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,
Agree many people in U.K. are not racist, do not agree that it is most people though.

But that’s not what bothers me the most your point of view is very classist with comments that women not working (I.e SAHMs) are a “different breed” and have “low IQs or are from sexist families”. That you tend to only make friends with other professionals (members of your class).

But take a working class BAME SAHM on benefits, who is according to you “a different breed” and with whom you say you “have nothing in common” and are “less likely to have a close relationship with them”. To this person, your evident feelings of superiority and abhorrence towards them can be indistinguishable from racism.

People going on and on about how they are treated differently because of the colour of their skin is pretty tiring IMO

Gosh, maybe they should just shut up about structural racism in case you find their conversation tiresome, @dooratheexplorer. Because being amusing company for you is probably their priority.

I'm sure racism (both conscious and unconscious) will play a part in your experiences. Having a British accent will help with people whose racism is unconscious I'd have thought. As a Scot in a mixed room of people I'd be more likely to chat to a Scottish Asian woman than a white English one.

The thing is it's easy to say we don't base our friendships on skin colour but we are likely to be happier with people who are similar to us. MIL is foreign and she knows everyone from her home country in the British city she lives in, she'll go and chat to a stranger who looks like her. Her best friends here are all from there.

But not everyone is racist and big life changes (like birth and deaths) tend to make you re-examine friendships. You've just got to keep plugging away at trying to make friends and at some point you'll realise you've met someone you do have a connection with. I didn't meet 'Mum friends' I got on with straight away, and it takes time and repeated exposures. And baby groups are awful!

@StuntPond

No, you're right. I'm not interested in talking about structural racism when I meet up with a friend for coffee. I would personally find that pretty dull and depressing.

My (private) school was very mixed, a school that tended to make doctors (about 20 out of the 100 in my year ended up at med school)...

Also had a boarding department so decent numbers from Russia, Hong Kong and Brunei.

No issues relating to anyone. My group of close friends was a real mixture, best mate from mainland China, plus girls from India (2 different states originally, both did their other language as an extra GCSE), Japan (also did language Saturday school) and some boarders from Hong Kong.

I'd probably have more issues relating to someone who wasn't interested in how the world works and had limited their horizons to their own small town...

I honestly do not care what colour my friends are.None of my friends are like me per se,all I ask for in friends are be a nice person.

I'm a half n half, married to a half n half, and was brought up in a white working class area.

As a result, I get on very well with white working class women, "outsiders" of all cultures and creeds, and have a lot of mixed race friends. I struggle though to get on with middle class men and women, be they white or otherwise; there's some sort of problem and I don't really know what drives it.

I suspect it's a cultural thing. I nominally read as white, but it's obvious I'm not western European. Culturally, my behaviours and outlooks, even though they are heavily influenced by the very foreign part of my heritage, align more with old working class English culture.

I've got to the point though where people can take me or leave me; I'm no longer bothered.

[quote dooratheexplorer]@StuntPond

No, you're right. I'm not interested in talking about structural racism when I meet up with a friend for coffee. I would personally find that pretty dull and depressing.[/quote]
Even if it was affecting their life and upset them?

regardless of how hard I try or attempt to fit in with their norms
Please be yourself.

Hmm you can only do that when
1- you somehow fit at least in one group where you live (eg I don’t as I have the privilege to live in one of those very small minded areas in England described by some PP)
2- you know deep down that how you are is ok and not somehow offensive. That’s hard to do when you are an immigrant and are trying to understand how things work in the country you are living in. No one, not even the most laid back, will want someone who doesn’t follow some basic rules. Eg queuing.

Most people tend to make friends with people of a similar educational background and like conversations with them. I have never really mixed with housewives and why would I? I was back a work full time when the babies were 2 weeks old!

My general point above is that people in the UK tend to mix more based on class and educational level rather than race issues. I would feel closer to Rishi Sunak for example than to Priti Patel (never mind that I have had more close friends who are male than female but that is a different issue again).

Question, yes following the basic rules is always a good idea and cultures differ. The Americans tend to be a lot louder and pushy than the British for example. In flats in Switzerland you may not flush the toilet after 10pm in case you wake people up. I never drop litter (although we seem to have all kinds of people currently dropipngi t all over in the UK so I am not sure I can see it is a British thing not to do that but if I compare say Bermuda where we had one holiday with Mexico and Panama Bermuda was almost litter free and the other too (poorer countries of course too) loads of litter. Also climate means some countries only waken up at night as it is too hot to move around int he day whereas in the UK the weather is usually so awful we are tucked up in bed around 10 or 11 so want silence outside.

