White women, please be honest about this

[Lightsmother]

I’m a South Asian woman and genuinely feel white women are unable to fully connect with me in the same way they are with other white women. I don’t feel a genuine solidarity or sisterhood coming from them, regardless of how hard I try or attempt to fit in with their norms.

When you meet a non-white woman, do you really see through her race?

From school to university and now parenthood, it’s a difficult experience and I am constantly considering how each meeting and interaction would go if I were white.

@Xenia

Most people in the UK are not racist. We find comon ground with all kinds of people. For me women who don't work full time however are a different breed. So on this point..... "What I’m talking about here, trying to interrogate, is do white women see non white women as other, or as just another woman in the school playground, office, soft play?"

In some areas the only women not working are those who are not very well educated without professional careers so IQ may be lower or from sexist families so less likely to have anything in common or everyone at the private school date at 3pm might well be a nanny or child minder not a mother (or father) as parents work. I have for example been to a soft play area despite having 5 children and to go sounds like something worse than hell....

I tend to get on well with most people however but would tend to gravitate to those with my educational level and interests which would mean the Asian female or male doctor (I like men as much as women by the way for socialisation which itself might be an alien concept for some cultures) rather than the white or non white housewife who has never worked in a professional career. You get similar divides between professionals and the secretarial and post room staff - that doesn't mean you cannot have a nice conversation with them and a joke but you might feel it is less likely you might marry them or have a close relationship with them just because lives are so different. Skin colour has never genuinely been an issue for me including when my son was the only white boy in his class. My parents were the same - well educated but also importantly Christian - a fundamental point in the Bible is people are equal. The Catholicism of my mother and her ancestors was about love and equality and respect for all faiths and none.

Please clarify what you are on about as it reads very offensive.

@Lightsmother

I’m a South Asian woman and genuinely feel white women are unable to fully connect with me in the same way they are with other white women. I don’t feel a genuine solidarity or sisterhood coming from them, regardless of how hard I try or attempt to fit in with their norms.

When you meet a non-white woman, do you really see through her race?

From school to university and now parenthood, it’s a difficult experience and I am constantly considering how each meeting and interaction would go if I were white.

The difficulty comes where somebody genuinely does 'see through race' because it doesn't matter to them, only to be told that's being offensively racist in itself and you're supposed to put it front of centre because being able to say it doesn't matter in the first place is an expression of white privilege.

Anytime there's somebody I speak to, there's any number of things they could think of me - posh bitch, council house scum, complete knobhead, possibly some prejudice based upon views of Celtic people and/or GRTs due to my complexion, possibly negative thoughts based upon opinions of the English/people from southern England/London (due to my accent), stupid fat bitch (because I'm fat), disabled (because I am), stupid or embarrassing (because I'm disabled) - I could do without offending people by being assumed to be intrinsically racist/exclusionary as well.

I completely get that people feeling that way have got damn good reason to do so (experienced it being directed at my mates at school and me because I was supposedly 'betraying' something I feel no kinship to, just by being friends with them fucking Neanderthals and white van drivers ) - not because of anything I've ever done; but then again, they've been on the receiving end of racism not because of anything they've done, either.

I don't expect somebody to fit in with 'norms'. Normal is a vastly overrated concept in my opinion. Unless you count a norm to be interested in you, interested in your opinions, hoping for somebody else who likes music, art, B movies, cooking, animals, growing plants, bitching about interior design fashions, not be a raging Tory if at all possible - then I'm up for talking bollocks and having a laugh.

I'll talk to everybody (who isn't wearing a MAGA hat/equivalent/offensively misogynistic T-shirt, at any rate). I'd like to be friends with them, or at least have them think 'Oh, she was nice/friendly/kind'. Most people probably think I'm a dickhead, though. That's fine, I'm used to it. I'm not fine with the idea that somebody expects me to be a racist dickhead, though. Because I'm not.

Seriously, is the right answer 'I'll see it if you want me to, but if you don't, then I won't'? Because I want to get it right and not hurt anybody anymore than they have been hurt by other people already.

