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.

My mistake, I could have sworn you just compared the Roman occupation to mass immigration. LOL

It’s crazy isn’t it.

I don't think there is widespread dislike of South Asians in the UK. Just those who choose to join the rape gangs.

I want to reply to @IslandVoiceUK because I think it's important to have a discussion rather than just call others stupid or racist. I really don't think that's helpful and, if anything, makes things worse. For context, I'm British, my partner is British from a South Asian family and I've also been an immigrant in another country.

@IslandVoiceUK I think many people have concerns about poor immigration policies and would agree that people shouldn't move here if they're actively hostile towards British culture or have no interest in integrating. That shouldn't be a controversial thing to say and you're right that many other countries would not accept this.

I also agree that it's a shame that the national flag has become associated with racism. People should not be made to feel ashamed for the historical sins of their ancestors and this "woke" idea that we should all be apologising to each other for things we didn't do is nonsense.

However, there's a few of your points I can't get behind.

Firstly, I don't believe beauty trends have anything to do with reverse racism. Beauty trends are just trends and there's already a shift back towards the waif-like Kate Moss look. Statistics show that black and brown people still get the fewest likes on OLD so the white beauty standard is still dominant.

It's also not the case, statistically, that black and brown people are more likely to be selected for jobs. Studies have shown that it's still the case that a CV with a "foreign" sounding name is more likely to get passed over than one with a British sounding name. It's down to cognitive bias and people instinctively wanting to hire in their own image.

But the main point I can't agree with is this one:
there’s a difference between being a citizen and being part of a deeper shared national identity that’s rooted in culture, ancestry, and history

At what point do you switch from becoming a citizen to becoming part of the national identity? If someone's great-grandparents are German but their grandparents were born here then do they count? You would think so because that's our own royal family. So why is it different for people with brown skin? Why can't they be part of the national identity?

Every time I've travelled from Heathrow, I've always been pulled for a "random bag" check whole the white passengers walked ahead.
As a 40 something woman of colour with dodgy eyesight & knees & kids, I'm regarded as a potential threat to the UK!

Yes it is getting worse since the popularity of Reform and I am being questioned more about whether I will retire to my home country. Well yes I am retiring to my home country, the UK where I was born & brought up.

Thats a load of regurgitated soundbites.

I’m so glad you’ve felt like you’ve never been held back, but you say We are south Asian. We live in a South Asian community in the UK which is perhaps why. When I was teaching a mum who had come from an African country told me they had tried to integrate into a predominantly white, local community, but were sadly the victims of racism so moved to a more diverse one and were happier. It’s really sad that migrant families who make the effort to become members of ‘indigenous’ communities can be punished for it by being shunned so they then move to communities made up of ppl from the same original country and the same racists accuse them of not trying to integrate! They can’t win.

@VanessaFence you've hit the nail on the head with your last comment, it's to do with the colour of skin. The British Royal family is about as international as they come with the amount of European DNA & foreign marriages until Meghan Markel. There isn't really much English blood in King Charles' generation but they've all been white.

No they didn't

The smell thing is funny. I've had that happen to me when returning a jacket, which was hilarious as it had only been in my car and I don't even know how to cook Indian food (unfortunately). Also my great grandfather immigrated over 100 years ago, so likely my family was here before that persons. Sorry this is happening to you.

My ex is south asian and whenever we travel with the kids he says walk through with your mum if you don’t want to be stopped. He always gets stopped for extra checks etc, especially when we have travelled to the US.

What makes it feel even more unfair is that you don’t really see British people moving abroad and expecting other countries to adjust their traditions or sense of national identity to suit us. But here, we’re expected to constantly adapt while being told we should stay silent about our own culture. That doesn’t feel like equal respect.

@IslandVoiceUK have you heard of something called the British Empire & colonialism? It went through most of the world, terrorising the indigenous population, asset stripping, taking over countries & stealing natural resources. Mainly to make Britian and the colonial entity more richer at the expense of other nations. As well as imposing British cultural values and the language at the expense of the country's own cultural identity.

When Britian left a country, it left it impoverished & mainly unable to sustain its made own citizens. So they eventually emigrated to other countries like the UK, which is what you're complaining about. This is a very brief summary of the destructive legacy & far reaching consequences of the British colonial regime.

