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 know you are trying to be balanced, but you have fallen into the same trap that many of the racists do for different reasons. You are extrapolating from an experience you have never had, applying it in a broad brush. and making asumptions that aren't reflections on real life.

Without being too outing I live in one of those pit villages, although the pit is now gone. Not a million miles down the road a bunch of fascists tried to burn down a hotel with asylum seekers inside it just last year. About 700 people were outside that hotel - some locals yes, but also many "imported" professional fascists.

My village has about 6,000 residents - we have an active support group for asylum seekers who live in our village. We have always had people of different ethnicities in the village - many were miners or miners families. We still have a mix of ethnicities in the village. As asylum seekers get asylum (so far every single applicant has been given asylum) almost every single one of them has decided to settle here in this village because it is a nice place to live where they have British friends and are able to feel safe and settled. We have others who are first and secnd generation immigrants from other countries too - everything from doctors to the local kebab shop.

Do we have bigots and racists, yes, of course we do. It has nothing at all to do with community, or culture, or tradition. It has to do that these people get off on controlling and dominating others, on bullying and on being bigots. If the community was all white, they would still find someone to attack, because they are cowards who can only thrive when they have someone to blame for their own inadequacies. One thing you will quickly find out, however, is that often the village knows them - as in they are extended multi-generational families who have never brought anything positive to the community.

Some smaller communities may have more to learn about their new neighbours than some of the cities, but that doesn't mean they are scared or challenged by change.

And BTW - there are dozens of small former mining communities here and almost every single one of them has a support group for asylum seekers. Miners remember lots of things, and one of the things they remember is how many communities stood with them against injustice. Many think they owe a continued commitment to justice and equality.

Correct. And I grew up in a mill town, not a mining town - and as a child we had a tin bath in front of the coal fire....

Oh, so glad.

Indeed.
Going back a while obviously, but the support for the Southern American cotton workers by the workers in the mill towns was unwavering. Still remembered with great pride here in Lancs.
Moving to Perth soon. I understand the jute workers of Dundee had a similarly supportive relationship with their counterparts in India?
Such a great, great pity that Farage and his ilk are trying their hardest to destroy the spirit of humanity behind that wonderful heritage.

Yes not occupation related but social class - working class homes were small and families larger than now so an upstairs bathroom with a fixed bath would 'waste' sleeping space. Same with indoor/outdoor toilets

Being able to hang the tin bath on the wall also saved precious living space

I have the vaguest memory of all this at my grandmother house

I remember the horror of my great aunt's outside toilet. I don't know exactly how it worked, but I don't think it was on a mains sewer, because it used to get...full 😱

Yep - grew up in Lancashire, Irish family, worked all over the world, then lived / worked in West Yorkshire and now in the mining community that we (our union) supported during the strike. The history of the working class has been struggle and unity, right around the world, and there are so many outstanding examples of support between communities. A shame that the bigots and bullies have never had the opportunity to enjoy the diversity and appreciate the richness gained from it. Those are actually the small lives.

I’m pleased that your villages are inclusive.

My views are based on the Red Wall voters voting conservative purely because of Brexit

Pretty conclusively proven now that they were very deliberately lied to and screwed by BJ, NF and various other men of the people.

Oh no that's pretty horrific!

bizarrely when my granny had an upstairs bathroom/toilet installed they kept the outside toilet and my grandfather would sit out there for hours

torn up squares of newspaper instead of toilet paper too

it was another world

Completely irrelevant, but …. if you visit the National Museum of Wales site at St. Fagans, it has homes dating back to the 1500s. One of them is a cottage with no bathroom, an outside loo and the most incredible bath in the kitchen with a lid that’s used as a worktop. From the late 1980s!

That is a massive over-simplification and highly inaccurate. There were differences of opinion about Brexit, as with all things - and a hell of a lot of misinformation (much of it also pushed by a certain Farage). But your views about us are wrong, and frankly, since you know nothing about our communities, pretty offensive. Are all Londoners so ignorant about the North? Don't answer that - just pointing out how rude it is to make generic assumptions about an entire group of people that you have no knowledge of.

If you visit early December they have a fantastic Christmas Fayre on too! One of the best, most original ones I ever see now. No Chinese tat, all lovely artisans and craftspeople.

I love that street! The whole museum is fab, but that’s the bit where you get the best glimpse into the lives of ordinary people and how slow they were to change and get something other than the bare minimum.
Edit: I live just up the road from it so it’s a regular place to g9 with visitors, particularly since you only pay for parking.

💯

True, but also decades of austerity that has impacted so many lives. Add in an act of violence which is so abhorrent (like the stabbing of multiple young girls at a dance studio), and the anger grows.

