Really? Do I want to? For once I’m relieved that the online BBC video player doesn’t work in the US, but enough snippets are getting through on other media to give me a bit of the flavor.
When this woman begins her monologue with there’s absolutely no way I’m a racist,
you just know that what’s going to come out next is flamingly racist.
Oh, dog. Now you can watch the whole thing for yourself. UKippers are worse than the snippets reveal.
OMG! What an embarrassment they are. Almost as bad as the Tea Party. Is it too late to persecute them so that they would want to move to Boston? I seem to remember that it worked before as a way of getting rid of extremists.
She’s talking about it like it’s some affliction she has that she can’t help. I wish I knew why I hate ’em! I really do!
Disgusting.
A good place to start would be to stop calling them negros, Rozanne.
Of course she’s not a racist, she ONLY has a problem with negroes !
Pathetic, she perfectly knows why she’s got that problem, and the other one’s right when she says it’s not their character/personality/facial features: those are not the issue, the issue is , quite tautologically, that they’re negroes ! Bwuuuuhhh, poor her !
“Call me a racist, but…” ” OK, you’re a racist butt”. The depressing thing is that this bunch of nasty idiots will probably be part of the next British coalition government (election in May). They have significant support, thanks to free newspaper publicity and the wink- wink racism (though they normally “hide” it better than that example) that permeates British white culture. They are not only racist, but also climate change denialist.
Ah, UKIP. There’s currently nothing quite like them for setting the blood on a course for boiling point. I recall their harping on about the fact that they were the only party in Britain that had a, “No ex-BNP members” policy. That’s because they were the only party that was attractive to the racist scumbags.
More recently a ‘kipper has been identified as one of the group of idiots on the Paris metro who prevented a black man boarding a train and chanting racist songs after Chelsea’s Champions League game with PSG. His mug has been captured outside a pub, posing alongside Nigel Farage’s gurning visage. I cannot bring myself to find a link, Farage’s face turns me into a sweary angryperson and I still have to deal with customers at work for a couple of hours.
One woman says, “It’s got nothing to do with facial features.”
On Australian talk-back radio many years ago I heard a guy trying to make a similar point. He was against Vietnamese migrants but insisted he wasn’t being racist. He said, “I don’t hate ’em because they’ve got slitty little eyes, and I don’t hate ’em because they’ve got big moon faces, I hate ’em because — I mean I don’t hate ’em because — they come over here and take all our jobs.”
Smoke me a uKipper. I’ll be back for uBreakfast.
The funniest 50 minutes of television you’ll see this year. “At least I wasn’t in the Gestapo”, says the local party chairman, attempting to laugh off his former membership of the racist National Front.
I think if you were to ask a Black Briton, they might dispute the “wink-wink” part of your assertion, jacksprocket. It may seem that way from the white side, but there was nothing wink-wink about the deaths of Jean Charles de Menezes or Mark Duggan, for instance, at the hands of Met Police, and that’s just the tip of the tongue references. Being dismissive of it, or suggesting it’s subtle and difficult to pin down, is not supported by the evidence.
What do you say to people who aren’t smart enough to be climate change deniers?
See
“Ukip candidate asks: what happens when renewable energy runs out?”
Damn! When I saw the word ‘kippers’ I thought this was gonna be about one of my favourite breakfasts!!
Well, she’s got a point. When the sun runs out of hydrogen to fuse, we’re going to be screwed.
(Yes, I know we’ll be in trouble long before then.)
“What happens when the renewable energy runs out?”
Same as when your rechargeable battery runs out–go buy a new one.
Whenever Farage appears on TV I always think of the H.P Lovecraft story Shadow over Innsmouth
Darjien @ u
Sounds like a college meals program.
newenlightenment @ 14
I can see it all now:
BBC News Presenter: “In other news, the controversial UK Idependence Party has announced that it will be changing its position on inter-racial relationships. Also their new platform includes replacing the traditional Church of England with something called the ‘Esoteric Order of Dagon’ which an unamed UKIP spokesperson claimed would ‘better reflect the proud spiritual traditions of.Britons and pave the way for the glorious return of Lord Cthulhu and his star-spawn.'”
“What happens when the renewable energy runs out?”, what part of “renewable”, do you not understand? Yes, it is NOT infinite quantity of energy, but it cannot be “used up”. The question you are REALLY asking is, “What happens if we need more energy than the renewables supply us with?” _That_ is a valid question, yours is nonsensical.
@15 Actual UKIP party election broadcast:
@CaitieCat
If you ask a variety of Black Britons you’ll get a variety of opinions.
Younger people see racism in different ways. Having more contact with the police, they’ll have a different perspective from their parents’.
Talk to their grandparents and get a different perspective again.