I don't feel a "genuine solidarity or sisterhood" with anyone. Regardless of colour or anything else. Is this a thing?

@Xenia

Most people tend to make friends with people of a similar educational background and like conversations with them. I have never really mixed with housewives and why would I? I was back a work full time when the babies were 2 weeks old!

My general point above is that people in the UK tend to mix more based on class and educational level rather than race issues. I would feel closer to Rishi Sunak for example than to Priti Patel (never mind that I have had more close friends who are male than female but that is a different issue again).

Question, yes following the basic rules is always a good idea and cultures differ. The Americans tend to be a lot louder and pushy than the British for example. In flats in Switzerland you may not flush the toilet after 10pm in case you wake people up. I never drop litter (although we seem to have all kinds of people currently dropipngi t all over in the UK so I am not sure I can see it is a British thing not to do that but if I compare say Bermuda where we had one holiday with Mexico and Panama Bermuda was almost litter free and the other too (poorer countries of course too) loads of litter. Also climate means some countries only waken up at night as it is too hot to move around int he day whereas in the UK the weather is usually so awful we are tucked up in bed around 10 or 11 so want silence outside.

Katie Hopkins what are you doing here???

I half wondered if OP or someone would promote the current BBC podcast/radio broadcast about "coding": it's pitched as black woman toning down their urban-black culture so they can fit in with "white" environments. Could pick up an Asian audience too.

I doubt that OP truly bonds instantly in sister hood with any random South Asian females who aren't her own kind of South Asian -- not beyond the "I see you're coding too" moment, anyway. South Asian is a huge umbrella and lots of people under it don't like each other for having different religion or nationality.

Surely it's not a case of seeing through differences in other people but accepting them. We are all different with different norms, beliefs, backgrounds, family circumstances and yes skin colour too. I lived in an Arabic country for a number of years so hard lots of 'foreign' friends. We don't look alike and often don't think alike but it doesn't stop us being friends. Similarly I have white friends and while some may think we look more alike we often don't think
alike and we all come from different backgrounds. We are still friends.

I’d chat to anyone, but I’d be more likely to strike up a proper chat with someone who has spent time away from my town, and the most likely reason for that would be education. Although I have a great pal who spent time in the services, great stories, so cosmopolitan in outlook now.

I am the same as fascinated - I can chat to anyone and find something in common with almost everyone on the planet but educational similarities and perhaps having moved away from home town (as I did) helps.

I’d argue that there’s as much inverse snobbery from “them” as snobbery from “us”.

Usually it’s obvious from your age - young dc in your forties is a giveaway!

@Xenia

Do you mind me asking what work you do?

@OverTheRainbow88, how can you have missed the umpteen times @Xenia has told us all about her Big Law Job? Possibly almost as many times as she's told us about her private education and her belief that SAHPs are a different and inferior species who have nothing better to do than to gossip at the school gates about their Big Job-free existences.

[quote StuntPond]**@OverTheRainbow88, how can you have missed the umpteen times @Xenia has told us all about her Big Law Job? Possibly almost as many times as she's told us about her private education and her belief that SAHPs are a different and inferior species who have nothing better to do than to gossip at the school gates about their Big Job-free existences.[/quote]
Gutted she isn't Katie Hopkins!

My general point above is that people in the UK tend to mix more based on class and educational level rather than race issues

Yes they do. The problem is that to be part on one of those classes, you still need to fit some standard. I’ve been told that I can’t fit any class (because I’m not BRITISH so the way I am doesn’t fit anywhere). But ive also been told my dcs, who have an English father and have lived all their life here are ‘international’ and don’t fit in any social class either!!

The system is so rigid that it is racist And xenophobic by default, regardless of alll the talk about bee friends with non white. I suspect they are mostly 3rd generation immigrants
It’s a bit like all the ‘up in arms about Catherine M getting married in royalty and how she will never be one because she wasn’t born into it (including people going back to her grandparents only been MC or was it WC to prove she would never fit in)

Usually it’s obvious from your age - young dc in your forties is a giveaway! Giveaway about what?

I’ve been told that I can’t fit any class (because I’m not BRITISH so the way I am doesn’t fit anywhere). But ive also been told my dcs, who have an English father and have lived all their life here are ‘international’ and don’t fit in any social class either!! I don't know anyone who is this obsessed about class to go about ascribing it to other people as a way to "other" them. Possible because I'm the inferior breed, sahm

It's not so much colour as culture and class and core values. It's also a feeling of being judged for who you are.

Sorry meant to say for who you are based on appearance