utopiandreams wrote:Sorry folks for going on but feel that it's a little more acceptable here than in the G, so here's something I posted in conversation with someone but with some additional thoughts added...
I appreciate this isn't election related but further to our conversation about perceived racism, I just thought I add this here, catslovelivemice, rather than buried in an old nest. I have been out and have only just returned.
Anyway what particularly galled me about the Pakistani/Indian prejudices, other than separation by time and geography, was that one of the Indian descent lads' family was here via Uganda. He was a classmate of my youngest in primary school and his family had lived very close to my late wife during her childhood and had built up their lives and business from scratch having arrived with nothing. I can't speak for the other except that he was the son of a doctor. Despite my best efforts to establish peace they both left some time later through stress related to their treatment.
I felt particularly upset by such outcome because I had myself been subjected to not insubstantial abuse during my own childhood in the fifties. Indeed had even explained the like to the Pakistani lads when they repeatedly brought up the race card whenever chastised for anything at all.
I should just add that individually the lads of Pakistani origin were extremely likeable. So let's just say that I am averse to groupthink.
Now get out there and give the Tories their comeuppance. #GetEdDay
Addendum: I guess I was lucky that I was taught to box from quite an early age. I say lucky, not quite as much as my brother who although very similar to me in appearance is fair so never received the abuse that I had, only second-hand by association. I was initially taught to run away or avoid conflict when bullied, even advised by my blonde, blue-eyed mother to tell such assailants (especiallyy after Sunday School) that I was the same colour as Jesus. No prizes for guessing how that went down!
Anyway, my Dad wasn't an expert boxer but the younger brother of my namesake and uncle, a Spitfire pilot who was shot down and killed over Burma shortly before the end of the war. Like so many others of his generation, only 19 at the time. He was a champion boxer at his weight including All India champion of the forces as well as a variety of other trophies I have seen. Anyway being at a boarding school my poor Dad used to get pushed into the ring because of his brother's reputation.
I must say that thereon I was able to hold my own even if outnumbered. What I do remember however with greater regret is my sister, three years my junior and similarly swarthy, although as a youngster not quite as dark as I because I had regular sun-ray treatment for mild rickets. Anyway my Mum once found her in tears in the bath, scrubbing herself to the point of bleeding.
Appreciate what you are saying here, especially the last about your Mum. As the child of a wartime mixed marriage I can say it is one thing to observe casual racism and another to be at the receiving end. My. Own mother went to huge lengths to fit in here, she was talented, smart and from a very well to do family. Just how well to do I did not realise till this year, she worked very hard, and never saw herself above other people. Her brothers both served this country, one in the RAF and one working in a major London hospital for a dozen years.
For us it was not always easy. We were taught to be strong, to ignore ignorance, and not to pop of if needled by our peers. It takes going away to remind me of how deep and institutional thighs racism can be. In the late 70s after living in my Mums home country for some years, largely because life left me without family, I returned with my (even further) mixed race partner and child, and right from arrival at the airport had a very hard time. Both partner and child were taken through a different gate, we were interrogated in different places and had no idea what was happening. Oh, well, said the.person my mum trained to be tough, we got through it. But a bit of you cringes at this kind of stuff.
Returning this year to England was a very different experience one which my son and I discussed only last night. I'd been home after decades here, was made incredibly welcome everywhere, even by total strangers, and as a now rather visibly not so able person was offered help everywhere in a very practical way. We both found it hard to be back here, largely because our return had heightened our awareness of what people don't get right here. Where we had been class divisions and racism were not issues, skin colour an irrelevance, many of the old prejudices, a lot of them remnants of empire just vanishing. Indeed it was hard even to regard things in the terms we do here. Working people of all kinds for instance were valued and most were living well. Anyone can genuinely aspire to anything, and I don't really think that's the case so much here, these days. We seem to have solidified.
It's not just the obvious I want to change here, I want this other stuff to go too. I want the nation to grow up and accept what it actually is, and make the best of things, not the worst.