To despair at the growing level of racism and xenophobia in this country?

[AlexaShutUp]

I have just been told by the security guard at my local shop that the coronavirus is a "good thing" because it will stop people from traveling and it will therefore "keep them foreigners out". I am ashamed to say that I couldn't think of a good response quickly enough, and just muttered something disapproving but pretty incoherent back to him. Have so many much better responses going round in my head now, and I am annoyed that I didn't challenge him in a more articulate manner.

I know that there have always been racists and xenophobes, but I'm sure that there was a time when such hideous views would not have been expressed to a stranger in public. Over the last few years, it seems that there have been more and more comments of this nature, and it makes me so sad to see the ignorant, unwelcoming little nation we have become.

What sort of fuckwit thinks that a global pandemic is good news? And what sort of society makes people think it's ok to voice such opinions?

Yes overt racism has become more permissive. Look at the disgusting antisemitism from the left and the anti Priti Patel threads on mumsnet for example

@ProgrammableMagneticStorm my point with Elizabeth Gilbert, is, it is very difficult as a white person, to talk about racism on a large scale.

Isn't it difficult for us? Because we have to look at an uncomfortable thing that is going on.

So I admire, that Elizabeth took a book, written by a non- white woman, and promoted it to a much larger audience. Elizabeth Gilbert has millions of followers.

I know that it is an uncomfortable discussion for us to have.

You’re welcome @EmeraldShamrock .

My belief is that I could just as easily start a thread entitled ‘AIBU to despair at the growing inequality and injustice in this country, combined with the slow destruction of livelihoods and total blinkered snobbery of those who’ve been given life on a plate’.

There is racism and it is growing. I don’t wish to justify the irrational right wing hate that’s always been there. But some of it is a response to what people see. The destruction of the capability to make a living through work while richer groups are enabled and encouraged by the state to get rich quick ripping working people off. The incompetence of born middle class people who think life is nothing but a game and were born with a high score. The diminution of the central ground as public funding dries up except to the extreme charity cases, who can be easily portrayed as not having had to work for it.

Start listening to the grievances instead of just kicking people harder, give them a chance, and they’ll come back to the small-c conservative central ground. Keep kicking at them and a real problem is going to start.

Wonder why youu arnt a lawyer any more...

They have 85% of the media behind them and the government's blind eye. Its them doing the 'kicking'

And you can see on here what happens when you point out that 'legitimate grievances' are actually anything but

I’m anti-Patel because she’s a massive fucking Tory.

And you can see on here what happens when you point out that 'legitimate grievances' are actually anything but

So you think simultaneously destroying real jobs with real pay and replacing working homeowners with working private tenants, to pay richer groups’ precious pensions, and other shifts from an asset-owning in-credit economy to a renting, indebted economy are not legitimate grievances? Not agreeing with that. At all.

What some people seem to fail to realise is that the trends I talk about, and talk of “the economy” are not simply problems of figures on a screen, as it is in financial circles. It’s becoming a question of survival. People are being pushed to the wall, and in such circumstances they will claw and pull at each other.

Agree 100% Throwing

I worked in a shop years ago, Nigel Havers came in, all suited and booted, looking expensive. While he was waiting to be served another customer asked him for something. He looked aghast and said I don't work here! She thought he was the manager.

I have been asked for things in ships even though what I wear was not remotely uniform like.

From the example given I have no doubt she associated him as working for tfl but that would not be racism, just laziness. People wander around in self absorbed bubbles, and whilst it is annoying lots of people get mistaken in shops etc.

Shops not ships

I haven’t read the whole thread, so I apologise if another oldie of my generation has already said this, but it is laughable to say that racism is increasing in Britain!
Have you forgotten the 1960’s, when it was normal and widespread to see “for let” signs on flats or rooms that stated “ No dogs, no Irish, no blacks”. Nobody expressed shock or outrage, because our whole society was intrinsically racist. Nowadays it is quite rightly illegal.
I recall buying sewing thread to hem my curtains, in a shade that was openly labelled “nigger brown”. By the 1970’s, they’d changed it to “Leaf mould”, much to the derision of my parents and their contemporaries, who thought it was ridiculous and over sensitive.
Teenage skinhead thugs regularly went out “Paki bashing” as they called it - attacking and beating up random people in the street on the basis of their skin colour.
At my hospital, the consultants quite openly rejected any applications for medical jobs from people with (quote) “funny foreign names”, and interviewed local white males instead. Nowadays, we have consultants from all over the globe, of every possible skin shade, happily working together.
Their was much tutting and disapproval over mixed race marriages as well - thankfully now they are so normal they don’t even raise an eyebrow.
How can you possibly think that Britain in 2020 has got worse than all that?!

Because many of those things are happen again @Babdoc.

And if you read the thread there are plenty of comments either dismissing incidences or defending them.

@Babdoc so right. I feel like I'm in the twilight zone or some alternate reality when people say Britain is more racist today.

@ProgrammableMagneticStorm what exactly were the colonialist overtones of her earlier book?

So, you presume to tell others how to be better white people, but you need help from an unreconstructed white person to understand the problem with Eat Pray Love.

Why don't you google it?

I know that it is an uncomfortable discussion for us to have.

Please don't patronise me.

@ProgrammableMagneticStorm just because you think that there is colonialist overtones to Eat, Pray, Love, doesn't mean that there IS.

It is simply your opinion.

I have also visited India twice. I think saying that visiting India is "colonialist" is ridiculous, frankly.

Okay I have googled "Colonialism and Eat, Pray, love".

There are a couple of badly written opinion pieces that say that:

Elizabeth Gilbert went to India, but she was wrong in how she did it, because she spent her whole time in an Ashram, and didn't go out and see the rest of the country.

That is ridiculous. Many people go to India, purposely for the sake of going to an ashram. Isn't she entitled to do what she wants to do on her vacation?

We could also say, that she increased tourism to India, which is also a good thing.

You seem to be very against her speaking out about racism now, I am not sure why. Because, it can only be a good thing. @ProgrammableMagneticStorm

@ProgrammableMagneticStorm and I wasn't patronising you. Get over yourself. I meant, "it is an uncomfortable conversation for us all to have".

Tone down your level of aggression.

No dogs, no Irish, no blacks.

How shameful of our country

Noone, as far as I can see, is saying that Britain is more racist than in the 60s. What they do seem to be saying (and I agree with them) is that there is more open racism than there was 10-20 years ago, that is, in the 2000s/2010s.

Also more open displays of Nazi symbolism, defence of fascist ideas, eugenics etc.

No dogs is fair enough. Dogs are smelly and dangerous and crap everywhere.

In the 50s /60s there were rebellions by the mau mau in Kenya and other countries in Africa, they attacked white settlers with machetes - beheading them, killing them, men women and children. So you could say they were the terrorists of those decades, freedom fighters to some killers to others.
Hence, I would think, a very anti-black attitude in the UK would have been expected.
I can remember being horrified by photos on the front page of the Daily Express, which is how you got your news then, even if I was only 5 at the time.
So no blacks was very likely partly due to that, A bit like Trumps no muslims from certain countries.
Glib talk of what happened in the past is pathetic if you weren't there and haven't studied the history or the society.
'The past is a foreign country' is a true saying.