Exactly why I often put 'visibly or audibly different' and yes to 'riddled with predjudices'!ohsocynical wrote:Good post. But I'd also point out the English [not being nationalistic] are riddled with all sorts of prejudices and not necessarily of skin colour.TheGrimSqueaker wrote:Amen to that!!!seeingclearly wrote: Warning. Long read
The largest growing group of people in Britain are British born people of mixed origin. 'Mixed race African Caribbean', or Asian, or even 'other' just doesn't do. It's a definition of exclusion.* By that I mean the excluded bit is what indigenous people call white, but mean English. Im visibly different, but damned if I'm going to explain why, or what my complex origins are. I'm British, that should be enough, not ticking boxes indicates it's no one else's business but mine.
If I was British and was not of mixed origin I'd take the same position, because I fiercely oppose the notion of 'race'. The boxes reinforce the notion.
*i was reminded how a wider sense of exclusion plays out with our NonBritish workers on encountering a young member of my family recently, a gifted young doctor with a bedside manner and personality to die for, his family paid his very expensive costs to train here. He now lives in an expensive run down kennel in the SE and endures ingratitude, hostility and DM attitudes everyday in his work. He'll be a specialist surgeon in time, with the huge responsibility that brings. In training he was shielded from such attitudes because his peers were international, the cream of their nations students. He loves the best bits of being here, but still finds it hard to deal with the things I mention. Where he comes from people who help you get well are respected. He does not discuss this with his parents, one of whom heard the call of the NHS in its infancy and worked all the hours God sends to do his bit in making it a success. But he did tell me, because I'd understand it was the norm here. The bit of me that's normally expunged was deeply ashamed, and the rest of me was bitterly angry.
They used to say the boxes were for making sure people were treated fairly. Where I live they determined everything from the location of your council house offer, to the secondary school your child got allocated.
An incredible example of this was the case of a young boy I once knew who attended a very mixed JS with a largely Sikh and African Caribbean intake, great little school. Parents duly filled in their preferences for secondary school, this lads mum included. She chose the good school that most of us did for her child, but was allocated a school in a very tough area of the city with what she found was a 100% black intake of kids. The head teachers of both schools advised her to appeal the decision, and at the hearing she was refused on grounds of her 'racism'. He would have become a lone white student in the school in the very worst part of the city. Famous in fact for the deaths of teenagers in drive by gangland shootings. It is in fact a place where for 40 years or more the poorest and least advantaged black families have been dumped, with very little prospect of ever moving out. The powers that be had assumed that, going to the mixed school he went to, in a wider area famed for its black community, that was what this boy and his family were, because they assumed white people would not choose to live there, and they wouldn't back down. The family moved out of the city, utterly disillusioned by policy, the mum had chosen to bring her kids up in a diverse area, believing it to be the future of the nation. In truth this city is now very divided, an issue my mother foresaw in 1956, and had great concerns about. The sad thing is when people choose to live in an integrated way it's often our structures that create the divisions, because the people who make the decisions at the top come, not from the communities, but well off mono cultural suburbs.
I don't and won't tick the boxes, but maybe you have to live on the other side to see that they can be a double-edged sword. It cuts every way tbh. Swathes right through our communities, and segregates them. Leaving us wide open to the divisive stuff we see now.
Two very different stories, neither fits the stereotypes, I know. But few people do. I keep wondering at the absence of wisdom.
"I'm visibly different, but damned if I'm going to explain why, or what my complex origins are. I'm British, that should be enough, not ticking boxes indicates it's no one else's business but mine. "
An oft-quoted statistic from our Kipper friends is that the British are now a minority in their own capital city; which is odd, because if you look at the figures, people born in Britain make up 61% of the total - what they mean, of course, is that people who ticked the box "White British" make up roughly 45% of the total the rest, including yourself, are "not indigenous" so don't count.
Which is, of course, utter bollocks. I have friends in and around London whose ancestors were part of the Windrush generation, some Indian friends go back further than that; my friends are 3rd or 4th generation, while I myself am actually 5th generation Irish - so what makes me indigenous and not them? Rhetorical question, obviously. Like you I find those boxes unhelpful, even dangerous; I'm a simplistic soul as far as I'm concerned there is only one race, Homo Sapiens, and these further categorisations pander to baser elements in our society - frankly they are anachronistic, a hangover from pseudo-scientific notions of race prevalent in the 19th century.
Which doesn't, however, remove the fact that there is a perceived problem (as Ohso has pointed out), a problem I genuinely thought had been left behind us through the course of time; you can't play the Kipper game (that mug was dumb, although not as important in the election defeat as Diane Abbott seems to think) so you need to educate & enlighten.
I have a strong regional accent - think Pam Ayres. Time after time I've been judged 'thick' or been discounted because I sound like a country yokel.
The worst instance was when my son was hospitalised when he was six. [1972] They weren't sure he didn't have bone cancer. We were frantic with worry. The doctors in those days used to insist parents left the ward when they did their rounds...but we noticed well speaking and obviously better off parents were allowed to stay and question the specialist, whilst I had to chase him down the footpath when I wanted to know his diagnosis. It really put my back up and I told him in no uncertain terms I wouldn't be put off again. He laughed and from then on I noticed all the parents even from the poorest families were allowed to stay.
It still happens. And often doctors are the worst offenders.
I'm a big observer of people, like you I'm fascinated by these things, though it takes a lot of learning. I worry most for people where there's some kind of institutional or legal bias that perpetuates it though, which is why neither of my stories, of people very dear to me, fit the stereotypes.
I remember there were some young women in Blairs time, in politics, but not MPs as I recall, who were lambasted for their West Country accents, and were very demoralised about their lovely voices being equated with ignorance. Men with regional accents seem to do better in parliament, or with the public at least. I suspect less so with professionals, who often have it educated out of them. Something certain kinds of schools take pains to do. I went to one such, and remember worrying about what would happen to one Geordie lad, he spoke what seemed a different language. I heard recently though he didn't last the course he nevertheless has had a successful fulfilling and happy life. With his accent.
I love the differences in people, and am always dismayed when they attract negative response.
PS An ex teacher friend always dresses up for specialist appointments, adding jewellery and accessories to match, for exactly the reasons you describe. She gets listened to. I've no such fancy apparel, and despite my age love converse boots which I wear till they fall apart. I'm rubbish with tying laces, and rarely get listened to at all, and have to get pushy on even the basics. The laces get more attention than me! But I can't be bothered with the games, it only makes things worse for the next poor sod. Awful hearing of it happen with to someone with kids though. You do have to challenge this stuff, glad you did, always makes me feel better
much easier to stand up for children or even others though, doctors are authority figures of a kind, I'd rather they were partners in wellness, but that seems like a vanishing dream. Patient centred practice isn't always what it might seem.
Je suis le renard..........
