Is my best friend racist?

[Newnamefortouchysubject]

Visited my best friend today for lunch and had a conversation that has left me confused, so thought I'd bring it to the MN table.
We were talking about immigration, refugees and asylum seekers.
My friend says the issue is not the colour of people's skin, but rather their culture.
She has no problem with people who wish to settle here when they embrace the UK culture.
Her attitude is that multicultural societies are almost impossible to implement to everyones satisfaction because different cultures have such widely opposing beliefs and values and she believes it is unrealistic to expect to integrate many different cultures and values without considerable conflict between the different cultures.
Furthermore, she believes it is so difficult to integrate different cultures that people of the same ethnicity will inevitably gravitate towards each other and form their own social groups to the exclusion of other ethnic groups, so the whole idea of integration is pointless anyway.
We just end up with lots of different groups of people isolating themselves from other groups who don't share their ethnicity.
She is firmly of the belief that tensions that people describe as racially motivated actually stem from cultural differences, that she knows no one who has any issue with people of different races when they adopt the culture of the country they choose to migrate to, and that the tension is created by ethnic differences and their cultural differences.

I still say this is racism because racism also includes discriminating against people based on their ethnicity. She called me naive if I believe a truly multicultural society is possible when 'you wouldn't even tolerate a friend who has the same ethnicity as you but doesn't share your values so how do you expect to embrace someone's complete different way of life'.
I explained that the way other people choose to live their lives doesn't affect me. She called me naive again at this point and said when people don't have the same values, when they live according to different social rules, it affects people living in their vicinity who don't live like that.

Im not sure whether to raise the subject with her again, or let it lie because she seemed quite adamant and I'm not sure I could make her see this is still racist.

Now I'm wondering if I don't understand what racism is. Maybe I am naive.

Given you have called me and snide and insulting, I won't be engaging with you.

Okay, but I'll keep reiterating the stats whenever you bring up the 19 rapists being too low a number to be indicative thing.

@nomas

You are being completely disingenuous with your figures.

The table you attached was from the Met Police (so presumably only London) and the numbers showed 19 out of a total of 2,934… not the 140,000 or 200,000 you subsequently quoted. I admit I got some of my calculations wrong too, and based on the number of Afghans in the UK in 2023, they were 15 times, not 20 times more likely to be charged with a sexual offence.

Also, your choice of article to link to subsequently was interesting given its conclusion that “…foreign nationals accounted for a quarter of all “rape of a female over 16” convictions last year, despite them accounting for roughly just 10.9% of the population.”

I’m not saying all Afghan men are “bad”… most won’t commute sexual assault, but the deeply misogynistic culture that they have been steeped in, will doubtless have an impact (as it would if white English boys had been brought up there).

The figures @nomas quoted originally indicate a similar imbalance when you realise that she had subsequently replaced then original 2,934 comparator with 200,000.

Nope, not disingenuous at all. Migration Central says there were 19 sexual offences by Afghans in 2024.

Google says there are 116k identifying as Afghan in the 2021 census, with an additional 86k born in Afghanistan.

Plus the UK took in an additional 25k after this census in 2021.

So, as I said, any credible data agency would laugh at your sample data of 19 offences out of all these thousands of Afghans.

https://www.migrationcentral.co.uk/p/up-to-third-of-sexual-assaults-committed

Why are you trying to inflame racial tension here?… And insist that any concerns about how different cultures mix must be “racist”?

As I have repeatedly said, this is nothing to do with race. I was good friends with a Bangladeshi Muslim when I worked in central London… her ethnicity and religion weren’t and issue, though it helped that she did have similar cultural views and values (democracy, rule of UK law, freedom of religion/expeession, women’s rights etc). Also, I have no issues whatsoever with the two women from India on my team, and have known and been friends with people from many, many ethnicities throughout my life. Race doesn't matter to me at all…

And if someone has a fundamentally different outlook and values to me, it doesn’t matter if they are a blonde haired white-supremisist anarchist, or an brown-skinned Islamist from Somalia, I would have an issue.

I have never “shouted” on MN before but there’s a first time for everything: THIS IS NOT ABOUT RACE! The obsession that some posters have about race is just crazy.

You do realise that the article you quoted from says that the 19 sexual assault convictions by Afghans were out of total of 1,453?! That’s 1.3%.

Given that the 2024 UK population was c.69 million, Afghans would have to total 900,000 for their conviction rate to be proportionate, FAR FAR higher than the numbers you quoted.

I’d suggest taking a long, hard look in the mirror before mocking others’ grasp of statistics in future.

The figures @nomas quoted originally indicate a similar imbalance when you realise that she had subsequently replaced then original 2,934 comparator with 200,000.

That's a good spot! And of course my figures from other European countries are being roundly ignored as well as I previously pointed out the poster's rudeness - which somehow negates relevant statistics, or something (especially when they don't suit).

I've just looked at the provided link now and it's actually horrifying - quite why anyone would link that when wanting to prove that certain nationalities don't assult more is beyond me.

"The figures would mean that the conviction rate for foreign nationals is 5.75 per 100,000 of the population and 1.77 per 100,000 for the British population - a conviction rate which is 224% higher. In other words, foreign nationals are convicted for sexual assault on a female at a rate 2.24 times higher than the British population."

and

"It is of course worth noting that a significant number of foreign born people have been awarded British citizenship in recent years and are thus likely inflating the actual British conviction rate."

The article also says foreigners have a much higher conviction rate than British people charged with sexual assails, this is likely due to lack of access to a good defence lawyer.

