RURAL RACISM

[findingthepremise]

So, I live in a predominately white area, an affluent area also. It has become apparent to me that even after decades have passed, the mixed or otherwise non white minority has never developed. I ask myself why? I find that in many rural areas this is the case and I cant understand why. Is having a housing stipulation under the council that requests that only people with family ties to the area can apply to put their name forward for the housing association schemes? is that possibly an undercurrent of racism?

In our rural (& pretty small - about 250 population) village there is a small strip of council housing for which you are meant to have a historical tie to the village in order to apply for. The farmer who sold the land to the council stipulated it should be for families of locals & farm workers who were being priced out of both buying and local private rentals. It’s not meant to be racist, it was meant to provide a future and some stability for both the tenants and the farmers. Sadly these days many of the occupants don’t work at all and most of the farm labour comes from abroad so sadly it’s not worked out how anyone intended.

I should stipulate however this is not an affluent area…

What do you think anyway OP? Do you like where you live, does it feel like home or would you prefer a city?

Oh FFS.... 🙄

I don't think the example quoted is racism.. yes one of the priorities for social housing will be people who already have family links to an area... if the majority in an area are white then the majority with family links to the area are likely to.. be white.

I do think the rife and undisguised racism in rural areas does put people off living here, it puts ME off and I am white. I get comments about being an outsider because I have only lived here just over a decade, my father still does and he's been here over 30 years.

I absolutely understand why people wouldn't want to live here.

I live in a rural area and am a farmer. My family has lived here for many generations, and most of my farming friends. I'm related to most of them somewhere along the line 😅 A lot of farming families marry locally, have kids etc, so its a given that there'd be a higher percentage of white people.

More currently is the socio-economic problem that has made the countryside the preserve of the rich. The prices of a plot, a barn or 'hovel' in the countryside are more than a basic house in a nearby town. Before you even cost in any improvements.

Rural Racism is a 20 year old theory with very little evidence - a rich black person can buy their place in the countryside just as a rich white person can.

I don’t think your assessment is fair @TheHateIsNotGood - my dsis lives in a town not far from me….her 5 bed semi with 30ft garden is worth about 45% more than my same sized house with small holding on the edge of an AONB. The countryside is quite often the inexpensive option….till it comes to travel & fuel!!

I'm black and have recently done exactly that. Only black person in a rural village and the main town its few and far between. There is no hiding from it. You are on show 24/7 and no matter what people say, it does take some guts! Had to post a parcel in town today and I still have to take a deep breath before I step out of the car as I feel like an alien with 3 heads! It's all I'm my head and I know I still need de-programming. My sister and I both have white partners and obiously mixed kids. We both bought houses last year at the same time. I left London becuase I wanted my daughter to grow up in nature. My sis moved to lovely house in a gentrified nook of London, yet still surrounded by stabby-stabville as she wanted her kids to have a 'diverse' upbringing. She was truely appalled at my decision to move to the country. I showed her a video of the villages annual Wasailing with and border Morris (black painted faces). She saw it as instantly racist where as I bothered to research into its rich history and found it charming. Ironically this year due to BLM they no longer paint their faces all black. It was so much fun and found this village to be very welcoming. However, she represents the view ethic people have of the country - that it's not nor never will be for them. They would never dream of leaving London/cities - hell, it's been 5 months and she's yet to even visit! London really isn't all that diverse and as you say the biggest devide is social economic. When I go to my sisters parties I see this diversity she's feels so important. Just well to do people with well to do jobs living well to do lives.

My parents live in a small village of 100 people. In the next village they built some new houses, some of which were ‘affordable’. To be allowed to buy one of the affordable houses you had to prove a local link. So it’s not just council houses that sometimes need a link.

Aside from that, in their village the wealthiest family is a black family, there are also two Asian families.
Quite different from when I was a child there and there was not one single non white child in my primary or secondary school.

As a non-White person living in a big urban UK city, I would not move to a rural area due to:
Racism
No or only a few other non-White people living in the rural area
Not having any family or friends within a 60-90 minute drive away

I live in an affluent area.

Because of racism, I’d be more likely to move to another city in another country than move to a rural area in the UK.

I was born in the UK.

Re. Needing family links in order to qualify for Council and HA properties - I guess this would mean that it would be difficult for a non-White person to move to these rural areas via the social housing route. This policy clearly excludes all people without the financial means and also without local/family links to live these rural areas and most of those people will be non-White.

Affluent non-White people could obviously move to these rural areas, though most are unlikely to do so due to racism and lack of family ties.

A few months ago, I swore that I wouldn’t even read threads about racism on MN anymore as they usually turn nasty.

