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.

@lljkk I honestly can’t understand your rambling post.

@Muser314

Yes! When I was young and living in London I had a lot of non-white friends, from south africa, brazil. I think we clicked partly because we were ''young and in london but not from london"' and there is a lot of common ground. Now that I'm back in Ireland, I have no non-white friends as I'm ''from round here''. I find it hard to make friends now at my advanced age! I certainly wouldn't be rejecting the hand of friendship from somebody I clicked with and felt affection for.

Ha! Muser, I'm non-white, old, and moved to Ireland recently! I also find it hard to make friends from round here, but it's not because of racism. It;s because the friends I do have are ones I've known for decades; we had children together and "know" each other. I have managed to make friends with two 60 year old women, through similar interests, but both live in Dublin and I hardly ever get to see them. It's not easy making friends when you move country in your 60s. But my children (and some grandchildren) are here, so...

As for those commenting on me politely requesting people to not to throw shade - the issue is this. I started this post asking white women for a genuine opinion - I’m honestly curious (as a non white person) what white people think. I wasn’t seeking help, I was just open about how I felt and wanted the same from you

Noone is "throwing shade". You asked for "honest" replies and that is mine. Self reflection is a vital life skill that we should ALL be able to engage in, to improve both ourselves and the quality of our relationships, regardless of race, and if I was continually coming up with the exact same issue with every person I met then you bet I'd be doing some bloody self reflection.

If you are unwilling to do that, thats entirely your prerogative but then dont complain when you come up with the exact same problem say after day after day.

I think that most people do see colour.
I am white and I do see race. However, I do not allow this to stop me from interacting with people of different races.
I attended a predominantly white secondary school and I noticed that many of the black students preferred to stay with other black students . I think it’s simply because they felt more comfortable with girls of their own race.
Most of my friends are white, but my closest friend is a British born Nigerian woman. We met at university and just clicked. She was a bridesmaid at my wedding and I was bridesmaid at her wonderful Nigerian wedding . She is godmother to my eldest daughter
I think the reason our friendship ‘works’ is because we feel free to talk to each other about everything (including issues of race ).
I don’t feel that I have to watch what I say with her and if I said something that could be deemed offensive , she would tell me and vice versa.

Many rather than most - for the pedants

I have friends of all colours. I enjoy other cultures but i am more interested in the person. Asian communities tend to be closed and some of the " well off" women come over as rude and entitled but i find most quiet, shy and a bit unsure. Just be yourself and make the first invite for coffee. Good luck x

@AlexisCarringtonColbyDexter read carefully - I’m not “complaining”. I’m asking for people’s views. Can do without being patronised, thanks!

In my experience it depends on where in the UK you live that will change your experiences. We now live in a w9nderful South coastal city, have done for many years, and it's just been amazing. People are kind, we've not experienced racism, race isn't even mentioned as an issue because I don't think people see things this way here. Used to live further up north however, and even though that city was multicultural there were more incidents of "minor" racism, and people seeing us differently. It wasn't aggressive etc, just a constant subtleness.

Rather than explain myself (who cares), I am curious to ask:

What experience do you seek? What would "solidarity" or "sisterhood" mean to you, @Lightsmother ? How would you know you had obtained these things?

Fascinating thread. OP, I do think it's all about finding people on your wavelength, yet with a tantalising point of difference. Why do we travel, if not to find something that we can't find in our home culture? Why did I, a freckled Celt, feel so at ease in Brazil, and go back three times? Because I found the points of connection, yet details of difference, so exhilarating.

I'm an Australian born in Hong Kong and tend to gravitate toward Asians, as we seem to have cultural similarities. My young adulthood in a posh (white) part of Sydney was so dreary; I couldn't get into the boring heavy drinking/drug use thing. I moved to Melbourne, and my closest friend here is an Indian Malaysian I met on the dance floor. Many Melbourne people actively cultivate friendships "across race lines" to expand the network and have fun. It's something I've always admired about this city.