@OverTheRainbow88, what @Xenia is saying is that she's a crashing snob, and that her snobbery outweighs her consciousness of race. Basically, she's fine with brown people as long as they're not SAHMs with low IQs, which she appears to see as related predicaments, and she can't have more than superficial chitchat with the secretarial or postroom staff at work, whatever their ethnicity, because secretaries are not like 'professionals' and their 'lives are so different'.

And how she can't make friends at the school gate because it's only nannies and childminders doing pick ups, because 'parents work'. Similarly, she has never been to a soft play with any of her five children, because she's too busy and important.

I think that about sums it up.

I've just thought of something. At the DC's primary, a leafy sought after cofe in a quite diverse area of SW London, the playground was full of "tribes". The Alpha mummies, the quiet mummies, the socially awkward mummies, the continental mummies, the hyper church mummies, the BAME mummies. The alpha/pta mummies were the worst and others either wanted to be part of them or avoid or for some reason just gelled with them.

I was freely accepted by them but actually couldn't give a flying fuck. My rules re school, that the DC were told to abide by were: be nice to everyone, include the left out children, be polite, be cheerful and do your best, and never laugh at other people. They had a very wide circle of friends and so did I to the point that the alpha mummies remarked on how I got invited to everyone's cliquey drinks and coffees and were shocked when I said I made an effort with everyone. Oh and my rules "never talk about your children's achievements, never talk about other people's children, houses, spouses or holidays.

Funnily enough I'd say I didn't have many close friends and never have. We stay in touch with two sets of parents from those days - ònes with whom we are comfortable. Both professional families. I have in common with one mum being a full time working mother; with the other who has always been a SAHM our German roots. We are all v late 50s now.

The only bit of arsiness I encountered was over moving ds to the independent sector.
By year 5 bloody parents used to phone me up if there were problems with school/their children. I was never a governor when the dc were pupils. I am now.

I mean, you have to love @Xenia. She has the emotional intelligence of a teaspoon.

@StuntPond

She writes very poorly for someone with such high expectations of IQ etc , I literally had no idea what she was harping on about.

*I have both white and non white friends. I’m good friends with the white English girls (now women of course) I met in Year 7 at school, but as I grow older and reflect on how I was othered by even them as a child, I wonder how genuine our relationship is now.

As for culture, this is interesting territory to explore and perhaps it does centre on perspective. While I feel mostly British, I feel white Britons are more closed off to me than some white Europeans*

Have you read Brit(ish) by Afua Hirsch? It's a great book about race and identity in the UK and your comment here remhinds me a lot of some of the things she says

I have women friends of different races - there has never been any differences that I have noticed from from my friendships with white women compared to BAME women

The is a difference with one of my friends who is south Asian ethnicity but that is more to do with her religion as she do les not drink alcohol so prefers not to go to pubs so I do not always invite her if a group is going for drinks. I am not religious at all but it has no other baring on our relationship

I work in a very international field and have formed some great friendships with women from different religions and races. We respect and show an interest in our differences and talk about them, and in doing so found many similarities.

I'm white british and don't actually know many other white British women but have found some hard to relate to as I'm from quite a working class background while many of them had very different upbringings and have a different outlook eg expectations, accent, tastes. Maybe this is why I'm more comfortable with people who aren't part of the British class system.

I only know one non-white British woman and I thought she was quite friendly and fun at first but more recently she keeps saying things like "white people think this, white people always, white people don't..." which I find pretty othering. She says she experienced a lot of racism growing up and I think she carries it with her. She often contacts me, as a friend would, but I actually feel quite resented by her because I'm white and I don't really want to continue the friendship as she makes me feel disliked because of something I have no control over.

Everyone's different.

I don’t think this is true for me. My husband and children aren’t white though, so I guess it would be a bit weird if I felt unable to be close to them.

