Racist thread

[ThejoyofNC]

There is a thread running in AIBU where people are being openly and freely racist. You've already deleted several posts on there so you're aware of it. Why are you allowing it to run?

Also why do you allow racism against travellers on here?

I have no skin in the game as I’m a Londoner with immigrant parents and loved growing up in a multicultural environment.

However I do wonder whether some communities feel that their small town or village is changing too quickly and that they are losing a sense of a shared history or culture where everyone had had similar experiences. For example ( and being very Broad brush here) whilst they didn’t actually talk about the fact that most of their fathers or grandfathers worked down the pit and had their backs washed in a tin bath by the fire when they returned home, or the strikes etc, it was a shared experience and that gave them a sense of community and belonging.

I found this to be the case growing up… my Indian friends’ parents had the same need to be with others who had escaped during Partition. They didn’t talk about it all the time; but it was a shared and traumatic experience.

However when people from these small towns and villages in the UK expressed a fear that things were changing too quickly, they were branded racists. I think that this current and distasteful demonising of asylum seekers and pinning crimes on them is because they feel they need to have a “reason” to dislike immigration and that the “true” reason makes them racist.

Effective immigration tends to take a generation. My friends felt “British” ; their parents loved Britain, but many kept yo their own communities.

My fear is that if politicians don’t listen, the resentment will just simmer and eventually boil over.

Nope. They were just racist.

Do you know any ex-miners or miner's children? Because what you are describing just is not the case IME (married to the son of a miner).

People from those communities are often very politically aware, left leaning, and don't fall for the foreign bogeyman shit. The ones that do are racist.

Eta: tin baths made me chuckle. There were things called showers at the pits.

I was just pondering whether that might be the real reason.

I’m interested as I felt that immigration was a real success in London in the 1980s and I’m wondering why there is negativity now.

I do agree that communities can sometimes feel that change is happening too fast and the CoL crisis adds to that. Makes it easier for the likes of Reform to swan in with their lies and blame it all on immigration.
A parenting website like MN being strafed with lies adds to that feeling of disengagement.
I'd like to discuss this more but I have to go out (really, not the classic MN Going Out ).
Legitimate concerns will never be dismissed by me, but facts matter and is people deliberately ignore them and keep blaming the Other then yes, they are choosing to be racist.

Social media.

There was still lots of racism in London in the 80s and beyond. That's why there were movements against it. But social media means the racists have a massive platform now. And there is a whole army of AI bots to unleash.

Duffy interjected: "You can't say anything about the immigrants because you're saying that you're … but all these eastern European what are coming in, where are they flocking from?"

Erm, Eastern Europe, presumably, PandoraSocks 🤣
Every Eastern European immigrant we have ever known, going back to our first home in London in the 80s, has been industrious, incredibly hard working and took enormous pride in their work, whatever that was: NHS through to butcher on our corner.
Already though the “coming over here, steeling our jobs and living off of our benefits (both at the same time? 🤪, UC wasn’t a thing then) was starting.

Stealing, flipping autocorrect. That was wrong, autocorrect, if you’re listening!

I think the Durham miners would have something to say about it.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwye381k53zo

I know there were riots etc in London, but I think the racists were confined to skinheads whom everyone I knew loathed.

There probably was “casual racism “ but we just ignored it and definitely had each others’ backs and were vociferously defensive of each other! ( mouthy) 🤣

Time, I think,

(Possibly a bit too woke for some posters on this/these threads)

Talking about people being patronising followed by a definition of the difference between an opinion and a belief that nobody asked for - good one.

No the reason you can’t have a discussion here is because of inconsistent moderation.

No, MiloMinderbinder925.

Some members of the Durham Miners Association will have something to say about it. There is always a spectrum of political views in any organisation. Presumably, the Association knows its members and their opinions far more deeply than the Reform Johny come latelys, and has taken its stance based on the majority view of its members.

There were also tin baths in the homes (source: me being bathed in one as a child at my miner’s widow gran’s). Go back far enough and there weren’t showers.

Thank you for correcting me. I was labouring under the false impression that the Durham miners were one homogenous mass and now I know better.

T’was ever thus. Mosley getting his arse resoundingly handed to him at Cable Street being one of the highlights.
London was founded on trade and immigration and is the great city that it is today because of it, culturally and financially.
Wave after wave of immigrants for millennia can take much of the credit for that.

Yes, my DH was saying before his parents moved out of the old mining cottages in the 50s (they were demolished in the 60s)people still used the tin baths. But they had showers at the pits by the early 60s.

In fairness my grandad died in the mid 60s and hadn’t been a miner for a while before that, what with fucked up lungs and so on. I was using that tin bath until my gran died in about 1973. One summer she got all fancy and bought/borrowed a camping shower. You had to fill the reservoir by heating water and then get an associate to pump it for you. Worth it to avoid gran’s rather thorough shampoo and rinse though…

Why is pointing out the difference between opinion and beliefs patronising?
Because it takes out the veneer of intellectual sophistication and superiority?

The issue is not moderation

The issue is one side never accepting they ever may be wrong even a little (always something else’s fault as you just demonstrated) or that the other side may be right even a little

Your post sort of suggested it was, tbf.
**
“I think the Durham miners would have something to say about it”

What, all of them?

I think what has changed is that SM has emboldened "casual racism" massively.

I'm forever grateful.

The issue is one side never accepting they ever may be wrong even a little (always something else’s fault as you just demonstrated) or that the other side may be right even a little

I agree that's a problem and it's very frustrating.

For example, 'illegals'. Referring to human beings as 'illegals' and 'criminals' is not only dehumanising, it's wrong. Asylum seekers can enter a country by any means in order to claim asylum. Therefore they're not 'illegal' and they're certainly not 'illegal' while their claim is being processed.

Despite this being repeated, they're still called 'illegals'. It seems as though one side never admits they're wrong.

I agree with that @MiloMinderbinder925

I post as an individual not as part of a team. I find moderation inconsistent, you don’t. Which of our opinions is right?