There must be people like these in every city, so, OP, I hope you find them, wherever you are. Follow your interests and find your people.

I get what you mean, OP. Of course people see colour/differences, but if they're worth anything they won't let it affect their interactions. I live in a a South East Asian country and have felt very welcomed and have lots of friends of different ethnicities, but there are plenty of expats who don't seem to make as much effort, which I find quite sad. I get that sometimes it is easier to speak in your first language, but I really appreciate efforts to welcome me, and now I'm getting better at the language I'm finding more doors opening to me too.

One of my best friends and the person I probably look up to the most is Brazilian. Of African descent maybe? I don't know, I think she's smart, funny, talented and ambitious.

TBH I try to be friendly to everyone and would nearly go out of my way to be more friendly to people from different cultures to my own.

I think other people's lives are so interesting

OP, can you give concrete examples of things you did “to fit in” with white culture?

OP do you feel like you have a community that you do belong to? You say you live in East London and so did I when my son was born.

Although it was very international, I still never found very easy to find someone to talk to in baby groups. Maybe ‘too international’ is a thing? Not enough common cultural background?

I am v used to be being the outsider in any group as I grew up with parents of 2 different nationalities in a third unrelated country! I am brown but not many people can pinpoint what kind of ‘brown person’ I am. I have a British but with a twang of international school accent.

So much so that when I took my son to a toddler group in the new village we moved to, I knew the best tactic was to chat to the most obvious outsider there - the only male there!

@lljkk perhaps familiarity is a better way to explain it. I see how other white women behave with one another, even if they were strangers a moment before, and notice a difference. Certainly, with some South Asians, we “bond” more instantly too.

I'm the opposite, I was brought up in my stepfathers country in Asia from the age of 3 and only ever had asian friends until I left to go to boarding school at 16. I had an extremely strict upbringing, no boyfriends, no going out alone or to parties, spent my time studying.
I feel no affinity with white women as our upbringing was completely different and feel a huge sense of relief when I find an asian friend who knows where I'm coming from.
I've not fitted in in the UK for the whole of my life so I think I have some idea how you feel.
It is difficult to fit in. I've been confused about my identity my whole life. My mother and I were the only white women in our community, nobody had ever married outside of their own culture before.
But unlike over here in the UK we were made to feel very welcome. I've not really felt completely happy since I came back to the UK.

I probably have to give up on thread because I find MNers write very vague descriptions & then other posters declare "I know exactly what you mean!" when nothing was described exactly. I reckon other posters project what they want to believe was meant and then the conversation becomes meaningless (to someone like me).

"bond"? "behave with each other"? What do those words mean?

Kisses on the cheek? Explicit TMI conversations? "I know exactly what you mean!" statements? "Yes of course you can borrow my mooncup" offers?

A lot of my non-white friends were born and grew up in London and have tight-knit family and friendship groups which are very well established. As a result, although we have worked, travelled and socialised together, I have only ever felt peripheral in their lives, as they have a core of friends and family going back years. I grew up in the north and relied heavily on friends in London for pretty much all my emotional needs, I wonder if this experience is also making it more difficult for you - if people assume you have your own networks to rely on already? Sorry - possibly a bit of a reach! I now live more rurally and miss having a diverse friendship group.

Unfortunately it's human nature to have unconscious biases and make snap judgements about people based on their appearance.
When we walk into a new mother's group we look for people that look like us - similar age, socio-economic background etc.
A lot of the snap judgements we make will turn out to be wrong. Hopefully we learn from this and try to be more aware of our own biases...

Once we interact with a person they stop being the stereotype we created in our mind and become a unique human being.
At this point something like skin colour - which tells you literally nothing about a person - becomes completely irrelevant to a relationship.
This is my experience anyway.
I don't feel like there's any difference at all in my connection with my non-white friends to my white friends.
You say you have a british accent, culture etc. so I'm actually really surprised by your experience.

