Scotland “decades behind on attitude to race”

[NotThePars]

Nah.  I live my life 'down south' and am in and out of London 2ish days a week and I almost never see these attitudes.  Plus Scotland has this whole ethnocentric dissident movement going on where people garb up in folk dress and bang on about The English. 

Something beautiful about Forza Dundee trying desperately early on to get a bite before Kincy dives in with an absolute peach of bait. The master at work.

[D Angelo Barksdale]

When the Makar talks about attitudes being 30 -40 years behind, I assume she's talking specifically about the 'but where are you actually from ?' question, because 30 -40 years ago down south, the National Front and the BNP were polling high numbers and there was riots in London, Liverpool and Manchester. This bears little resemblance to Scotland today.

[nsr]

1 hour ago, D.A.F.C said:

Bertha?

 

I was more scared by the wee robot.

Turban guy was sound.

 

Aye that's the one. My mum insisted on buying it on DVD for my own kids to watch recently and they didn't react in the slightest to Turban guy. 

[Dons_1988]

I feel like racism can be used as to blanket a term here.

The issue in the OP feels like racial awkwardness (or a similarly shit term) rather than racial hatred. I’ve asked questions to minorities in the past which make me cringe in retrospect but it came from what I thought was genuine curiosity. I don’t think there’s a particular problem though with just acknowledging that people are ‘different’ and wanting to know about it but I understand the feeling of awkwardness I’ve probably created.

Racial hatred is totally different IMO and I’d say England is far worse in certain areas but also acknowledge it’s not a particularly helpful debate.

We have racial hatred here no question, I have an old school friend recently call me a ‘fucking liar’ because I told him he was talking shit when he claimed my parents would leave Aberdeen if their entire street was suddenly filled with ‘pakis’. Disgusting stuff and haven’t spoken to him since.

[Lurkst]

My kids have several school friends from a variety of ethnic backgrounds,  and I'm pleased to say I've never heard them even mention their race.

For my sins I can still unconsciously use someone's skin colour to describe them before anything else. My daughters don't seem to do that.  

Me and my peers would have thought nothing of using casually racist language back in the day. And tbh my parents and their peers still do.

Scottish society is progressing on this front without a doubt.

 

[Carl Cort's Hamstring]

I'm not sure that comparing voting patterns is the best way of looking at it. Bigots living in diverse areas are more likely to vote UKIP/BNP because they see it as affecting their everyday lives. A racist living in Somerset or Sutherland probably doesn't feel the need to express it at the ballot box.

I've worked in the BNP heartland of Barking and Dagenham for 5 years, and never had any problems (although European colleagues had a tough time after the Brexit referendum). Family holidays in Dorset were a much greater source of low level bigotry.

I loved living in Scotland and, on the whole it's a much friendlier and more welcoming place than where I grew up. But I experienced far more racism in the 5 years I lived in Aberdeen than I have in 24 years living in England. That's both the low level bullshit like asking "Where are you really from?" or "Can I touch your hair?" to a group of guys near Tynecastle coming up to me to tell me that "Jesus hates n*ggers."

[BFTD]

1 hour ago, Carl Cort's Hamstring said:

a group of guys near Tynecastle coming up to me to tell me that "Jesus hates n*ggers."

Sorry, I've no doubt that this did actually happen, but I LOL'd. I think that's the only reasonable reaction to that kind of boggle-eyed insanity. Anyone who can come out with something like that is to be pitied.

I hope you told them to shove their Watchtower up their arse.

[tirso]

Scotland is as racist as England was decades ago?  

riiiiiigggghhhhtt................................

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

[Newbornbairn]

5 hours ago, The Moonster said:

Why is it black people are currently going ape shit

Racist

[Ross.]

2 hours ago, Carl Cort's Hamstring said:

That's both the low level bullshit like asking "Where are you really from?" or "Can I touch your hair?" to a group of guys near Tynecastle coming up to me to tell me that "Jesus hates n*ggers."

Boy I used to drink with occasionally would regularly get girls walking up to him and just touching his afro. He would generally respond by touching their tits. Reactions varied...

[Torpar]

On 17/08/2019 at 11:42, BigFatTabbyDave said:

I think the idea is that people are liable to see somebody who isn't white and assume they aren't Scottish. Of course they, their parents, and their grandparents could all have been born in Scotland, and they'd have no connections to anywhere else. Got to be a bit shit to feel that, in your country of birth, a certain percentage will assume on sight that you're a foreigner (and in some cases, will still think so even after discovering the truth).