Duwayne Brooks, the anti-racist activist thrown into the middle of the Stephen Lawrence case, says this woman is expressing an irrational fear rather than being openly racist. I can’t say I agree with him but that’s my point. Black Britons no more speak with one mind than Mexican Americans or red haired Scots.
While we’re here, your examples are somewhat flawed. Although both killings were reprehensible, even some teenaged North London gang members will tell you there is a difference between being executed on the way to work and being shot in a standoff while you’re on your way to shoot a “pagan”.
Having said that, I agree with your general point. About ten years ago, some fairly well known (no names no pack drill) liberal friends of mine were telling me that racism was dying and “we” had reclaimed Britishness and the Union Flag. I could give any number of examples of alienated Muslim youths and disaffected Afro-Caribbean youths but, hey, that was just anecdote.
Since then, it’s got much worse and much more casual. The mums who assume a Catholic Asian lad is a Muslim and let him know in no uncertain terms, the grown white men making the pistol gesture at teenage girls wearing a hijab, the black woman swearing at old Portuguese couple standing on the pavement chatting in their own language…that’s just what I’ve seen in the last month.
Parts of South London are starting to feel like its the late seventies again and I wonder whether UKIP isn’t a symptom and not the cause.
@JackSprocket
Beyond taking chunks out of the (mainly) Tory vote, UKIP are unlikely to matter in the next elections.
Even if their party machinery worked properly, the “first past the post” system means they are unlikely to get more than a handful of MPs. Less than the SNP, less than the Lib Dems, both of which know they have the two main parties by the balls in the event of a hung parliament (pun intended)
The irony is that every UKIPper I know voted against PR in the referendum in 2010.
#14, newenlightenment
Ahh, mocking him for his physical appearance, rather than his actions? Stay classy.
Now there’s no way I’m a homophobe, but if there’s one group of people I can’t stand it’s those lesbians…
So married Orthodox Jewish women wear wigs? Huh. I did not know that. You learn something stupid every day.
Ah, nice to be reminded of this little architectural gem, Britain’s very own Catholic mosque.
For iPlayer-less masochists with forty-seven minutes to kill, the whole show is now on YouTube.
“… not a racist, but I don’t like [ ____race____ ]…” to give that phrase ‘rope’, it could be that xe thinks “racism” means one does not like EVERY race except their own, however xe only hates ONE race, so not enough to be a “racist”.
OR
Everybody xe hates ‘just happens’ to be of the same race, so xe got evidence that their race is hateworthy. Xe not a racist, just hates people who are hateworthy.
.
– I don’t think that word means what xe thinks it means.
http://hola.org/
She’s a product of her generation. A cousin of my Dad’s, who would have been in her mid-eighties if she was still alive, was one of the sweetest, kind-hearted people there was. She was a wonderful host, always willing to go the extra mile, and never had a bad word to say about anyone… until she started talking about the “Pakis” (a racial slur in the UK) who had taken over the city center of Bradford, completely transforming it in her lifetime.
Clearly her racism was rooted in the resentment at the way the immigrant community came into the area and fundamentally changing the nature of certain parts of the city — churches closing, mosques opening, traditional stores being replaced by Asian food outlets, and so on. Thing is, she was a genuinely nice person. You couldn’t dismiss her as just another ugly racist, and odds are that whenever she interacted with someone from that community one-on-one, she was just as nice to them as she was to us. But then, you couldn’t exactly dismiss her patently racist views either.
Growing up, she would have never men a person of color (heck, I’m 50 and I only ever meet one black kid in my entire school career, in Yorkshire, then Glasgow), and throughout her life would always be looking in from the outside as the immigrant community grew. There was no reason to interact with them, and by the time the community was making a large impact on the city, she was already too old and set in her ways to change. That’s not to excuse her racism, it just explains how it can happen.
tacitus
And so many other people lived through those same times under similar circumstances and didn’t turn out racist. Explaining how her racism may have happened doesn’t really garner any sympathy from me, actually, because it arises from othering those immigrants and treating them as outsiders and transgressors of the home turf – they’re different, they’re not like me, they eat funny food and do funny things, and that makes them scary. She could have seen them for what they were – new members of the community, from whom she could have learned plenty, and they from her.
Heck, my grandma, who died at the wonderful age of 91 pretty much exactly a year ago, had never met a black person before a family moved in next door – she a refugee-exile from eastern Europe living in Toronto. Yes, she was afraid and worried at first. But you know what? She got over it. Within, my mum says, a couple of months, and came to the conclusion that ‘heck, they’re just people, just like us!’
There comes a point where the passive attitude just won’t do, where it’s time to take responsiblity for one’s views, instead of trying to justify them or trying to explain away one’s dislike of an entire race (or races) as just something that happens. A lack of introspection to challenge one’s own views and an unwillingness to accept differences – that’s where the problem is. And it is not excusable, and though it may be explicable, it doesn’t become any more palatable in the end result.
