Is racism against the English acceptable?

[BabyBearRus]

We are currently on holiday in Wales and have just heard an altercation outside our holiday accommodation blasting the "bastard English who come to stay here". I'm shocked. I am half Welsh and half Irish, and spent much time in both countries. But also spent half my life in England. There has always been a jovial criticism of the English, e.g. during rugby internationals etc, but in recent years the tone has become more racist. I also find this resentful attitude towards the English amongst my Irish and Scottish friends. The English seem to be an acceptable people to hate. Surely this should be classed as racism? And, I'm saying this from a predominantly Welsh and Irish heritage. Yes, I am aware of the history of these isles, but when are we going to get over this? Truly baffled.

@SchrodingersImmigrant

*Because at last the English are starting to show some independence. We chose not to be part of a homologous structure in Europe and instead forge ahead shedding ourselves of the bureaucratic encumbrances Europe entails. Sadly not all our nations agreed. The French don't like us cos we saved their sorry asses in two world wars and they've never got over it!*

Just want to point out, that this is why most of Europe waa cheering for Italy... Why English are not particularly liked. Oh and you couldn't save anyone's arses without the others. Also example of the weird English ww2 fetish which is also known abroad. And if it's weird...

**Yep. I think the English need to take a long, hard look at why they are pretty much universally disliked across the world.

Hint - it's not jealousy as you are manifestly a country and a nation on the wane**

Where are you from then?

@thedancingbear
@SchrodingersImmigrant

Two of the most bigoted posters on this thread. Oh the irony……

Rno3gfr as previously mentioned, many of the second homes in the area are owned by locals who rent them out as holiday lets. The woman in question inherited the house. Been in her family for three generations. She intends to permanently move there in a couple of years.

Personally, the area has thrived in recent years due to the holiday industry with many of the locals making a living from tourism. I'm not saying that is right, but until the government invests more money into the area, this is the reality.

Frankly, I loved it here years ago when it was a sleepy village with no amenities, but I also appreciate that tourism is the life blood of the village.

Incidentally, I found out today that the perpetrators are not locals, but holidaymakers from a different area of Wales renting a house nearby.

[quote TableFlowerss]@thedancingbear
@SchrodingersImmigrant

Two of the most bigoted posters on this thread. Oh the irony……[/quote]
Your right to think that. I was just pointing out that the post was exactly the shit why people are not fans of English 🤷🏻

A lot of Welsh communities are sick of rich people from England buying up all the houses for their second homes, making their local areas totally unaffordable.
This happens all over Europe and many parts of the world.
The amount of Airbnb's holiday homes around coastal towns in Ireland and that is without the Canadian cuckoo funds buying up housing estates and apartments blocks in Dublin as they're built leaving people with no place to live.
Not saying we can't be angry about it.

I'm English. I hate that everyone hates the English. I'm British. I hate that much of the world hates the Brits. I am aware of the wrongs committed by my ancestors, but I have done nothing wrong. Yet I always am made to feel guilty for the colour of my skin and where I'm from, for being privileged (which I'm not), and for what my ancestors did.

Hitler committed much atrocity, but we don't all think it's acceptable to hate the Germans. We make a distinction between the nazi government and the decisions they made, and 'germany' and its current people

Why can't we accept that the English and British governments and some of their people committed bad acts in the past, but that the 'english' and 'british' now are different.

I am not a racist. I have never done anything to harm anyone. I am sick of being made to feel guilty for being white British and not being able to fly my flag and feel proud of my nation, like every other country can, because of the connotations

Some Brits and English are nice, don't tar us all with the same brush.and make us feel guilty for things that have nothing to do with us and are from the past.

"Hitler committed much atrocity, but we don't all think it's acceptable to hate the Germans. We make a distinction between the nazi government and the decisions they made, and 'germany' and its current people

Why can't we accept that the English and British governments and some of their people committed bad acts in the past, but that the 'english' and 'british' now are different."

I agree, and I'm not even English. And we are in a far better position today to bring about change. Education, more political engagement, and lobbying for a better, more inclusive future for everyone, is imo achievable.

I cringe myself at some of the British stereotypes like getting so drunk and making a tit of themselves abroad and football hooligans etc

But the whole hating the British now (more precisely the English…. Bizzare because it was a joint effort but hey ho) because of the Empire is just ridiculous.

Yes people suffered tremendously and it is heartbreaking, but to hate an average English person here and now and blame them is wrong.