One sexual assault is too many.

But 19 is too small number to judge an entire community.

I fully agree with your friend. If you emigrate to another country learn that countries culture and language, not try and impose your own culture or laws.

As I said, I do not engage with people who call me snide and insulting, especially when they can’t point to a single example of it.

The article also says foreigners have a much higher conviction rate than British people charged with sexual assails, this is likely due to lack of access to a good defence lawyer.

Everyone in the UK is provided with a defence lawyer if they're unable to pay for one.
We both know that the reason is people who are from cultures with a very different view of women, and nothing to do with the ability of their legal representation.

But 19 is too small number to judge an entire community.

Time for the chart again.

"The figures would mean that the conviction rate for foreign nationals is 5.75 per 100,000 of the population and 1.77 per 100,000 for the British population - a conviction rate which is 224% higher. In other words, foreign nationals are convicted for sexual assault on a female at a rate 2.24 times higher than the British population."

”Foreign nationals” will include many people who share significant common ground with our culture and values, be they white, black, brown or whatever…. That number will be massively skewed by those that don’t, such as those from misogynistic Islamic cultures.

I can’t quite believe how the Left are sacrificing women on the altar of identity politics, first gender, now culture (dressed up as race).

She’s racist. She doesn’t think she
is because she’s trying to justify it with soundbites from Reform types.

Just because she doesn’t have friends of different cultures, doesn’t mean other people don’t. This means she is also ignorant.

There are frankly many white English people I’d rather not hang out with or live near and many people from the vast aray of cultures and backgrounds who are my friends and neighbors whom I am delighted to live side by side.

Our children are educated alongside one another in an incredibly mixed, tolerant and happy state school. Over my dead body would they grow up to be such bigots!

YFIAB op.

I can’t quite believe how the Left are sacrificing women on the altar of identity politics, first gender, now culture (dressed up as race).

I used to be very much one of them. What started my change of mind was the Cologne mass sexual assult incident on NYE 2015.
And between then and now, I've seen more and more people come to the same realisation.
I wrestle with this, as I also know and like people who are immigrants to the UK and are Muslim, who would never do this or break any other law for that matter, and I worry how things will be for them if there's too much of a backlash. It's for the sake of decent immigrants as well as women and children generally, that the government needs to get a grip of this. Instead they seem intent on censoring, gaslighting, and inflaming tensions. It feels unsustainable.

Plenty of people in our own culture who think women are second class citizens citizens and who rape women. Would probably happily have multiple wives if the laws allowed. Instead they just shag about.
it’s not a culture thing. It’s a fundamental beliefs system thing and that can vary as much within a culture as between cultures

Quote an assumption, when the vast majority of the foreign assault convictions are from non-Muslim countries.

Plenty of people in our own culture who think women are second class citizens citizens and who rape women

I'd happily see the back of them too if possible. To somewhere deserted so they're not inflicted on anyone else.

But oh dear, it’s clear you won’t understand this either.

Interesting that you whine about another poster being rude to you when you make remarks like this...

Despite it being explained to you in painfully simple terms, you continue to demonstrate complete ignorance of even the most basic statistical concepts. Whether this is intentional or not, I have no idea. Though I suspect.

You are obviously and demonstrably wrong in both your reasoning and your conclusions.

You are, however, entirely correct that there’s little value in continuing to engage with someone who has to resort to silly insults when they find themselves unable to formulate a coherent argument. If your strategy is to shut down discussion by being so consistently and tiresomely obtuse that people lose the will to continue, congratulations. I’m out. 👍

Interesting that you whine about another poster being rude to you when you make remarks like this...

Interesting that you’re criticising me yet have ignored your comment to me that I was responding to which was ‘Oh dear. Though I suppose it's better that you just don't understand…’

What you’re basically saying is that you can say whatever you want and are not rude, but me saying the same thing to you is rude. Can you explain the double standard?

And once again, go to any credible data agency and they will tell you they can’t work with a sample size of 19. The number is too small.

And once again, go to any credible data agency and they will tell you they can’t work with a sample size of 19. The number is too small.

You can, although the result will be much less robust than a larger data set.
But as I've said, we've got data from a variety of European countries, so are not confined to such a small dataset.

I think very many of us can recall the moment we first started to wonder. This thread really suggests scales are falling from eyes at quite a pace now, I can't imagine the conversation being like this even a year or two ago on MN, a famously 'leftie' forum. I think people are starting to suspect that 'diversity' is not always our strength, and that all cultures are perhaps not in fact equal.

i think you’re missing the point. My children are also in a school with others from different backgrounds, and they get along very well. I believe other cultures can and do enrich us….

But this is about those cultures in the UK that don’t integrate and share common values (democracy, women’s rights, freedom of speech/religion etc.), in particular how their extreme patriarchal and misogynistic cultures create significant risks for women whose lives overlap with theirs (the Rotherham grooming gang being just one example.)

I’ll champion the right for women to be safe from sexual abuse any day over pressure to be politically correct and pretend that there are no issues with certain cultures in this country.

Completely agree!

If integration was not a problem you'd expect an even distribution of races and cultures all over the UK, however, there are many cities over the UK which have names like "Chinatown", "Little Germany" etcetera.

First generation immigrants will group together with people of their own culture because they struggle to integrate and this is how these small pocketed communities come about.

It takes several generations of social mobility to get away from this, but the hub for new immigrants is already there and will always be its own "culture within a culture"