To wonder why my mother is so racist?

[Petridish]

To summarise:-

"A touch of the tar brush there"

"He was coffee coloured"

"A bit tinted"

"It would be awful if someone in the Royal Family married a black"

I could go on... She also disapproves of "Muslims" coming to the UK and leeching of the benefit system.

The irony is that she is very PC about discrimination against those with disabilities - mainly because my late sister was disabled.

I don't think she has any motivation. She has no non white friends and knows no Muslims of any race.

I honestly think she does not understand why it isn't okay to say that Muslims just come into the UK to abuse the benefits system.

She didn't think it wrong to disapprove of my black boyfriend or suggest that a black person becoming a member of the royal family is wrong.

She has described people who are non white as "tinted", "coloured", "coffee coloured" or "touched with the tar brush".

She is ill educated, limited in her life experience and does not read a decent newspaper or access news and opinions from reliable sources of media. She comes from an over privileged, white world and has met few very few people from other sections of society. None of this excuses her ignorance.

She doesn't think it wrong to "feel racist" towards a cold caller from a call centre in India.

And yet, any derogatory or out dated term for disability will cause her to become upset and angry because one of her children was disabled. She takes it very, very personally and still remembers someone in her family using the term "village idiot" decades ago.

When I was little, I used the word "idiot" in front of her - I didn't know it is an outdated term for a learning disabled person. She went ballistic at me but didn't explain why she hated the word I used.

It's just so frustrating - she's wrong and she's offensive but then takes offence herself if bigotry affects her.

You have answered your own question as to why. She is narrow-minded and has lived a restricted life.
She doesn't sound as if she is interested in educating herself or widening her horizons.
I don't think there is much you can do but ignore/walk off when she does it or say that you disagree.

I think you are right, Drudge.

If she says anything racist in front of ds, I will go nuclear.

MiL was extremely ill in hospital for 7 months, coma etc, a few years ago. The surgeon saved her life and she's now fully back to normal. The ONLY thing she says about him is 'black as the ace of spades'.

It isn't a generational thing. Someone in my family is 50ish and still uses the p word. And he's not doing it in an innocent way. Luckily others (of the same age, usually) will call him out on it.

My grandad was prejudiced (but I think, mainly, just ill informed). He once went on a bit of a vent about asylum seekers. I'd just gone some volunteer training with the Refugee Council. I'd had a couple of drinks and I just snapped at him; I felt awful (and everyone else glared at me!) but I couldn't sit and listen to such rubbish, much as I loved him. By the same token we never told him when my cousin came out; there seemed to be this thing of "your grandad's old and set in his ways, let's not challenge/upset that". I don't agree with that at all. If you're still mentally healthy then there's no excuse for prejudice (I say that because I suppose things like dementia could cause issues there).

I get the impression reading MN that a large number of posters are younger than I am at 70, as they often talk of currently having children at home or at uni etc. So I assume that many MNers have parents about my age.

It does sound very patronising and discriminatory to lump every bad thing your parents do or say as explicable as a 'generation thing'. We are all different you know, just as you are,

And ffs, which' generation' was it 40-50 years ago introducing the Race Relations Act, marching in the streets with friends of all colours and sexualities against homophobia, sexism and racism. Who went to school and sat beside the post war West Indian immigrants, who went to the theatre to see Hair, or danced to ¡Melting Pot'? Oh no -- it was us oldies who are now soooo politically incorrect, all use the N word, and all read the Daily Mail!

Well said dejard. My parents - now in their seventies - were passionately opposed to racism (and other forms of prejudice) long before I was even born. As you say, it was their generation that marched for equality and introduced the race relations act etc.

It's absurd to now suggest that they're old and therefore don't know any better! And they would find it deeply offensive!

I think a lot of it is a life experience thing, as a pp said. My DPs do not appear to have one single friend/close acquaintance/business contact of another ethnicity, nor do they appear to have ever met anyone gay. I wouldn't say they're particularly racist or homophobic but they simply don't seem to know what to 'do' with anyone/anything outside their life experiences. I live all of 40 mins drive from them (them Home Counties, me edge of London) and it sometimes feels like a different world. Their language could use some updating, too.

Well said dejard. And my mother, who would be 94 now if still alive hadn't an ounce of racism in her body.

My DM too. She's 76.

Racist about everyone who isn't white english basically. Everyone is either 'one of us' or not in her eyes.

Unless she has got to know them to some extent (local shop keeper or GP for eg.) and has decided that they are ''actually quite sweet'' or ''nice''. Then when she talks about them it's in an odd simpering way, with a strange secretive amusement thrown in somehow:

''The lady in the chemist, you know; the asian one said x, y, z about my tablets. She's actually very nice ..... ''

This is every bloody time! 'The asian lady in the chemist' - the Chief Dispenser in fact! - has worked there since 2005.

If i called her on all her racist comments i'd be doing nothing but arguing with her. I'm already maintaining an arms length relationship with her for my own sanity and the sake of DD4 knowing her nan. It's hard work.

Ive pulled my parents up on it a few times, they get vey annoyed at my comments and feel im being too sensitive, but they've never made the comments in front of the dcs.
Mil got unusually vocal about the guy in a dress with a beard who won the eurovision in front of my kids - she's a bit too religious ;), i had to put her right and explain that her views would be seen as completely unacceptable at school if the kids were to pick up on them. Nice thing was she gave her views more thought and backed down gracefully.

