To feel oddly offended by this remark?

[sharkirasharkira]

I am not in the business of being professionally offended, in fact I very rarely get offended by anything as I am a very laid back kind of person.

However.

I was having a conversation with a customer at the pub I work in, about exercise and losing weight, and he remarked;

'didn't you get a lot of exercise as a kid running from the Zulus?'

For reference, although I look and sound 100% British, I am from (born and lived in) an African country and I'm white. Said customer knows this.

I'm sure he wasn't exactly meaning to be offensive and technically he didn't actually say anything derogatory but aibu to feel offended by this? I ask because I realise I may be being overly sensitive, I was subjected to horrendous physical and emotional bullying as a child because of my nationality.

By the way, I live in South Africa and have had loads of stupid comments, and have had to put people in their place at times re racists comments, but like to point out that the Zulu people are brave and fearless.

Its simple racism, and he is assuming you will agree with him.

Is he a pensioner ? Not saying that excuses what he said it was very insensitive but different generations often say inapproprate things in that regard

Older people do not "often" make racist comments. My DM is in her 80s and would be disgusted by that remark as would most of her peers. The younger end of current pensioners were hippies in the swinging 60s, not Victorian colonialists and slave masters.

Racism, like any other form of willful ignorance, is pretty evenly distributed across all groups.

Totally agree with C8H.Ane we should call them on it,regardless of age or social or professional circumstances.

Full house now. Lots of people saying “He was only joking” A classic “Zulus are the first thing you think of when you think of Africa- the second thing is lions” And now everyone over 6O is a racist. You couldn’t make it up.

Mind you, I have also known supposedly progressive people be utterly obnoxious towards white people who were brought up in South Africa - as though they, as kids, had any choice over where their parents lived and/or what the government of the country got up to.
(This was, admittedly, 20+ years ago, but that sort of mindset - I will show how 'woke' I am by being ostentatiously vile to someone who can't hit back, because of something over which they had no control, is still with us...)

That's true, SGB- remember Not the 9 0'Clock and "I've Never Met a Nice South African"?

Bertrand yes, and I will now have it on the brain all evening so THANKS. . I remember chatting with a South African girl at a party once: I recognised her accent (because I had a colleague at the time who grew up in Zimbabwe) and she asked me to keep my voice down because she preferred people to think she was Australian so she didn't get lectured for hours on the evils of apartheid, as though it was all her fault...