To wonder how I didn't grow up racist?

[malfoyy]

My mum has just said to me that she thinks what Boris Johnson said about burkas is hilarious.

I replied that I don't care what people wear and why does she?

This then set her off on a rant that it's wrong not to see people's faces, about being burka wearers being allowed to go into a bank covered up but if someone did the same in a crash helmet they'd be arrested...

She then continued with a load of 'we didn't ask them to come here' and how this country has been ruined by foreigners.

I accused her of repeating a load of Daily Fail bollocks and she said it's. It bollocks it's true but it's too late and the damage has been done.

She's never been quite this vile before. I knew she had less than ideal views - the woman raised me after all, buts it's always been more subtle.

I remember, as a child, my nan telling me all the black people should go home now that we don't need them anymore! I was about 8. This attitude runs in the family!

Both my sister and I have never had this attitude though.

I'm just fucking disgusted with the woman.

Not sure even why I'm posting I'm just fuming.

It must have been shocking and depressing to hear that rant. I guess despite how we are brought up we still have our own thoughts, have different educations and experiences to those of our parents. It’s the same how a child of very religious parents can end up
Atheist or the child of very laid back parents can end up very routine orientated. It’s a bloody good thing we don’t take on all the opinions of our parents.

Lots do take it on though don't they?

I only hope she keeps these opinions to herself around my 5yo.

Depends if you had other influences around you aside from your mum that negated her obvious bigotry. People who grow up with racists will invariably become racist themselves if they don’t have a good influence to sway them the other way.

My DM is also racist. She picks and chooses who to be racist towards, her main gripe has always been Pakistanis. I once used the P word as a young child because I’d obviously heard it from her, my DF heard me and that’s one of the only times he has ever got mad at me in my life. They are separated and have been since I was a baby for reference, complete opposite people. I also went to school with a mixture of races which helped.

My dm is also very racist and I'm ashamed to say that I constantly have to fight against what I think are some very deep-rooted attitudes within myself which I was obviously raised with. It is a battle to have to constantly silence the inner-voice that spouts all sort of crap that I 'learned' from my mother.

I should've pointed out that mum has been very happy to watch the athletics this week and watch our multi-cultural teams win medals. Being from a different race is fine then!

My dad once told me (when I was a teen) that if I came home with a black man he'd disown me!

Idk, I discovered a political kind of 'alternative ' music at 14/15 and I honestly think this shaped my life. I can't think what else it could've been. Certainly not my family!

@lovelyjubilly you're fighting it and that's what matters.

My dad is a racist. I’m NC with him but was raised with it. He used to think it so funny with the jokes that he would tell us. Some of them I even thought were funny as I didn’t realise at the time that the ‘joke’ was made in a put down to others.
It doesn’t help that I am from a predominantly white area of the UK.

My mum is also racist but doesn’t accept that she is because she means no harm in the terms that she uses. She honestly doesn’t mean any harm but she also refuses to acknowledge that what she says is racist. I pull her up on it every time.
Sadly there is no changing some people

A lot of my family have mild racist attitudes. I say mild as they aren't 'death to non British people' or anything like that, but lots a casual racism and 'jokes' about Black people etc. I am actually astonished I'm not racist. I think I have held certain views in the past as a result but thankfully I became a bit more open minded. I do hate it when these things are said in front of the DCs though and when I tell them not to say it, they basically ignore me and make out like I'm making a big deal out of nothing. I have to enforce to my DC that we don't judge others for anything.

The older I'm getting, the more and more I see how sexist the men in my family are, and that is utterly depressing. As a result I'm becoming more the other way. I would never have described myself as a feminist in the past but now I would say I am. I have always found that when all the men get together, it's like a game of pick on and wind up Anon. They don't do it to each other of course.

I think if you are adult and educated enough you don't feel the need to copy your parents attitudes, political views or cultural inclinations if you recognise they are wrong. Of course. If you stay at home, don't mix outside childhood circles and have no influences around you other than a family with narrow anti social views, you are not likely to know much else.

Yes we lived in a predominantly white area.

Sajid Javid is now the town's MP and mum voted for him as 'he's not like a normal Muslim' and because she'd vote for a paper bag if it was Tory

This has actually made me decide to look into mum's side family trees. I hope there's a good racial mix in her ancestors!

I often wonder the same op. I grew up listening to my mum & step-dad ranting about foreign people and people who don't come from here and who ought to go back to where they came from (a bit odd now I think about it as my best friend was part Egyptian, had very dark skin and a foreign name. Her father came over in the 70s I believe. I once asked if she ought to go back home or if her dad should be forced to leave her or what would happen to her English mum. They just said that was different.) I grew up listening to 'comedians' such as Jim Davidson, Roy Chubby Brown or Bernard Manning and wondering what was so funny.