No one living here now, committed any atrocities. Our ancestors did but we can’t be tarnished with the same brush. We weren’t born. We didn’t exist.

We just happened to be born British. It wasn’t choice. Some would say lucky others would say unlucky.

To hate people purely because of where they were born and to blame them for something that happened before they existed is terrible.

Every time there’s a thread like this, these comments are always thrown in about the wrongs that Britain did in the past (and yes they absolutely did.)

You can feel the resentment build in the posts and the blame that is then placed on the English etc and we are told this is why we are hated. But remember, it wasn’t us, the people that are hated here and now.

To be honest, people become de-sensitised to it, when they are blamed for something they didn’t do. So the sympathy that they all have had starts to wane and that’s not a great situation either.

We all need to learn from the past and try to create a better future for those whose ancestors were wronged but hating the English for simply being English is going to help bridge that gap.

is NOT going to bridge the gap I mean

To answer the original question, no I don't think you can call it racism, but it is xenophobic and prejudicial behaviour.

I'm Welsh married to a Scot, living in England where our children were born.

I absolutely find the intolerance towards the English very offensive.

Both DH and I have both witnessed in our respective home nations, really quite awful behaviour when visiting family.

It has to be said it happens when our children speak first and the assumption is the whole family is English.

The U-turn when either DH or myself speak as a follow up is often quite remarkable.

It makes me really sad if I'm honest.

I want the children to feel relaxed and happy in the nations where DH and I were born. I want them to enjoy visiting those places and "feel/belong" to that part of their heritage.

However, we've witness first hand that the situation is getting worse as time goes on.

I fully appreciate the pressures second home ownership and AirB&B can put on a community and my relatives in Wales have certainly been subject to this.

It is damaging on so many levels - raising house prices beyond local reach, reducing trade for local hoteliers/B&B owners, leaving villages decimated out of season and making some places undesirable to live because it's impossible to function normally when next door to a holiday home where 2am noises booze laden hot tub sessions happen every night and you need to put the children to bed/get up for work.

This absolutely needs clamping down on big time.

All that said you can't blame "the English" such as my children for wrongs done hundreds of years ago. Or for policies in Westminster.

It has sadly imho become socially acceptable to exhibit extremely prejudicial behaviour towards the English and no, I don't think it's acceptable.

is NOT going to HELP bridge the gap I mean

Fucking auto correct 🤣

@foxandbee

Christ *@TitchGreen and @SourAppleChew*. Are you having a competition to see who can be the most offensive?

I think it's pretty offensive to state that the priority around slavery should be giving money to free people who were never themselves enslaved instead of helping those who are currently enslaved.

Sadly I think a lot of it comes down to the stereotypical image of the black slave in the cotton field rather than the Eastern European sex slave or the Filipino maid being abused by Arabs, so people ignore the present and focus on what happened hundreds of years ago.

The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database estimates that 12.5 million slaves were shipped from Africa to the New World. There are estimated to be 40 million slaves currently in the world today. Why are so many people seemingly more interested in getting their monetary compensation than fighting actual slavery I wonder? 🤔

I think it's pretty offensive to state that the priority around slavery should be giving money to free people who were never themselves enslaved instead of helping those who are currently enslaved.
Your argument on this reminds me of the (generally right wing) argument that we should stop sending foreign aid while there are still homeless or impoverished people in this country. It would be a halfway reasonable argument if the same people that made it weren't also for slashing the welfare state and instead advanced policies that further marginalize the impoverished.

If other countries want to make and fund a concerted effort to abolish modern day slavery, great. But while that isn't happening it's not a good excuse to say 'well, we can't do X Y and Z until we solve this other problem that we are taking little or no steps to solve '.

Not sure why I said 'other countries' in my last post. If the UK wants to make a concerted effort to end the international slave trade, great, but unless it makes a converted effort to do so, it doesn't get to use the issue as an excuse for not tackling other injustices..

I’ve done a fair amount of travelling and living abroad and from my experience everyone does not hate the English. I’ve only seen that really expressed here.

@DewDew83

Not sure why I said 'other countries' in my last post. If the UK wants to make a concerted effort to end the international slave trade, great, but unless it makes a converted effort to do so, it doesn't get to use the issue as an excuse for not tackling other injustices..

I can see how my comment does look a bit like whataboutery in an almost WATM manner. I guess it's just that these discussions almost make it sound like the slave trade is over, and there is usually almost zero discussion around current slavery aside from occasional passing reference to trafficked women - in complete contrast to the frequent discussion of the African slave trade from several centuries ago. I don't mean zero mention in these threads, because that's not the focus here, but just zero mention in general.

