit so, I don't think is helpful.

slavetofilofax - calling fabric exotic isn't racist. Calling a black British woman's hair exotic is absolutely about saying that she's not 'proper' British.

Can you not see that?

it's interesting to to find out what people think racism is your hair is exotic or you have afro hair so it's ethenic its all stero typing theres not just slavery in blackpeople theres slavery every where even today people are still being exploited you go back intime white people have been raped abused they have no power in money im mixed race halfblack and white and i never get this strong black women thing all women can be strong my mum is a strong women just has other women have been before her in our family.

Christine - sorry I don't see it. I hope I will not stop complimenting my friends on thing about their appearance I find interesting in case they read into it some sub text that I don't think they 'belong' here!

But I would be very careful about invading a strangers personal space, just because I think it could be inappropriate - I don't know them, I don't know how they would react.

But I think it sad that a compliment, however crassly delivered, is interpreted to put someone in the same camp as murderers of Stephen Lawrence.

Karma I'm aware of white slavery. Yes that was also bad but it doesn't have the same historical or societal legacies.

I don't understand why people are inferring from my posts that I think they should feel guilty about slavery. I have not said that at all. I think people should be sensitive out of respect, not guilt.

I think it's the ultimate mark of white privilege to tell other people history doesn't matter, they should draw a line under it and get over it. Of course that history doesn't matter to you, you're not still living with the effects of it. But people living in sub-Saharan Africa today suffer greatly in large part because of what slavery and colonialism did to their continent. Black people in the US and Europe still suffer from racism because for hundreds of years they were treated as objects, not fellow human beings. The wars we are fighting today have their roots in the Western treatment of these nations.

And actually, I don't think it's that hard to guess what people might find offensive and not say it.