Active discussions

Meet the Other Phone. Protection built in.

Meet the Other Phone.
Protection built in.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Talk
AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

To ask where ethnic minority Brits holiday in U.K.?

248 replies

CluelessBint · 30/08/2017 20:50

I know I'm going to be flamed for asking this, but I can hardly ask irl!

I live in south devon in a very popular holiday area. The area is very white middle class. I noticed a few years ago that almost all the people who holiday here are also white Brits. Since noticing this I keep wondering where all the ethnic minorities British people go on holiday.

I travel to other south westerly holiday resorts a lot with my work (hotel industry) and it seems to be the case there too.

If 82% of the population are white, why are at least 95% (a rough estimate from looking out at the harbour the last few days) of grockles white?

OP posts:
Frazzled2207 · 30/08/2017 21:31

On a similar note I was wondering when we went to center parcs why it was virtually 100% white. Would love to understand why.

FiddleFigs · 30/08/2017 21:31

Brown Brit here. We love going to the Isle of Wight and Gower. DH is white, and once a year we join his family for a week's holiday in Southwold. In the 7 years we've been going to Southwold, I've had some negative experiences - my 2 SILs are also ethnic minorities and between us we have 6 kids of various hues, and we like to joke that we've helped Suffolk's diversity quota for the season. Incidentally, I'm 3rd generation Brit - no family abroad to visit. I love holidaying in the UK, but postBrexit I am wary - I especially don't want to expose DC to negative attention.

SummerKelly · 30/08/2017 21:32

My parents went to PR-China in about 1987 & said that getting stared at by circular crowds, very close up, was pretty unnerving, far worse than I bet any person of colour has experienced in UK.

Not really. I was in China in 1990 and same thing, but there were no hateful undertones, people were just interested because they had seen few / no white people before. Also we were guests in their country rather than someone just trying to go about their business in their home country. It was perhaps more overt, but we never felt threatened, just sometimes a bit exasperated that we couldn't buy bananas without an audience!

SnickersWasAHorse · 30/08/2017 21:34

OCSock. You know that most meat is Halal right? Also all that happens is that it's a tape being played right.

Anyway Even in Dorset (fairly rural) there is an obvious lack of diversity
My folks like in a tiny Dorset village. There are about 25 houses. There are two Asian families.
Very different to when I was at school. In my school of about 600 children there was not one non white child.

echt · 30/08/2017 21:37

I don't know why the OP, is being sneered at. If a single woman was asking about welcoming and safe places to holiday she wouldn't get this reaction. The subject of the "whiteness" of the UK countryside (in terms of holidays, not residents) has come up in the press a number of times over the years.

This just one article:

www.thenewblackmagazine.com/view.aspx?index=206
This is some years ago now, but Margate was popular with black Londoners when I was last there.

sandgrown · 30/08/2017 21:38

Lots of large ethnic minority families visit Blackpool and have done for years. Lots of celebrations at Eid and other festivals.

SabineUndine · 30/08/2017 21:38

I was in Bournemouth recently and noticed lots of Orthodox Jewish families, I'm guessing there must have been a hotel near where I was staying that kept to their religious observances.

KimchiLaLa · 30/08/2017 21:38

I don't feel like I'm in a minority but if it helps your question, our friends and ourselves visited the Cotswolds last weekend.

Ebony69 · 30/08/2017 21:40

I remember my husband and I entering into a pub in Southwold one Christmas. He is white and I'm black. It was like one of those scenes in movies where everything stands still as they stop and stare at the object of fascination. I thought it was hilarious but I can totally understand anyone else feeling uncomfortable in that position

ragged · 30/08/2017 21:46

SummerKelly, no one else on this thread used the word "hateful". Is that an unspoken thing that everyone else understands, that when posters on this thread* say they got stared at they actually mean stares full of hate? Fair enough then, I don't know anything about that.

(*I am not British so I often miss these culturally shared assumptions).

SylviaPoe · 30/08/2017 21:46

Blackpool.

Ummmmgogo · 30/08/2017 21:47

British holidays are very expensive, likely to be rained, and rightly or wrongly there is a perception that rural/brexit voting areas are unwelcoming/dangerous. I had people trying to fight me in skegness because of my skin colour. me and my kids go abroad, not a real holiday without sun.

