Active discussions

Meet the Other Phone. A phone that grows with your child.

Meet the Other Phone.
A phone that grows with your child.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Talk
Site stuff

Join our Innovation Panel to try new features early and help make Mumsnet better.

See all MNHQ comments on this thread

Original poster

MNHQ Racism policy

337 replies

ThePigOfHappiness · 31/12/2013 15:17

Hi,
I was just wondering if you could let us know when the racism policy has been amended? I'm sure following today's discussions on NI that it needs to be looked at.
It's clearly breaking the equality act to discriminate based on nationality as it is racist, yet MNHQ don't acknowledge this?
Ta

OP posts:
PhilippaOfHainault · 31/12/2013 18:12

Votes for HoneyDragon for PM. Grin

MrsWedgeAntilles · 31/12/2013 18:16

That's really interesting Pan and good to know.

wannabedomesticgoddess · 31/12/2013 18:18

As an aside.

I was googling about Northern Ireland but can find nothing to say it is a nation. An NI citizen can have dual nationality, I could own two passports should I desire. But I cannot be "Northern Irish."
That said, I have selected that option on several monitoring forms over the years.

There were some whispers about creating a new flag for NI, that doesn't have the red hand of ulster on it. I think it is time this happened. That seems to be a hangover from the gerrymandering and unionist rule days. We have moved on, and so our flag should reflect that.

isnirelandanation · 31/12/2013 18:21

wannabe - from wikipdeia

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countries_of_the_United_Kingdom

isnirelandanation · 31/12/2013 18:24

Also

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constituent_country#United_Kingdom

wannabedomesticgoddess · 31/12/2013 18:27

We are a province. Not a country. Bah.

However the ISO list of the subdivisions of the UK is supplied by British Standards and the Office for National Statistics and so uses "country" to describe England, Scotland and Wales.[3] Northern Ireland, in contrast, is described as a "province" in the same lists.[3]

neunundneunzigluftballons · 31/12/2013 18:31

Maybe that can be the next mums net campaign. Make Northern Ireland a country. Most people I know from Northern Ireland that I have met refer to themselves as Northern Irish first. If it could be recognised by the international Olympic committee it would really help the golfers too as well as the racism policy for mumsnet.

HappTeeNewYear · 31/12/2013 18:31

See? Even second hand citizens in the 'official' records.

isnirelandanation · 31/12/2013 18:33

I actually think it is splitting hairs and pedantic to say just because I'm northern irish I can't be protected on here from racism.

It's horrible either way. As I said, legally it might not be actionable, but to say "well you're not quite protected enough legally so I'm going to do nothing even though you're telling me you feel it's racist" just makes you sound like a bit of a prat really.

isnirelandanation · 31/12/2013 18:35

Ethic origin is protected.

Definition from Wikipedia is here

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_origin

can't I be protected under that then?

ItsIgginningToLookALotLikeXmas · 31/12/2013 18:39

I don't think what we are looking at here is a "legally actionable" case either, I think it is about accepting that being Northern Irish (or English, or Scottish etc) is a protected characteristic and we shouldn't be subject to discrimination or harassment as a result of that characteristic.

isnirelandanation · 31/12/2013 18:41

I agree Its

Pan · 31/12/2013 18:50

Yes, those characteristics are recognised in law and a tribunal will find in your favour, and yes HQ should be recognising racists attitudes based on these characteristics too, whether they are 'actionable' or not (eg the original OP wasn't 'legally' actionable as racist but, I'd suggest, had a racist motivator), and overall HQ should be better-developed when looking at posts that are discriminatory regarding GB/Irish profiles.

worldcitizen · 31/12/2013 19:13

^^ Agree

Original poster
ThePigOfHappiness · 31/12/2013 19:39

I'm really actually shocked that is even an issue. I mean a large group of regular posters have told MNHQ that they are offended and feel marginalised by something and were just told to wait it out. Not at all what I expected

OP posts:
isnirelandanation · 31/12/2013 19:42

ThePig I feel a bit like that too. I mean, it's not as if it was just one of us, there's a whole load of us and we are just told, effectively, to suck it up it has to be discussed.

What's to discuss about racism? Why isn't it simple and clear and obviously unacceptable, no matter who it's directed to?

And for me, it's not just the OP of the initial thread, the reaction of HQ and the comments they made on the thread are actually far far worse.