I have three very close old friends who I have known for years. The first is from school (totally white in rural area). We both felt at a disadvantage because of family issues, and drew close over that. The other two friends I met at university. One (black) and I shared our degree subject, and she is just a lovely person, who you cannot help but like. We hit it off and are really comfortable around each other and compatible. She is the person I most like to discuss politics with. The third (white) and I bonded over a very deep bad shared experience, and have remained close friends as we are both trying to develop psychologically, in separate ways but often strangely parallel. All three of these friends are lovely people and our friendships would not have been sustained otherwise, but initially what brought us together was something in common, so we could relate to each other and develop friendship based on that. Strong cultural barriers could inhibit that sense of having something to relate to. I had another friend at university, a postgraduate scientist of Pakistani background , who I used to go jogging with and she had an amazing personality, very strong and happy. I went to her wedding to a man she described as "liberal Pakistani", held in her home town, and never saw or heard from her again.

[quote OverTheRainbow88]@StuntPond

She writes very poorly for someone with such high expectations of IQ etc , I literally had no idea what she was harping on about.[/quote]
Have you not come across her before on these boards? SHe's been here for ages - her posts are all written from a perspective of not having a fucking clue what it's like for anyone who isn't exactly like her.

I like Stuntpond's description but I would say that she just has zero ability to put herself in anyone else's shoes.

Women who are in low paid jobs, for example, just aren't trying hard enough.

"I'm white british and don't actually know many other white British women but have found some hard to relate to as I'm from quite a working class background while many of them had very different upbringings and have a different outlook eg expectations, accent, tastes. Maybe this is why I'm more comfortable with people who aren't part of the British class system."

I think I feel the same. I grew up pretty poor, but went to university so most of the people I know are middle class and I struggle to relate to them sometimes.

I also wanted to add that I'm an immigrant to another country - but it's Australia, so white person in another white person's country.
Australia is also sometimes considered to be a hard place to make friends, because although they're very friendly on the surface, it doesn't always translate into real friendships.

Well, I've found a bit of that but I've also made some very good friends here - and I would say that, oddly, the common denominator in most of them is that they are either first generation Aussie-born of British immigrant parents, or they're British themselves.
There are a few exceptions but I live in a country town, where a huge proportion of people have never left the area, married people also from the area and send their kids to the school they went to (or not, if they had a bad experience there) - so it's a fairly insular community in that respect. Now I've been here 11 years I'm making inroads into the insular community too, but I'm not sure how many of those friends are actually real friends, rather than "acquaintances I have now because our children are friends/at the same school".

Whereas all the friends I have in the UK are real friends, many of whom I've known for years.

I think adaptability has to play a part too. If what you're doing isn't working for you, then there's no point in keeping doing it the same way - change things up a bit. I hate going up to people and starting conversations, but when I moved to Australia with a young child and a husband who has no friends, I had to learn how to do it or stay totally isolated.

I’ve not read the full thread but I just wanted to say I’m a white British woman and I also have made any friends like I would hope to. I look around in RL and on fb and it seems lots of women are going out with friends having a great time but I think a large majority of women just don’t have many friends or those they are that close to, regardless of skin colour.

Also my bf is asian and I know his family and friends are very different from me culturally, such as some of the woman are subservient to their husbands and that doesn’t sit well with my feminist viewpoint but I am always friendly, even if I often try to steer them to be a bit more outspoken 😂

I don’t have many close friends, I’m not that way inclined. However I have friends who are from different races and cultures than me.

I do see colour. I think it is quite ignorant to try and “not see” it, because people’s skin colour forms a lot of their life experiences. Telling someone of colour you don’t see it seems an awful lot like invalidating their lived experiences. Hearing about experiences that are so different to my own can be challenging sometimes because it means I have to reassess my own beliefs but I think it’s important to do that.

Different skin colour or culture isn’t a barrier to me getting along with or being close friends someone - I very much take each person as they are as an individual. Shared world outlook is the most important thing to be. They don’t have to be identical and differences are fine but similarities are key to friendships, for me.

@OverTheRainbow88 I'd explain Xenia's point but I'm a SAHP in a working class area so probably lack the intelligence to structure a response coherently. Something to do with the breed of human I am.

