to be called racist

[UpsyOne]

in a nutshell

I am white with white children, friend of several years is black with black children.

I was looking after friends DS who is under 5 at her house. Her elderly mother lives with her as she is poorly and not well enough to look after children - she was there with me.

Her DS was attention seeking in a cute way, kept pretending to fall over and bump his head to get me to fuss him. When he did it I would call him a little monkey, make monkey noises and encourage him to make monkey noises back to me.

In hindsight I do realise that racists will call black people monkeys as an insult.

But I believe in evolution and therefore believe that we all descend from monkeys. Not only that, I do the whole "you little monkey" thing with my own children.

My friend has been really off with me since as I apparently upset her mum (wasnt aware of it at the time) and her mum actually called me a racist!!

Am I being unreasonable to think the whole thing is just ridiculous or was I somehow out of order?

AKMD, that's a good point.

sorry but lol @ making monkey noise in front of elderly black woman.
i think you have been indeed tactless. you must apologize and explain yourself to her mil.
saying that i often called my dd monster when she was little. one day stranger asked her name and she said, "im a monster"

yeah, i've never done that.

I consider the following things to be racist, and this is based on things that are taught on any basic equal ops training course:

1. Not bothering to find out about the things that have been done or are currently being done to minority ethnic groups, or to have thought a lot about their shared experiences both positive and negative and how they may have differed from your experiences as a white person.

1. Thinking that treating people from minority ethnic groups in exactly the say way as you would treat a white person on the basis that you are ignorant of their culture and different experiences.

1. On having caused offence based on your ignorance, claiming that they have taken things the wrong way, thus making them responsible for your racist behaviour.

I actually don't know why people make such a big deal out of having their racism pointed out to them. Sometimes I do selfish things, out of ignorance/laziness/stupidity, and I apologise for them. The fact that I sometimes do selfish things and people point them out does not make me consider myself a selfish person. I am just an imperfect person like everyone else.

Similarly, when I unintentionally do something racist out of ignorance and it is pointed out to me, I don't walk around considering myself to be a racist. This huge defensiveness over racist behaviour makes it really difficult for people to point out other people's inappropriate and racist behaviour.

If OP values the friendship, she should apologise and say that she hadn't thought through the different experience that many black people have had of the term 'monkey.'

Also, we are not really descended from monkeys. We share a common ancestor with the great apes - chimpanzees, gorillas etc. They are not monkeys.

this is an interesting read.

it's interesting because OP finds her friends mother unreasonable for being offended along with many other posters on here.

consider this. you are in the work place and one of your male colleague's keeps smacking your bum. you report this to your boss then the boss turns around and says that you are being oversensitive because this is definately not sexual harrasment he was just being friendly....???? WTF

OP's friends Mum has obviously encountered racism at some point, maybe so has OP's friend. Racism, may now be not very PC but I can assure you( having suffered some myself) it still exists even in todays society.

A lot of the time people like to say that black people are over sensitive when it comes to certain circumstances. before you make the judgement, imagine yourself in say Africa somewhere or Asia where you are now a minority. How would you feel if certain terms or phrases were used to address you or to address a member of your family?

would i be offended if a caucasian friend of mine called by child a monkey? No
Would i be offended if they went on to make monkey sounds and encourage the child to make monkey sounds back? all dependant on the tone of the conversation between said friend and my child....
would my mother find both of the above offensive? YES ( and Mum is 47years old)....

IMHO there is a HUGE difference between racism & offence caused by ignorance, and just to check I'm not going mad, I looked up the definition of racism in the OED

racism
? noun 1 the belief that there are characteristics, abilities, or qualities specific to each race. 2 discrimination against or antagonism towards other races.

I don't get
"2. Thinking that treating people from minority ethnic groups in exactly the say way as you would treat a white person on the basis that you are ignorant of their culture and different experiences." is racism - surely treating people DIFFERENTLY because they are from a different race is racism?

MollieO - you don't think making monkey noises is "racist at all". Hmm, I assume you mean in the context of the OP rather than absolutely?

Because it is a well-known and longstanding racist taunt. In 2004, FIFA finded the Spanish Football Team mucho casho because Spanish fans made monkey noises at black British players. Lewis Hamilton has also famously been called a monkey in a racist way. That happened in 2008.

As has been said by others, the OP merely has to talk to her friend, say that of course she didn't mean offence, although in hindsight she can see why the grandmother would be sensitive to that term and accompanying monkey noises, and in future she will be more respectfull.

Where IS the OP, btw?

i would see it that way betsy boop. i didn't know how to articulate it, but although millyr's course sounds really interesting, not every person can know everything about every other culture. apparently you don't blow your nose in front of a japanese person or ask a Sami how many reindeer they own.... but not knowing that is just ignorance, it's not racism.

although, this is going off the thread subject a bit, tbh, acting out monkey actions is a bit .... ODD in front of anybody of any description full stop!!! maybe there was a bit of 'don't mention the war syndrome' going on there. op ended up doing the ONE thing she really should have thought better about doing.

NO, BB, refusing to treat ethnic groups differently is racist.

If there are, for example, Jewish children at a school and you insist that they eat pork for lunch because you believe everybody should be treated the same, then you are a racist.

And yes, before you ask, Jewish is considered to be an ethnic group, and there is no difference in international law between ethnic and racial discrimination.

