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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

You're white. You haven't experienced racism

999 replies

PatricksRum · 04/06/2020 00:29

I'm so sick of repeating myself today.
AIBU or is ignorance just bliss?

OP posts:
Thread gallery
23
JuneJulyAugust · 04/06/2020 04:59

We still never got to find out which country OP was in and which plane she couldn't get on in case she was shot.

ArriettyJones · 04/06/2020 05:00

[quote NotNowPlzz]@ArriettyJones it being BBC Bitesize only serves to illustrate it's basic information that even children should know. Perhaps you could go over there and brush up on your UK history knowledge? It seems woefully lacking.[/quote]
Which aspect of my History knowledge do you feel is lacking, specifically?

NotNowPlzz · 04/06/2020 05:01

@JuneJulyAugust black people are afraid of being murdered, and that's your contribution?

Flaxmeadow · 04/06/2020 05:02

The white race is terrified to look in a mirror. Dreadfully afraid to turn back a page in the history book. When really that is the only way to truth.

It's one thing to read history books and acknowledge wrongs were done in the past but it's another to be perpetually blamed for it, just for the colour of your skin

I come from a very mixed English heritage. I've seen a contemporary account of the sugar cane plantation my ancestors once slaved on. The conditions were worse than I could have ever possibly imagined. The only reason I knew about the location was because a descendant of the owner of the plantation told me which one it was and I found a book, a description of plantations in 1830's. There it was in the book. In all its dreadful fully understandable 19th century language. Punishments and cruelty only a psychopath could have carried out

I have also researched my English ancestors and learnt about the conditions they lived and worked in. They were moslty coal miners, and they laboured from childhood. I found accounts in the area that some children had started work at age 4. Toddlers working in mines in England after slavery in the West Indies had been abolished. Long hours, in the bowels of the earth, dying there too, their bodies deformed and broken.

I corresponded for a short while with the person who who told me the plantation name, the descendant of the owner, he wasnt afraid to "turn back a page in the history book". He seemed to me a pleasant and decent enough man.

NotNowPlzz · 04/06/2020 05:04

@ArriettyJones I'm actually not sure it was you, my apologies if it wasnt. Anyone who was denying Britain's wealth derives from slavery.

changeitupagain · 04/06/2020 05:05

@NotNowPlzz

It's not and that is a problem absolutely, in life and on many threads on Mumsnet, but from reading this one, not here specifically.

But the @op is continuing to attempt to erase people's experience, some truly horrific, after they have shared in defence of them - not to 'and' on any experience the OP has shared, just to make sure there's aren't being denied.

Erasure is wrong by anyone of anyone else's experiences. No one on this thread is saying their experience is worse than that of black people, they are just saying I've experienced racism and I don't want it erased by a sweeping comment.

I am sure if the op said - ok, yes you did in that instance, but systematic racism and killing of black people is far far worse - these people would absolutely agree and continue to listen with the knowledge that their experiences are not being denied or erased but right now is not the time to being them up because it is the times to support the ones who's experiences are worse.

ArriettyJones · 04/06/2020 05:07

@Flaxmeadow

The white race is terrified to look in a mirror. Dreadfully afraid to turn back a page in the history book. When really that is the only way to truth.

It's one thing to read history books and acknowledge wrongs were done in the past but it's another to be perpetually blamed for it, just for the colour of your skin

I come from a very mixed English heritage. I've seen a contemporary account of the sugar cane plantation my ancestors once slaved on. The conditions were worse than I could have ever possibly imagined. The only reason I knew about the location was because a descendant of the owner of the plantation told me which one it was and I found a book, a description of plantations in 1830's. There it was in the book. In all its dreadful fully understandable 19th century language. Punishments and cruelty only a psychopath could have carried out

I have also researched my English ancestors and learnt about the conditions they lived and worked in. They were moslty coal miners, and they laboured from childhood. I found accounts in the area that some children had started work at age 4. Toddlers working in mines in England after slavery in the West Indies had been abolished. Long hours, in the bowels of the earth, dying there too, their bodies deformed and broken.

I corresponded for a short while with the person who who told me the plantation name, the descendant of the owner, he wasnt afraid to "turn back a page in the history book". He seemed to me a pleasant and decent enough man.

That’s interesting Flax. I’m also of mixed heritage and also fight shy of oversimplification.

It always feels to me like ALL the detail and the micro-history matters. All the historical perspectives of the different nations of Empire. I’m never sure if it is pedantry on my part or an emotional reaction because of my different genetic inheritances but it’s interesting to hear you express it in much the same way my internal voice does. Smile

Puds11 · 04/06/2020 05:07

I am white. I have two children. I have never worried about them being at risk because of the colour of their skin. That is white privilege.

