Are people on Mumsnet secretly racist or what?

[2024wtf]

So many posters not being called out. They say blatantly racist things and back it up with "You can't keep shutting us down by calling us racist". It's because you're a racist assh*le.

Comments aren't even being deleted. Last month, you called YOURSELF a Karen you'll have pages and pages of people telling you off.

Posts are not deleted just because people report that they are racist. MN looks at the content and makes a judgement as to whether they are actually racist or not.

So I would respectfully suggest that, just because you may not have seen racism, that doesn't mean that it isn't there.

I’m a serial name changer who has been here around 15 years and have been accused of racism in the last couple of days.

To be clear I don’t think I am (I know everyone thinks that though), I detest Farage and the riots.

I have an opinion that the political environment over the last decades has led to this, with many people disenfranchised, perhaps not having the emotional intelligence to deal with this in a mature and useful way, voting is not the democratic process that it’s supposed to be and realistically using our vote leads to more disenfranchised people, there’s no simple cure for the shit this country is currently going through.

By not being clear about certain issues (immigration, NHS, education) and actively allowing things to deteriorate and appearing to flounder, Tories and Starmer’s piss poor effort of an opposition has allowed Farage to have a voice, a strong voice unfortunately.

Yes I believe the rioters are right wing thugs, yes I believe Farage has been inciting violence and has an agenda, but unless we change politics so everyone is represented and there is clarity around immigration (which seems to be what’s driving most of this unrest) this will continue and get worse.

The UK has become more tribal, more polarised. Before brexit it was felt that there was input from Russia or China to stir this up, I have no idea if that’s true or not, but whatever has caused it we are a divided nation and we don’t have strong united leaders to combat it. I feel it’s inevitable that we will become a harder right country over the next few years. If we want to break this trajectory it’s vital that everyone is listened to and that all issues are clearly laid out in a way that everyone can access and understand it.

We have the problem that mainstream news and SM have very much cherry picked what news people are told, which leads to distrust of news sources. Add in twatter and tiktok, where people can share live feeds that contradict what we’re being told and you have a perfect storm. Treat people like scumbag idiots and they’ll behave like scumbag idiots. This has been bubbling up for years.

This, 100%. I do wonder why people are so fixated on making Britain look terrible?

We need to bring back proper teaching of history, in schools, in the media and in places like the national trust.

We need to bring back proper teaching of history, in schools, in the media and in places like the national trust.

Yes definitely.
I don’t think the current trend of “queering history” is doing anything to help.

Im glad people like you and @Lacdulancelot can recognise your bias. The ones who think racists are just thugs throwing bricks at Asians or people in white sheets burning crosses on black peoples lawns are often racist themselves so they use extreme examples to seperate themselves from the more “unacceptable” racists.

I had an incident outside a local shop recently, I was waiting for the place to open just before 9am. I had a delivery at home due a few minutes later. There was some sort of delay which meant just after 9am it wasn’t open and I was getting anxious and kept looking at my watch. There were a few people waiting near me too.

This woman out of nowhere ordered me to stop looking at my watch because it wouldn’t make the shop open any earlier. I was speechless but thankfully found my words and told her where to go. I really doubt if I was a fellow white Woman she would have dared to speak to me like that. What harm was it causing her if im keeping an eye on my watch? But because my skin wasn’t white and I was wearing a headscarf she thought she could try and order me around. I’m so glad I put her in her place.

When the shop finally opened I was at the front of the queue as I’d been there first, I went to stand at the counter to get served and I was gobsmacked to find this nasty woman who came in behind me went through the back entrance where the staff go - she was actually a staff member there!

now, I’ve heard reports that customer service in that shop is poor but that’s more people complaining about them opening later/closing earlier and long queues. I doubt she picks fights with most customers in my white majority town. There are white people who stand in the queue and complain loudly about how slow staff are and I’ve never seen them challenged.

She has a POC colleague that she made a big deal of saying hi to when she entered, so in her mind she’s probably not racist as she speaks nicely to some POC 🙄

The people who are making Britain look terrible are the racists and the far right thugs who are burning libraries and terrorising innocent people.

But I absolutely agree with better teaching of history. It is incredibly important that people have a better understanding of the past so that we can learn from it and understand how it affects the present.

Shall we start with a national push to educate people about the rise of fascism and how it was allowed to take hold?

What I see time and time again is that anyone who has an opposing view on immigration gets shouted down as a racist. I don't think that's fair. You can have concerns about immigration, I don't think it automatically makes you a racist.

