AIBU to think some people on here are way too obsessed with not being seen as racist?

[BadWordlePlayer]

I’m posting in AIBU because this has been niggling at me for a while with the tone of so many threads lately, but it's really blown up following the bodycam footage of the Henry Nowak case.

There seem to be loads of posts these days where people are basically showing off how not racist they are, or how much they hate racists or the 'far right', or jumping in to call something racist at the slightest thing. It feels performative, like they’re desperate to signal their virtue and make sure everyone knows they’re on the “right” side. I get that racism is bad, obviously, but it sometimes feels like it’s taken over to the point where common sense goes out the window.

Henry Nowak shows how dangerous this mindset is. This poor 18-year-old student was stabbed multiple times by Vickrum Digwa, who then lied to the police claiming Henry had racially abused him. The officers took that accusation at face value, handcuffed Henry while he was lying there bleeding out and saying he couldn’t breathe, and didn’t treat him as the victim urgently enough. He died in police custody essentially. The mindset of those officers sounds exactly like the over-the-top “must not be perceived as racist” attitude you see in some threads here. They sidelined a dying boy because of a racism claim (which turned out to be a complete lie). That’s not just sad — it’s dangerous.

This isn't a left wing / right wing post and I’m not saying racism doesn’t exist or that we shouldn’t call it out when it’s real. I also hate the phrase "virtue signalling", but I can't think of a better one than it. This constant virtue-signalling and knee-jerk reactions make situations like Henry’s more likely, not less. People (including police) become so paralysed by the fear of getting it wrong on race that they get it horrifically wrong on everything else.

Am I being unreasonable? Or has anyone else noticed this shift on MN and in general?

These 'people on here' threads are always hard to respond to, because without concrete examples no one can agree or disagree.

Have people noticed a move away from racism on MN? Dunno, I never experienced it as racist in th first place.

Have people noticed a swing towards xenophobia here? Yes, I have. But that's not what you're asking.

By your logic, everyone should go back to old-fashioned racism so the police would have correctly arrested the brown guy in the turban first in this incident?

I think a lot of posters on here positively revel in saying racist stuff. It's a great time to be a racist. Very en vogue, and actively encouraged.

Have you seen the thread where someone moved to a “nice” (their words) white town and is now complaining about the lack of diversity?

Why don’t they move to somewhere more diverse then?

Hardly, and yet it would have produced a better outcome than anti-racism did. That should prompt some serious thought.

To answer the OP, there was a shift towards doing absolutely anything so long as it didn’t make you look racist, but it wasn’t on here and it happened about ten years ago. If you see more of it on mumsnet these days, it’s because mumsnet is slow in catching up.

Rochdale grooming gangs are an example of this.

The woke brigade has nothing to help race relations. If anything their virtue signalling obsession with victimhood has made things worse for people from
minorities.

Remember, when taking the knee was fashionable. Utter madness. Anyone who jumps up and down about being anti racist is a bit unhinged and an attention seeker. These people have no real value to add to anyone or themselves, so the must pretend that the are morally superior to everyone else.

The police and institutions are totally captured. When the police are more interested in turning up to pride marches and arresting people for ‘non crime’ hate incidents, just imagine….arresting people for NOT committing a crime, you know that the world has gone mad.

While stab victims are being handcuffed and arrested and young rape victims are being criminalized.

Racism is never OK. Just like xenophobia, sexism and homophobia are not OK.

Do you find that hard to understand?

You can have a discussion about immigration by the way without the need to attack/hate people simply because they are not white.

Most of the sikhs I know are nice people. They have good food, good music and are all nice to be around.

That was the thread that inspired me to write this post.

It's interesting to note that the vote is 3:1 in agreement with me so far but the majority of comments so far are disagreeing with me.

I suspect there's a silent majority on Mumsnet who have a different opinion to what we see predominantly written in many of the threads. Maybe they're too busy with life to post comments, or too weary of being called racist or transphobic or far right?

The silent majority won’t speak. Because of fear of being labelled racist by the rabid mob. The worrying thing is that their perfectly legitimate views are made out to be extremist. This is how race relations suffer. The left are causing this problem to become worse.

Farage is right about one thing. We don’t need to worry about him. We need to worry about what comes after him.