If you're white, you probably have the opposite - people assuming you're a Canadian native until you open your mouth.

If you're native Canadian chances are you aren't white. 

According to the 2011 census 96% of Scotland identified as white, while undoubtedly a lot of people's attitude to race is stuck in the past, asking a non white person in Scotland where they are from doesn't seem deliberately racist.     

[Bairnardo]

England has, to my mind, boughtuch harder into the US led creation of the tribal political divide. Pishy language like snowflakes etc are one symptom of it. Another symptom is hardenign of attitudes towards who you now consider your enemy.

The govt and the media are the culprits in this country. They have empowered people like Farage and Tommeh to become figureheads, allowed the veil over their racism to become ever thinner and as a result, trickles down to the marks who read the Sun etc and think its ok to be openly racist.

Thats an epidemic that IMO is much less in Scotland and thats because you rarely hear the same type of inflammatory language coming out of the Scottish Parliament, we dont really have emboldened high profile bigots acting as a lightning rod. There is racism in Scotland for sure, but to me it appears to be at an individual level. In England, theres a rather grubby societal movement, a political wing, something you can seek to be a part of, which has its roots in making the UK white again.

[welshbairn]

There's loads of racism in multicultural London, it's just usually not expressed out loud unless you're with like minded people in a white only pub, given that you're likely to be working with and living amongst different races and being known as a racist twat would make life difficult. Similarly in the Netherlands who like to project an image of easy going liberal acceptance of other cultures, underneath there's a hardcore resentment. I used to work in factories around Amsterdam and all the jobs above the bottom rung, even forklift driver, were reserved for white Dutch born. That might have changed, it was quite a few years ago.

[Kuro]

On 18/08/2019 at 01:07, Carl Cort's Hamstring said:

Stranger: Where are you from?

Me: London.

Stranger: Aye, but where are you really from?

I had variations of this conversation about once a week for the five years I lived in Aberdeen. It gets tiring.

That's not racism though is it?  That's just ignorance, racism is discriminating against someone because of their race. There's no suggestion that happened there.

[Kuro]

On 18/08/2019 at 11:32, Marshmallo said:

The posts in here tend to back up the assertion. Folk seem to think "attitudes to race" means outright uses of abusive slurs directly to people of another ethnicity. Some good examples given in the thread along the lines of "where are you from originally" or thinking a player "should" be fast because he's black. You see it anecdotally with "jokey" comments or songs about black players having big cocks.

I think the best way I could describe it is that we probably have less racial hatred in Scotland than down South, but people from BAME backgrounds are still seen as unusual/different.

Well they are unusual and different tbf.  Crazy notion I know.  That's just a fact, nothing racist about it. If I asked about someone's heritage it's cause I'm interested not cause I disapprove.

[Carl Cort's Hamstring]

5 minutes ago, Kuro said:

That's not racism though is it?  That's just ignorance, racism is discriminating against someone because of their race. There's no suggestion that happened there.

"Where are you from?"  is fine.

"Where are your family from?" is a f*cking weird coversation starter with a complete stranger, but whatever, they're trying to be polite.

"Where are you really from?" is racist.

[Kuro]

2 minutes ago, Carl Cort's Hamstring said:

"Where are you from?"  is fine.

"Where are your family from?" is a f*cking weird coversation starter with a complete stranger, but whatever, they're trying to be polite.

"Where are you really from?" is racist.

Maybe comes across that way but I think you should maybe look up a definition of the word, it's just clumsy language.  

[welshbairn]

[Carl Cort's Hamstring]

3 minutes ago, Kuro said:

Maybe comes across that way but I think you should maybe look up a definition of the word, it's just clumsy language.  

It's clumsy language that would never be used towards a white person. And it's always an interrogation - just saying London or England again is never seen as an acceptable answer funnily enough. It normally goes something like this:

It's rooted in the idea that if you're not white, you're not really English/Scottish/Irish/British/whatever, you're not one of us, not really. 

 

[Kuro]

Just now, Carl Cort's Hamstring said:

It's clumsy language that would never be used towards a white person. And it's always an interrogation - just saying London or England again is never seen as an acceptable answer funnily enough. It normally goes something like this:

It's rooted in the idea that if you're not white, you're not really English/Scottish/Irish/British/whatever, you're not one of us, not really. 

 

It would be used towards a white person in a majority black country.  You're making quite a bit leap here imo by automatically attaching the rest.