I've actually hidden most of my family members on fb because of their appallingly racist attitudes. Sharing shit like campaigns for Farage to be knighted or those dreadful "ban the burka" memes (when asked why they drone on about Sharia law taking over and how their rights trump ours). The thing is, when I try to argue against that point of view they all pile on and it kind of makes me feel attacked.

My aunt goes on about how people who come over here should learn to speak English and use it even when talking to each other because it's rude (e.g. if two non-English speaking people are having a private conversation in a lift full of complete strangers). I asked if she spoke Egyptian when she went over there or did she talk to her boyfriend in English and expect the hotel/resort staff to speak to her in English. She just said that that's different but wouldn't/couldn't elaborate on why.

I don't know why I'm not racist when pretty much my whole family are, from grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins, all the way down to my siblings' children. I do try to encourage my own children to question the racist things they hear or are told, as I try to do, but I sometimes feel like I'm fighting the tide, especially as the area we live in is very white and many people seem to share those opinions.

It's also a bit jarring because these are the people who have also shown me lots of love and kindness and who I remember with great fondness - to me and to lots of people who knew him, my step-dad was the kindest and most generous person I could ever hope to meet; the same could be said of my nan and my mum. But there's this whole other side of them that I'm ashamed of and that disgusts me.

@ILoveMyDressingGown your last paragraph really resonates. My mum, dad, nan etc are all/were otherwise lovely so it doesn't compute.

Same here! Lots of casual racism from my parents! Mum relays stories of how rude a Muslim was who was taking up the whole pavement and how she had to walk in the road to get past. My response is so you've never encountered a white British person who did that to you? She can't answer... She's also seemingly used osmosis to absorb lots of daily mail BS and harps on about Muslims and their Sharia laws taking over!

She hates Nigerians too idk why i don't think she does either and she's obsessed that Germans are taking over and shares pro Brexit posts based on fear that Merkel is the new Hitler and will take over!

All quite ridiculous really! It's always precursed with "I'm not being racist, but..." It drives me MAD and I hate it when she does it in front of my kids.

I moved to London in my early 20s which helped debunk a lot of myths about over races but like a PP mentioned I've had to change some attitudes which were imparted on me. I always thought I couldn't be friends with someone foreign as we wouldn't have things in common! I can't believe I'm remembering that as it's so far from how i am now it's unreal...

This side of my mum really angers me it's just screams uninformed and ill educated to me. I just need to ensure she doesn't impart these views to my kids.

Thank you pp for being against racism even when deep rooted in your own families.
I am mixed race and definitely had people like your Dms who would pat my hand, after spouting off about a different 'race' and go but not you my dear, whilst I was at work as a waitress.

I would suggest using facts, rather than calling a person racist, as that makes them defensive and less receptive.

E.g. all these Jamaicans grumble grumble
You: did you know that after ww2 the British government asked people from Jamaica to come and rebuild the country. Xxx men were killed in the war so they invited xxx people from the Caribbean.

Nigerians !
Did you know that uk people often do not want to go into nursing due to low pay and unsociable hours. People from commonwealth countries like Nigeria were invited to help keep the nhs running. Obviously they come with their family.

You might not get a response but it may sow a seed.

I loved my grandmother but she was appallingly racist. Fortunately my parents were the opposite, which was pretty progressive for the area in which we lived.

My family are mostly all casually racist, at least they were the last time I seen any of them (my mother is horribly abusive and I just avoid the whole lot of them now). I know why I didn't end up racist: I hated my mother from a young age and whenever I heard a different point of view I secretly stuck to that and dreamed of growing up and leaving. They talked about racism and stuff in school and the idea that you should treat everyone with respect just seemed so much happier and brighter than the racist, sectarian, miserable bastard attitude to life my parents had. As a teenager I would argue with the family about it - all it did was make them go "[racist comment] oh but we're no supposed to say things like that in front of you are we" and then there would be something about me being at university, as if the idea of treating people equally was like some esoteric branch of philosophy (or more likely, a middle class affectation which, having made it to university, I was now obliged to take on along with not hitting your children and going on holiday to places other than the south coast of Spain)

My PIL are the same. I have to keep my mouth shut (v v difficult) but I do call them out if they say anything in front of the DC. They had a rant about a Chinese family moving in on their street "we don't want their kind here" I was

I'm happy to report that my PiL are the opposite to my own family.

@malfoyy I'm happy to report the same :) my own mum is not racist at all.

MIL takes sweets to school when she does pick up and has been known to refuse to give them to one of DDs friends because of the colour of her skin. DD came home distraught. WW3 kicked off that night, I've never been as angry or as disgusted with someone in my life. Thankfully DH agreed (he can be a bit blind where MIL is concerned) and he dealt with it. If he had let me speak to her after that I don't think we would have had a relationship anymore!

@frazzledrockred you might want to look at history there have been black people in the UK since at least the Romans invaded. Yes a lot were encouraged over in the 50’s and 60’s but black people have been living here a lot longer than that.