I don't worry about being seen as racist in the same way that I am not worried about being seen as a murderer or thief
Because I am not
IMO the only people who DO worry about being seen as racist probably are.

I've been called a "Karen" by a young black woman and i find that to be fecking racist, ageist and misogynist - so, gee thanks BLM. I hsve never been racist that I'm aware of but I've given over worrying about this now, so again, thanks BLM. I think "race baiting" is a more pressing issue tbh.

That is totally illogical..and I suspect you know it. Proving the point though.

YABU! MN can be racist cesspit.

The racists here and racist and the non-racists are not.

Nothing has blown up here, except that some fuckers are hell-bent on turning Henry's murder into a political opportunity.
Something even his bereaved father has managed not to do.

My heart goes out to his family, and I hope people do not get distracted from what has really happened.

Digwa committed a violent murder.

The police service was absolutely woeful in handling the victim; because they are, as usual hideously reactive, instead of treating him with dignity and compassion.

@Dweetfidilove “The police service was absolutely woeful in handling the victim; because they are, as usual hideously reactive, instead of treating him with dignity and compassion.”

How’s that come about though? That’s the bigger scandal here. It’s not just about a couple of coppers being stupid.

I’d counter with the argument that it’s your views here that are incompatible with western values.

To me western values at their core include tolerance, acceptance of others and understanding. A statement such as “Islam is incompatible with western values” comes across as intolerant and frankly ignorant. And largely playing into stereotypes of angry violent Muslim men.

I know a number of practicing Muslims (including family members), and their beliefs and values are entirely compatible with western values.

Not a couple, no. There have been countless incidents where the coppers have completely mishandled situations, with disastrous consequences; so I'd say there are more than a couple coppers being stupid.

How's that come about?

Nothing has blown up here, except that some fuckers are hell-bent on turning Henry's murder into a political opportunity.
Something even his bereaved father has managed not to do.

Exactly.

Feel free to explain. The OP’s logic appears to be that the police automatically believed the non-white person when he claimed that he was the victim of a racist altercation, and dismissed the white man’s assertion that he’d been stabbed because they assumed he was the perpetrator rather than the victim on the grounds of his race. Surely in the racist past (for which there seems to be a creeping nostalgia on this thread), the police would not have defaulted to that assumption?

It used to be that we all understood what racism was: calling a black person horrible names; denying work to an Irish person; beating up an Asian man for being Asian; graffiti on a synagogue. Laws were introduced to combat these things and they because less socially acceptable (although of course they didn't disappear altogether, unfortunately).

The problem is that as that old style racism was mostly being sorted out, a new style of racism had to be invented to keep the DEI industry going. This included things like microaggressions, anti-colonialism, defunding the police etc. As actual racism became less and less of an actual problem, the fight against racism because more intense, judgemental and puritanical, which lead to increased hypocrisy, fear and virtue-signalling. In a system that judges every arrest of a black man as racist and posts everything a police officer does online, of course that's going to distort how people behave.

But we are not afforded the same tolerance and respect.

I have very good Muslim friends. But they are middle class and although they have some of their own traditions, live life as ordinary British people.

The majority of more recent immigrants are from poorer backgrounds and no desire or intention to aspire to “Western values”. In fact we know that our women are largely viewed as degenerate. Applauding that really is suicidal empathy.

But the point is – is there an ideology that’s making coppers behave stupidly?

You're going to get a certain amount of stupidity in anything humans are involved in, that’s a given. We should do our best to find ways to reduce it but ultimately we’re going to have to accept that it happens.

But if an ideology has been introduced that results in stupidity where there wasn’t stupidity before, then that’s an actual scandal.

You seem to be aware of an ideology that is making coppers behave stupidly.
What is that ideology?

Karl Popper said that in a liberal society tolerance has to have limits. His 'paradox of tolerance' is that if a society tolerates intolerance, it risks enabling the dominance of the intolerant element and thus eliminating the tolerant society altogether. If you take the example of Islam, there are two ways to avoid it destabilising our tolerant society: either Muslims can be as 'non-Western' and extreme as they like but numbers are kept relatively small (like Hasidic Jews for example) or they integrate well, continuing to be Muslim but also recognisably culturally British (like liberal Jews). So I wouldn't agree with the past poster that Islam is inherently antithetical to British culture, but it does need to be appropriately integrated.