Thanks for all the interesting posts.

My mother is ignorant and I hate her views.

One incident sums up my relationship with her - I have been treated for depression and bipolar for twenty years now and am well.

My mother told me that I should not "dare get ill again" as I have a child to look after.

I don’t think it’s a generational thing either. I think it’s more of an ignorance thing. (Or possibly an image thing. White = superiority, and putting down non-white people reinforces that.)

I’m now in my 60s, still living in the predominately white, mostly middle-class, small town I grew up in. From my teens onwards, I learned a lot about the real world beyond the small-minded (News of the World) mentality that my parents lived in, especially about the inequalities in society.

It’s always been possible for people to educate themselves away from racist attitudes. But that means bursting the perfect white bubble that too many people like to live in.

Epona - my mother is exactly the same. The simpering, the coy looks, the little giggle - "That new doctor at the surgery, he's as black as your hat, but he seems quite nice really."

"The new nurse at the hospital is Asian, but she speaks lovely English - you wouldn't know she wasn't English, though she says she comes from Slough - she was really lovely to me when I went there for my last appointment."

A thought provoking thread. I also don't think it's necessarily generational. My DM's parents grew up in the 20s and 30s and were actively anti racism. In the 70s they marched with the Anti Nazi League. My other GM was prejudiced against foreigners or basically anyone who was not from Yorkshire!

Interestingly none of them could deal with homosexuality though. Men were referred to as 'confirmed batchelors' and no more was said!

If I try to explain that mentioning that a person is non-white, female etc I get told I'm interrupting and my dad/mum are just filling in detail to give a good story. Funny how they never feel the need to give the same detail for a white male.

RachelRagged Fri 10-Jul-15 12:46:27
That's how it used to be . ? (Sorry I forget the name of the poster) it is re her Mothers comment and Operation Yewtree.

You should tell your Mother that's the reason there are many many messed up adults now , to scared to mention some dirty nonce to a "family member" as a child for it being swept aside or told to Shusssh .

Your Mother sounds vile .

That was me RachelRagged. FWIW i agree with you on your first point and in fact so would my mother. Not wanting to drip feed but she agrees that the 'higher level' cases are warranted, but she doesnt understand that the 'lower level' allegations require investigation as that is how it was. I get that i wasnt clear on that.

My mother is not vile. Ignorant - yes, but not vile.

Presumably, if you're a victim of racism, you do think the perpetrators are vile. Bystanders might not. I suppose the defence for ignorance depends on what it involves and how long it lasts.

My grandma was very racist until she met my black DH. Initially she was still racist I suspect she'd never really met many black people before.

Now she defends him all the time she is so sweet and often asks for the correct terms to use especially with regards to DC.

She's in hospital at the moment and the nurse told me my grandma had a row with the woman in the next bed after we'd visited as the other lady referred to my DH as a n**r.

I suspect that it's not exactly generational, but that it was generally more socially acceptable for her generation to publicly holds such views in the post war years.

My own mother is 74, reads the Daily Express and has a DP who gleefully put a UKIP poster up in the porch
Judgmental about everything is a fair summary.

She is deeply suspicious of 'foreigners', their customs and lifestyle and their motives for coming to live in the UK, and will moan/comment about it frequently. My SIL (Latvian) was initially viewed poorly for no other reason at all- she's utterly fab and the best thing that every happen to my brother- and it has taken all of her other outraged DCs to knock sense into her.

The irony is that her eldest two DCs- that includes me- were the product of a marriage to an Asian man! She says that she was never discriminated against for being a single mum in the 60's with two brown DCs, something I find hard to believe having watched a documentary about that era.

I have frequently marvelled at the fact that she cannot 'see' that she has brown offspring, who in turn have had marriages and DCs with non white partners... She is deluded but there is no point taking her to task.

I don't know whether to be sad or relieved that there are so many of us in the same situation.

Would this be the same generation that brought us - off the top of my head - the civil rights movement, the anti apartheid movement and the anti nazi league?

My mum is racist because in the 1960s and 1970s she lived in a very traditional lower working class area of a city which changed enormously with the arrival of Indian and West Indian migrants. The arriving migrants moved into these areas and opened up shops, restaurants and services catering to the new population. For my mum's parents especially, they felt like the area they knew and had lived for many years was changing beyond repair for the worse and moved out to 'get away from all them foreigners'.

Added to this, my mum drank in (and continues to do so) the sensationalist stories about people coming over and taking our jobs. This is despite the fact, of course, that migrants from the former colonies were pretty much asked to come to the UK to fill the jobs shortages.

In addition, my mum sees anything which isn't bascially exactly what she does/says/believe as being completely wrong. Since foreign cultures don't easily replicate that of the white British working class, all foreign cultures (and therefore foreign people) are wrong.

So, that's why my mum is racist.

I'm married to a black man. It was fun and games when we first got together. I think she's over it now although she says 'I do like him though' which implies there's some inherent reason why she wouldn't like him. She can't see this when I pull her up on it.

She also asks very inappropriate questions about his family or family events;
Was there lots of jerk chicken?
Was the music really loud?
Has his sister got a fat arse?

^ Not condoning her reasons for being racist, just explaining them

My mum is racist because in the 1960s and 1970s she lived in a very traditional lower working class area of a city which changed enormously with the arrival of Indian and West Indian migrants.

So did I. So did a lot of people. It didn't make us all racist.