The anger has been stoked by the right wing press, politicians and social media making dehumanising and inflammatory comments and spreading disinformation.

You give a perfect example. The Southport murders weren't carried out by a Muslim who had just arrived on small boats. However, years of dehumanising asylum seekers and spreading the false narrative that they're all paedophilic benefit scroungers, contributed to public unrest.

And the anger is then directed at a whole group who were not even involved in the abhorrent violence. It’s manipulation and racism, pure and simple.

It’s clear he was deeply troubled, with a history of complex issues that were flagged multiple times — including by Prevent. What’s especially disturbing is that he seemed to be drawn to a violent ideology that has caused harm in various parts of the world. That kind of extremism has no place in the UK, or anywhere.

Many people recognised early on what he represented and were understandably alarmed. But when they tried to speak out, it felt like their concerns were brushed aside or even shut down. The sense of frustration and helplessness in the community was real — people were angry, not because of background or religion, but because they felt ignored when trying to protect others.

This isn’t about blaming entire communities — it’s about acknowledging when dangerous ideas take root and making sure we’re allowed to talk about them openly and responsibly. We need better systems, not just to intervene earlier, but to listen to those raising the alarm. Instead, we currently live in an era where people’s concerns are escalated too quickly and labeled as racism etc, without trying to understand the context with which it came from.

What’s especially disturbing is that he seemed to be drawn to a violent ideology that has caused harm in various parts of the world.

Prevent only deals with potential violence due to idealogy. He wasn't found to adhere to any particular ideology which was why he fell through the cracks. More disinformation.

Many people recognised early on what he represented and were understandably alarmed

What did he represent @Sparklybutold ?

I almost agree with you for once. We should definitely not be blaming the Welsh for the murders in Southport. We should be blaming the alarming lack of any / appropriate mental health services to support people and their families with unideated "terrorist" (in the broadest sense of the word) feelings.

What’s especially disturbing is that he seemed to be drawn to a violent ideology that has caused harm in various parts of the world. That kind of extremism has no place in the UK, or anywhere.
And that's the part where you step beyond the pale. No motive for the stabbings has ever been identified. Even the prosecution suggested that the motivation was probably "the commission of mass murder as an end in itself" and that no evidence of terrorism (in the narrow interpretation of the word) was found. He was drawn to violence without an ideology attached to it.

When we look around us, there appears to be a disturbing growth in violence amongst young people. In the past child murderers were uncommon and huge national news. Now murder and attempted murder / acts of extreme violence seem to be so common that they are almost skirted over as not hugely newsworthy. And whilst restricting access to knives and other weapons is a good thing, these things have always been easily available in the past, and yet young people did not routinely turn to murdering their fellow pupils over a social media post, or attacking an elderly gentleman sitting in a park minding his own business and filming it for posterity. In the last 10 years there has been a 240% rise in teenage homicides from knive alone. The majority of those murderers are white (and male), and almost without exception they can offer no rational explanation for killing. You cannot blame ideology for that because it isn't about ideology.

We should be blaming the alarming lack of any / appropriate mental health services to support people and their families with unideated "terrorist" (in the broadest sense of the word) feelings

There were a couple of threads this time last year trying to work out what sort of provision is needed for young people like the Southport killer which came to no conclusion - the nearest seemed to be the ND unit attached to Wandsworth prison but on what grounds could he have been detained [and for how long] when he'd only committed minor offences before the attack

The other possibility was a specialist foster placement with 2 to 1 carers but that hadn't stopped Jonty Bravery from slipping away and throwing the little French boy from the Tate modern

He'd been seen at Liverpool/Alder Hey CAMHS for 4 years and they would have had access to specialist forensic risk assessment services [don't know if that happened] - but he dis-engaged and refused to go anymore - so any further mental health in-put came to an end

I imagine no-one knows how many similiar young people are living at home who haven't done anything dreadful yet but might do in future

.

I do think it is challenging and complicated, and the history of time suggests that we will never get it 100% every time. For all our knowledge and advancements we don't know, and may never know, exactly why some people "just turn out bad / insane / whatever you describe it as". There have always been some. There will probably always be some. Perhaps the best we can hope for is that there should be fewer, and we intervene sooner and better for the majority. Maybe he couldn't have been "fixed" but if one child murderer was "fixed" that is two or more lives saved. My issue is that we simply are not really being seen to try very hard. Sending them to prison after the event has been shown not to be a route to rehabilitation. We need to get to them before the crime - after is too late for everyone.

I know, couldn’t believe it was free! Brilliant place.