I probably have to give up on thread because I find MNers write very vague descriptions & then other posters declare "I know exactly what you mean!" when nothing was described exactly.

I agree that this thread is frustratingly vague. I asked up the thread what cultural/racial 'faux pas' people are so worried about committing that they avoid friendships with people of other races, and all I got in return was someone who said a child in their child's class went to the teacher every time someone said 'black', even if it was about a pirate's hat, and someone who said that someone at her workplace had complained about a discussion of food being held during Ramadan, when it wasn't clear who had made the complaint.

"You're manufacturing barriers that only need to be as important as you decide to make them."

I think this is a very good description of the problems inherent in the Identity Politics that currently saturate our society.

@HBGKC God I hope we never meet in a baby group or otherwise :)

My friends are people with whom I have things in common in the context of interests and values. They include two South Asian professional women, a Muslim mother of one of DS's school friends, the black British father of one of DH's school friends (both married to white people), and a Nigerian woman. Also we have neighbourly relations with the three Asian families in our small, gated road.

I also have many white friends, similarly with shared values and interests. I am quite sure I have met and not forged close relationships with a far higher number of white people than BAME people over the years for the simple fact we have no common ground.

May I say very gently op that in my experience there are a small number of South Asian women who over share in relation to their servants in their home country, their respective wealth at home and convey a sense of superiority, often misplaced in the context of their lives in the UK that is not helpful to their popularity. You may not be one of those people but it is not uncommon in my experience and the lack of filter is unhelpful.

DH is white but from another European culture, our family is very international, and I work all over the world. Therefore I am used to straddling cultures. Even though I'm white British, living in a fairly white British city, I often find I have more in common with the other people who straddle cultures, whether those are European, South East Asian, Indian, American etc.

People who are living in a different country from where they are born or are 2nd/3rd etc generation / have married across cultures are used to dealing with the complexities when these cultures meet and navigating a way through. Juggling competing cultural and family demands around celebrations, holidays etc. Mono-cultural people can find that harder to quickly grasp because they're not living those complexities every day. I also find these 'straddlers' are used to communicating with people who might not have the same references as them, so make an effort to explain, or actually just avoid cultural references altogether. Whereas monocultural white Brits who have never worked abroad/married across cultures etc, don't necessarily realise this is an issue, and that can feel impenetrable and make it harder to make connections based on shared backgrounds.

People aren't just commenting on the fact you say you 'politely requested them not to throw shade', but your interpretation of what is being said as 'throwing shade'. It could be that you already have some preconceived ideas about other people, and are making assumptions about otherwise neutral remarks or interactions, which then get responded to.

You want to assume that your interpretation of it all is the way it is, and therefore you don't want 'help' changing it, when people might be suggesting that rather than just assuming you are right, and this is how it is, and wondering about why, perhaps all your interpretations aren't right in the first place. It's not saying you have to change if you don't want to, but offering alternative viewpoints about what might be going on, which invariably ends up with the possibility that the interactions would turn out differently if you had a different mindset.

You perhaps don't even think that you are coming across as rude or touchy here, whereas it does come across that way to me. That doesn't mean you need to change - you are perfectly entitled to continue to express yourself the way you like. But it would put me off, if something similar happened in interactions in real life. And yes, that might mean I'd lost out on someone who could be a good friend, because I'd found something rude and abrupt when it wasn't meant to be. Both parties can then look at their assumptions and decide if they want anything to change or not. If you've got all the friends you want, then no need to care, you can carry on just assuming that you've interpreted it right, that it's to do with race, and you can wonder why white women are like that. Or if you aren't happy with things and want more friends, you can consider whether other things might be going on. As can the people you interact with. If I find you rude and antagonistic, but also wished I had more friends, I'd look at my own assumptions and consider that you maybe didn't mean to come across that way.

But it is difficult to discuss a situation that could be based on a false premise, without suggesting ways that things could be different. Many people DO want to discuss a situation because they aren't entirely happy with the way it is.