I'm not one of them, I am the child of an immigrant for the record but I do get a bit fed up when people want to shutdown other people's opinions by labelling them a racist. Racism is being prejudiced against people on the basis of their ethnicity, this isn't always the crux of the immigration issues. (Although, clearly for some it is 😕)

And how the UK built its wealth on the back of slavery and colonialism. Hello Liverpool, Glasgow, Bristol!

The rioting seems to have emboldened people to condemn it but hastily follow up with 'but it's not far right to think the government has to do something about immigration'.
The fact that people aren't just condemning the rioters in the strongest possible terms is worrying to me.

That type of message pushes people away.
Of course we need to understand our history, but the pushing of our ancestors actions - not our actions.
For some people trying to make current generations feel responsible for past generations pushes them into the arms of people like Farage and Tommy Robinson.

It’s like how feminism is thought to push some young men to Andrew Tate - of course it’s wrong, but we need to recognise this and approach things in a way that doesn’t lose the target audience.

Humans are tribal, its just how it is.
Most of the rioters will put their football shirts back on in a few weeks and it’ll all calm down as they’ll be scrapping over whose team is best.

Immigration does worry me, but it’s not about skin colour it’s the sheer number of people on an already overpopulated little island. Round here the quiet roads are now busy, and the busy roads are gridlocked, every field or bare patch of land seems to have a planning application pending, public services are failing, everything from GPs to highways. I would quite like to emigrate somewhere myself!

The rioters are mindless thugs, they truly are racist pigs. They don't care about any of the actual issues, they probably don't even know what they are. These people shouldn't be allowed to breed.

I'm all for letting people peacefully protest which demonstrates that people feel strongly about an issue but looting a Greggs? I'm all for sticking those pillocks on a boat to Rwanda. I'd swap them for hardworking immigrants any day of the week.

Although apartheid and colonialism are excused on Mumsnet these days.

Are they? I think I must miss some things. I avoid the really aggro threads mostly.

Report to HQ, though. They're usually very good if things are flagged to them.

I know. These thugs set fire to hotels knowing that there were people in them. There were small children in the one in Rotherham.

And yet people are queuing up on MN to say, "yeah, but they have a point".

It is deeply shocking to see that so many people are willing to align themselves with this kind of racist thuggery.What a terrible stain on our nation, of which they claim to be so proud. It's utterly shameful.

For me it’s got to be a balance though.
Condemning without fixing what has led to this is pointless.
I hope the rioters are all punished for this, but at the same time I hope that someone in charge has a good hard look at how things have been done and what has given opportunists like Farage and Robinson the room to slot into popularity.

They're out and proud.

It's not just Mumsnet, it's absolutely everywhere. Far worse on social media. Think we have to accept the sad reality that millions in Britain are racist.

I hope the rioters are all punished for this, but at the same time I hope that someone in charge has a good hard look at how things have been done and what has given opportunists like Farage and Robinson the room to slot into popularity.

Thing is, these people have always been there. They've always had these views, they've just normally covered them up. Farage and Robinson have legitimised them but people have always been racist. Look back to the 50s/60s and the infamous 'No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs' posters.

Yes I agree, but it appears to be mainstream again, and we should be looking to understand why.

But that’s the thing isn’t it? “It’s not racist to worry about immigration” is employed as a defence all the time, and yet do the people who say this actually look into the numbers, for the uk, for around the world? Do they look at how immigrants are employed? Do they see the immigrants they know? Do they know ANYTHING at all about immigrants?
They just assume immigration is bad and not just a natural part of life around the world.

Don't get me started on “ah but it’s always certain cultures which hate women and are violent” Again, these people clearly don’t look at the numbers. Or even see in front of their own eyes.

There are names that turn up time and again on threads about the riots who make no secret of how racist they are. I've given up reporting them.

But that’s the thing isn’t it? “It’s not racist to worry about immigration” is employed as a defence all the time, and yet do the people who say this actually look into the numbers, for the uk, for around the world? Do they look at how immigrants are employed? Do they see the immigrants they know? Do they know ANYTHING at all about immigrants?

Yes. I believe a lot of people who have concerns about immigration do know a lot about it. You're missing the point that was made earlier. People genuinely concerned about immigration are concerned about the policies, not the people.

Only about 5% of uk land has houses in it so we aren’t “full”. What we do have is decades of governments not building the homes, Drs surgeries etc which are needed to support the people. In the last two years the Torys gave a million people visas to legally come into the country yet have built very few houses. It’s criminal! People should be focusing on that, not the 50,000 people who came over in boats.

Yes I agree, but it appears to be mainstream again, and we should be looking to understand why.

@TygerLyon The thing is, it's not just the UK. It's all over Europe. Racism has been steadily growing in countries like Austria and Germany over the past several years, and many others. This is a widespread problem.