I certainly don't think one issue cancels out the other and probs wouldn't have even made the comment if modern was discussed even remotely as much as historic slavery.

**I think it's pretty offensive to state that the priority around slavery should be giving money to free people who were never themselves enslaved instead of helping those who are currently enslaved.

Sadly I think a lot of it comes down to the stereotypical image of the black slave in the cotton field rather than the Eastern European sex slave or the Filipino maid being abused by Arabs, so people ignore the present and focus on what happened hundreds of years ago.

The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database estimates that 12.5 million slaves were shipped from Africa to the New World. There are estimated to be 40 million slaves currently in the world today. Why are so many people seemingly more interested in getting their monetary compensation than fighting actual slavery I wonder**

Very true.

I was thinking about this the other day after watching a documentary about sex trafficking and rife if it.

Got me thinking about how many people are enslaved right now yet it’s hardly mentioned.

I think it is possible to believe that we as a society need to recognise the damage done by historical slavery that still has an impact today and care about modern slavery. We can and should address both of these issues. The two are not mutually exclusive.

The point about these issues being ancient history: they're really not. A PP made an excellent point about Northern Ireland. The structural racism people experience today is a hangover from that history. Its effects are still being felt today; they are embedded within the very fabric of our society. It's possible to recognise and address that issue without descending into self-flagellating apologism. Nationality is an accident of birth. We have nothing to be either proud or ashamed of in our heritage.

But IME these threads tend to become very polarized and lacking in nuance. This one alone is a prime example of the kind of reasons why Reni Eddo-Lodge wrote ^Why I'm no Longer Talking to White People about Race'.

Also about the supposed 'whataboutery', it's hardly possible to put a post up on this site about 'racism', which isn't actually racism, and then expect people not to talk about actual racism.

@foxandbee

I think it is possible to believe that we as a society need to recognise the damage done by historical slavery that still has an impact today and care about modern slavery. We can and should address both of these issues. The two are not mutually exclusive.

Exactly this.

Also I’m sure @TableFlowerss and @SourAppleChew are both aware that modern slavery is illegal and punishable by law? There are even reporting systems if you suspect a car wash/nail salon/“massage” clinic/factory etc is trafficking workers.
You can even report online if you notice something, here
www.modernslaveryhelpline.org/

Historical slavery was not illegal, with no “protections” (in the sense that slave owners could be arrested and imprisoned) for people forced into slavery. I would think people would know this, and therefore know it’s not a normal comparison to make, but mumsnet is always full of surprises

(To be clear - both are despicable practices. Modern slavery needs to be abolished. Thankfully, and differently to the past, there are systems in many countries to crack down on and eliminate modern slavery.)

@JaniieJones

'Well, lot's of countries have problems with the English, and its not like theres no basis for it. No excuse to be personally rude to people, but when your ancestors killed and subjugated theirs, and/or your countryfolk wreck their country with your second homes and remote governing......it's not going to go away.'

Change 'English' for 'black, 'or 'Muslim' and you might just might see how xenophobic and offensive your comments are. You cannot generalise and attack an entire nature or race. It really is shocking that hating Engkis peope is so widespread.

We aren't responsible for the actions of our ancestors.

This for sure.

A lot of Welsh communities are sick of rich people from England buying up all the houses for their second homes, making their local areas totally unaffordable

That is happening everywhere: Cornwall, Devon, Lakes, Norfolk.

Salcombe is the latest place to try to stop second home ownership and it is categorically not in Wales.

and/or your countryfolk wreck their country with your second homes and remote governing

???

We aren't responsible for the actions of our ancestors

or or the actions of other people who happen to live in the same country as we do, as many were at pains to point out on the England fans thread.

Although if people really do think that everyone who lives, or has ever lived in a certain country all act and think the same way, then work needs to be done on education systems.

@znaika

It is xenophobia, and it takes no account of class so is definitely not kicking up. There seems to be some deluded and ignorant view that English people were all living in Downton Abbey when the reality is their villages were being destroyed too ( still are by second home owners) and their kids sliced up by heavy machinery and shoved up chimneys or in a workhouse. There are plenty of Scottish and Welsh landowners and slavers but of course blame some English guy who came from impoverished peasants who were exploited by the industrial revolution.

It's a curious kind of selectiveness. .

This