SquirtedPerfumeUpNoseInBoots · 31/12/2013 20:04

I need to stop opening this thread.

But since I can't.. I know I can choose, in terms of passports and therefore nationality, to be either British or Irish or both at the same time.

My DH is English. Through and through. And has lived in NI more than the length of time he spent in England. He too, could apply for an Irish passport if he so desired.

But as wrong as the original post on that other thread was, MNHQ got it wrong too. I am not a lesser British citizen because I live in the province. Ah well, I pay way too many taxes for that. I take too much shit, sorry, took too much shit years ago from shop assistants on the mainland who would not take my money as legal tender as it was terrorist money.

It is insulting big time that the area of the UK that I was born and raised in is of a lesser importance than those who are in, for example, the capital city of England.

I'm hiding this now. It's doing my head in.

isnirelandanation · 31/12/2013 20:43

Squirted I know exactly how you feel.

I cannot for the life of me get my head around that it's ok for me to feel so second rate and dismissed and be treated so offensively because I'm from Northern Ireland and not the mainland.

I have ranted and raved all night about this and I keep coming back to it - if I held any other ethnicity other than Irish/Northern Irish, if I was in the phrase Rowan used, BAME, then that thread and its tone would NOT have been allowed and HQ would NOT have taken the stance they did, that other posters had to be educated and we have to suck it up. That it was OK for us all to be offended, and that we just had to take it up with the poster in question.

I just cannot get my head round it at all.

wigglesrock · 31/12/2013 20:48

It was a ridiculous response from MN, but it happens all the time on different areas of MN - from the sectarian attitudes to names on Baby names to the sheer stupidity of some of the posters on the the Feminist boards when discussing abortion. MN is exceptionally anglo centric & people are up in arms when you happen to state that you use another parenting websites local boards because they grasp the concept of different summer holidays etc.

HappTeeNewYear · 31/12/2013 20:49

isni it's the same stance they used to take about disablism before the This Is My Child campaign.

It was up to those with disabled children or who were disabled themselves to stand up to disabilist rhetoric. And often be deleted for it.

Well that's now changed.

Time to change this. And we don't need a fucking campaign.

We just need MNHQ to stand up for what's right.

I am really really really pissed that my second deleted post was deleted. I did not say she was a racist. I said she acted and spoke like a racist.

Fine line? Perhaps. But one that should be kept.

treaclesoda · 31/12/2013 20:50

Squirted I know exactly what you mean - I want to stop looking at this, but I find myself compelled somehow, like I can't help myself.

I'm old enough to know what it was like to go to the mainland and be treated like crap for being 'one of them' and whilst I've never experienced that in recent years, I certainly don't want to go back to it. I just want to be considered the equal of everyone else in the UK, and not be accused of being overly sensitive or feeling persecuted.

isnirelandanation · 31/12/2013 20:53

Why can't MNHQ see what is the right thing to do? Why does it take a great big meeting when everyone is back at their desk?

Racism is racism and hairs were split on that other thread to make it not legal racism.

But what about doing the right thing?

worldcitizen · 31/12/2013 20:57

isni I feel so sorry that you are made to go through these feelings, you described your feelings as

And for me, it's not just the OP of the initial thread, the reaction of HQ and the comments they made on the thread are actually far far worse

sounds so much how people feel, who are re-victimised

seriously HQ's reaction is such a "re-visit" to times and areas where various kinds of social groups have had (and some of them still are) fight for equal rights and have to fight so hard to explain the latent forms of racism, that they are feeling but were constantly dismissed.

I still cannot understand why no-one from HQ is commenting anymore. Maybe should try an insult, that deletion of some posters' comments went fairly quickly...

Such a miracle how fast it all of the sudden works??? Strange.

wannabedomesticgoddess · 31/12/2013 20:58

I have never experienced these opinions first hand, mainly because I haven't left NI, but I am shocked and disappointed that the attitude displayed by that OP seems to be quite prevalent.

HoneyDragon · 31/12/2013 21:00

The school holiday thing gets on my tits massively. The assumption is the op is either a hairy handed who has made a rookie error or a private schooler. Either party gets shit.

If someone posts about their lunch at midnight I think located in another hemisphere rather than TROLL!

Swipe left for the next trending thread