Is race-hysteria…the threat of encountering racism even where that possibility doesn’t exist demoralise, undermine and attentuate the enthusiaism, stamina and efforts demonstrated by ethnic minorities when seeking employment?

On other words is too much talk of racism by white progressives creating an atmosphere of defeatism among certain minorities?

Do you think it was a polish grafitti artist?

All of those are equivalent (without getting into the old debates about whether black/Asian on white racism is as damaging as white on black/Asian racism)

I’d say ‘white person’ is roughly equivalent to ‘Asian person’ or ‘black person’ – ie it can be used pejoratively if you want it to (‘have you been hanging out with the Asians again?’) but the word itself is neutral and inoffensive. You can’t say that about the more aggressively insulting racial epithets, can you?

Anas – brilliant story. Love it.

heh that’s true Chris – ..in attempts to try and recruit people who can then write Community Cohesion strategies!

infact the reason why the situation is so complicated now is there is a lot of this happening on many levels and it is feeding off each other. so you have a lot of people dissatisfied and seeing each other as the ‘other/enemy’ etc.

Sounds like one of those dreadful public sector job ads.

clearly you’ve not heard a lot of the stuff from ‘inside’ the asian community : ‘what you’re hanging out with the goras? why are you going to the pub> do you think you’re a white person..’

kismet- i suppose white can be a similar ‘blanket’ reference in the way ‘paki’ is used..that was my point i guess.

We all get on fine, but there is a lot of discussion about the recent influx of Eastern Europeans and their effects on local flat rents and availability. Plus a certain amount of rudeness and drunkenness associated with aforementioned using these shops. They are mainly young men.

I have heard the term dumb Pollack used which as you are all aware is very insulting and similar to the use of the term Paki.

The difference is that ‘that white person’ is not pejorative. Nobody has ever chased me down the street with a baseball bat shouting ‘f’cking white person!’

Perhaps I might get some time to put up a post on that.

One element I think it misses is a resentment against so-called political correctness. There is currently a disconnect between what people feel they would like to say and do, and what people feel they are allowed to say and do.

On the one hand, that makes me think, well tough. I’ve got no time for the attitude that says ‘you can’t even call someone a Paki these days without being accused of being a racist’ or ‘I’m not even allowed to beat my own kids in the privacy of my own home without some PC Social Worker interfering.’

On the other hand, there are plenty of people who genuinely hold little or no malice towards ethnic minorities who nevertheless wouldn’t think twice about referring to ‘the Paki shop.’ Likewise there are good people who discipline their children with a slap. They don’t want to think of themselves as racist or as violent bullies and they resent the implication that they are. This resentment is of course stoked up massively by the tabloids (& the Mail & Express in particular) with their ‘political correctness gone mad’ and ‘Christmas is cancelled’ bollocks. But people are genuinely fed up of being patronised and lectured at by the political & media establishment.

Now personally, as a lefty/progressive/PC/Guardian reading community media worker, I’m at the forefront of this – more to blame than anyone. I’m not apologising because I think it is right to purge racism from language where possible and right to purge violence from childhood where possible, but I have to acknowledge that there is a significant minority of society that ‘we’ haven’t brought with us on this. We’ve tended to lecture, patronise and abuse people rather than persuade them of the merits of our case (see the Jade Goody media witch-burning for example) I think voting BNP for many people is a way of sticking up two fingers to the new liberal-progressive consensus. It’s actually an expression of conservatism (very small ‘c’) rather than of ultra-right radicalism.

Whether that makes it any less dangerous or not I’m not sure.

Erm, OK…

Actually Chris this is a fundamental point. The breakdown of our communities and the lack of pride in people supposedly doing menial jobs, the onslaught faced by the Unions in the 80s all contributed to where we are today.