You're white. You haven't experienced racism

[PatricksRum]

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

@changeitupagain of course no black person should be killed for being black. No person should be killed full stop.

The greatest crime in the UK is not gangland stabbings but the grooming of underprivileged boys by temporarily successful dealers near the end of the grooming programme. These young people are collateral damage for serious organised crime mainly orchestrated by mature white men. If only as much effort were spent on the cause of the problem as on the issues arising from it.

I'm white and I've being on receiving end of racsium .Worked in a largely asian populated city.
worked for one of the communication providers cut a customer off they owed over £1000 wanted to pay £10 a week same rules applied to every customer got called "a racist white batsard and they spat on my desk "
got called many names all related to being white.

I feel tired too, Op.

I am BAME. But because my heritage is mixed, I pass as white. Most people assume i have Italian or Spanish heritage. The other side of my family is white Irish Catholic.

In the 80s I saw my Irish nana spat at because of her accent. Mum called a terrorist. That calmed down for a bit. Then other members of my family started being called terroists for looking potentially Muslim for the colour of their skin.

And what I have or my family, have experienced is nothing compared to the black community. Theres low level racism like "thats YOUR cousin?....is he adopted?'. Then the comments from white saviours 'should you be wearing that?, people may feel thats cultural appropriation, y'know' and the look of shock when I tell them to piss off.

However, white people do experience racism. Even by your definition. And I would say the white girls abused by organised gangs of Asian men, is an example. Those girls were systematically abused because they were white and the power was definitely in their abusers hands.

I think when it comes to this issue, I think both sides need to not engage with this debate. White people saying 'we exeperince racisim' need to shut up. While a smaller number may have (small in comparison to numbers of BAME that experience it), thats not what we are talking about here. Thats not the issue at hand.

But I think BAME people need to stop telling all white people their experiences dont count. But overall, I do think white people right now, need to listen. Understand the issue, isnt about them, at the moment. And I say that as someone who most people think is white.

Its a very complex and emotional issue. It is exhausting. My son broke his heart last night, before falling asleep because he just doesn't understand why in his words 'why are some many people just idiots?'

His best friend is of Pakistani descent. My 9 year old son has seen it, once got in a fight over someone abusing his best friend at school. (Please note he didn't start the fight, a child called his friend a racial slur and he stood up for him. The other child swung for him and he hit back. The school were support of my son for defending his friend and himself) But only now has it hit him, exactly how stupid some people are.

It hurt to watch how upset he was. But I was also proud that he was moved by it.

I really wish posters would stop comparing the UK to the USA. As if they have identical histories and identical modern day situations. They don't.

I thought in educational terms that the most disadvantaged / worst outcomes were for white, working class boys?

I think that the USA is far more racist than Britain though, its entrenched there. Not sure what the answer is tbh.

@changeitupagain i was targeted by people who didn't know me didn't know a thing about me other than the colour of my skin!! It wasn't just me there was one other white girl she too suffered the same abuse on a daily basis for no reason other than being white so black people can be extremely racist to and you will never change my opinion on that because it happened and yes it may only be a group of 30-40 individual's but it's also only a minority of white people who are racist (i for one am not in that minority)

Election night 2016 with Saturday Night Live
m.youtube.com/watch?v=SHG0ezLiVGc

Let's face it though the majority of white people who indulge in whataboutery on this issue haven't experienced systemic racism. They might have experienced some racial prejudice but not institutional racism.

And yet they pop on Twitter bleating about All Lives Matter. When you go on their Twitter feeds, there's lots of union jacks and go back to your own country if you don't like it comments.

So while I agree that racial prejudice and racism against any race is unacceptable, this is not the time to hijack the black lives matter movement in my view. Give black people their time to express their case and be heard. It is an outrage that black men worry about going to the shops on their own in a nice car in the US in case they get shot. The fact that that even crosses their minds is awful.

And I wish people would drop the I hate racism but rhetoric.

YABU
I’m not white, but white people CAN experience racism in countries that are not white majority countries. The racism is prejudice + power definition is of structural racism and is not the entirety of racism itself. You are lacking in ‘education’ and seem to be merely regurgitating tumblr and buzzfeed slogans.

Also, white people HAVE been enslaved by other races all through history. And yes, they were being enslaved by Africans at the same time Africans were being enslaved by them. There is no race that has never been enslaved. The word for “slave” even comes from a white ethnic group that was almost entirely enslaved- the Slavs. The Slavs were Eastern Europeans that were enslaved for over a thousand years by the Islamic empires that stretched from Turkey to the Middle East to Algeria in N. Africa.

Finally, on a global scale, the ethnic majority are Asians, not white people.

I'm white and yes I have.

[quote PatricksRum]@emptyplinth White people are the ethnic majority. It's simply not possible.

Why, again, am I forced to educate you? This is not my duty.[/quote]
"White" isn't an ethnicity

I’m white british.
Was once minding my own business and a black woman started going mad at me saying she was fed up of us white people appropriating their culture by surgically enhancing our backsides.
It’s natural
Newsflash people come in all shapes and sizes.

I'm white and I have experienced racism.

Op you’re right racism requires structures of power for the oppressing group.