DingDOng I am referring to the context of play with children. There are lots of things that in different contexts aren't or are racist. A friend of mine had to put up with someone doing jazz hands behind her back at a party. On stage in 'Chicago' that wouldn't be racist but in the context of my friend it was, very.

ah yes, i see what you mean millyR, but obviously you'd have to know that they were Jewish in the first place, and you'd have to be aware of what jewish people did differently.

I should have done a course like that when i first went to live in the uk. after 20 years growing up in ireland i found it quite hard to know what to do or say. i think i used to be quite nervous around other races. this is twenty years ago (nearly!). Obviously now the Ireland i've come back to much more diverse as well which is badly needed here. too much homogeneity a bad thing. makes people v lazy in their thinking.

MMS, it is not my course, it is based on the law! I work in a university and so have some public sector funding. Anyone who receives any public sector funding or works in the public sector is legally obliged to positively promote racial equality.

I am amazed by the constant threads on MN about homophobia, disability and race where people seem totally unaware of the Equality Act and the fact that public sector employees, including teachers, have legal obligations.

No, we cannot know everything about every culture, but we can make an effort to know something about the main cultural and ethnic groups in Britain.

oh yes! i knew that it wasn't your course!! i meant, the course you did!

a lot of people could benefit from going on the course. i'd happily go if any work place ever wanted to pay for me to go.

...... and i don't feel racism, but I'd hate to inadvertently upset anybody. Like, if I'd done something like 'the jazz hands' (???) and later realised that somebody had been badly upset by that, I would be mortified.

MMS, I think how different countries have dealt with the changes is really interesting. My sister has been in Dublin for the last year and I am going to see her in a couple of days. Even the difference between Ireland and the UK culturally can be quite a big deal to cope with.

I think '2' is a kind of racism in itself. I tend to forget what color people are because I think of them as people not dulux charts.

I've been told on here before that this means I am racist, but I reckon it means I am sane. I would hate to be one of those people who meet someone new and make a mental note what color they are so that they can treat them accordingly.

singersay, your analogy is just wrong as the smacking would be a deliberate act. To make it a fair comparison you'd have to say that a male colleague reached for the toner cartridges and that because you were expecting to be molested you thought he was reaching for you and ran off screaming and demanding he be sacked.

it was for me going from a village in wicklow to London back in the early 90s!!! But now funnily enough, I find the big town where i live MORE culturally diverse than Chiswick where I'd been living before I came home. It is funny that, but I felt ah phew when I realised that not everybody within a stones throw was a 30 something guardian-reading, recycling, university-educated self-deprecating book-club attending, nigella-cooking type of person...... having been brought up in a country where everybody was the same, it was really really stifling!! and i suddenly realised after 15 years in England i was back in a similar kind of bubble in my leafy victorian street.

I recycle and read the nob, it's just htat i feel kind of nervous if every single solitary soul around me is cut from the same cloth!

I didn't know that Monkey was a racist insult until my early 20s when we moved to Asia. It isn't used in Oz, we have plenty of vile racist insults () but monkey isn't one of them.

I heard about the pig being an insult to Muslims, then I was amazed when my Muslim work colleague called her own son a "little piglet" because he loved his food so much!

MMS, Nollaig (déanach) sona dhuit - agus tá mé sásta go bhfuil an sneachta imithe!

I am black and I grew up in 70s Britain. I have been called numerous times a monkey or gorilla and told to go back to the jungle where I come from. I have seen derogatory comments about Serena Williams and Michelle Obama where they have been referred to as apes.

I do feel the hackles rising on my back when I hear well meaning carers call my child a "cheeky little monkey", even though I know that they are using it as a term of endearment.

I think the OP was naive and rather dim to call the children little monkeys and make monkey noises in front of their grandmother. If you have been friends with the mother, surely, you must be aware of racist terms that she has had to endure?

I do find it patronising when white people say that we are over-reacting because it is just a harmless phrase because they are completely clueless about the entrenched and endemic racist attitudes and vocabulary that are still prevalent today.

OP needs to take the first step and explain to friend the misunderstanding and apologise for any offence caused. Then in future, engage brain and think about how you act and behave in certain company.

MillR - I was looking at things from the other side of things

Offering a Jewish child (along with all the other children) pork IF YOU DID NOT KNOW child was Jewish/Jews don't eat pork (tick, that's one I already knew, phew ) is just IGNORANCE of another culture.

Once being told this fact, then insisting that the Jewish child has to eat said pork anyway is RACIST.

Hands up all those who know absolutely everything that every other race/culture/creed/religion/ethnic group in the world could possibly find offensive? I know damn well I don't, sure that doesn't make me a racist in todays PC-mad world ?

BB, no, you are making a distinction that does not exist in law.

MillyR You seem to be saying that your course taught you that offering pork to someone you didn't know was jewish IS racist.

If so and if that course is funded by tax money I think I can see where we can make some cuts AND improve things in one go.

Onagar, a school has to identify the range of ethnicities, SEN children, children with disabilities, nationalities and religious backgrounds of children in the school. If they do not do so and claim ignorance of the existence of a disabled child or a Jewish child in their school because they have no proper equality and diversity assessments in place, then they are breaking the law.

So in the instance given, it would be racist for an adult to not know there were Jewish children in a school they were working in.

Spokette it is perfectly understandable that someone who has experienced racism is sensitive about it. In the same way that (as a man) if I went to shake hands with someone who had previously been raped they might cringe away. It would be understandable, but it does NOT mean that my offering to shake hands is assault.