To find this ignorant and snobbish

[Peniston]

So I see this post on Facebook by a woman I know of through school. She has a high profile at the kids' school because she's a governor and until recently chaired the PTA. To clarify, she and I are NOT Facebook (or any sort of) friends. I saw it because she has posted on a friend of a friend's timeline.

To give some context, the friend of a friend's status update is grumbling about the increased noise from Heathrow planes flying over our South West London suburb. (I am not getting agitated about the new flight paths personally because my husband and I reason that the planes have got to fly over someone's house). So people are posting supportively and saying 'sign the petition' and so on. Relatively harmless nimbyism so far.

Then the woman in question posts the following:

"I wish they would now fuck off! Too loud tonight! Can they please fly over southhall [sic] as they pay far less council tax!"

I have a few issues with this:

1. Why single out another suburb?
2. Council tax is there to provide local amenities and not to protect against potential changes to flight paths so what a stupid thing to say.
3. I checked the Ealing borough council tax and compared it to my borough (Richmond) and it is pretty much equivalent so what a load of tosh.

This has incensed me and made me wonder should such an unpleasant ignoramus really hold a position of responsibility on the school board?

AIBU?

YANBU. As an ex-Ealing resident myself I read her comment as a blatant dig at Asian people

If it was for real then yes it's horrible but out of context, on someone else's wall this could well have been an ironic joke. I'd give her the benefit of the doubt and not get wound up over it.

Completely out of context. Not meant to be picked up by someone who can't stand her and then put on MN.

I get op's frustration. There was a chairsnob of the pta at my kids school too. She was delusional tho. She looked down on people with lessmoney.

Also, they alternate the flight paths! I used to live in west ealing and sometimes we could barely hear ourselves talk if we were in the garden and it was a flight path week!

Yes, it is snobbish and unpleasant.

But school board? I didn't know that schools in England had school boards.

The governors of a school are known collectively as the Board of Governors, hackmum.

Some background:

Southall: 4.6% white British, majority South Asian
www.neighbourhood.statistics.gov.uk/dissemination/LeadTableView.do?a=7&b=13688697&c=southall&d=14&e=62&g=6323962&i=1001x1003x1032x1004&m=0&r=1&s=1412441307367&enc=1&dsFamilyId=2477

Teddington: 80.7% white British

www.neighbourhood.statistics.gov.uk/dissemination/LeadTableView.do?a=7&b=13689037&c=teddington&d=14&e=62&g=6336345&i=1001x1003x1032x1004&m=0&r=1&s=1412441452633&enc=1&dsFamilyId=2477

Southall has an unmistakable South Asian identity.

If you said 'why don't they fly over Feltham instead', that would make more sense, because Feltham is closer to Heathrow than Southall. Feltham is historically a poor white area, and in terms of crime and general reputation it is a lot worse than Southall.

So Southall is very clearly a racial thing.

Ex Londoner here, and while I get that the comment could be racist, Southall is also known for being pretty deprived, so that coupled with her dig about council tax could mean that it was more about socio economic status than race.

As you don't know her, give her the benefit of the doubt.

Making a mountain out of a molehill... I would have taken her comment as tongue in cheek. For all you know she may have been debating some news story about Southall with her fb friends that day.

I doubt she meant to be racist, but that doesn't mean she wasn't. Southall is shorthand for worthlessness for some - because of the relative deprivation - and that is in this case very tightly linked with race. It's pretty much the opposite of Richmond.

data.london.gov.uk/datastorefiles/documents/2011-census-snapshot-ethnic-diversity-indices.pdf

The 2011 census placed Ealing third of thirty London boroughs for the makeup of BME groups. Richmond was last.

We haven't a clue about this woman or the context - all we know is OP doesn't like her and wants to show her in a bad light. I expect if she had trawled a bit harder she could have found entirely different examples that showed another side.
I expect we could all find a person we didn't like- find an isolated incident and invite everyone to say 'what a dreadful person'!
OP could go on PTA and try and get elected as a parent governor if she bothers her so much. More constructive than wasting time looking for her on FB.

Agreed, SSB.

To all the people calling racist -how do you even know that the woman in question is white??

Oh and leeeetle detail. At our school, you are not allowed to be on the pta if you are a governor.

She is not on the PTA and a Govenor.

OP is avoiding - I take it all with a pinch of salt because had OP found she was lovely on FB she wouldn't have started a thread! If she found a lovely statement now she wouldn't post it!

She may have become a governor after finishing on the PTA, the OP says that she was chair until recently.

I was born in Hayes and lived there until Uni. Southall (one 'h' only missus!) was even then a town with many Asians (mainly from Pakistan). (In the fifties) This was def a racist remark and also a snobby one. Dreadful thing for her to post on both levels. YANBU. Who does she think she is?
Anyone living under the flight path to/from Heathrow expects aircraft noise. Even the Queen when she's at Windsor at the weekends has planes flying over the castle.
Can you imagine the Air Traffic Controllers sitting there with a map of high and low Council Tax rates, plotting the flight paths to avoid the former?

Anyone living under the flight path to/from Heathrow expects aircraft noise
Yes, but a lot of people are complaining because they bought expensive houses which weren't under flight paths at the time, but are under the new trial paths. And Heathrow didn't even bother to inform some of the affected councils because they 'didn't think they'd notice'

In fact, as I mentioned before, the trial is being stopped sooner than planned, supposedly because they have got the information needed earlier than expected. Am I being unduly cynical to think that the very vocal protests from the wealthy areas affected have been the real cause and that if the trials had involved increased flights over Southall they would have run their intended course....

I'm with the OP here. I think that someone in a position of responsibility such as a school governor should be thinking twice about what they post on social media and remove anything that could be even slightly construed as racist or even elitist, which IMO the woman's post was - I also know west London well.

I'm a professional and would never post anything like that on Facebook as it would not go down well with work. This is no different.

Not sure OP but I'd be tempted to complain to the board of governors. People on the board shouldn't be spouting stuff like that on fb.

LEMming

Doesn't matter what colour the woman is, does it? Jews and Nazis were the same colour, Tutsis and Hutus are the same colour, Serbs and Croats are the same colour, Hindus and Muslims are the same colour (you get my drift). Extreme examples to show that racism isn't just white on non-white.

Crimea point taken and i agree with you. Would have been better to say non-asian. Sorry fot that

I never understand why people don't protect their privacy on FB- it is so easy.

I think the FB comment was offensive and inappropriate