To wonder how I turned out the way I am?

[cupcakesandbunting]

My brother and I are both very liberal in pretty much all aspects. Sometimes I wonder how because my mother is one of the WORST bigots I know of. This may get a bit long and ranty but really, I must vent...

My mum is a lovely woman; dotes on her grandchildren, will help anyone out and is generally good BUT I cannot tally this with some of the awful things she comes out with regarding immigrants/people not of white british origin. First off, she comes out with "they come over here" which gets my hackles up instantly before coming out with some stupid, stupid remark about Poles having their own section in the supermarket (wtf is wrong with that anyway?!) then wehn I point out that when she goes on holiday to Greece, the greek supermarkets stock British brands she will reply "that's different" which I suppose it is, but still.

She will not listen to any reasoned argument with regards to the open door policy within the E.U and that she is as able to go live in Poland if she choose as the Poles are able to choose to live here. She knows my feelings on the BNP (they need to fuck off and never come back) and when I was expressing horror at Griffin's £50K to fuck off back to where you came from idea, I'm sure her eyes lit up.

I just don't understand her. She refuses to try and even understand a tiny bit about other cultures and why people might wish to leave their own country so they don't get burned out of their bloody houses ("yes but why must they come HERE?") yet she has a very good black friend but then she does make remarks like "John doesn't like the amount of Poles and HE'S black!" like not being white and expressing the same opinion as a white person makes them a black person worthy of note.

I just kind of wonder how brother and I ended up being very accepting of pretty much everyone when mother darling is clearly Nick Griffin in a wig and lipstick

Chinky is not racist in the same way that paki is. Chinky is not short for chinese the way paki can be a short form of Pakistani, afgani a short form of Afganistani etc.

Chinky comes from chink as in narrow opening/slit and refers to chinese peoples eyes being like slits which was thought to be inferior to round eyes. Its very offensive to some people.

I think alot of it is fear/boredom, I don't know how people find the time to be hateful towards others tbh?!?

I am really proud of my dad though-he's always been a bit funny about gay people an recently a very close family friend 'came out' - he was VERY suprised because 'liams just a normal bloke..' who chats to my dad about cars football an doesn't wiggle about! Ever since he's a conpletly changed man

It's the opposite in our house. I grew up in a world of lentils, sandals and anti-nuclear stickers and now say things like 'It is probably quite a good idea to learn to speak English if you live here' and 'Children usually benefit from knowing where the boundaries are'.

Cue very long, emotionally overwrought heartfelt lecture from my mum about caring for others.

(I'm a liberal really - just not THAT liberal!).

I think most people of ethnic origin will find the terms "paki" and "chinky" racist and very offensive.

Surely everyone is "of ethnic origin"

My Grandmother (God rest her soul) was very racist, she once said she supported a certain football team "because there are less Jungle Bunnies on that side"
This was when my brother had some friends round to watch the FA cup, we were all shocked and we all challenged her. To be honest, I think she just liked starting an argument so was deliberately provocative (hmm, ringing bells).

Just before she died she went to visit a family member in South Africa and made friends with black women there. She came home a different person. We all had "tribal" gifts which she explained to us in detail.
She did rather ruin it by saying:

"They are not the same in their own country"

THUNK

I had a very long and very futile row with someone on a Facebook group (yeah, I know) because the idiot in question told me that "we call americans yanks, welsh taffys, irish paddys. Paki is short for pakistan." I did try to explain that paki is usually said with some degree of venom i.e "fuck off back to where you came from you paki bastard"

I HATE people who use this type of logic to justify their ignorance.

I'm not saying paki isn't offensive and racist, it obviously is (in British culture), but saying chinky is ok because paki is short for pakistani and is culturally acceptable in other parts of the world is like saying chocolate drop is an ok name for your black waitress, or ghost people is an ok term for white people. Chinky is a dig about chinese appearance, not a shortening of the name of a country.

It's offensive. There's no excuse or rationalisation, so don't make yourself look more ignorant by trying to justify it.

I second that.

Stangely I didn't know there was any element of racism or prejuidice in my mum and dad until I was older. I never recall them speaking ill of other races when I was a child, they also never banged on about 'proddys', which was quite liberal of them considering we grew up with Catholic/Protestant tensions. Did have to cancel my friend and her husband coming for lunch with me and my mum though, she had no problem with my Thai friend but when I mentioned he was German (don't mention the war) and couldn't trust that she'd not bang on about Hitler and so on.

