Fear of safety for my mixed race family

[Kayakinggg]

I feel a lot of worry about the safety of the country for mixed race people. They are the most precious people in my life. They are my family. My son, my daughter and my husband are all mixed race. I don’t have a close relationship with any other family members and I have a few other friends but they are white so don’t really
Get it.

I know I am not overreacting as racism is clearly on the rise and rampant and the politicians are deeply corrupt in their tactics to turn us all against each other.

I feel guilty to be the only white one in the family. I feel so angry that when I choose to have children, race was not an issue in the UK 🇬🇧 I hate to see it but I feel like I’ve failed them to raise them here even though I didn’t know what the future held. I have this desire to make a plan to move abroad but logistically and financially o don’t think that will be possible.

I feel like everyone else (that I know) is safe and protected but my little precious family is at threat. I can’t even speak to my own parents about it as they don’t believe reform are racist.

I feel like I’m stuck in a nightmare and it’s only going to get worse.

In my deepest darkest moments I fear my family being taken from me as there is a hate group towards mixed race people that is only growing. I’m scared of history repeating itself.

My feelings are worry, fear, anger, loneliness.

AIBU?!

I am looking into counselling but money is tight atm and we are not in a position to change location. My kids are happy and thriving in school and have a strong social network.

Im sorry i find the post extremely alarmist and performative. Im a 30 yo, half Indian woman and would have said up until very very recently that the UK is one of the least racist countries in the world. I am white passing but with a tan can look fully Indian.

There has absolutely been a turn since thousands of undocumented people came into the country. People are fed up of British citizens suffering at the hands of people who should not even be here. I am fuming at all the governments who have led us to this point. We have become so fragmented and it really was not the case until extremely recently.

This is why I think these type of vague threads are quite damaging as they serve to create divide. If you are for example a person of Pakistani descent and you keep hearing online that white people around you are racist and dont want you there, you are obviously going to become fearful and that manifests itself in a hostile demeanor and reluctance to interact. The white person who never had racial prejudice now is being told they are racists and that they are to be feared which is incredibly offensive (and racist too) but then they start to experience hostility and as a result become either paranoid about their race and reluctant to engage for fear of being called racist, or they start to develop their own theories based on experience for example that local Pakistanis are unfriendly and don't want to engage with me. Either way you end up with a scenario of racial tension between two groups of people that is completely artificial and fueled by online comments.

My DH is Indian and my son is mixed race but both are British. I'm white and Irish. I find it hilarious and sad that if people were to look at us they would say that it's fine for me to be here but not my British family. I've had people say to me that I'm not really an immigrant when I've objected to the way they speak about immigrants during the brexit ordeal.

What I've noticed is that when DS and I do the school run on our bikes, I rarely get any hassle at all. My DH regularly comes home after the school run and describes incidents where he has been beeped at, shouted at, or followed closely by a car in an intimidating way. Is it because of the colour of his skin - maybe not but I can't understand what he could be doing so differently to me.

👏👏👏

hear hear

Just pouring fuel on the fire. And for what?

I’m white but not British by birth and what you describe has always been there , people in my position have always been targets as you describe . It’s not much to do with colour but what perception people have of you and where you live .
My friend is Jewish and currently doesn’t feel safe .
Last week I went to Oldham and I felt completely unsafe as pretty much the only non Muslim woman walking around , men where extremely rude to me when I asked him for directions and certainly didn’t feel at ease for a single moment I was there . 3 weeks ago I went with a work colleague to Birmingham for a meeting , she felt perfectly safe as a Muslim woman , me not so much . I’m sure the opposite would happen to her in some places .

I think an important piece of the jigsaw that people may be missing is that quite a few British of all colours feel that our personal safety is at risk due to Islamist terrorist attacks.

Of 31 terrorist attacks on British soil since 2000, only 9 have not been by Islamic extremists. One hundred+ dead and thousands injured.

