To Think The UK is a Racist Country and the racism is deeply ingrained.

[ACoolDad]

For the last couple of weeks BBC Three has been running documentaries about racism and racial tensions in the U.K and USA. This week we saw a program called "Is Britain Racist?" it failed to prove much apart from black men are seen as more likely to steal from shops and women in Burka's are more likely to face verbal abuse.

As a second generation Black Briton from Jamaica, I have faced racism many times, I do believe the UK is a racist country but it is a in the closet type of racism that is hard to prove. The UK unlike the USA has a type of racism in which few people are openly racist, but racism is deeply ingrained into are mindsets as the program explored.

The presenter who comes across as a very anti racist person still perceived black people as dangerous sub consciously when she had her brain scanned. You have to ask why? You have to ask why black people have been sub consciously viewed as angry, violent and criminals.

I am so proud of my family and my black, mixed and white children and stepchildren. My family represent the tolerant modern Britain that we have and should be proud of.

My son aged 15 was stopped and searched two weeks ago. My white stepson aged 15 has never been stopped and searched, despite them wearing similar clothes, my black son has been profiled by the same mentality explored in the documentary. The type of racism is so difficult to fight as it is so difficult to prove it is racism.

Britain comes across as a country that is improving in terms of race, but I believe certain people and aspects of the media always have to push the idea of white supremacy in different forms. In the past it was considered that black individuals were considered less intelligent now it is considered blacks are more likely to be criminals.

It would be interesting to hear what you think.

I just mean that I don't think anybody in life can say they've never been discriminated against. As a mother to a son I have heard some pretty awful things about boys and men (such as 'all men are capable of rape').

I think we are one of the most tolerant nations on the planet. Yes, it may be subtle as the original poster says but many many of us are not racist and there is much more racial mixing than most countries. London is a real tolerant nice mixture of peopl. Howwever it remains true that I am more likely to suffer crime at the hands of someone black than Asian (my borough is over 60% non write with 25% hindu). We need to change that.

Wiki
Race and crime in London

Figures from the Office for National Statistics showed that in 2007 an estimated 10.6 percent of London's population of 7,556,900 were black.[23] Evidence shows that the black population in London boroughs increases with the level of deprivation, and that the level of crime also increases with deprivation, such that "It is clear that ethnicity, deprivation, victimisation and offending are closely and intricately inter-related".[24]

In June 2010 The Sunday Telegraph, through a Freedom of Information Act request, obtained statistics on accusations of crime broken down by race from the Metropolitan Police Service.[n 2] The figures showed that the majority of males who were accused of violent crimes in 2009–10 were black. Of the recorded 18,091 such accusations against males, 54 percent accused of street crimes were black; for robbery, 59 percent; and for gun crimes, 67 percent.[25] Robbery, drug use, and gang violence have been associated with black people since the 1960s.[26] In the 1980s and 1990s, the police associated robbery with black people. In 1995, the Metropolitan Police commissioner Paul Condon said that the majority of robberies in London were committed by black people.[27]

Street crimes include muggings, assault with intent to rob, and snatching property. Black males accounted for 29 percent of the male victims of gun crime and 24 percent of the male victims of knife crime.[25] Similar statistics were recorded for females. On knife crime, 45 percent of suspected female perpetrators were black; for gun crime, 58 percent; and for robberies, 52 percent.[28]

Operation Trident was set up in March 1998 by the Metropolitan Police to investigate gun crime in London's black community after black-on-black shootings in Lambeth and Brent.[29]

Between April 2005 and January 2006, figures from the Metropolitan Police Service showed that black people accounted for 46 percent of car-crime arrests generated by automatic number plate recognition cameras.[30]

In London in 2006, 75% of the victims of gun crime and 79% of the suspects were "from the African/Caribbean community."[31]"

Tolerant - bleurgh! What's wrong with 'embracing'. I don't tolerate difference, I embrace it.

I agree the very word 'tolerant' suggests you are putting up with something unpleasant.
IMO.

Yes I do Ego. I have no doubt about that. I am certainly privileged and any discrimination against me has not adversely affected my life chances.

I think all humans have an automatic bias against people who are not like themselves. Most people in the UK try to rationalise out that subconscious bias. Racism arises when people don't do that

I think Britain has been, largely, a very tolerant place but immigration has had a big impact, both in terms of attitudes from other countries gaining prevalence here and in the reactions of some people here feeling threatened so voicing more unpleasant attitudes.

Having said that, the area where I live is largely white so I have very little first hand experience of this

I agree it depends on the part of the country. Northumberland where I am from is almost 100% white in many places (although there are African genes from when the Romans were up there building the wall) My bit of London is 60%+ non white.