ArriettyJones · 04/06/2020 05:08

[quote NotNowPlzz]@ArriettyJones I'm actually not sure it was you, my apologies if it wasnt. Anyone who was denying Britain's wealth derives from slavery.[/quote]
Nope. I certainly wasn’t denying that.

5MikesOut · 04/06/2020 05:08

My late DF always told my DBs and me that we must stand up to anyone we heard being racist towards black people because we were lucky. By that he meant that as Sephardi Jews we were less easy to pick out as an ethnic minority. Our family were hounded out of their villages and ended up in the UK. I have a sallow but pale complexion but don’t look or sound remotely British. I look very Jewish. My DNA gives a percentage of my Jewishness. My late DF had swastikas painted on his shop doors and windows, the gravestones in our cemetery have been defaced several times as has our synagogue. I’ve been called a dirty Jew when I walked out of a Jewish deli. I was bullied out of my first ever job, I received racist comments about tight Jews and crooked Jews when I was in a choral group. My late DM was called a gypsy at school and a boy threw a dead cat at her as she walked home one day. She had a lifelong phobia about cats which was hardly surprising. We have security outside our synagogues whenever there are services.

I cannot pretend what we have been through and still go through is the same as what black peoples have been through and go through now or that my experience is as relentless and as pervasive or that our lives are being brutally cut short as yours are, but I do care and I do want to learn and I have been thought to stand up with black people and try to feel their pain. I hope the heinous murder of George Floyd does bring about lasting change. If this doesn’t, what will?

NotNowPlzz · 04/06/2020 05:09

@Flaxmeadow I'm white and I don't feel ashamed or blamed to say the white race as a whole has committed savage violent acts of atrocity. Just like you might say men as a whole commit violent and sexual acts. As a class, not as individuals.

Nearly all my white ancestors come from grinding poverty. They are not individually responsible for west indian slavery, and neither am I. But it was a white venture with racism at its heart and it carries certain things with it to this day that have an effect.

NotNowPlzz · 04/06/2020 05:10

@ArriettyJones I'm sorry I mistook you for another poster I think. My sincere apologies.

ArriettyJones · 04/06/2020 05:11

No problem Smile

NotNowPlzz · 04/06/2020 05:15

@changeitupagain just give her some grace and focus on the issue at hand. This is extremely emotive and terrifying and hearing about people's minor experiences is upsetting and triggering because they minimise black experiences by somehow putting them on a par. I don't think you should be policing OPs behaviour. This is urgent. This is happening right now. Innocent black people are being murdered right now.

LunaMuffinTop · 04/06/2020 05:16

Op if your right and white people don’t experience racism then can I just draw your attention to this news article about a man who spat in a 9 month old babies face and shouted that white people shouldn’t breed if that’s not racism to you then what is it because from where I’m sitting that’s racism.

metro.co.uk/2017/02/21/racist-woman-hater-spat-in-babys-face-and-shouted-white-people-shouldnt-breed-6463332/

Flaxmeadow · 04/06/2020 05:21

From 1750 onwards a new industry emerged in Britain - the production of cotton cloth. Wool production had previously been Britain's major industry, but cotton had one key advantage - machinery could process cotton fibres better than wool.

Cotton was not the only industry and cotton production didn't take off until after the American War of Independence, when it was no longer a colony of the British.

As a result it was in cotton production that the industrial revolution began,

Not true

particularly in and around Manchester.

Lancashire (including Manchester) but also, Cheshire and West Yorkshire

The cotton used was mostly imported from slave plantations. Slavery provided the raw material for industrial change and growth.

One of the raw materials.

Coal, iron ore, wool, flax and other raw materials came from here. Without coal, none of it would have been possible

The growth of the Atlantic economy was an integral part of the growth of exports - for example manufactured cotton cloth was exported to Africa.

Not in large amounts. By the end of slavery in the West Indies, the USA was producing it's own cotton and exporting it

The Atlantic economy can be seen as the spark for the biggest change in modern economic history. The Atlantic economy in the 1700s was founded on slave labour

The "1700s" is too vague a date for a spark

changeitupagain · 04/06/2020 05:22

@NotNowPlzz

No one is trying to put their issues on a par, they are merely stopping their own experiences being erased by an OP who made a sweeping statement which attempted to erase all of them.

OP can absolutely be given allowances for this given the trauma they are currently experiencing but these other people still shouldn't have their experiences invalidated.

