AIBU to suspect a colleague’s behaviour may relate to my nationality?

[oneofthems]

I have a colleague who is new to our function, although not new to the company, and from fairly early on I had the sense that something was quite off in her attitude towards me.

I hope people know what I mean. Nothing you can formally put your finger on, but a pattern of small things. Meetings I am left out of, emails that don't get forwarded, deliverables I am only brought into at the last possible moment. We are at the same level.

Every individual micro incident is absolutely in nothing to see here territory. Taken together (been six month) they paint quite a clear picture.

I thought I'd make a very intentional effort to build bridges. I looked at her public social media to see whether there was anything we might have in common, I don't know, something very innocent, a first step. Dogs, travel, hobbies, sport, whatever. Her own feed is very mainstream, mostly food, travel, family events and fashion, occasionally some local news reposted.

However, I discovered that her partner, whom she publicly tags as being in a relationship with, has a very specific prejudice against people of my birth nationality.

To anonymise this, imagine I'm Argentinian (I'm not), with apologies to any Argentinians reading. More than 50% of his posts are things (mostly reposts, with some crazy conspiracy-theory shit) along the lines of "deport all Argentinians back to Brazil if Argentina is so bad for them ", reposting crimes no matter how minor committed anywhere in the world by Argentinians, "lock Milei, lock Milei" protests, stats on Argentinian corruption, or claims that Argentinians are all Nazi descendants and shouldn't be allowed into the UK. I am actually surprised some of what he reposts is not automatically flagged by algorithms as hate speech.

Neither he nor she appears to have any connection whatsoever to Argentina that I can work out, or even to anywhere in South America, which somehow makes the fixation even stranger.

I OBVIOUSLY know his views aren't automatically hers, and I certainly don't want to hold someone responsible in my head for everything their partner posts. There were views my partners held that I didn't, and vice versa. Still.

AIBU to wonder whether I found the reason?

Yes

It doesn't matter who the two people's views are here: nationality, religion, colour, domicile, sexual preferance etc. No one should ever bring these views into the workplace. All are there for the benefit of the Company involved. Personal preference is left outside the working hours, full stop. OP is being undermined by someone either above, at the same level, or subservient. They are not in any way entitled to do so.

Hopefully HR (OP are you copying HR in on all interactions?) will pick up on the way they are treated and will take appropriate action. Clients should not be disadvantaged or informed of the situation.

Is this the poster who thinks English people hate her but we suspect it is her personality that might be the issue?

This might be the poster who is anti English and keeps her nationality secret.

Oh dear God, I hope you’re joking lol

The entire thing is odd, OP, her colleague, stalking someone’s SM etc.

Well there are different issues here. Nationality is very different from race which is different from religion.
Eg if you were Israeli those things could all conflate. I wonder if you are from Eastern Europe, as there have been some issues with criminal gangs from parts of Eastern Europe that may have been latched on to by her partner. Im not excusing his weird Facebook posts, just trying to think about what is going on.
I don’t understand why as we have criminals from all sorts of places but I have heard negative comments about some Eastern Europeans, and comments about Russians partly due to the war in Ukraine.
Possibly this woman is just not very nice full stop, competing with you and trying to undermine you and would be doing that whatever your background.

This is the way I'd play it.
Can't argue with cold, hard evidence.