I went to a wedding once where the bride was half German and half Finnish. Her grandparents were a combination of French, German, Finnish and Swiss, and had been on opposing sides in the war somehow (and still thought that way).
The bridegroom's father made some comment in his speech about not mentioning the war.
Tumbleweed time.

Dave - Chinky is bloody offensive you daft apeth.

My parents are just like this as well. The less educated/life experience argument might just about stretch to my Dad who left school when he was 15 and has worked in industry all his life, but my Mum went to university and got a degree, spent a year living in France and her young adulthood in London, has worked in various public and private sectors through her career and is now a manager in the NHS. She's wedded to the Daily Fail, votes Conservative but would probably switch to UKIP if they had a serious chance where they live and regularly rails against the "flood" of Eastern European immigrants/"darkies"/Muslims coming into the country and would pull us out of the EU in a heatbeat.

I recently joined the Lib Dems. I haven't told her yet, but might let my membership card "slip out of my pocket" next time I visit just to see the reaction...

I know its offensive GetOrfMoiLand but it pisses me off when the 'paki is short for pakistani so chinky can't be offensive' old chestnut is trotted out over and over. I have even seen it in thread titles on here in the 'what shall I order from the chinky' type threads that pop up occasionally. Sometimes it feels like the forgotten racism, a bit like gingerism. A policeman even told me there was no such thing as racism against chinese people when he was taking a statement about a racially motivated assault . Its bloody frustrating.

Gay40 are you talking to me? I'm not trying to justify anything, I am responding to the 'I call chinese food chinky but Australians say Paki so its ok' post earlier on. I am aware that I am not articulating myself very well and I am not trying to say that paki is not offensive but I am hypersensitive to chinky and the justification for it is always along the lines of "Its just short for Chinese, we don't mean anything by it" and I think its shitty excuse. Its not short for chinese, its no less offensive than "slitty eyes" its a piss take, its rude.

It's offensive. In my workplace, you'd be up on a disciplinary, no mitigating circumstances.

seen comments on the Daily Mail where hundreds of posters keep on claiming 'Paki is just short for Pakistani - how can that be offensive or racist?' They always excuse it with - 'Scots get called Jock, Welsh are Taffys etc'. They just don't get (or refuse to get)it's offensive to the people it's aimed at and has been used threatingly by the far right types for decades.

Exactly, Scanty. Like I said earlier, paki tends to be used with some degree of venom whereas taffy/jock/paddy are more like affectionate terms although under workplace ethics they would be considered racially offensive.

I hate the word paki. Hate, hate, hate it.

My mum used to go on about how liberal and accepting she was of people from other countries and/or who aren't white. Her proof was that she loved world music and documentaries about Martin Luther King.

But that was when almost everyone was white in her town, and had been born there. There has been a huge influx of people from other countries into my home town over the past 10 years, mainly from Portugal and Eastern Europe. Now whilst she is not at all as bad as most other people she knows, she does regurgitate some of the opinions she hears, about such and such "who can't get a job in Tesco and has children to feed while there are Portuguese girls working there" and complaining about "young men hanging about in groups talking in their own language" which she can't understand and is apparently intimidating.

And I know she bites her tongue when I'm there. Last time I was home a family member said that "foreign nationals should be sent back to where they come from" for driving without car insurance

Being anti-immigration is not the same as being a bigot or a racist

I agree, kind of, Oldandgreynow.

I think some immigration is good but I don't see how this open-door policy is sustainable. We're a titchy island and I'm willing to bet that the number of immigrants entering isn't matched by the amount of Brits leaving. On a pure numbers level, we need to cap immigration somehow.

No-one wanted the jobs the immigrants in my town filled. The manager of the local meat factory himself told me they needed loads of immigrants to come and work there as they had nowhere near enough workers from the town itself. Despite the extremely high uunemployment rate.

I don't think immigration is a problem in my town at all. What my mum and most others in my home town are objecting to really is not that immigrants are "taking our jobs". It's because they are different, they look different, speak a different language and have different religions. And that instantly arouses suspicion in them, it causes them to think the worst of immigrants and to believe they should have fewer rights. And that is racist.

cupcakes, can't believe your mum is only 52 and has views like this. I'm 47 and the only person I know like this is my 83 year old uncle!

And I have never seen anyone who isn't white or who is not originally from my town working in our local Tesco.

'No-one wanted the jobs the immigrants in my town filled. The manager of the local meat factory himself told me they needed loads of immigrants to come and work there as they had nowhere near enough workers from the town itself'
That is because they are not paying enough!And that is the problem while there is a steady supply of immigrants willing to work for peanuts , wages for the 'working classes will not improve.