to be annoyed at so much racism re “the boat people”

[NavyOrca]

A large hotel local-ish to us (around 10 miles away) is currently closed for bookings as it is being occupied by just under 400 asylum seekers.

Recently, in our village and a couple of neighbouring ones, there has been a spate of parcels being stolen from doorsteps. I’m sure you can all work out who has taken the blame for this….! Even though one of the perpetrators is known to be a local lad, born and bred in our village, some people are still blaming others..

The comments on Facebook community groups are disgusting.

Since when has it been acceptable to so readily stick the blame upon those literally fleeing their countries?

I honestly feel that as a human race, we are devolving.

@GeneralPeter us every day citizens have little to who does or doesn’t arrive in who does or doesn’t arrive in “our” country. Therefore any racist generalisations of all Afghans (or Poles, or whatever other cultural group you want to use as an example, as you said there is no actual data to support your claims for the U.K.), serves no purpose but to harm the innocent Afghans (or Poles, or whatever other cultural group you want to use as an example). Racism has harmful effects on all of the people you choose to lump together as “low value” or “idiots” or whatever other ignorant terms have been used to describe people on this thread, not just the ones you claim to be criminals.

That is exactly how racism works - some people from x group commit y crime, so let’s treat all people from x group like they’re criminals.

Thanks. I don't think a claim about the statistical properties of a group is a claim about every member of the group. Do you really?

Whether generalisations are racist or not I think mainly depends on the rationale and motivation of the person making them (though I think reasonably foreseeable effects are relevant to some extent too).

"Serves no purpose but to harm..." I disagree, in the general case. I don't, for example, believe that recognising that men are a much greater sexual violence threat than women "serves no purpose but to harm" men. It serves the purpose also of protecting women from sexual violence. It's debatable whether it even harms men as a group.

In the specific case (specific immigrant groups), I think the logic runs similarly. I recognise there is some harm in that case (risk of stigmatisation), and some good (less gang rape, to use the German Afghan example). It's then a policy trade off of how much gang rape we want to accept to reduce stigmatisation (or vice versa). Trade-offs are the absolute bread and butter of policy discussion and of intelligent thinking about the world in general. There is nothing disreputable in considering them.

I've certainly not used the terms low-value or idiots, or claimed all members of a group to be criminals.

I actually support very open immigration. To me, identifying and fixing the problems that that brings is absolutely fundamental to that. I feel like a doctor who wants to show people the benefits of vaccination. Data arrives that a few specific vaccines have horrible effects. Why would I want to ignore that? I'd want to work out what's gone wrong in those cases and fix it, lest the population reject vaccines overall. Meanwhile I have colleagues telling the patients that they are mistaken or immoral to have concerns, while wishing to conceal the data.

(I don't even want to block Afghans, who I think we have a special obligation to. But I take the real difficulty of the resulting commitment seriously. I also think that treating gang-rape stats as irrelevant probably in the end will lead to greater stigmatisation of innocent Afghans. Just like if we shut our eyes to the threat men can pose of sexual violence, and removed all our protections against it, the ultimate result would be more fear of men as a group).

Those four Afghan ‘children’ who arrived via boat that gangraped a girl in Kent from their school aside, I’m sure 🙄

Thanks for your opinion. Presenting statistics from a completely different country to back up your claims is nonsensical. Perhaps what you should do is present other evidence such as newspaper articles and reports. If crime has gone up in areas where there are lots of asylum seekers, it will be reported in the paper.

Articles from the UK would be great, not Sweden.

I do this with men tbh. We all should as a matter of safety

@RingoJuice Yes. I'd put it slightly differently. But I think all sensible men should understand why you would do that. It's not a smear of all men.

I don’t actually disagree with you. What I find frustrating, though, is how you claim not to see that people (on this very thread and in the outside world) are lumping all refugees, migrants and anyone with brown skin into the same category based on these assumptions.

The “rationale” of many of these racists are based purely on hatred. It’s just fortunate for them that there are now enough people refusing to acknowledge racism when it exists for them to hide behind.

Someone upthread said something along the lines of “save your cries for racism for actual racism” (I can’t remember the wording and can’t be arsed to look for it but it was along those lines). When does racism become “actual” racism? When we’re arrested for crimes we didn’t commit? When people start refusing to serve us or rent to us because of “our kind”? When the places we’re living in are set on fire? Where does racism start and end because, as far as I can see, it starts here.

Which is reasonable. As women in a patriarchal society, we are the ones in vulnerable positions so it makes sense to be wary of men as a whole. I do the same.

The difference is, however, people aren’t talking about their husbands, sons, brothers, uncles here. Only the migrant ones, which strikes me as odd.

(Edited to add that I don’t literally mean your own husband, brother, son, etc., before some genius comes along and makes a comment about family members - which ironically still wouldn’t be unjustified. I mean British, French, American - whatever part of the world you’re in - men in general.)

Something has gone deeply wrong when people cry 'racism' at discussions of the very real risk young, male economic migrants who arrive illegally pose to women and girls - not that colour matters but it's not as if the girls affected are all going to be white. But then I saw it happen in my own city, MPs badically accusing groped schoolgirls of racism. What matters more: 'lefty' credentials or human safety?

