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

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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?

But George Flloyd isn’t a comparison is it? The cops murdered somebody on camera and would merrily have gotten away with it had it not been filmed and was in the context of many other such instances that have occurred over years to the extent that it created BLM to protest the frequency of police killings (and vigilante) murders) going uninvestigated nevermind unpunished (which was actually what the protests were about. Not one person.)

It’s apples and pears. The only actually comparable one I can recall is Stephen Lawrence (dying while the police assumed he was the perpetrator) and there wasn’t any greater outrage. There weren’t comments from three major political party leaders and nobody was even held to account for years, which was only due to the relentlessness of his family.

I was beyond repulsed and shared that on here and publicly via my social media accounts. I still believe religion should not exempt people from the Rule of Law.

I know that crimes taking place between people from different ethnicities doesn’t make it a race driven crime. Most of the time it won’t be.

But this was, because the victim was selected on the basis of being white and therefore able to ‘support’ his evil untrue ‘defence’.

There are certain similarities because it was someone who was arrested and died in police custody - not exactly the same, I agree. But two people who died and were not listened to whilst in police custody.

Was he?

Or is it equally as likely that he’d have murdered him regardless of colour and given another equally as nonsense “defence”?

We have absolutely no way of knowing what would have happened had he murdered someone who wasn’t white. Zero.

Stephen Lawrence will stay in the mind of everyone, thanks to his mother who should never have been in this position, fighting to prove her son’s innocence. There has been repugnant attacks by police against POC.
I can’t remember the young lads name. I listened to a podcast about a young black boy. He stopped a gang rape, became a witness, he was bullied, terrorised and attacked by the community, the police intimidated his mother, threatened her with deportation if he did not give evidence despite being under horrendous threat they had to stay in the home. He was eventually killed. I remember hearing that podcast and thinking if only one person from the UK could have helped the family, fought against the police intimidation, supported them.

I’m sure voting for the guy who spent his formative years chanting Hitler Youth songs is the best way to bring the UK together.

One was murdered; dying in police custody because he wasn't listened to.

One was murdered by the police who whilst he was 'in custody', proceeded to literally squeeze the life out of him.

If police presence is your common denominator, yes, police was present at some point at each incident.

They are otherwise incomparable, and trying to make them so is dunce at best, sickening at worst.

Well we could ask the same about Stephen’s killers. Would they simply have hurled obscenities at anyone else and done the unthinkable? I doubt it. What we know is that they both killed somebody, and they made it about race at the time.

I see quite the opposite recently on this forum.

More and more I am seeing posts which dog whistle racism and in some cases are quite blatantly racist.

I think that There's enough awful things going on in this world at present without adding a tiny bit more hate and anger via a web site.

By and large I try to avoid subjects that spread hate and distrust.

Or voting for the anti-semitic Green party as an alternative. Which many MNetters admit to.

I never condone racism but are people allowed to be angry? Isn’t this a human reaction to a terrible crime where authorities have badly let down the victim? I don’t like this framing ANY reaction or blame or questioning as ‘hate and anger’ that is somehow unjustified.

The police need to go back to basics and stick to fighting crime instead of trying to be social workers or sociologists.

Well.

We couldn’t, because we know from evidence that Stephen Lawrence’s killers used racially aggravated language towards him (including insults that started with the word “black..” and the n word) during the attack.

And we don’t know similar happened here.

You’re assuming it did. Which is different.

I’m absolutely not disputing the obviously disgusting behaviour of the murderer, and his family, but you can’t call it racially aggravated murder unless you know it is.

Which you don’t.

And I am entitled to make what comparisons I want to. You carry on with your personal insults, the irony that you try to make such comments from your high horse.

That all came about when their ethos moved from force to a service. Other European police forces must be laughing at us.

Well no - one died due to police inaction (I assume he could have been saved), one was murdered by police and it took protests and video evidence for investigators to bother to investigate.

It's not "Not exactly the same". It's not remotely the same. I mean yes the police were present. But that's the only similarity.

Where did you read Digwa selected him as a victim because he was white?

But we have the evidence of their racial abuse and racist background don't we? We may yet get that for Digwa but we have not to date.

We don’t know why anyone selects their victims unless they explicitly state why. But the events speak for themselves.

But the events have spoken have the? They have provided zero evidence. You can assume that he was killed because he was white. But it's just an assumption without further evidence.

The problem is that politics shift. Some forms of racism are seen as decidedly more palatable than others when expedient.

In most instances I'm fairly impervious to others' opinions of me, but I have no wish to be seen as racist. More importantly, from the viewpoint of my own conscience, I have no wish to BE racist.

To fuck up is to be human, and if I do that I will apologise. But I'm always suspicious of the 'it couldn't happen here' line of defence. My employer, which some would doubtless call 'woke', did this when one of their staff was racially profiled. Rather than saying 'that's unacceptable, we'll deal with it', they immediately denied that such a thing could ever happen in their pristine instititution because the optics were bad for them. They were more concerned with their public image than the wellbeing of their staff.

All the while, they were waving 'Allies' flags everywhere.

The 'that never happens' line of defence is suspicious no matter where it's trotted out. Because we all know that it does.

How do you want me to stand up and be counted exactly?

I have noticed both IRL and MN that it depends who and what race is being targeted. The horrible things said about Travellers is often overlooked and reinforced.

Ideally I would like to see as many marches and online displays of concern about members of those communities as I do about Palestine and similar. Everyone seems to have no problems mobilising for Palestine but I doubt there will be widespread marches of disgust by community members regarding the grooming gangs, for instance. I would absolutely expect it from white Brits if the situation was reversed. And actually many white Brits do mobilise against racism, so you can’t say ‘nobody else is expected to do this’