The Romans didn’t replace the British. They built roads, cities and sanitation but left when the Roman Empire collapsed. They didn’t replace the indigenous population.

It's not helpful to keep repeating this claim like it's a fact. I grew up in a mixed area. I had friends with a south Asian heritage and we played at each others houses. My friends parents were extremely lovely to me (white kid) and vice versa.

Who knows what is going on with your experience - maybe your experience is unique and something lay behind it (for example maybe the parents were picking up on racism from the white parents, or there was some other type of toxicity at play).

Search for a thread on here called ‘Primary school head cancels Easter’. I’m afraid I can’t link it on my phone.

Sorry this is happening to you and your family OP.

Sounds like you have intersecting factors such as race and disability at play so you are getting this bigotry from all angles. Disability hate is rampant as well.

All I can say is that I don’t understand why people act like this towards other human beings. I never have nor would.

Reform have stirred up the rhetoric that immigrants are here to take our jobs and our benefits and they are disgusting. However I’m hoping that people will see how awful they are with the councils they have control over - I live in one of them and they don’t know their arse
from their elbow.

Did you you think the PP was taking about British people living abroad in the 1800s? I’d imagine they were referencing a more relevant time period.

If you’d bothered to read the full thread, you would have seen that PP addressed the Empire point. It’s really not the gotcha you think it is.

I’m really sorry to hear this OP.

What I’ve noticed an uptick of recently is the language used by Palestinian activists/far left people about Israelis, ie they are all occupiers, colonisers, don’t belong in the Middle East and should return to Europe, is being regurgitated by the far right and applied to not just new immigrants to the UK but 2nd/3rd/4th generation. There has always been talk among the right about lowering immigration but it’s only in the last year or so I’ve seen people actively pushing ‘re-migration’ and speaking about immigrants like they are invading and trying to replace the local populace. This is from both left and right though of course applied to different people.

Also, an increasing trend towards Christmas being referenced as ‘the holidays’, US style.

It is a pity that the OP hasn't come back to the thread. It makes you wonder whether they were actually genuine. My initial sympathy is fast waning.

It’s not just her experience. We are in a very ethnically mixed, fairly middle-class part of London. My friend’s daughter desperately wanted her friend to come and play. Not a sleepover or party, just play. They were best friends for the whole of primary school. The little girl was never allowed to play with her out of school, even after years of friendship. If a white parent excluded a child like that, it would be called racist.

My son had a Muslim heritage girlfriend. Again it was all a secret. She was welcome in my house but my son was a secret. Her family would not accept her going out with a white boy. Her parents were born here. Again, her parents would be called racist if they were white.

Just as the OP has had individual experiences, so have other posters on this thread; some have experienced prejudice and some haven’t, or hadn’t until recently.

Yes and those middle class ignorant educators are doing more harm than good for minority communities. They have no idea about cultural nuances and understanding different faiths. I had to 'educate' a primary school teacher about the role of Jesus in Islam. She told all the kids not to give my dd a Christmas card or to mention Christmas in front of her because it would be offensive.

I had to explain to the "teacher" that Jesus's was regarded as a very important prophet in Islam. There is also a chapter in the Quran about Mary & the birth of Jesus, needless to say the teacher was a bit stunned. Probably embarrassed for being right on & ending up trotting put her own unconscious bias in a different way.

I did and they didn't (unless there’s more than 2 posts), I assume that’s why you asked ‘have you heard of something called the British Empire & colonialism?’

Its not supposed to be a gotcha, it’s supposed to make you have a think before you write stupid things you heard someone else say in the Guardian. Just a little bit of critical thinking would go a long way,

I am of mixed white / South Asian background and the UK is my adoptive country. I feel it has given me everything I have and I love it here. I haven't been totally immune to racism but I am largely shielded from it by living in London (although I was once called a "Paki" while minding my own business on the tube). Personally I am disappointed by what I perceive as other South Asians' failure to integrate, a lot of the time. Obviously different cultures band together and it makes sense to live near others like you, but to me they often seem to be homogeneous communities where older family members don't speak English and younger family members only marry people from the same background. It's a shame because it's so insular and allows racists to speak in terms of "us and them." Is the racism getting worse? I don't know, but if the OP feels it I believe it.