AIBU to think that racism is getting a lot worse of late.

[AliceMaforethought]

Just read this awful story in the Guardian. Awful and makes me feel so angry and so unsafe as a half Black woman.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/aug/20/family-in-fear-after-tommy-robinson-shares-video-of-black-man-with-white-granddaughters

I believe it is sadly not safe for women and children to travel, many have been crushed or attacked.
Sadly, female immigrants suffer a high number of sexual assaults on their journey.
I think most people would be happy to see a balance, saving some mothers from a hellish life given a choice.
If they wanted to allow women have freedom, they would send them without men on board.

Amazingly for such a dump it's incredibly popular and sought after as a place to live. I love living in London and take advantage of all the amenities and great infrastructure. You seem to have lived in a very run down part of the city and I'm sorry to hear that.

My partner would absolutely not send me and our 8 year old to our potential deaths crossing the ocean.

He would do that journey, apply for asylum, and then apply for a family visa (for example) so we could then follow. Because that’s the sensible approach.

The only way a quota would work would be in a similar way to the EU who distribute refugees. Otherwise you can't refuse to process asylum seekers.

If your husband sent you and your daughters how would you get out of the country without a chaperone and what about predators including human traffickers who prey on the vulnerable?

Or love thy neighbour
Mind your language.

I remember that too. Dreadful man.

That's exactly my thinking - thinking back to when my kids were small toddlers, would it really be a good idea to trek possibly hundreds of miles with them and then start a perilous sea journey in a little boat?! Some days just going to the corner shop seemed a mammoth expedition, can't imagine a refugees journey! Makes sense to try and get a life established somewhere else first and then move.

Because:
(a) Most women and children would struggle to survive the journey. It isn't just about from Calais to Kent. It won't have been a picnic getting to Calais.
(b) Women and children are at higher risk of trafficking and/or sex crimes.
(c) Women and children are unlikely to have marketable skills, and so would be unlikely to be able to meet the requirements for reuniting family.
(d) In many countries it is the men who are most at immediate risk - whilst women can and do play an active part in society, in repressive countries it is often the men who speak out or are involved in opposition. The need to flee can be very immediate too, so packing a removal van tends not to be the first thought.

You might think that your husband would send you and your daughter to safety first. From a comfortable western perspective, that's lovely. He'd no doubt put you on a plane to a nice safe place. But would he expect you and your daughter to manage a tortuous journey overland and by sea, with no possessions other than what you can carry, over thousands of miles, and organised by people who you know are only interested in the money they make from it. To be blunt - do you know what a five year goes for in places in Europe? Do you know how much you can make from a trafficked sex worker?

Is that genuinely what your husband would do then?

Just as well Scotland's part of the UK or the majority of us would have been jettisoned to some far flung corner of the Empire.🤣🤣

Would he leave you both behind in a war zone to be potentially murdered and raped for a few years while he applied for asylum?
I understand that it is horrendous.
A desperate situation.

But that could take a few years, and if the place that leaving is so terrible, the wife and child may not even survive this wait.

While both staying and the journey are both risky, staying is clearly the more risky of the 2 options, otherwise no one would leave, so why would any man chose the more risky option for his wife and child than himself. In many of the oppressed countries, women are at much higher risk, due to the inherent misogyny. If a women cannot leave the house or work, how can she support herself and her child whilst her husband is making the journey, applying for asylum, finding a job, applying for a visa...

And women and children do make the journey, I think someone above posted that 20,000 children arrived by boat, so it is possible for then to make the journey.

Note also that the majority of the UK do not want existing settled immigrants to be made to leave the UK which is scaremongering and escalating the situation. That's not the case amongst the majority at all. It's now an issue only because of the huge numbers coming into the UK during the last decade. That's what people want addressing - bring the numbers down and find a process (which works!) to stop people arriving on boats. Our infrastructure is on its knees. I honestly struggle to see where migrants are now going to be housed following the legal challenge by councils to stop hotels being used.

Again, read the article I posted about the Sudanese refugee. He was kidnapped multiple times on his journey, including several times by people saying they'd organise passage across the channel on a small boat. A husband may have a chance of surviving the journey, albeit with terrible trauma, a woman and child unaccompanied would not.

I don’t know all obviously. But I do believe I have a very representative distribution of contacts. I have never got an election prediction wrong.

If it was tomorrow reform would win. We should all be worried about that.

And yes they are talking about all that. That’s part of the issue (besides the cultural issues). We are in scarcity mindset.

I doubt the minority who are bothered about refugees being housed in hotels would be happy to see safe, legal routes opened up and refugees housed within local communities. Call me cynical but I'm not sure that's their burning desire.

Trying living in and working in a place like Bournemouth.

At least 3 hotels housing immigrants, with stabbings and in-fighting going unreported in the press.

The ‘women and children’ of these families are not seen.

The men however hang out in the town in groups; intimidating, leering and harassing for money. It’s unpleasant and people don’t go out at lunchtime now in certain areas now because of the jeering. It’s a complex issue but the impact on our daily life is so apparent and unfair. It’s scary. You cannot speak on in publicly as you are called a racist.

Stating facts isn’t being racist.

It’s hilarious how people cherry pick Malcolm X.

You should read his quote in full context.

How do you know what I think 😂 I haven’t given my personal view, more a collective view of what I am seeing.

You might think exactly the same as me, probably not but who knows.

Reform wouldn't win tomorrow, they don't have the candidates apart from anything else. Let's not make far right government a self fulfilling prophecy. We can and must resist.

This is almost victim blaming and passing the blame on to immigrants, when the culprit (Stephen Yucky Lemon) is a white racist.

Well that’s good news. If they had the candidates I believe they would though. Or if it was all votes count not FPTP.

I also believe for the majority of the population migration would probably rank in top 3 voter issues.

My child would have to be in imminent danger of death, and I mean literally knocking on the door within the next 5mins, for me to even contemplate that journey. Those doing it must be really truly desperate.

I can’t imagine bundling him onto a boat, and I don’t think my partner would enjoy having to leave him behind so he could do it instead.

Precisely. The hotels aren’t the problem, they don’t want them anywhere in their community.

I don't yhink that's doable. There are no spare houses, or very few. We only have to look at waiting lists for social housing to realise that's not going to work I'm afraid. If someone is allowed to leap frog over someone else who is on a ten year waiting list for a home, thats going to open a whole new can of worms...

I think you’re right- my friend is mixed race and her lovely mum was shouted at to “go home” a few months ago by some young lads.
This is a lady in her late 70s who’s been in the UK since the 60s and worked her whole career as an NHS nurse 🤬
Said she’s not had anything like that happen to her since the early 80s