Concerns about racism

[PandoraSocks]

Hi there Mumsnet HQ

Many of us are concerned about the uptick of hatred, xenophobia and racism on the site over the past couple of weeks. Most of the bigotry is focused on asylum seekers. MNHQ will of course delete racism etc. if reported, but this has gone way beyond a few hateful posts.

Links below to three examples of threads which have descended into real nastiness.

Cheers.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/in_the_news/5385273-civil-unrest-whats-really-going-on?utm_campaign=thread&utm_medium=share

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5385914-do-you-believe-there-will-be-a-civil-war?utm_campaign=thread&utm_medium=share

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5386073-to-be-so-fed-up-amd-disheartened-with-all-the-xenophobia?utm_campaign=thread&utm_medium=share

Agreed. I have friends who vote Conservative. I don't agree with them much politically but they aren't racist.

I would be surprised if the MN demographic opinion was any different from opinion polls of women in general. Its a large site, I’d expect to find all views here if not on every thread and topic. When the country trends right or left, so do large mixed forums.

Anyone who thinks racism and racist tropes are the sole prerogative of the right needs to get out more. There is plenty of racism (and sexism and classism) on the more authoritarian left (always couched in self justification) - I’ve experienced all three in leftwing politics, as have my counterparts in rightwing politics.

I always experienced a higher correlation between extreme views and authoritarianism rather than the left/right axis. No surprise as identity politics in general fits better on the authoritarian/libertarian axis and is often used as a deliberate misdirection from economic class politics. However getting off topic now!

If Rotherham had not been exposed yet, any post on here saying men of mainly Pakistani origin are attacking young girls in gangs would be absolutely annihilated and deemed race hate.

The safety of women and girls plays second fiddle to everything, and I mean everything. Even posters who are happy to join in the ‘men are awful and predatory’ type threads absolutely balk at any suggestion being made that certain demographics of men are more likely to attack women than others.

I think for once women and children should come first and those posters should do a lot of soul searching about where we may be in 10 years.

I would implore mumsnet not to let this as well become a place where sexual crime can be covered up by accusations of bigotry.

I fully support any pejorative racial terms, suggestions of violence, etc being flat out banned because yes I agree racism as a whole has increased and is totally unacceptable. But that doesn’t mean all is well when it comes to very specific types of immigration and the effect on our society.

No, I would be more than happy to engage with someone who was asking this question in good faith, but I have seen enough from you to know that you're not interested in the answer. I'm not responding to your goading.

What I will say is that it's actually very easy not to sound racist if you aren't actually racist.

Thanks for raising your concerns.

Racism - or any hate speech - is absolutely not tolerated on Mumsnet. Posts that break our rules in this way are removed when reported, and posters who persist are banned. We rely on reports to help us catch anything that slips through and we’re grateful to those who take the time to get in touch with us. Compared to many other large platforms, Mumsnet takes a much firmer and faster approach to removing hate speech and posts that cross the line are often removed within minutes of being reported.

Immigration is a major political and national issue. Allowing people to talk about these issues openly and within the rules is not the same as endorsing prejudice, and we believe thoughtful, good-faith discussion is far more constructive than driving it underground, which ultimately just leads to more division - and we think there’s more than enough of that at the moment in our society.

We don’t assume that everyone who has concerns about immigration is racist (or indeed white and British), and we don’t believe that creating a separate board for such conversations would help. Much like in political debate, it’s often by allowing people to express opinions - even uncomfortable ones - that those views can be challenged, debated, and sometimes even changed.

No one is obliged to engage with threads they find offensive - scrolling past or hiding is always an option. And if a post does cross the line, please do report it so we can take a look. We have deleted many posts (and banned several users) in recent weeks thanks to your reports.

We’ll continue to do our best to strike the balance between open discussion and keeping the site one of the few civil places online to have these difficult conversations.

I agree @MrsBennetsPoorNerves I was going to respond to a pp but then took a few minutes to read their other posts. I'm mentally hiding their posts from now on.

I’ve shared some experiences of a couple of friends in some recent threads, mainly because their experiences (one several years ago, one recently) have changed how I view the situation.

I don’t think it’s racist to have an outlet to discuss certain issues that are going on and that are affecting more disadvantaged women and children who are often left to it - we’ve seen this with happen with the whole gender stuff that’s going on, we’ve seen this happen with the grooming gangs scandal, and I believe we’re seeing this with some asylum seekers now.

I agree racist posts need to be removed, but by assuming all of the posts have a racist motive and deleting all those that cover topics like this which people are divided over could just end up with disadvantaged women having no way to discuss these issues and speak out when it’s happening, and when they do they’re told they’re bigots (again).

Racism - or any hate speech - is absolutely not tolerated on Mumsnet. Posts that break our rules in this way are removed when reported, and posters who persist are banned.

I'm sorry @BeckyAMumsnet but this blatantly isn't the case. There are so many horribly racist responses on so many threads that are left to stand. Unless perhaps we have very different views on what constitutes racism or hate speech.

I am so left wing that you would probably be hiding behind a wall if you saw me coming. But here's the thing. I, like many on the left, am not pro-immigration. I am simply not anti- immigration either. And I do my very best to not be racist, even unwittingly. Most of us are in favour of a nuanced debate about what immigration could look like, just as we are in favour of a nuanced debate about benefits and all the other controversial subjects. I was brought up, as many of us were, that discussion and argument (i.e. debate) were the way to discuss political issues. That is not what happens on this site. Immigrants are not responsible for most sex crimes, they are not terrorists, they are not all Muslims, they should not be left to drown in the Channel, there are no shops displaying signs that say no English allowed. There are problems with immigration. There have always been problems with immigration. The Celts thought the Romans should go home (they were possibly correct!). There are problems with the "British" (whatever they are).