I used to be intelligent and interesting but had to give up work to care for a disabled child so now I'm some thick inconsequential breed that isn't worth listening to.

I think your post is really offensive OP. To suggest white women don’t want to be friends with South Asian people. I find what you are saying racist.

I never see people’s nationalities when I make friends with them. It’s just a case of getting along well.

If you approach people with all this negativity, where do you hope to go? This is a friendly country OP.

@lightsmother

I'm white, my friends are not. In my friendship group i am the only white women, we have different religons and backgrounds but so much more in common.

Some of my closest friends are south asian too.

However a few years ago i had a white women in work ask what its like to have so many non white friends, i found this question to be akward stupid and offensive. We can't deny racism exists and there is some strange people out there so i'm sorry you have not had good experiences

Thing is op it's very easy for me to say one of my friends from high school is of Malaysian heritage and my best friend at University was born in Sri Lanka and I've if the Mom's on our school group moved from India in 2018 and I don't value them any differently. And it's true. Bit it really isn't any use. Because if I did think non white women were somehow unworthy of my time, most people wouldn't say so. They are, like Xenia had shown, more likely to say they wouldn't deign to talk to a SAHP or someone who was working class, but Pele are much less honest or aware of their racism

@lightsmother also i don't think you should try to fit in with anyones norms. No real friend who expect this

All of my friends we have different traditions and as i said religions and we are respectful of this. Some of my friends are muslim, sikh, some christain it doesn't matter

With my friends we have tended to learn about each others norms etc

I guess some people are not so open but i certainlty wouldn't expect someone to try and fit in with how i do things to be my friend.

I'm convinced Xenia is a character conceived by a frustrated writer. They dip in and out of the 'Xenia' Mumsnet account when they feel like creating a new story.

My advice would be that she's not believable - no-one is that unremittingly ghastly.

@Xenia you have my sympathies. I really do feel sorry for you and the narrow life you must lead.
For me women who don't work full time however are a different breed erm nope, just people with different life experiences. Even clever rich people can find themselves in a situation where they're suddenly out of work and unable to get a new job. They're isn't some weird rearrangement of chromosomes as they become a sub breed of human unable to converse intelligently
In some areas the only women not working are those who are not very well educated without professional careers so IQ may be lower or from sexist families so less likely to have anything in common or everyone at the private school date at 3pm might well be a nanny or child minder not a mother (or father) as parents work.
The smartest, most successful people I know are able to talk to anyone as an equal. It really shows a lack of imagination to only be able to connect with someone very like you

Hello @Lightsmother
I think it is sad that you have had this experience.

On the cultural front, I have lived in two countries that are either majority white or have a big white community (but both English speaking). I felt like an outsider in both, even after seven years I was definitely a foreigner. This point however doesn't apply to you as you are British living in Britain.

I grew up in a white community and went to an exceptionally white private school. I am sad that I didn't get to grow up with friends other than white people. I did however grow up with a firm belief that we are all equal and to treat all people with respect. I have never considered myself racist, however, I have to admit that I fell into that trap which is common in Britain of thinking if you ignore race then you are not racist. More recently I have realised how this is not right, to acknowledge all our colours and cultures, respect them and work towards understanding people's beliefs and experiences is so much more important. In doing this you are not ignoring race (and in so doing saying it is a bad thing) but rather celebrating it. I've read a particularly good book called Brit (ish) which made me reevaluate and think.

Whilst I don't call myself racist I am first in line to say I have much more to learn, I think ten years a go I wouldn't have admitted that but simply said 'not racist, nothing to discuss'.

All of these conversations flying around about race baffle me at the moment.

I went to secondary school with a very diverse demographic. I now live in a very white British area. I don't really view anyone differently based on the colour of their skin or their cultural background. I view people as individuals and whether they are nice people or people I want to be friends with. Do we have anything in common?

People going on and on about how they are treated differently because of the colour of their skin is pretty tiring IMO. If you're that person, then yes, I probably would give you a wide berth. It's not a race to the bottom.