Yes, it is a huge shame that there is so much more violent crime than within the Indian and white british communities in London. That may be because of deprivation and perhaps lack of fathers around which you don't get in the Indian communities but we certainly need to look at the reasons as indeed we need to do to find out why white british working class boys do so much worse than anyone else. Chinese girls do better than anyone in the UK academically in schools. My son is the only white boy in his class which is not something which is an issue but certainly a huge change from how things were.

Back on to the thread if black youths engage in more crime in London then they would be the ones to search. Just as if white boys were usually those at fault or those with crew cuts or whatever (or women with tattoos or whatever) then we would want the police to concentrate their efforts there. It's a difficult policing issue. And yes my white blonde daughter has been stopped by police at night.

If anyone referred to my son as half -caste I would be furious. It is NOT an ok term to use, it is highly offensive.

There is also the predjudice and racial bias, that however sly still manages to sneak their way in, but once addressed you are "oversensitive" or "have a chip on your shoulder".

I have lost count the amount of times mums in playgroups have said things like "oh doesn't your son have a great sense of rythm" (ergh, nope he really doesn't) or "which toy do you want baby lndn, Rasta mouse?" (he wanted iggle piggle actually) Or in my Swedish one recently when the children got to choose how to dress for the naivity play and the teacher thought ds would make "a lovely gingerbread man (cant find the biscuit symbol).

I have also been on a train with my dh when he was helping a man who had lost his laptop. My kind (black) dh helped the guy for 30min to look for his damn laptop, only for us to find that the police were waiting for him at our end destination to question him as a suspect.

Few things, get under my skin like this and sadly as a white woman it took me to marry a black man and have our son to see the true extent of it.

Oh and my ds apparently was aggressive at nursery....at the age of 2! I should add that he was the only non white child there. Lesson learned, never again.

I could go on all day sadly, it breaks my heart.

I'm white and I've lost track of the number of times I've had other white people say racist things in front of me assuming I'd agree. I usually make a point to say something unless it would be inappropriate - so probably about 90% of the time.

I think racism is alive and kicking in this country. I have BME friends who are naming their children traditional "white" names to try and get them past the CV stage when they're older. I know a woman who changed her surname by deedpoll and credits it with getting her the job she has today. This type of discrimination, which is so hard to prove, is insidious in a way that blatant name calling and bullying isn't and can put such massive limits on people.

Some things can be solved e.g. by moving to anonymous CVs but unconscious bias is going to be a lot harder to work against. Hopefully as more children grow up in integrated classrooms, this will wear away at the "otherness" that forms the basis of unconscious bias, but only time will tell.

To my mind, drawing up crime statistics on the color of the offender's skin is already racist.

I'm originally from N. Ireland and I so remember on a visit back hearing the BBC announce statistics on alcoholism, broken down according to religion. Only in Northern Ireland would people divide such statistics in that way. And I hate the term black on black crime, is crime in all white communities called white on white?

Atenco you have a good point there- why not break down crime stats by socio economic background?

and yes where are the 'white on white' crimes?

Lndnmummy - then tell them. A lot of people just don't know what terms are acceptable or not or that what they are saying is offensive. It frustrates me when I'm back home so I can understand you would feel a lot stronger about it. Not everyone lives in multicultural cities or reads threads on Mumsnet. These things often just never come up or are discussed.

Is there any country on Earth which is not racist?

The UK is certainly not free of these stereotypes and cultural ideas. We have a long way to go.

So because someone's white blonde daughter got stopped by the police once that means there's no bias and racism in the stop and search process??

All those stats are being used to prove what exactly? As a PP said how many black people
In those communities DON'T commit any crimes?

A black man in a nice car must be up to no good. That is the prevalent view. And using crime stats to suggest it's because black men commit crimes and so need to be stopped and search more is
I don't know the stats but I bet black men are stopped more even in areas where there isn't high numbers of black crime...

*aren't

Do you think black people - especially young, black men - are much more likely to suffer discrimination based on race and to be viewed with suspicion / taken less seriously by the police - than white women?

100%

Lndn - gingerbread man?! Holy shit. Some people just don't seem to engage their brain.

If I'm honest I think the group who still all get the most racial stereotyping and open racism are irish travellers and gypsies. Other groups it's more the hidden type.
Plenty of intelligent people are able to see that if you look at stats for eg crime committed by black people in a certain area, you might as well be looking at socio economic stats for crime in that area. And those same people are usually willing to believe there are historical reasons for the socio economic difference. Yet when it comes to travellers, those same people will judge and insult away.

I'm not dismissing racism towards any other minority, but it does strike me that many people who identify as not racist about one sector of society will happily jump on the racist bandwagon about another group. I could have easily have said people who have no problem with jews but don't like Eastern Europeans or any other combination.