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?

So to be clear, I have never met a non-white person living in a village who has tried to do anything other than fit in. As an ethnic Indian. There is limited racism here in Norfolk (there is I am afraid always some wherever you live), but please do not tar my lovely neighbours wrongly. For some people access to people who sound and look the same is important as is access to different food and religious facilities and I do get that, but largely this is a genuinely fine place to live and my biracial kids love it as well.

Would you say this is the same the other way around? Do white people have their pick of the non Western world? Just curious. I've never tried to live outside of it so I genuinely don't know.

I grew up as mixed race in an almost all white area. This was in the fifties and sixties, and I am still dealing with the effects of it now.

It created huge problems between me and my white mother, because I know she hadn't the slightest idea of the racism I endured.

Father was totally useless and left us anyway when I was a teenager.

Times have moved on, but I still wouldn't want to subject a child to the hardships of being an ethnic minority in a predominantly white area.

@thebeespyjamas well put it this way, when white people move to other countries, they are 'expats'. I am an immigrant even though moving to this country involved my dad placing the equivalent of £500k in a bank account to prove to the home office that he could support me while he pursued my studies. Indian doctors are immigrants.

Western Expats in many asian countries are assumed to be wealthy (though many are probably not as a lot of them are on local contracts these days or the expat contracts are not always generous) so locals do not think they are a burden. I haven't really experienced much racism, but my friend who is a doctor in the NHS said she once encountered an old lady who told her that she wanted a white doctor! This was outside london of course. I have never heard of the reverse somehow.. in any country.

Whne circa 87.2% of the population is white, of course you will have areas that are predominatly white, that is just how % work.

@fromdownwest and in London, White Briish is 43.4%. Even if you add in White-Other, it is 14.6%. so basically only half the population are white.

I told my friend in Bristol this and he was genuinely gobsmacked.

Thanks, yes that sounds about right.

We live in a small village as a family of colour,it is awful 😖 my children have had to move schools,my partner has been wet by next door with the hose pipe,called racist names! And my children cannot play out as they are bullied by the white children & there parents don't seem to care!! Yesterday we was out seeing family in a city around 50 miles away on our way home I had a severe anxiety attack I couldn't breath!! As I knew what we was going back to!! I am white my children are mixed raced and my partner is black! I feel like it's all my fault as I thought moving here would be lovely for my children to grow up in the countryside!

No it’s not racism, anyone can move anywhere, the rules regarding social housing have no race requirement.

@desiringonlychild2022 Thanks for the reply, but coming from a white non religious family with many friends who do not have a religion, I'm a bit of a loss why you think your DH would not be welcome if he did not want to celebrate Christmas? I know not one single person who would bat an eyelid if he went for a coffee on Christmas morning. To be honest the main thing what I find hard to deal with when I go to other areas is the politeness of strangers. No matter who you are colour or creed if you walk round my village or on the canals ect pretty much everyone will smile and say hello. The only time this does not happen if you see some one who refuses to look at you or you can tell they want to ignore you. That is part of fitting in. Perhaps it's a northern thing or local I cannot say.

But I do not understand your perception you described. 🙂

Not racism! Imagine if you grow up in a village with limited housing, and an HA built in your village but then let to people from elsewhere, and you, who live with parents and work in the village, can't get a place to live independently ? That's why they do it.

People tend to go where they feel they will be amongst others like them, with a support network/cultural connections etc. If you look at all the racially diverse places in th UK most are like that for a reason. It usually starts with accessibility. Liverpool for example becasue of it's port. Birmingham, London and Manchester due to air travel/transport links. Some areas will have actively recruited certain workers from abroad for example our local NHS trust had a massive recruitment drive for Indian & Pakistani medical professionals. Others follow to those places due to things like family connections. They don't make it to the rural areas where jobs etc may also be scarcer.

@fairylightsandwaxmelts

Maybe they don't want to live in those places.

If I was moving to a foreign country, I'd want to live in a city with easy access to shops, banks and an airport so I could go back home to see family. I wouldn't want to live in the middle of nowhere where I was dependent on a car etc. to get around.

I say that as someone who lives very rurally btw. I love it here but it can be incredibly isolated and you need a really strong local support network if you're unwell or can't drive etc.

You know some black people are born in uk?

YABU. I live in a rural village of about 140 houses, of which only four are tied to 'families with connections to the community'. The rest of the houses are owner occupied or rented. Anyone can live in them if they wish. Our village has no church, one small corner shop, several rural employers (small food manufacture, farming, forestry, fisheries, and a camp site) and standard British village culture based around a pub and village hall.

Most people choose to live where they feel at home, in areas that provide their needs in terms of worship, culture, food, work etc. but there is nothing to exclude people. There used to be a US airbase quite close and there are some African-American ex-US airmen and their families in the area. They obviously don't feel excluded, since they chose to stay. I've never seen any form of racism towards them,

That’s how they’re allocated here, I think it’s called section 106 or similar, you have to prove you’ve lived/worked in the area for 3 yrs.

i suppose it’s inadvertently racist if the area is already predominantly white but it’s done with the intention to stop people being driven away from family and roots, not expressly to keep away outsiders who aren’t from round these parts.