The point of terror attacks is to cause civil unrest. it is designed to cause people to turn on each other. White British people are currently being denigrated as racists and in one thread ‘flag shaggers’ (these were actually a women’s rights events) for making the entirely reasonable suggestion that we should have secure borders. it is a tried and tested method by the extremists. Look at Lebanon and other formerly lovely countries.

We know we currently have a problem with men entering our country as ‘asylum seekers’. Some are genuine and some are known terrorists and criminals. The government seem to be unwilling do anything meaningful to stop the terrorists and murderers coming here and roaming freely, increasing the risk to the safety of all of us.

British people of colour are feeling uneasy as unfortunately the Islamic extremists are also overwhelmingly black or brown and the known criminals entering our country alongside genuine asylum seekers are black or brown so an atmosphere of suspicion is manufactured.

The government currently appears to be disproportionately scared of upsetting the Muslim community. Some UK Muslim leaders have expressed an aim to take over in the way they have done in other countries like Egypt etc. Bangladeshi and Pakistani Muslims are known to use a high level of electoral fraud to weaponise our democracy against us and gain power. We should take their threats seriously. They have a global track record of success.

This is a problem for all of us. They want us to be suspicious and attack each other. They want ever more draconian laws preventing free speech and outlawing ‘Islamophobia’ (currently defined by Labour as ‘targeting expressions of Muslimness - intentionally nice and broad) .

We need to stop pointing fingers and accusing people of racism and work together to fight the real threat to our future and freedom.

I hear OPs fear! As non white people we have a lived history of racism and cruelty. I live in Kent and have a mixed-race family myself. What strikes me isn’t danger on the streets but how fragmented the country has become. My experience isn’t feeling fearful to walk the streets of London or Kent.

Reform, the flags, and all the noise around them seem to have tapped into something deeper — a loss of trust and belonging. People feel they have to pick a camp, and the loudest voices keep telling us to be afraid of each other. Yet day to day, most of us still live peacefully together.

It’s sad how quickly fear has become the language of British life.

OP the fact that your children are “happy and thriving”, is something to celebrate. That you are fearful of the potential of a Reform government, is another conversation; a conversation about the fragmentation of our society. About the fear that is instilled in us by some levels of media and politics, the aim of which is to fragment us and have us living in fear of each other. There are racists but as a PP said, they are a minority!

Real life racism?
What type of racism do you classify as outside of 'real life racism' ?
Are you saying the OP should be less concerned about the rise in racist language, media and political spouting and racist attacks because it's not yet at her personal door?

Racism may have reduced at some point, but that trend is currently in reverse. It's on the rise in schools, online, at work, in media, on the streets and Reform has proven time and time again that it's a haven for racists and racism.

Well said…

Agreed.

People accusing Reform of being the problem have missed what is really going on.
The fragmentation is already happening and Reform have just become a conduit. Very few people actually like Reform, it’s just that they don’t spend their whole time telling normal British people to shut up and accusing us of racism like Labour and much if the ‘liberal left’.

The rise in terrorism and the terrorist threat from high numbers of men entering our country is doing the job it was intended to do.

It is creating division and unease and causes neighbours to be suspicious of each other.

The government are exacerbating this for some unknown reason by causing a quite blatantly two tier justice system where normal people get imprisoned for awful but swiftly deleted tweets whereas a Labour councillor standing in a baying mob actually inciting violence to white people by slitting our throats, get away with it.

Obviously we have also developed quite a large ‘human rights’ industry of lawyers working to keep criminals from being deported - some of whom go onto commit more crimes. It is such a mess.

OP I feel exactly like you. You are not being unreasonable. Don't let people gaslight you in to thinking that you are.

Thank you. The recent tragedy of the train stabbings is now making us feel more at threat as people online are saying that ‘every non white’ person has to go… and a big being born in a stable doesn’t make it a horse …

this is not just about immigration, these killers were sadly black British nationals.

SW London. Thankfully a rare incident. Although i am very aware of simple things I never needed to consider as someone white - going away for the weekend in the countryside, will DD be stared at? A city break, how welcoming is it to black.people?

