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Once I read the transcript of the conversation it’s clearly racism for me.
Being food driven, I have a passing interest in people’s ancestry because non-UK cultures tend to have more interesting food.
But there are polite ways of asking.
“What’s the ancestry of your family please? And what sort of indigenous food does they have there?”
I’ve yet to offend anyone by asking this – and I’ve frequently amused them! – plus a lot of people are proud of both their ancestry and its cuisine.
But this was an interrogation, very rude and racist.
People aren’t actually obliged to answer questions about their background and origin anyway – it’s presumptuous to even expect a reply.
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It's the "Millwall FC" of Point broadcasts: "No One Likes Us - We Don't Care"Not just racism.
I’ve met her sort before, out and out snob, I’ll bet.
I've stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains
I've walked and I crawled on six crooked highways“Their” days are slowly coming to an end, Purwell.
They should never have had “days” in the first place, but at least we lived long enough to see it.
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It's the "Millwall FC" of Point broadcasts: "No One Likes Us - We Don't Care"To expand a bit, I think even the phrase ‘innocent question’ is wrong. There were questionS (plural). Repeated questions about where she is from despite already having answered Britain. A clear insinuation that because she is black she couldn’t possibly be British, which is of course complete nonsense.
I am a young(ish) white male so I have things easy in many respects and can’t even begin to imagine what it feels like to be constantly questioned about where you are ‘really from’ and similar. I actually have some foreign ancestry (white) but funnily enough I never get questioned about it.
It’s a perfectly valid topic of discussion when approached in the right way. I’m sure many people would be happy to discuss their heritage in a constructive manner. In fact it would probably do many people a lot of good to hear abut it. The lady in question almost certainly gets this a lot and I have no doubt that she can tell when someone is genuinely curious and when they are being racist.
Apparently, despite being born in the UK the black lady was wearing a colourful dress from the country of her parents origin.
Each of those invited had a name tag and maybe some other info, but the black lady’s long hair covered this tag.
The 80 odd aged white lady asked from what country do you come from?
All the black lady had to do was say I was born in this country, but my parents were from…..
And that would and should have been it.
But no, the real racists get their teeth in.
‘The 80 odd aged white lady asked from what country do you come from?
All the black lady had to do was say I was born in this country, but my parents were from…..’
Why does she have to say where her parents are from? She wasn’t asked that. Not that she has to answer either question if she doesn’t want to.
‘And that would and should have been it.’
So it’s the victim’s fault for not answering a question she wasn’t asked, got you. Do you routinely tell people where your parents are from when asked where you are from?
Your last paragraph Richard.
Did I say it was her fault?It was an innocent question with the lack of information she had in front of her because of her hair covering the tag.
Without crying racist, the black lady could have just replied that, and end of.
Talking about trying to make more out of something that wasn’t actually there.
Now there’s the real racist, something to get their teeth into.
‘Did I say it was her fault?’
You said she could have diffused the situation by volunteering information that was first of all not asked for and secondly irrelevant, sounds a lot like blame to me. She answered the question as to where she’s from (Britain) and was then subjected to further questioning about it. Read the transcript.
The issue is not so much that she was asked where she is from, it is that the lady asking it didn’t seem to accept that a black person could be from Britain and started asking further questions.
Who are the ‘real racists’ please?
I think I understand what GSP means, but like Richard it seems to me to carry the assumption the lady was obligated to answer.
As stated in my original post on this subject, she isn’t.
And I’m completely lost as to how anyone is a “real racist,” (or any kind of racist) for thinking what this person said was wrong.
Generally speaking, we don’t have to justify or explain ourselves to others.
But this seems a little-known fact as it’s something I seem to end up setting someone straight on in real life on an almost daily basis.
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It's the "Millwall FC" of Point broadcasts: "No One Likes Us - We Don't Care"The initial question was ‘where are you from?’ which she initially took to mean ‘which organisation?’. Fair enough, easy misunderstanding, perhaps caused by the obscured name badge.
At some point during the conversation she answered ‘here, the UK’.
Quite simply, she answered the question.
Any other questions about Africa or parents or anything else are totally irrelevant.
What is the solution to this issue?
To my mind there is a significant proportion of the elderly population who have no idea what is acceptable and what isn’t and being of advancing years are unlikely to change their (very much closed) mindset and/or behaviour.
I don’t see that pillorying them in the media helps much to be honest and find some of the reaction very over the top – traumatised and violated, really, it’s just a bigoted woman (as G Brown might say) behaving as you might expect them to isn’t it, unpleasant yes but in the “sticks and stones” envelope in my opinion. But then I would say that as I’ve never been on the direct receiving end of such insensitivity.
I don’t buy any argument about age. Plenty of people in their 80s are not in the slightest bit racist. They came from the same ‘different time’ that some seem to think gives people a free pass to say unacceptable things.
Chezza is looking forward to being in his 80s, being an even bigger See You Next Tuesday then he is now, and if ever challenged blaming it entirely on his age, senility, the value systems of his generation and parental influences in his formative years too.
If people actually believe it, Chezza might go on to rob a bank – after all, it’s a free bet.
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It's the "Millwall FC" of Point broadcasts: "No One Likes Us - We Don't Care"
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