@desiringonlychild2022 I lived in a country where non whites were in the majority (I am also Me but different type of me than majority in that country).

I found that there was a lot of racism towards the “ex pats” (who varied from legal and medical professionals to nannies and house keepers). There was also legal discrimination (locals could get jobs, promotions etc rather than immigrants). There was also pretty much no way for people not from that place to immigrate or become citizens and immigration decisions often were made on an openly racist basis (eg immigration would refuse permission for Filipino women of child bearing age so they couldn’t have children with locals.)

many people working there did want to put down roots and immigrate but they couldn’t as it simply wasn’t allowed. I don’t really have a point other than it used to annoy me being called an ex pat - I would have liked to have immigrated or at least had the choice and was treated as a second class (non!) citizen. This is relatively common in eastern economies.

@profilehopper i guess my impression of rural living is from vicar of dibley where people are not necessarily religious but a lot of community events would be things like Carol singing, midnight Christmas eve service, church fair to raise money for the local roof, easter egg hunt etc. And you would look antisocial if you did not attend.

My DH is also white and irreligious but is culturally Jewish. So he may not be actively interested to attend such events even if he wants to integrate with the community. Like he may go once or twice to show he is joining in, but he wouldn't know the words to the carols or would feel out of place.

London actually is the most religious part of the UK ironically! But because it is so diverse, we can't all celebrate every single one of them as a community! When a community is more homogeneous, you can safely assume that 99% of them appreciate christmas. In my area which has a large Jewish population (many of whom are orthodox and therefore aren't even allowed to have a christmas tree), you really can't.

I am white and want to live in a neighbouring county. However I am blocked because I have no relatives or local connections actually in the county.
I only live a few miles from the county border but it's not good enough.
This isn't racism.
Though you can perceive it that way what do you say to those of us white people also blocked?

well put it this way, when white people move to other countries, they are 'expats'.

Where I live there are a lot of expats from across the globe. The difference between an ex-pat and immigrant is their intention to stay not their skin colour. The ex-pats typically stay less than 4 years as that is when tax arrangements change.

For those who wonder about the ethnic minority population in rural areas could this be partly due to a distorted understanding of the proportion of ethnic Brits in the UK based on large cities?

@lameasahorse aren't a lot of the white people in the rural areas retired pensioners? Older BAME people- i honestly can't think of anyone i know who would think limited access to ethnic shops, limited or no access to places of worship (except the local church) is a great idea in one's old age...

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/is-the-countryside-racist-p6bfvdfrfps

@lameasahorse from that article:

I’d like to take my mother for a day trip to the English countryside. Which probably sounds simple enough. But single-handedly decoding the human genome would be easier. Not least among the complicating factors is the fact that, as a family, like many immigrant Asian families, we have no tradition of leisure in the conventional sense. I recall only three outings as a child that weren’t visits to relatives’ houses.
There’s also our highly unrelaxed approach to travel. Even a trip to a park down the road involves extensive fuss: time to pack the necessary chapattis and brazil nuts into containers; more time for general conversation, noise and argument; and additional time for calls to random relatives who may or may not want to come along. This tendency has got more acute as my 59-year-old Sikh mother has become more religious and correspondingly stricter in her dietary and religious observances (often the same thing).
Then there’s the fact that my mother has never actually visited the English countryside in her 40 years of British residency, and also doesn’t speak English, meaning that conveying the concept of a “day trip to the North York Moors” in my rusty Punjabi is a challenge, both culturally and linguistically. In the end, after consulting a friend for the Punjabi translations of a host of terms including “walking” (“torna”), “nature” (“kudrat”) and “cow” (“gai”), I put the idea to her one evening during a trip home to Wolverhampton.
She is at the time watching a TV show on an obscure Asian satellite channel hosted by a bearded yogi who seems to be suggesting that consuming turmeric can prevent the common cold, among other ailments.
“Mum,” I venture. “Do you fancy a day trip [I use the word “phera” here, which literally means “round trip”]... to the countryside [“hariaval”, which means “open pasture”, as opposed to “farmland”]?”

“Do you fancy a stroll [this time I use the phrase “sair karna”]... next month... to the country... to a park?”
“A park?” She peers over the rims of her spectacles. “Like Alton Towers?”
“Well, a bit like that, but without rides. It’s a park for adults. A ‘national park’, it’s called.”

“What will it cost?”
“Nothing.”
“Hmm.” Never keen to spend money, the idea suddenly seems to hold some appeal. “Why do you want to go?”

Most people choose to live where they feel at home, in areas that provide their needs in terms of worship, culture, food, work etc. but there is nothing to exclude people. There used to be a US airbase quite close and there are some African-American ex-US airmen and their families in the area. They obviously don't feel excluded, since they chose to stay. I've never seen any form of racism towards them

How would you know? Just because you don’t see it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Plus, it could be that the covert racism here is somewhat easier and safer to tolerate along with more resources than the more overt and lesser resources in the States.