What constitutes racism?

[Forth Bridges]

I sure people in England take the piss of the scotts tongue and visa versa

but what I hate is I phone a call centre but its in aisa!

as you know I;m disyliic  and I can;t speak to those flok as I can;t spell thing out to them I do have a go at them!!!

I'm surposre to calling a person WHO KNOW English thourgh and thourgh

 

[kevvosa]

but what I hate is I phone a call centre but its in aisa!

That annoys me too. I've been on the phone ages trying to make them understand what I'm saying.

[Forth Bridges]

when there say " how do you spell that"

I go for them and state i'm disylick.... I have just had to complaint from any company about my action towards staff!

[oldspice]

To say that the only true racism is colour prejudice is, as Goldencup put it, rubbish.

Within the huge Asian category, there is a massive amount of racism. The Hindus do not, generally like the Muslims. The Sikhs definitely don't like the Muslims (although their religion acutally refutes this). Even some Muslims will hurt and kill other Muslims of a different caste - look at Iraq and Afghanistan.

Then look at our own history and the way the English treated the Irish - based on perceptions of race and culture.

If you must categorise squabbles between people from different counties then call it regional prejudice.

 

All I'm saying is, that the concept of race is fundamentally flawed. When you look at what it's supposed to mean, you start to get fuzzy boundaries.  If I can replace race with culture, region or colour then I can accept that these are objects of predjudice.  I don't know how you can be predjudiced against race as it doesn't meaning anything. Race is an empty expression coined by 19th century physiologists to try and catergorize humanity.  

Anthropologists now accept that we differ mostly by our language and culture.  Race is a myth.

[goldencup]

To me, if the kids had gone up to an Asian and called him or her a 'f**king Paki' or similar, THAT would be a racial incident. The comment made was thoughtless, childish and yes, probably racist, but it wasn't an incident.

I agree and that's why I didn't make an official note of it but seriously - we are supposed to! 

[goldencup]

Can you have positive racism?  I think the Koreans are amazing with their work ethic (I've known many Korean kids moving to Britain without a word of English, only to overtake their friends academically just a year or two later).  And the Jewish people are generally brilliant at so many things - music just being one of them.  Is this culture or race?

[oldspice]

A culture. Race is about ethnicity whereas culture is how a group of people express themselves socially, politically, historically - in art, religion, literature, music etc.

My first degree was in Cultural and Historical Theory and we spent years studying culture in all its aspects.

I agree about the Korean kids. They work so hard - so do the Chinese and those from Thialand and The Phillipines. They put our kids to shame.

It's true also that the Jewish people are industrious and artisitcally talented. That's why they get on so well wherever they settle. 

[Velvet Darkness]

You cannot say that people in Derbyshire are a different race from people in Yorkshire, so your example would not constitute racism, just ignorance and bad manners.

I was born in Yorkshire, and all my family were Yorkshire born and bred, ("Yorkshire born and Yorkshire bred, strong in the arm and thick in the head" as the quote goes. Ooops is that racism? Can you be racist against your own people I wonder? ) and most Yorkshire people proudly consider people from anywhere else to be not simply another race but oftentimes a whole different species!

I think that any race of people can be racist, it is not simply a matter of colour difference. From my time spent in Wales I have been shown that prejudice between same colour but different race is very much alive and flourishing.

"The only people the Welsh hate more than the English are the Irish." This is a quote from one of the very first people I met when I moved down here, I thought he was joking, but during the last 8 years I have realised that unfortunately he was not.

I had not thought about Wales as a seperate country in all the time I lived in Yorkshire, it was simply a part of the British Isles, like Scotland and Northern Ireland. I did not know that they were unhappy about it, or that they wanted to be a seperate country, not until I moved here and realised all the different ways there are of seeing your race, country of origin and indeed your nationality.

It is much more complicated than colour and creed, and it is a serious issue that gets more tangled and confusing the more you try to get to the bottom of it.

[oldspice]

The example of England, Wales and Scotland show how how you can have three indigenous races in one nation. Add the Cornish, some of whom want an official separate identity from the English and you can see how deep it all becomes.