Racism has a lot to do with the ‘them and us’ feeling that religious groups frequently wallow in. I don’t know who this woman is, but I would bet a pizza that she goes to church.
rq
Everyone has to be put into their context, which is presumably why your grandma was initially nervous. Her attitude, though, shows she was ready to learn and accept new things even at her advanced age, and that shows merit. I would suggest that what matters is not so much where you are, but in what direction you are trying to go.
Fixed that for you. While you may not be wrong re: her religious practices, atheists do it, too. People do it.
johnlee
I would agree. I do agree. Which just means that the woman from UKIP is trying to go in the wrong direction.
rq
Your correction is appropriate.
tacitus
You know, my grandpa would have been 94 this April. He was a wonderful, genuinly nice and mild tempered person.
Unless people made racist remaks, then he had a few choice words for them. I’m sick and tired of that argument.
@97: rq
I agree, but we have to accept that in many cases, as with my Dad’s cousin, it simply wasn’t something they ever considered doing. In her case, she grew up in an all white community, lived in an all white community almost her entire life, and probably only thought about the Pakistani community in the context of the typical grumbling that many older people do when they don’t like the changes happening in and around their lives.
Like it or not, many people simply just don’t care. They’re not political, they have no interest in the causes of immigration or who these strangers are, and they’re not out to improve themselves or learn more about the world, so it’s not surprising when they react badly to change when it finally impinges on their lives. I don’t believe it is excusing people’s racism to acknowledge that it’s not as easy for some people to get over their prejudices as it is for others, whether it be because of life experiences or innate personality.
Fortunately, my own parents trod a different path, driven by interest and curiosity, and involvement in current political and social issues. As a result they met the changes head on and were fully equipped to handle the transition to a more multicultural Britain, which they fully embraced.
Good for him, and it probably made him more the exception than the rule. I live in Texas these days, and of my closest half-dozen friends, at least half of them have elderly parents who are either openly racist or pretty close to it.
Nigel Farrage started life as a Roald Dahl villain.
tacitus
Sure, and many people can afford not to care, being on the higher end of the privilege scale. Their private views remain private, or at least within the sphere of friends and family, and do not necessarily affect public policy decisions, or the public image of a government party and the like.
But for someone in the political game, this can’t apply. It’s a public job, working for the public and a myriad of different kinds of people, where these things must be examined for them not to negatively influence any future public-affecting decisions this potentially political person would make, where their prejudice might have a disproportionately negative effect on specific groups of people. Whether this process is easy or not is immaterial, especially if it will have an effect in the real world decision-making. For anyone in the public sphere, this must be done.
Your parents would be a fine example of politically-involved people who obviously did see the value in examining their own views and embracing multiculturality, etc. The woman from UKIP is not.
I don’t get this phrase, it seems useless and handwavy. Everyone is a product of their generation.
For every prevailing cultural meme, there were counter-culture memes alongside them. People from the mainstream can choose to challenge it. Saying they can’t is a crap excuse.
“We do not say that a man who takes no interest in politics is a man who minds his own business; we say that he has no business here at all.” — Pericles
Giliell@33:
I’m with you. I fully understand the “they are a product of their time” argument as it comes to explaining why a proportion of people believe certain things, but I don’t accept it as an argument for *exonerating* individuals because, barring rare exceptions, all those people were still aware of and exposed to alternative beliefs, and chose to reject them.
There were anti-Jim Crow activists in the 60s, German anti-Nazi movements in the 30s and 40s, suffragettes in the late 19th/early 20th century, abolitionists in the mid-19th century, and so on. Every era, no matter how regressive, still has examples of people who rejected the prevailing ethos — sometimes even succeeding in *changing* the prevailing ethos.
They’re really special, the Kippers. Farage isn’t xenophobic but he gets all tense whenever he hears someone speaking a foreign language and this lady isn’t racist, she just needs help with her racism problem??!!! I mean, what? Lucky for them, and unluckily for us a lot of their supporters come from the whitest, least immigrant-populated parts of the country*, have no clue what they’re talking about, but are willing to be told what they should fear. For the rest of us, they’re like Palin, they can only implode under their own collective stupidity.
* This, incidentally, is usually to due to very long-term economic deprivation or decline, making these areas unattractive to newcomers since at least WWII and also, desperate enough to listen to any rubbish. It’s a problem.
@9
Just so we know, ‘wink-wink’ is the nearest British equivalent of ‘dog-whistle’ and like ‘dog-whistle’ doesn’t imply an absence of other manifestations of racism.