If you knew what a great many on the left actually think, you'd probably be gobsmacked. But "left" is just another insult that is bandied around, just as "right" is.

You may not agree with people on the left (or you might be surprised to find out that you do), but they come to their positions through discussion and debate - that is the hallmark of the left, like them or not. To be fair, I do not like the politics of conservatism, but I recognise that many have come to their position through equally genuinely held thought and discussion. And I can debate with and deal with that. The true "right" - Farage and those to the right of him - look at what they do. They do not debate. They do not argue their position. They come up with slogans and rants - no rationale at all.

Anyway, I digress - racism is not acceptable full stop, whatever your legitimately held views, because it derives from hatred. There is no room for the politics of hatred.

I haven't seen the thread you're referring to, although I have read many others. The problem isn't people having concerns about asylum seekers. It's about skewing facts and repeating of misinformation planted by bots online to try and demonise a whole group of people. They are not one homogenous mass, they are from different countries and cultures. Some will have escaped truly traumatic situations, some will be economic migrants attempting to better the situation for their families and should be processed and sent back. Yes, some will have values and behaviours that don't fit our laws and culture and some may be actively a threat and it is fine to discuss these issues and how they can be mitigated. What is not ok is to demonise a whole group of people to the extent that a mob thinks it's ok to try and set a hotel containing women and children on fire, as happened a year ago.

can i suggest if you do report racist posts that you state why you think it’s racist ? I have found that can make it easier for the moderators who after all are only humans and dealing with lots of stuff

Thank you, I agree with that statement entirely.

It wasn’t too long ago that any woman expressing concerns about transwomen were also deemed bigots, hateful etc - the default is that any woman with concerns is a bigot unless the evidence is irrefutable and universally agreed upon.

It’s incredibly wearing, and just so disingenuous.

Thanks @Zonder - could you please report these to us? We're unlikely to be aware otherwise.

I got an email from MN saying I had been deleted several times and I should review my posting style. I replied saying, essentially, ‘what? When?’ And was told they don’t routinely tell you if you are deleted. They wouldn’t give me all the posts in question but did quite the bits they didn’t like. I took it on board (though thought it a little harsh). People are posting far, far worse (both about groups outside MN and, recently, me) and I’m being told it doesn’t breach guidelines. I’m confused.

it does seem to be absolutely everywhere at the moment, online and in real life. People are just getting too comfortable sharing their awful thoughts out loud.

I fear it’s just going to get worse over the next few years also.

Can you please start your own thread and not invade this one.

Thank you.

I saw somebody say that on Twitter too. Perfectly innocuous, genuine "Happy Yorkshire Day" tweet and the racism that came after in the comments was foul.
Somebody said the same as your relative, that they can't usually stomach defending Rishi but felt that they had to in this instance.

Just to clarify, it isn't acceptable to set a hotel on fire containing men either...

Many of us have tried and been told (or not told) that a post / goady thread would be left to stand, sadly.

@BeckyAMumsnet, thank you for responding. Could you please explain why some blatantly racist posts are allowed to stand even after they have been reported, when some relatively innocuous posts get taken down? And would it be possible for moderators to provide an explanation for their moderation decisions in future?

As highlighted by many posters above, misinformation is a particular issue in this discussion, and others, and posts containing misinformation are frequently left to stand while other comments are deleted. I'm not sure if this is because spreading lies isn't actually deemed to be breaking any of your talk guidelines? For me, much of the misinformation that I see amounts to hate speech, because its purpose is very clearly to incite racial hatred, but your moderators don't seem to agree. Can you please clarify if spreading misinformation likely to incite racial hatred is permitted within the talk guidelines?

Thanks for this - we agree that's it's really useful when reports provide additional context - we don't insist on it, of course, but it's especially useful on contentious threads.

I might just take this tirade seriously if I hadn’t seen exactly the opposite on the Rotherham threads. The odd poster saying “it shouldn’t be discussed” with the vast majority disagreeing and wanting to understand what could and couldn’t be learned from the whole situation. I’m on a couple of them - feel free to hunt them down.

Incidentally, the police, social workers and councillors of all political parties who worked to cover up and ignore the girls (who commonality was status and risk, not race) were largely white and came from all political viewpoints. All were equally looking after their own interests and failing in their duty to girls who simply didn’t matter.

This was organised crime profiting from male violence and has happened across every cultural group. Learning about the Mirpuri dominated gangs is useful when dealing with Mirpuri gangs but doesn’t tell us anything useful about the exact same problem with criminal gangs from other ethnicities (many of them white). Pretending that looking at one gang will provide TOT answer to grooming gangs is simply stupid. Looking more closely at the professionals who looked the other way is more of a recurring pattern.

I don't think you should have to. They are surely trained. Racism should not have you be explained. I don't mean you but this is something disingenuous posters make people do.

I also see this a lot, and it’s happening here in our local Facebook group - virtually anything seems to set them off. I agree it’s appalling.

Thing is, though, on these types of threads you never seem to look into the discussion surrounding the post. You only ever delete outright posts (even then not always) if they're blatant.
So much is left to stand, and if you're not reading the whole thread and just jumping in and deleting the ones that get reported, you miss all the rest.