It has been eye opening to realise (as a white person with a black child) just how pervasive racism is. Not 'just' the outright racism of physical or verbal attacks, but also the stares, the whispers, the being followed round the shop because black people are all shoplifters....

It sounds like you've either inadvertently or deliberately misunderstood my post. OP doesn't need to move, but she said she wanted to move abroad (to get away from racism in this country) but couldn't afford to. I was saying that she could potentially think about moving to somewhere in the UK that was more diverse if she wanted to, and felt that would be best for her family. Lots of people choose to live in a diverse area because they feel it will be more welcoming; there's nothing wrong with making that choice.
Also, counselling is not primarily for mental health issues; that's more specialised therapy like CBT or psychotherapy. Counselling is generally for someone who is going through something difficult and wants someone to talk it through with. I found it helpful after someone close to me died, and that wasn't a mental health issue.
I mentioned the other type of difficulties that people are having at the moment in the context of saying that even though OP's friends may not be experiencing exactly what her family is going through, they may have experience of other, not dissimilar issues, so they may be able to understand and empathise more than she thinks. So it could still be worth talking to them. Unfortunately, OP cannot just personally 'tackle racism', and solve the issue that way, if only it were that simple! However it sounds like her worries about her family are being compounded by her sense of isolation and feeling as though she doesn't have anyone to talk to. My suggestions of counselling and talking to her friends were in the hope that she could at least find a way to ease that.

@BundleBoogie, as you say, I personally do not spend to much time bothering about Reform and believe as you do that most people do not like Reform.

MSM fuel the narrative of the incompetence of our politicians by parading Reform as a threat!
I am not diminishing the reality of the fact that UK politics now has a populist party in the mainstream.

But I feel we have more to fear from the threat of terrorism than Reform.

And we have more to fear from progressive governments whose objective is to instil fear, division and suspicion into ordinary citizens.

For those wondering ‘why post’ I’d guess it’s the same reason I post about the difficulties I’ve had being Jewish lately. For solidarity and to remind myself not everyone is a hateful bigot, despite feeling rather outnumbered at times. I think calling it out and talking about it openly is the only way forward before the casual becomes commonplace and then escalates.

I really appreciate reading comments from people with physical disabilities about mistakes people have made. I am so much more aware of the difficulties people are navigating and I have learned a lot. I hope someone has learned something about being Jewish from my being open about it. (Not the same thing of course, just different sorts of minority experiences). Otherwise everyone just exists in their own bubbles.

Violence is on the rise. Knife attacks are on the rise. The UK is very unhappy right now. Nobody feels safe.

Well, i feel a lot safer as a white woman than for my DD, who.is black.

Nothing to add - except to say I am sorry current society makes you feel this way.

I empathise with how you feel, I won’t try to gaslight you and stay safe.

(Hopefully you can move / live in a city / neigubourhood where it’s less of a concern.)

Not to derail but I have actually really welcomed posts from posters such as yourself. It’s provided an insight as to the experiences of some which may not exist within our personal bubbles.

This is because international ruthless criminals and rapists have been allow to roam the streets. We all ( including honest immigrants) will pay for this. The governments previous and current are to blame for the mess we are currently living. Also, the people should not give a blank pass to all immigrants as been good. Start by acknowledging there is an issue and we can move the discussion to find solutions. You should also be worried about your relatives being knifed, raped and groomed by foreign gangs.

I feel for your daughter and share your frustration. I fear that there are rather a lot of people from minority ethnicity and minority religious communities at the moment in Britain considering signing up their sons and particularly daughters for self-defence classes.

The threat families are facing is real, and unfortunately often women and girls in particular are increasingly facing physical abuse as well as emotional abuse due to their perceived religion or ethnicity.

Literally. I’m half Indian. I also don’t want to be bloody hurt or killed. Or raped. By whoever commits those crimes. This is not a white vs poc issue.

I love this country. We have to protect it.