@26 – tacitus
My grandmother’s the same generation as your relative, and from South Yorkshire. The defining feature of her personality was that she never saw a change she liked after about 1930. When it applied to the price of bread and milk, changes in clothing, colour tv (what am I saying, tv, full stop), it was well… eccentric, I suppose, but more her problem than anyone else’s. When it applied to Britain’s changing demographic, OUCH!!!
“Product of her generation”? Wait a minute, there — she’s 5-10 years older than I am. My parents precede her by a decade or so.
He’s the Upper Class Twit of the Year.
Chris:
The only way they’d belong in Boston is if they were forced to live in the absolute worst part of Southie and dress entirely in orange.
(For those of you who have never seen “The Departed”, South Boston is stereotyped as an Irish ghetto. That’s not wholly true, but a big chunk of Big Dig money disappeared into a black hole somewhere in there.)
tacitus
But it is. Because when it comes to the targets of their hatred, it doesn’t fucking matter. The damage is just the same. There are no people who are “not political”. “Not political” means being OK with the status quo and that’s a political opinion. And when you actively oppose change because you don’t like the colour of your new neighbour’s skin, then that’s also a political standpoint, one we generally call “racism”. And it really doesn’t matter if that racism is due to reading tons of shitty literature or having forgotten to do that growing up thing where you learn that your personal preferences don’t translate into societal models.
@36 / 44: This is my preferred theory: Nigel Farage ‘comic creation that got out of hand’.
Tom Reeves, #19:
The referendum was on AV, which is not close to PR. It’s unlikely Ukip would get any seats at all under AV, since over half the voters in a constituency would have to put them somewhere on their ballot.
Nearly forgot: I know a song about this.
tacitus, #46
The basic rights of humans and their expectation to be treated equally is not a political thing, nor is it a matter of someone’s “interest”, nor is it about someone improving themselves or learning more about the world.
Not being political, not having an interest in immigration, and not wanting to improve oneself are irrelevant to mistreating people for their skin color or their accents.
You can be politically ignorant, have no interest in immigration and not want to improve yourself while also treating other humans fairly. Those that choose not to can’t blame anything for it but their willful desire to be racist assholes.
Oops, I meant post #34, not 46.
tacitus @ 34,
What could be more political than protecting your own perceived interests either at the expense of everyone else or of a specific group you’ve identified as useful scapegoats?
If only the well-being of those strange immigrants wasn’t a political topic! They should have known better and made their basic rights a matter of sports instead of politics. Then Whitey McPrivilege Person would have given them the attention football deserves. Darn foreigners… not catering to the things the default white folk care about.
They remind me of this awful man who used to work with me. He would say the most racist things and then do damage control by claiming his best friend is black. I would sometimes just stand there and stare at him, unable to believe he was saying such vile and racist things. He was not well liked here and his antics were well known by HR amongst others. I work for the Canadian government and this type of conduct is strictly prohibited within our organization. It is also really difficult to fire a person without an extensive case being constructed with numerous corroborative stories to contribute to a solid case for dismissal. This jackass was eventually forced out of his position with a creative approach to his contract and its renewal. Glad to say he is no longer with us and the work environment has improved a lot since then. I just cringe at the thought of some of his racist remarks. Good riddance I say.
Although Roseanne Duncan is obviously no paragon, and is quite clearly racist, I find encouragement in the fact that she’s a self-aware racist. There’s hope that a self-aware racist can overcome their own racism. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me” is infinitely better than “I don’t know what’s wrong with them.”
That said, I don’t know enough about British culture: it’s possible that the culture dictates a self-deprecating facade, and that her self-awareness is actually a sham. I’m taking her at face value. Once upon a time I was a self-aware racist and sexist; in fact I probably always will be, because despite my bleeding heart, I still find myself failing to check my assumptions (or my privilege).
I saw this and my jaw clanked about on the floor for the duration. You really can’t make this shit up.
A Masked Avenger #55:
Pretty much that, for Middle England types.
Note also that although she claims to be aware that it’s her problem, she still felt justified in blocking access of black people to some scheme or other. (I think she said twas summat to do with social housing, but I couldn’t quite catch her words.)
As a Brit myself, I consider Farage and his posse of racist nitwits to be the shame of the UK. They are the closest anologue our political system has to the Tea Party in the US, and they share several of that organisation’s repellant characteristics, with their front and centre racism supplemented by plenty of misogyny and homophobia that, while not usually quite as blatent, is still very much in evidence. They are basically a more virulent strain of Conservatism for those who find the already deeply unpleasent Conservative party to simply not be bigoted enough.
Like some other commenters upthread, the fact that these arsehats have a reasonable possibility of forming part of a coalition government after the forthcoming election both depresses and worries me a great deal.
newenlightenment (#14):
I always thought of him as Dolores Umbridge’s smarmier younger brother. And then Rowling revealed that Umbridge did have a younger Muggle brother, so maybe she sees the resemblance as well.