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.

Yes-so did a lot of us but it hasn't resulted in us becoming racist.

Do you ever get one racist person who is permanently surrounded by multicultural people? Or does a racist have to have at least one person who agrees with them? I find the idea of a mum conversing with her daughter, who is married to a black man, and asking if his sister has a big bum, very strange indeed. Isn't it possible that the same mum just likes doing mean things in general.

(For some people, is being racist just one outlet for the spite they'd have shown anyway?)

(For some people, is being racist just one outlet for the spite they'd have shown anyway?)

Could be true that. I remember living in a very rough part of Dublin and seeing some kids yelling racist things at two black fellas. I felt like going up to them and explaining that the kids would have been looking for a reason to insult them as they did everyone else, no matter what their race.

DH's parents are like this. They are perfectly well educated so I do think that in retaining their making of negative comments when, for example, they see a black person walking down the street, or constant comments about people's skin colour and aptitudes, they are just racists. They are overall very intolerant people with little sense of adventure and have lived in one part of the country all their lives.

I'd never come across it before - certainly my own parents and grandparents never said anything like that. What is worse, is that PIL cling to their attitudes in spite of all the education, media sources, etc that they have access to.

Its ridiculous to hear FIL, who isn't much of a worker and is hardly a prime physical specimen, making negative comments about other people simply because they are a different race. One of these days I'm going to get fed up with him and mention that he isn't exactly blessed in the genetic inheritance stakes himself.