to be shocked that 'normal' people can be racist?

[MitchyInge]

unreasonable or just spectacularly naive to have discovered that there are people working with (or for the interests of) asylum seekers who begrudge and resent the help they receive?

am not about to start reading the Guardian or anything but I feel a bit sick after being privy to a semi-private discussion which ran along the lines of - ugh, I can't repeat it

admittedly I don't live in the most multi-cultural place in the world so perhaps am just not aware of all the issues

YANBU, but naive. There are tons of people who hold racist views; they just don't air them very often in public.

Mitchy, I know what you mean.

I often start off liking someone, then they come out with some casual racist comment and I am appalled.

My ILs are particularly bad. Always harping on about immigrants and getting asylum seekers, illegal immigrants and economic migrants mixed up - always a sign of total fuckwittery. They seem to forget that their parents were migrants too.

Must point out, I am a Gruniad reading woolly minded liberal. Cards on the table!

no - you can often scratch a person who you think of as normal and then discover some quite disturbing views - it happens to me all the time.

I blame the Daily Mail.

But then if the majority of people think these things then it is 'normal' isnt it...

YABU to be shocked that "normal" people can be racist, as others above mention.

However your post says "people working with (or for the interests of) asylum seekers who begrudge and resent the help they receive?" which I think others may have missed. YANBU at all to be shocked that these people are behaving in this manner.

Whats wrong with reading the Guardian then?

I'm not shocked by that either tho Imsonottelling - look at lots of peoples experiences on postnatal wards in big city hospitals - esp the treatment from bak staff overnight- staff often get worn down and treat the the people that they are there to help badly because of the restraints they are working under or the difficulty of the job itself.

It doesnt excuse the behaviour mind...

that should probably be constraints and not restraints ahem...

I must admit, I find myself shocked when people come out with offensive / racist comemnts (and I don't mean the whole 'getting an illegal immigrant confused with an economic one' - I mean proper: I don't like that individual person because of some aspect of his physical appearance that he is unable to change)

I can appreciate how it's easy to get drawn along disliking a faceless group of people who do (or you percieve them to) have some unfair advantage or other problem....

But, to dislike an actual individual person, who has caused you no harm, based solely on that person's appearance, I find very very bizarre.

It's not uncommon to find (some) people working for a cause who have very bad attitudes to the people that cause is supposed to benefit. Or (some) people paid to care who sneer at their client group. Sadly.

I was shocked when my sister told me about some of the people she comes into contact with at work, but she shrugged and said round where she lived, what a care assistant earns is considered a decent wage and (some) people just want the money, aren't interested in supporting the service users.

Found the same thing myself when I once worked briefly for a charity and was really shocked at the attitudes amongst some of the staff - they regarded the people they were supposed to work for as scum, basically.

and bank staff overnight - [sigh] and to think I was going to attempt some work later...

I think it's the fact that one is a close friend and that both are Christians. Did not realise the central message of Christianity was 'local people first'.

Or maybe I have been wildly misled by various documentaries and it's actually absolutely lovely to flee God-knows-what in Somalia or God-knows-where and come here to be treated like shit.

Didn't know educated people could think like this.

Am sure there is nothing wrong with the Guardian, just have always thought of it as the polar opposite of the Mail. Can't stand either!

Begrudging or resenting the help asylum seekers receive isn't necessarily racist though, surely?

How asylum works (or doesn't) in the world at present, and the part the UK plays in it is pretty interesting.

It's perfectly possible to think things other than "hurray for all asylum seekers, they are all genuine and we must welcome them with open arms" and not be racist.

I tend slightly to the "hurray for all asylum seekers" view, but then I read the Guardian

Either way, I think you need to be careful about calling people racist just because they have negative opinions about how asylum works in this country (or the EU). It's a worryingly effective way of closing down argument about a very important topic.

Are you not from somewhere easterly though Mitchy? From your posts I think I'm in the same county, and no, I am far from surprised. Hell, I've lived here nearly 20 years and I'm still an Outsider.

yes, am a total foreigner in Suffolk - originated in NORFOLK

have two mixed race children and when I first rented a house here the local people got up a petition to stop the landlord letting it to us in case it lowered the value of their property!

also had various old ladies cooing over my double pushchair and telling me I was doing a 'marvellous job' and was very brave to have 'taken them on' and it took me AGES to realise they must have thought I'd adopted them, haha

but is v different to hear more sinister things from friends - unless of course I'm being extremely touchy at the moment

Mitchy OMFG...

Hehehe, sounds about right, I immigrated from Essex and I still get people looking at me suspiciously in the Co-Op. And when they actually had to TALK to me because I worked in the library...

I agree with thesecondcoming.

Also, the UK is not Europe's or the world's most popular destination for asylum seekers, despite what the Daily Mail would have you believe. In Europe, it's Germany, and the majority of asylum seekers and refugees go to the nearest country, like Syria from Iraq etc.

Not really surprising about Germany, given it's the biggest, most powerful nation in the EU.

What I don't understand is Sangatte and its successors. Why are all those asylum seekers who are in a developed nation that is part of the EU, so keen to leave and make the UK their final destination? What's so attractive about the UK compared to France?

A lot of it is language isnt it Edam and existing communities that people want to join...?

I think what irritates me is that, and perhaps a communist sneaked into my school and taught us this, have grown up under the impression that much of our country's wealth and power was stolen from other nations, or built on the backs of child and slave labour

so it probably won't kill us to do a little something now and again to help others in need?

Not sure if you are being unreasonable or not as don't know the details of the conversation.

But perhaps those people working with the asylum seekers are privy to information that you don't have? Maybe they are sick of help being given to people they know not to be genuine or consider undeserving? There seems to be a mindset that all refugees are "genuine" when presumably some are not.

Would really need to know the details of the conversation because I could judge!