BadLad · 30/08/2017 21:50

Last time I went to Devon (about 2010) I saw golliwogs for sale in a local shop, so...

They are still for sale.

mumof2kiddos · 30/08/2017 21:54

First generation Indian family here. We go to all sorts of places in UK- from Cornwall to Scotland, Wales to Lincoln. However they are short holidays, for longer ones we love to go and visit our family back home. Till now never felt ill at ease, even in places where there were no ethnic minorities apart from us.

ChampagneSocialist1 · 30/08/2017 21:54

I'm not quite sure why ethnic minorities are such a curiosity in Southwold as most of the population there second homers seem to be decanted from southwest London

SnickersWasAHorse · 30/08/2017 21:56

I was thinking the same Champagne.

madamginger · 30/08/2017 22:00

I work with a lot of Asian people (NHS) and on the whole they tend to do city breaks in the uk and a bigger holiday abroad.
They have a higher than average income due to the nature of their job, some of my colleagues take 2 or 3 foreign holidays a year.

toots111 · 30/08/2017 22:02

I'm on holiday on the Kent coast right now and it was pretty diverse on the beach on Monday. Also heard two separate families being told to 'go back to where you came from', nice!

charlestonchaplin · 30/08/2017 22:02

Ebony69 I defined the group of people I was speaking about: first and possibly second generation immigrants. I wasn't trying to comprehensively answer the question. My comments are based on my family and other people I know.

For relatively recent immigrant families when they do travel, their home country is often the destination. The distance means the flights aren't cheap. It also means people usually don't want a quick turnaround. A longer holiday duration means greater expense. In addition, there may be the expectation of gifts from many people who think that if you live in the UK you must be quite well off. So for most people travel back 'home' isn't an annual affair. Especially as in some cases it can be a stressful experience which isn't always done wholly for reasons of leisure.

I know many people abroad who despite being relatively well-off don't go on holidays very often, and rarely abroad. I don't think people's priorities change so suddenly when they move abroad. It's a more gradual thing.

Babyroobs · 30/08/2017 22:09

Well in our city, the people of Pakistani origin all go back to Pakistan for a month each year, The Poles go back to Poland to see relatives and all my collegues who are Zimbabwean all go to visit relatives there. I don't think people have the annual leave or money to go to tourist places in the UK.

MsAdorabelleDearheartVonLipwig · 30/08/2017 22:10

Three seperate people now have mentioned feeling uncomfortable in Southwold. This is my local seaside town and I love it. But then I'm white so I've obviously never had to think about it. Please don't be put off, we're not all like that.

ragged · 30/08/2017 22:11

What my parents experienced in China in the '80s was naked unembarrassed curiousity staring. Never hostile, but completely unabashed. Like being a zoo exhibit except mobile to wander around the city, of course. Crowds of 20+ people watched their every move intently, silently, with no shame about staring. The starers stayed barely out of arm's reach. Following my folks down the road or into a shop to keep staring.

Fishlegs · 30/08/2017 22:12

We camp in Cornwall every year (mixed ethnicity family), and although the locals are friendly dh with his dark skin is clearly an object of fascination.

His parents came with us one year and did not set foot on the beach, they had a lovely time but just didn't 'get' the beach part of the holiday.

Bisquick · 30/08/2017 22:12

Also I've never had a bad experience per se.. it just feels odd when you live in London all the time to suddenly look around and see you're the only brown person for miles and miles. To a very small extent it bugs me when people assume I'm a tourist or keep repeating the "but where are you from" question. I get that it's probably because they mostly only encounter tourists who are brown, but they seem unable to reconcile themselves to "I am from London". Ah well! Among my circle of first and second generation immigrants the biggest reason is that we tend to go see extended family in other countries during our holidays.

IDontGiveAPuck · 30/08/2017 22:18

I am 'ethnic'.

The few times we have been out of London excluding city breaks such as Edinburgh, Cambridge etc we have been looked at as we are from outer space.
I was born here as well as my partner.
It was very obvious when we went to North Wales and once we went to a country pub where they refused to serve us as there was a 'private function' although quite evidently there wasn't. Two customers from Ireland were very supportive though and left the pub after giving the barman an earful.