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Feb 2020
2:58pm, 3 Feb 2020
8,376 posts
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simbil
We were talking about some local break ins and my mother in-law pipes up, "probably some gangs, don't know if they would be foreigners" were to blame.
This is someone who knows nothing about the break ins or much about the local area casually introducing a race/nationality element to the discussion.
She is not racist in any real sense but probably a bit prone to prejudge as a lazy thinker that likes to put people in categories rather than just taking them for what they are and show themselves to be.
All that is to say that this level of casual racism is common, particularly in boomer demographics in my limited experience, but is not worth getting excited about as there is no malicious intent.
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Feb 2020
3:06pm, 3 Feb 2020
6,285 posts
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jda
But probably easily weaponised by repeated reference to queue jumpers and the like by unscrupulous politicians.
It was also standard operating practice in Japan when I lived there. Police posters about various crimes tended to use ethnically foreign(-looking) characters for the criminals, politicians introduced "snitch lines" where people were supposed to phone up about suspected illegal immigrants (despite having no way of ascertaining who might be illegal). Stuff like that was just part of the everyday background "hostile environment" that conditioned the population.
Incidentally, crime statistics show that immigrants generally display less criminality than the indigenous population. That was certainly the case in Japan, and I think I've seen stats saying it's true in the UK too.
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Feb 2020
3:49pm, 3 Feb 2020
2,572 posts
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J2R
jda, in which case the definition of race and racism has markedly changed since I was younger. How granular can we go with this? Could a Norfolk person be racist towards someone from Suffolk, say?
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Feb 2020
4:27pm, 3 Feb 2020
6,289 posts
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jda
Well I'm taking about the way it is codified in law. But IMO saying "I'm not a racist, cos black/white/Pakistani/German isn't a race" is a pretty pathetic attempt to weasel out of actually being racist. I think it may be permitted to discriminate agains someone from Suffolk so long as they aren't judged to be a specific ethnicity.
Though in some parts of the country perhaps each village has its own ethnicity 
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Feb 2020
4:43pm, 3 Feb 2020
2,573 posts
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J2R
But that doesn't make sense to me, jda. I'm not saying xenophobia is in any way acceptable. I'm just arguing that a hatred of foreigners is not in itself racism, but xenophobia (which, as I said, can be equally repugnant if you're on the receiving end).
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Feb 2020
4:52pm, 3 Feb 2020
6,291 posts
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jda
Race is a social not scientific or biological construct and I don't think your average knuckle-dragger really understands or recognises the sort of distinction you are trying to make.
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Feb 2020
5:22pm, 3 Feb 2020
10,599 posts
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Markymarkmark
In the bad old days when it said "Race: " on forms I used to write "Human".
Now it asks which ethnicity I wish to identify myself with, which has removed one minor source of officialdom-poking fun from my life.
It's a pretty short hop from assuming foreigners are inherently more criminal and un-trustworthy based on zero evidence to it being okay to deport them one zero evidence too.
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Feb 2020
5:22pm, 3 Feb 2020
10,600 posts
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Markymarkmark
on zero evidence, not "one"
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Feb 2020
5:24pm, 3 Feb 2020
311 posts
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Stander
Carrot crunching Suffolk v 6 fingered Norfolk
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Feb 2020
6:01pm, 3 Feb 2020
6,292 posts
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jda
I'm going to start putting White European on these ethnicity forms.
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