Racism against south Asians in the UK

[ArtfulKoala]

This is a very hard thread for me to begin. I’ve been intending to do it for months but felt unable to do so. I was born in the UK but I am of south Asian origin. My parents and grandparents emigrated here. We are five generations British and counting.

I feel that racism and racial suspicion towards brown skinned people has absolutely gone off the scale since Reform gained a foothold in mainstream politics.

At first it was the little things - being subjected to an extended bag check when entering a museum when white visitors walked straight in or were casually asked to just open the large section which wasn’t really checked. This is especially the case at places like Kensington Palace and the Imperial War Museum. For reference, I am talking about a small handbag 15cm by 25cm probably smaller than their own guidelines state. At Kensington Palace, it actually got to the ridiculous stage where the checker was asking me to open more and more zipped sections down to a 5cm one until there was literally nothing left to open and she was effectively asking me to open non existent ones!
There is an incident every time we are out ( me and my teenagers). People loudly talking about us standing right next to us talking about how we are entitled just because we have been directed to the front of the queue by staff as one of us is disabled.
Yesterday, we got on a damned train with cold, vegan salads from m&s and it started immediately. A white couple complaining loudly about “the smell” when there was none because they judged us by how we look and decided our food was smelly upon that basis. Then, when the ticket inspector came round and we showed the disabled railcard, a running commentary on how we must have gamed the system to obtain that.
It is really wearing. I don’t feel like we can belong here anymore despite being educated and fully integrated here. I fully pay for private housing, healthcare and education and yet I may as well have just stepped off a small boat yesterday as far as they are concerned. I cannot fight random bigots daily when we are just trying to live our lives having low key, relaxing private family time.
It is simply fogging to get worse isn’t it? I honestly believe that Farage will be the next PM ( I am politically literate enough to gauge this for myself rather than buying into tabloid scaremongering. Zayn Malik referred to similar experiences in the song he released last week. We have similar colourings to him and never experienced racism ever before this. Perhaps they think we are Middle Eastern and are directing a particular type of hatred towards us. Perhaps it is a new racism because there were not many Middle Eastern people in the UK until recently.

I know that it is not everyone everywhere but it is now frequent enough for us to come to expect it every time we leave the house. Is this the equivalent of the Weimar Republic for the UK? Since there is no such thing as “stopping the boats” then the headlines will continue and the hatred towards brown-skinned fully fledged Brits too.

If I don’t come back to this thread immediately, it is because it is a massive thing for me to write this down and I will be reading and considering the responses.

@GreenGully honestly it’s too hot to argue with someone who doesn’t know the difference between racism/sexism and discrimination/prejudice.

Your best friend being peddled out to prove you're not a racist makes you appear like a closeted racist and if you can’t see why you’re problematic then it’s not for me to try to help you make the connection.

If you feel you’ve “won” some argument or proved some point then Im glad for you, you clearly need something nice in your life. I won’t be replying to your next post you quote me on telling me that Im wrong and that I’ve ignored facts or whatever it is you plan to say. Our views don’t align. I do not believe white people will ever experience the inherent suffering we’ve caused to non whites. I do not believe men will experience sexism. I do not believe that your friend would appreciate you wheeling her out when you are trying to prove you're not a racist.

And I would happily blend racists into a smooth patê regardless of being a terrible human for it.
It’s not like I have access to a blender large enough for it to be possible anyway.

Enjoy the sun.

I'm sorry you have experienced this. I think that social media is dividing us all into different groups and encouraging hate against anyone who doesn't belong into that particular group. Everything is binary now - all people who vote conservative are evil, all people who vote labour are evil, a person of a particular background commits a crime - well ,all people from that background are criminals etc..( southport riots etc..) There is no tolerance for anyone anywhere. I think that people have no patience at all for other people at all. Eating an M&S salad on the train is completely acceptable and I'm sorry you were made to feel uncomfortable.

"Suffering we've caused". Please stop being a self-hating white person. All I ask is you treat an ethnic minority person just normally. Honestly.

That type of talk is what got Lucy Connolly put away. This is incitement to violence. What does it feel like to behave exactly like the people you claim to hate?

The irony is @Tofana doesn't realise just how patronising she is being toward ethnic minorities. It's shocking actually.

Acknowledging that white people have done shitty things isnt self hatred, it’s knowing what I think is an acceptable way to treat people.
I treat everyone the same. I don’t have some white saviour complex. Last person I had a physical fight with was an ethnic minority. Just because I can’t stand racists doesn’t mean i infantilise PoC etc :s

All races have done shitty things.

'I don’t have some white saviour complex.' That's exactly what you have and it's condescending.

@Tofana “Last person I had a physical fight with was an ethnic minority”

Hahaha!

and he fucking won 😤😂

"brown people" have done shitty things as well. Hindus used to make their wives jump into the funeral pyre as well. White people/British empire abolished that.

The Muslim mughals were oppressive as well. The Japanese massacred and slaughtered the Chinese.

I know right. 😂

Calling an individual 'an ethnic minority' when not talking about a group of people, thereby reducing this person to his ethnicity is all rather racist too. But Hey Ho @tofana is a self styled champion for the minorities (whether they want it or not)

Will you go away? I used the phrase “ethnic minority” in response to someone else.

you are becoming obsessed with replying to me when I have said I don’t want to talk to you.

As a white person I would never tell anyone who is not what is or isn't racist.
Part of my job is to welcome and people to The Uk from all over the world often from India and Pakistan and in general they tell me that they don't face any issues here when I check in with them. In fact quite a few come via The US and are very relieved by their reception here.
I am sorry you have had these experiences OP, its not on at all but I still think (hope) that the majority of people here are not racist

Most people have done shitty things but that doesn’t mean I’m ever getting on board with racists. I can find shitty behaviour shitty without it making me dislike everyone else, including white people.

Bowing out this thread. Hope OP doesn’t experience any more racism.

@EmeraldShamrock000 So in response to the fella being rude, you tell the Irish man to go back his country, but that's ok because he's white and Irish?
My parents were Irish and lived in UK and had to face quite a lot of racism, but apparently that's ok.

No.

I'm just pointing how inadvertently racist you really are.

Fine @GreenGully Im racist. Im sexist. Im ableist.

I wish I was as great as you.

I never suggested I was great. Just pointing out your hypocrisy.

@GreenGully glad you have. I really appreciate the time you have taken to inform me I have internal racist beliefs. I shall be campaigning for reform locally and shouting at abuse at african nurses later. Thanks again for your dedication to helping me realise I am in fact racist.

You are most welcome.

I wonder what proportion of rapists carry rape kits? How would searching a man reveal if he is a pedophile rapist? This is just silly, knee jerk crap. Terrorists carry bombs and weapons. That is why searches are carried out. And the vast proportion of bomb and weapon attacks in this country are carried out by people who would not be characterised as ' white'. You know that's true. It may not correspond with how we may like life to be, but there it is.

VannessaFence:
'But for those who wish they could be like Japan and have one homogenous British racial and cultural identity - that's simply not our history. That ship sailed (quite literally) with the explorers.'

It literally is my history and the histories of millions of others. Mass migration into Britain is a recent phenomenon. Census data proves this. And for those of us who married our fellow Brits, that 'racial and cultural identity' continues through our children.

No, they didn't. This is a spectacularly silly thing to say.

Are you kidding? Sorry you can DEFINITELY experience racism if you're WHITE. You need to stop telling people to grow up when you haven't yourself.

As a minority I don't know which is worse, fellow minority who wave racist card at just about anything, or a white person accusing others of racism because they think they are so morally superior without understanding what it is like to experience it. Both sicken me to be honest.