@GretchenWienersHair I don't deny that some people oppose asylum seekers or immigrants for racist reasons. I don't doubt there might be some on this thread.

But where we differ is that I feel that there is a large middle group of people who, when they say they are worried about migrants committing crime really are worried about migrants commiting crime. Not migrants being brown. Because it doesn't seem inherently unlikely that people would worry about crime, as a thing, and it doesn't (on what sparse data we have) seem unreasonable to think that there may be a link to asylum seekers, or at least to asylum seekers from the very places over-represented in the stats in the places that publish them. Those people may be right! (If we are like Germany, France and Denmark, they probably are right).

As a result, it seems to me that the most productive thing to try to address is the underlying issue, not the expression of concern. But I've been careful not to make the case that there is an issue in the UK. Becuase we just don't report the data. But we should! So we can fix the faulty vaccines, if that's the problem, or reassure the patients, if that's what's needed.

That seems like a more charitable approach than yours, which seems to assume racism (not even "...until proven otherwise", but just as a matter of definition if someone wants less immigration or expresses crime concern, etc.). That feels like an extreme position, and also not one that's likely to persuade those who aren't already persuaded.

@GretchenWienersHair ETA Please ignore

Except that wasn’t what the thread was about. It was about people stealing Amazon parcels. Just because people have turned the conversation in the direction of sexual violence, it doesn’t mean that the original point doesn’t exist nor that this thread isn’t still littered with racism throughout. And I don’t understand why people are just ignoring it like it doesn’t matter.

No need to @ me on anyone else’s behalf. I am perfectly capable of replying myself. If you have something you’d like to say to me yourself, Username299, feel free to @ me in your own post.

Edit: I’ve just seen your edit and I don’t know what ETA means, but I assume it means you posted by accident? If so, please ignore what I said above and accept my apologies because it was quite (intentionally) rude of me. If you were tagging me just to try to engage me into someone else’s argument, however, please take all of the rudeness I gave 😄

It was posted by mistake. ETA means Edited to Add.

So you would be prepared to agree with posters arguments relating sexual harassment, but not where parcel stealing is concerned?

Crime by white British men is baked into society; it takes a lot of time and effort to fix that (not a reason to ignore it and I think we do talk about male
violence quite a lot)

Crime by migrants is utterly preventable. Just don’t let them come. Or if you need the labor (which I don’t think you do but whatever) then vet them and have preferences for less risky categories.

I have lived in several countries and each time needed to produce a clean criminal record from EVERYWHERE I’ve ever lived to get that visa. But refugees are a category that gets away with not having these checks.
I suppose I just don’t understand the European fetish for importing people that make your society demonstrably less safe.

From an American perspective, you had beautiful clean cities where women could walk about and not worry about being mugged or sexually assaulted. And suddenly you have become indifferent to these changes in your society. Sure it’s not as bad as America (yet) but why does your need for cheap labor outstrip your ability to maintain your safe societies?

If we had the actual statistics, I would be willing to engage in a conversation about sexual harassment. I still would argue that we can’t “send them back” based on the idea that they might be sexual abusers as other posters have said, but I don’t disagree that large numbers of any men in one place is not great for women. I should know, I am one.

What I wont accept is people making racist comments or generalisations about specific cultural groups, and then claiming that they’re not racist and playing victim. Someone even used the phrase “woke left” on this thread ffs. So many people on this thread have that attitude and it’s disturbing.

This is it!! It’s not about their skin colour or anything other than their morals and what they do to this country. It has nothing to do with racism.

Exactly, that's the point. Aside from these criminals, others may be an asset.

Because they’re literally refugees. What would you do, leave them to die?

Ignoring the fact that you're still banging on about women's safety after voting in a rapist, you're conflating several issues.

The thread is about people who are coming to the UK in small boats. They're not being invited in to work, they're claiming asylum.

It's not a 'fetish' to offer people asylum, we're compelled by law to help people. I understand that you don't believe in human rights, the rule of law and offering help but luckily others do.

@GretchenWienersHair yeah, they’d not be welcoming to us in there country either and those of you that think they’d be an asset to the country are wild.

I see - my apologies!

Well luckily for you, you’re not in a position where you need to claim asylum in another country. How fortunate, eh!

(Also, since you love England so much, you should try getting the language right. It’s “their countries”, not “there”.)

Erm… hold on. I thought your rule was that we couldn’t look at what was happening in other countries with similar issues and population and culture to evidence how it may affect our own?

Why are you constantly banging on about Trump on a UK thread?

I have questions for you.

You stated that women are more likely to be abused by a man they know than by an unknown man with the heavy implication that this was because unknown men are safer rather than women are much less likely to walk alone at night and come into contact with unknown men.

You also said males are more likely to be attacked by unknown men than women are, is your conclusion to this that this is because men are more vulnerable than women are to male violence rather than they’re more likely to walk alone at night?

You also stated that we cannot regard German statistics because we are in the UK, so could you please explain by what process you believe Germany are attracting all the bad man and we are attracting all the good, law abiding men?

Thank you 😊