People who have cleaners, nanny's etc

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I am happy for you to tell me iabu. I'm just trying to understand it. Just stayed at a friend's in another country where it's normal for white people to have cleaner, nanny etc and they are all black.
I felt so uncomfortable with it, I'd hate someone doing menial tasks for me, the fact that they are black felt worse for me.

I realise that some people think that they are doing them a favour because they need work but it just feels wrong to me. AIBU?

I'm assuming your friend lives in Africa and employs locals. This is completely normal there. They're paid employees and some of them will be with the family until they retire. I understand it can be uncomfortable as a European.

But why is cleaning a house demeaning and sweeping a road isn't?

It's because house cleaning is traditionally 'women's work' so it's lower status.

There is nothing demeaning about cleaning.

It's also irrational to say that people who do have a cleaner are lazy - they are outsourcing work so they can spend their time on something else, and giving someone else a job in the process.

You could employ a male cleaner (I've had one) if you don't want your son to associate domestic labour solely with women, although as above, the fact that mostly women do it doesn't make it 'less'. And presumably he sees his father do housework.

It's a fact that many immigrants do do cleaning jobs. It's a job where bring fluent in the language isn't necessary

My take on this is coming from the UK, but my cleaner is white. So am I. We grew up quite near each other. I have the money to be able to employ people to do tasks I am able for but that I'd rather not do myself. I am happy to spend money to gain time.
See also - washing my car, cleaning the gutters, putting up wallpaper etc.

It's a job like any other. I've never had anyone be sniffy about me employing a window cleaner or taking my car to the car wash but I have had people ask if I feel "guilty" for having a cleaner. Guess which of these cleaning jobs are done by men and which is done by a woman...

I think it's because jobs associated with femaleness are inherently seen by society as not worth paying for. I ensure my cleaner is paid well and I hope she would say she is treated like a professional doing an important job, which she is.

There are two separate issues in your post OP.

One is about the structural racism in the country you visited and the other is about employing people to carry out household chores.

The structural racism is a serious issue that needs addressing separately to the domestic chores. If it were addressed you would probably find it was people with low incomes who carried out the domestic chores and that would cover a representative sample of the ethnicities in the country.

The domestic chores is more likely to be impacted by structural high levels of wealth inequality. Live in staff can always be afforded by the very wealthy but only by the middle classes in unequal societies often with little or no safety net.

We lived in a country with live in staff and at first didn't have anyone. Locals took us aside and explained that it was part of our social responsibility to employ people and ensure that they were paid, their dc had access to education and healthcare. So we did. It was an adjustment at first but in reality having staff often makes your life easier and occasionally more difficult.

I didn't say it was demeaning. My upbringing is based around being self sufficient, doing lots of your own cleaning and clearing out stuff you don't need- that isn't down to someone else doing it for you. Sweeping the road is not comparable as it is not the mess of one family. You are cleaning the most intimate spaces of someone's home, I just am not comfortable with that.

I think it is good that he sees his Father who is a director in an Architects practice cleaning as it is not below him, which I think having a cleaner insinuates. It is not just the male thing, it is well off male thing.

My mum had what seemed like an army of carers last year when she was in great need of them (nhs) and all of them were white.

My Dad lived in Ghana for a bit and due to the expectation did employ people to clean and run errands. He did pay well but fundamentally I think it made him a bit lazy and when he returned he didn't have staff it was quite an adjustment. He is lovely and fair-minded but that doesn't change the affect it had on his outlook.

My friend, who is from a country where it is quite normal to have domestic help, once explained to me that if you can afford it you are expected to hire domestic help as this will provide a family with an income (no benefits in her country).
i think the main part is to treat domestic help as a human, a service provider, who you talk to, treat and pay fairly. Skin colour shouldn’t come I to it, and I think in the UK it doesn’t matter.
in countries such as South Africa, it would make me feel I comfortable too

My cleaners charge a small fortune so I don't feel bad about it at all 😂
I'm white and they're all white.

My nanny is white British, I pay £250 per day so she's not bring paid menial wages! Being a nanny is a proper profession.

My cleaners have all been white British, I live in London. One was with me for 15 years and was a personal recommendation and the last 2 came from an agency.