Imagine a rape survivor post trauma going 'you've never been violated if you've not been raped' to someone who has experienced sexual assault. The person who experienced sexual assault still had a horrific experience and doesn't deserve for this to be erased just because something worse happened to someone else and has a right to make sure it's not forgotten when someone tries to erase it. However when the rape victim is speaking about her own experiences, not mentioning or invalidating anyone else's the survivor of the sexual assault should not try and bring up theirs because although there's was bad the others was far worse still and the other deserves to talk about it without the focus being taken away.

I have acknowledged innocent black people are being murdered right now and that deserves the main focus, go back and read all my posts to see this.

Flaxmeadow · 04/06/2020 05:26

It always feels to me like ALL the detail and the micro-history matters. All the historical perspectives of the different nations of Empire. I’m never sure if it is pedantry on my part or an emotional reaction because of my different genetic inheritances but it’s interesting to hear you express it in much the same way my internal voice does

Thanks that's a nice thing to say

I will admit though. I think I had played down in my mind some aspects of ancestors history. I was naive about slavery, even though I knew, or thought i knew, a bit more about it than most people. Being already interested in history but yes I was naive

FourPlasticRings · 04/06/2020 05:27

I don't know. I think men can experience sexism. I wouldn't insist it was sexual prejudice because the man has more societal power. And also, isn't power situational? So, if you've got a group or person of one race carrying out a racially motivated attack on someone of another race, if the group or person attacking is physically stronger, surely in that instance they hold the power, regardless of their skin colour?

ArriettyJones · 04/06/2020 05:28

I was naive about slavery, even though I knew, or thought i knew, a bit more about it than most people. Being already interested in history but yes I was naive

We all were until 10-15 years ago. On a societal level, slavery wasn’t remembered or taught well enough. I do think it’s improving a lot now.

TangibleTuTu · 04/06/2020 05:31

"I can’t comment on the US, but that is not my experience in the U.K. Britain seems to me to have become massively more racist over the last twenty years. It has changed beyond all recognition."

Stripes I have not lived in the UK for 25 years so I cannot comment but when it comes to Trump's Presidency and the obvious support he has for White racist groups I don't think he has increased racism as much as allowed it to be revealed publically. Of course by doing that they may be recruiting more to their cause. I don't know if either country has become more racist but that both have white populations who are feeling culturally insecure enough that they are willing to come out in a public backlash.

There was a lot of talk when Trump was elected that he was attracting poor whites. However analysis of his voting base has shown them to be more financially comfortable than average. Rather than economic issues they fear "status erosion", in other words the "browning of America" as white Americans have less children and are no longer a majority in many states. The Millenials are the largest and most diverse generation in American history (23-38 yr olds) and the one below (8-22) even more so. All those diverse young protesters on the streets of every major city are revealing the demographic future that can't be stopped.

Mimishimi · 04/06/2020 05:32

Lots of people have had their identity lampooned and belittled including non- Anglo whites.

TehBewilderness · 04/06/2020 05:36

Haven't read the thread yet. Just wanted to say.
I have witnessed it all my life.
Never experienced it, of course, because I am a white woman. Wherever I go I am treated like a white woman.
I live in the US and it feels like 1968 all over again to me.
I am so sorry for your pain and distress, PatricksRum. It is hard to imagine how exhausting and frustrating it must be.

Smiling89 · 04/06/2020 05:48

YANBU OP.

Being white, I don't think I could ever fully appreciate what you experience. I think the pp who compared it to sexism/misogyny is the closest I can come to understanding.

I think the main opposition you face from otherwise decent white people comes from misunderstanding and the language used to convey.

For example, in feminist discussions when I say "men are/do......" it implies I'm attacking all men and that the actions they take are inherently taken because of their biology as a man. When I really mean the patriarchy. It is not the biology (apart of who they intrinsically are) that makes them think that way, but the system - the patriarchy. When I started replacing the word "men" with the word patriarchy I found more men agreed and were willing to listen. Of course, there are still arseholes who still deny it all and always will. In race discussions there isn't terminology that makes that clear distinction.

Of course people should also educate themselves to understand it is just a language barrier and not a personal attack, but the reality is some people will need educating - by black people but also other ethnicities. People should educate themselves about a lot of things, but here we are in a world with "may contain peanuts" on the side of a packet of peanuts Confused. It's sad that you have to educate people, but it's reality unfortunately.

Tonz · 04/06/2020 05:48

I have experienced racial prejudice and while it was upsetting and scary it hasn't changed my life any. Racism is different because it causes economic and social inequality. I will never experience racism because I am white. Il never understand however I can stand for Black lives matter. Not being racist is not enough.. If there is ever going to be a change we have to be actively anti racist

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