After being the first PP to respond to the OP, I note that it then took a couple of days for the next PP to comment. Let’s see how this one goes…

I am an immigrant. When I applied to study in the UK at 18, I put down 3 london universities in my UCAS form as I knew little about the rest of the UK and as I was studying law, I thought being in London would be better as you could attend career events more easily. Also I grew up in a city state (and based on my friends from other countries), the vast majority of us who end up in the UK are from big cities. In a lot of countries, rural areas are underdeveloped compared to the cities; someone who studied in a school in Singapore or KL is way more likely to attend university in the UK (from a grades/finances perspective) than someone who went to school in rural Malaysia as an example. So people who have always lived in big cities or have at least spent a significant amount of time studying in a big city naturally gravitate to big cities unless there are specific employment opportunities in a town etc. We are already leaving our countries and it is already a big adjustment, why make it even harder!

my DH is a 4th generation londoner and from an ethnic minority. He is not religious enough to attend synagogue every week but given his family is here (and they don't want to leave as his mum needs to be near a synagogue and other kosher facilities), he doesn't want to leave either! He is unwilling to even move to south of the river, let alone to a rural area!

Who knows?

I wouldnt want to live in or subject my children to living in an almost totally White area. Too much potential for a miserable childhood due to racism.

Its bad enough everywhere else, no point going to where it'd be worse.

I also want to see reflections of me, and be able to buy food from my homeland.

Must be lots of other Black parents who feel the same.

tbh OP your post is not super coherent; that said, I’ve lived in small Cotswold villages, and I’ve lived in inner city London, where I grew up.
Privately expressed racism, usually from older white people, but sometimes from non-white people (I’m white, so the latter was overheard anti-white racism and presumably more common when I wasn’t in earshot), seems about the same in both places. Public racism was something I heard much more frequently in London and was exclusively Afro-Caribbean vs African, very occasionally anti-white. Comments from white British people about eastern/Central European or Baltic people are quite frequent but I’d personally class that as xenophobia rather than racism.
A friend who grew up in Leicestershire as a white kid said he had to make himself scarce after school on account of pitched battles between Sikhs and Muslims.
So, you’ll always find the odd frothing freak wherever you live. I lived in a small rural village where the neighbours were all related and my direct neighbour hated me because I leased a property where there had been a border dispute going on generations. You need thicker skin than mine to live in some villages, especially as an outsider, no matter what your background. Which is why I now live in a town!

I'm not sure what you mean when you say that most of the people who would be excluded, if they need local ties to qualify, would be non-white? Do you mean most non-white people would be excluded? Because a white Londoner who has no ties to a particular rural area is also going to be excluded and I daresay there are lots and lots of people like that.

I'm white but a religious minority and wouldn't want to live in, or raise my children in, a village where we would be the only ones like ourselves. Quite aside from not having any community, etc. I'm less afraid of direct hatred (though I think it would be worse for someone who is not white since this is visible) and more of the constant feeling of being different. You have to be a certain sort of person to be comfortable being the only one in the village.

I'm Muslim and certainly wouldn't want to live rurally, which is a shame as its often much cheaper. I want my dc to go to diverse schools, I want access to mosques, halal food and ethnic supermarkets.
We holidayed in rural Ireland a few years ago and we were like a travelling circus to the locals. They were lovely, but we were very much viewed with suspicion and as entertainment at the same time. Definitely not what I want to subject myself to on a daily basis.

@desiringonlychild2022 hello from a fellow Malaysian.
I want access to different cuisines, Asian supermarkets, etc etc.
DP’s ‘rural’ affluent home village, where the only interesting happenings are a tractor pull, and the only food is 2 pubs + a Chinese takeaway really bores me.

Also to add I don’t mind being the only one In a village etc. It depends though. DP’s are quite welcoming (although it could be because I’m with him? Don’t know if any solo people would be), and they recently welcomed refugees from Afghanistan as well.

If I had a family big enough to do a huge Asian shop once in a while I wouldn’t mind 😏

I'm white so not personally affected but when I lived in a rural area I found the racism/religious intolerance quite shocking. I moved back to the urban area to get away from it.

I can fully understand why people who are from an ethnic/religious minority prefer not to live in those areas.

Overall/in general rural areas are more conservative (small c) and therefore less open-minded in general. Doesn't mean everyone living there is a racist, but enough are.

In my experience, small villages in the Cotswolds are very expensive and very insular. I spent three years living on one and it was a miserable experience. I only moved there from a town about 25 miles away, but I was seen as alien. The only two friends I had were also not local and were also seen as outsiders, even though both had been there for at least a decade. We had the advantage of being white, I can only imagine how difficult life would have been for people who weren't.

So, I'm guessing the homogeneity of small Cotswold villages is in a large part due to people not wanting to spend a fortune to live in an area where people view them, at best, with suspicion.

FWIW, I now live in a very diverse major city; people are really friendly.

• racism
• being closer to the older generation, who are often based historically in cities
• food - variety of international food as we eat out a lot, Asian food ingredients, etc.

Oh, and my children going to an ethnically diverse school.

I live in the cotswolds, and we do have ethnic minorities happily living here and everyone is made welcome and treated with kindness, that is a given.

I accept we probably have lower percentage than some larger towns and cities, but that is a choice many people make when choosing where to live you need to find employment, which here seems to centre around farming, tourism, equestrian. So maybe it is not very appealing to lots of people, and many young people leave to find jobs in London after university. It is also eye watering expensive to buy a house, and you need a car as public transport is dire.

We have an ageing demographic and country life can be quite dull for some people. I enjoy the serenity and hope many more families will choose to live here, it is a very friendly and beautiful place to live for anyone interested in country life.