My sister is my cleaner. It's just her job. It fits round her kids and it suits me. I don't think if it as her being "beneath" me or menial. Obviously there's no race issue either.

She also means for others and has a great time chatting and drinking coffee (and cleaning obviously). I don't think any of her clients treat her like the hired help tbh.

I do a professional job, my cleaner does a professional job, what’s the issue?

South Arica?

I have a Hispanic cleaner (previous two cleaners were white). I pay her £16 per hour and she is wonderful. I try to be respectful of her in every way (tidy before she comes, chat to her, buy small gifts I know she’ll like - she does the latter for me too) - she wants a better life (and will get there) but needs to earn money whilst she works to it. I employ her service as I work FT, have two small children, a big house and a lazy husband. I can’t do it all. Somethings I feel awkward but ultimately get over it.

In regards to carers from Africa, this is due to the government adding a special visa scheme for skilled care workers during the pandemic which is still in place today.

People in places like Zimbabwe see it as a route into the UK which requires fairly attainable skills (you can train through the Red Cross, etc, it doesn't take years of advanced qualifications, and you don't need expensive equipment that isn't available in poor countries).

Example https://www.thezimbabwenewslive.com/boon-for-zimbabweans-as-uk-relaxes-visa-rules-for-foreign-care-workers/

I live in the much maligned UAE. I have a Filipina nanny, a Filipina cleaner, an Indian guy who does our ironing, a Nepalese pool guy and a Pakistani gardener.

I pay them all above the market rate. They receive all the benefits they are entitled to, and more. (For example, I ‘upgraded’ the standard health insurance usually offered to domestic worker, so they don’t have to pay extra for things like dental care) When I receive my annual bonus from work, they get a slice of it as well - my feeling being that without their hard work, I wouldn’t be able to spend as much time at work.

They are all treated with respect in our home (eg I ask them to call me by my name and not ‘mam’ or ‘miss’, my children absolutely know they deserve respect and are immediately told off if they forgot a ‘please’ or ‘thank you.’

I am immensely grateful for their work and my home would not run smoothly without them.

Ultimately, we all came here for the same thing - to earn better money than we would in our home countries. Just as I work and get paid for it, so do they.

I’m sure I’ll get slaughtered for this post though. Because I live in Dubai, I must be a racist, spoiled, nouveau riche chav who hates human rights and gender equality

I used to live there too, in Abu Dhabi and Dubai. The UAE deserves the vast majority of the criticism it gets. And while obviously it’s good that you treat your domestic help with respect and pay them above the (low) market rate, you’re still participating in a much-abused, corrupt system, whose supposed reforms are tokenistic and largely unenforced. That you also regard yourself as in the same system, just at a higher market value, doesn’t make it ok.

We were extremely uncomfortable when we went to south africa and the white owners of our accomodation (one local, one who'd grown up in kenya) were terrifically rude to their (primarily black) staff. Especially when they had one white member of staff and they were much more respectful to him.

We spent the holiday going out of our way to be polite to all the staff and tipping them extra.

The UK doesn’t feel like this at all, even if certain jobs are dominated by immigrants.

I would argue a lot of cleaners in the UK are immigrants

I’m assuming you donated your salary from your time spent in that much-abused, corrupt system then?

Our cleaner is black(English), nanny is white (not English). Their skin colour doesn't affect or dictate their career choices. The social view of these jobs being like servant roles is outdated, I pay them more than I get paid and they both have multple benefits alongside their salaries. I also think their careers are more meaningful than mine. They're not slaves and it's not demeaning

Do you really think that’s some kind of ‘gotcha’?

I was working as a freelance journalist. Or I was until I realised the press is heavily self-censoring and The National was never going to publish unaltered a mild little interview with a Lebanese spoken word poet who described her work as ‘critical of social and religious authorities”, far less an investigation into what happened to former child camel jockeys after the introduction of robots. I made virtually no money from UAE sources during my time there. DH quit his job and we moved back to London. Of all the places I’ve ever lived, it’s the only one of which I have nothing good to say.

I pay them more than I get paid @Ladyoftheknight how can you afford it then?

You get rude people all over the world.

That one person isn't an indication of how the whole country treats other people though.