People who have cleaners, nanny's etc

[W0MENclimb]

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 a white make gardener who's in his 50s I've worked for black, Indian and gay people it didn't bother me I have always joked I'm one of the "staff" and if I wasn't bald I'd tug my forelock. My wife is a cleaner. She also doesn't mind whom she works for...unless as another poster said they do actually treat you as a lower being, which has happened to both of us.
Employing someone means that they can put food on the table. I'm guessing that you were in South Africa and given the high unemployment levels, increased problems with the infrastructure, then employing a black person is a good thing...as long as they are treated with respect.
I was disgusted the last time I was there with a white couple who were visiting a water park...Ushaka, in Durban...They took their employee clearly to look after the kids but rather than say wear your own clothes she was wearing an overall, clearly to keep her in her place.

A friend had a job that took her to South Africa. She lived in a gated community and was told she would be expected to employ a black cleaner . The cleaner was well paid and they bought lots of books and toys for her children even though she was useless at cleaning.

yabu because in some countries, it is much needed, and well sought after, work. I am guessing your friend is an expat in a developing country?

Her cleaner likely has children to feed.

I am white British and have a white British cleaner - not out of anything other than she was recommended to me by a friend.

You hand wringing about having someone help out around the house is your own business to deal with, not project it on people who are busy and happen to be able to find the money to pay a cleaner.

I am sorry, but this is utter nonsense.

No one is expected to do anything. People hire help if they want/need to. No one is being forced to hire anyone.

And not everyone has domestic help.

Maybe that is what she told you, seeing as it's not the norm in the UK, and there is possibility of friends/family suggesting having help = being lazy. Which has already been said on this thread.

In the 50s and 60s female Irish immigrants in the US were in high demand as domestic staff because they were white, catholic and therefore seen as trustworthy both with the family silver and husbands.

my cleaners are both eastern European. I am British. does that make me a problem?

My cleaner is a white man. I could clean my own home, but it's saved so many arguments between me and DH about division of labour that that alone is worth the cost. Dreading having to give it up to be honest.

And a few generations earlier, they were a despised immigrant group considered uncivilised, dirty and shiftless, their Catholicism evidence of their gullibility and depravity.

There is wide-ranging research on the racialised constructions of the ‘Irish Bridget’ alongside the black ‘Mammy’ stereotype in US domestic service in the 19th and early 20thc by April Schulz and others. One of the more uncomfortable threads in US social history is the periods when Irish Americans and African Americans clashed when they were the two most despised ethnic groups, constructed in similar terms as apelike, rebellious and unfit to self-govern (Jacobsen, Knobel, Ignatiev.)

We have cleaners, a husband and wife team who are white British. Neither of us are British and I’m not white.

I expect I live in the country you refer to. I employ a nanny, she is brilliant and my kids love her to bits. She has a contract, at least 6/7 weeks holiday, gets paid over double min wage, interest free loans and is very happy working for us, She’s been here for 10 years and although my kids are older now, we’ll keep employing her until she is ready to retire as she is unlikely to get another job at her age - mid 50s. When she had Covid we paid for her to get tested and meds for her whole family. During lockdown we paid her full salary for over 5 months when she didn’t work (most people paid nothing).

If she quit tomorrow and got a nice office job on triple her salary I’d be so happy for her, but in a country with 40% unemployment I think that’s highly unlikely.

No time, she's on the dole 🤣🤣

Get over yourself. Inequality doesn't stop existing just because you don't bring people into your house to do domestic work.

You still live in a world where factory workers, cleaners, bus drivers, etc etc are working class and disproportionately from ethnic minorities. If you're middle class, you have the privilege of benefitting from their work. Even if they're not in your house.

Next time you get a tube in London to your office and have a takeaway coffee on the way - there's a whole chain of people whose labour makes that possible.

If people do cleaning, childcare etc and are treated well and paid well - why is that a problem?

What a strange thread. I have a cleaner. She is well paid, and works flexibly around her children. She is Eastern European (white). I don't see why skin colour matters.

I have a white cleaner. She's paid pretty well so don't see the problem.

We went

Sorry posted early. We went to Barbados on Holliday and it was a really clear divide between the wealthy white people and the local people who did all the cooking / cleaning etc. I did find that weird.

I live in SE London. My cleaner is from SE London. She is also the same ethnicity as me. Is that acceptable to @W0MENclimb ?

Totally off thread, but just wanted to use a 'teachable' moment (as an Ofsted Inspector once said to me!)
You put an s on the end of cleaners as you referred to the plural cleaners. All correct.
When you wanted to pluralise the word nanny, you put an inappropriate apostrophe in before the s. Plurals do not need an apostrophe. Commonly the plural of a word ending in y is to use ies as in family, families. But that's not my point!
No apostrophe in a plural.
(I'm not having a go, genuinely, just using a teachable moment!)
I'll get my coat... 😏😊

My cleaner earns a higher hourly wage than me.
Am I happy to pay this & do I think she deserves it? Yes
Is she a different race & nationality to me? Yes
Is she exploited? Definitely not

Is the country you visited majority black eg and African or Caribbean country? In that case the majority of all workers would be black.

My friends used to live in an African country and paid a cleaner that came every day £150 a month. I was appalled by how low that is, but they said it's such a high wage in that country people were saying they over paid her and the cleaner employed her own cleaner and also help for her daughter's baby on this wage- she would have much rather worked for my friends family (one white one not) than for a local family. I felt a lot more concern for the cleaners cleaner than the cleaner if that makes sense!

I don't know what point you can be making other than 'you should clean up your own stuff' - not everyone wants to do this. Just like not everyone wants to cook for themselves so they go to restaurants/get take away, or wax their own legs so they go to a salon. It's a free world. As long as people aren't being exploited and they are paid a wage where they can have a decent standard of living and they have opportunities to get jobs other than cleaning via studying or training, if they want to.

My cleaner now is Hispanic but I’ve had white in the past too. For me it is about who’d do the best job (eg recommended by friends etc) and who is reliable/ trustworthy. Whether they have certain skin, hair, eye colour- it’s not part of the decision whether I’d hire them or not.

The majority of benefit claimants in the UK also work, often full time. Lazy stereotype.

I think the Uk should relax their live in domestic help visa laws, if they could give short term one year contracts in the same way they do to seasonal contracts for fruit pickers etc, and people could have a live in nanny or cleaner that wouldn't stay so long that they could potentially be a cost to Uk resources and would have a home living in so wouldn't put more pressure on housing, they could earn a lot in a year and take money back home, and we could have more affordable au pair style childcare to help women back into work. Would be a great system.

In the countries you talk about it's normal to employ household staff whatever your nationality. I have Pakistani friends who have a staff of 10 to run their home in Pakistan, she's a dr he's a professor

When you go on holiday, do you all still pay your cleaner?