NotNowPlzz post at 4.50 breaks it down well too -

...I won’t repost it all

‘It's mostly a thread with an entirely incorrect inflammatory title
I don't find it inflammatory.

with an aggressive op
Black women who express sadness and anger are often called aggressive. I don't think she's aggressive. I think she's devastated and scared.’

This thread is going in many directions. I find it depressing to have to prove the connections of Britain to the slave trade as they are so well known that they should be a given in any conversation about the roots of racism in the two nations.

For goodness sake. No one has denied Britains connection to the slave trade

This thread is a good example of the frustration the OP is describing. When Black people speak up, immediately there is a constant qualifying of everything. Those grotesque charactures of Irish people only shows how there was an audience in British popular media historically for the othering of so many groups who didn't fit the profile of the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) citizen of a proud and jingoistic empire.

WASP has no meaning in the UK, it is an American term from the 1950s. But here it is again. This conflation of a purely Amercian experience with the UK.

Most British people were from working class families in the Victorian era and so while wc whites in the UK and USA were trying to improve their standard of living and working conditions, there was a class of people beneath them in the class and racial structure. There is no big secret about who they were and what they looked like. It's disingenuous to suggest otherwise. In this historical moment the descendants of those people are demanding the justice they are still not receiving. They are asking for something simple, to be safe and welcome in their own country. To not be treated as an enemy by those that are supposed to protect them and give them justice.

Why do you keep lumping the UK and the USA together?

The news about George Floyd's death, and other similar ones in the USA, made news around the world. As it rightly should. The USA has massive problems, with racism, segregated neighbourhoods, a corrupt and militarised police force, and it's right that we should all voice our disgust, but it's a problem only they can sort out.

This is bullshit

I am white. I attended a school in the UK where i was in the minority. I was called a stupid white bitch and threatened with being ran over. I would sit in a class where i was the only white british pupil and be talked about in a language i did not understand. I was also regularly called a white whore. I was 14.

OP is really doing the Black Lives Matter movement a disservice with some of the posts on here.

Honestly, if a black person shouts that all humans have one eye you should shut up and listen? No. I'm not going to deny reality because someone is distressed. I'm not going to ignore what I can see. Doing otherwise is treating them as lesser, as inherently irrational and unable to cope with disagreement.

White people do not face structural racism the way that black people do, with perhaps a few exceptions such as SA. Anyone of any colour can have racist comments made about them, but the power dynamics aren't always the same.

Also, patterns of prejudice in the USA aren't mapped onto the rest of the world. I think some US activists forget that. Other places have their own histories, their own divisions.

The greatest crime in the UK is not gangland stabbings but the grooming of underprivileged boys by temporarily successful dealers

I think the greatest U.K. crime is the grooming of underprivileged (mostly white) girls for rape and forced prostitution (sex slavery) by mature (mostly Asian) men.

While I agree underprivileged boys also have little to no choice but to join a gang or die, they then are groomed to be perpetrators of violence on victims. Whereas these girls, they are groomed to be perpetual victims of sexual and physical violence. That is much worse form of oppression.

I'm white and I have experienced racism.

The complete, utter lack of understanding of institutional racism on this thread is so depressing. @PatricksRum I completely agree and I'm so sorry.

The UK has its own problems with racism. Stephen Lawrence for instance was fatally stabbed in a racially motivated attack while waiting on a bus.
While not trying to take away from your experience @THATscurryfungeBITCH you are not considered to be socially unequal because of your skin colour. This is the difference black people are trying to show us. I too was attacked by a group of black people in my teens for being white but I am not living my life unequal because of my colour.

Erm, may I remind you
No Blacks
No Irish
No dogs?
?

@Pinklynx

Let's face it though the majority of white people who indulge in whataboutery on this issue haven't experienced systemic racism. They might have experienced some racial prejudice but not institutional racism.

And yet they pop on Twitter bleating about All Lives Matter. When you go on their Twitter feeds, there's lots of union jacks and go back to your own country if you don't like it comments.

So while I agree that racial prejudice and racism against any race is unacceptable, this is not the time to hijack the black lives matter movement in my view. Give black people their time to express their case and be heard. It is an outrage that black men worry about going to the shops on their own in a nice car in the US in case they get shot. The fact that that even crosses their minds is awful.

And I wish people would drop the I hate racism but rhetoric.

Totally agree.

I beg to differ tonz this wasn't a one off event. This was my education on a daily basis. That was my life and i was unequal within that school.

Even where white people are not the ethnic majority you are still in a position of power.

ROFL 🤣. Never been to China have you OP? I’ve witnessed racism against my white friend when we visited my family in rural China. A man on the street started asking what I was doing with “that monkey”
I or my uncle had to go everywhere with my white friend while there because their life would be in danger if they went out on their own.
And it’s insulting to me that you think white people have power in my homeland. They don’t. They never did.

YABU and YANBU

I've been punched in the face and called an Irish bitch when in England. My mum used to have the police at her door after every IRA bomb when she lived in England during the 80s. Members of my family were killed by the Nazis because their (white) faces didn't fit. So YABU because I don't think it's fair to say that white people can't experience racism ever. Racism applies to all races not just one, it's in the name

However YANBU in that it's not the sort of constant institutionalised racism, which is faced by the black community and which is in the news currently, and yes I agree that white people should largely STFU and let the black community take the lead on this one