Racist utterances in your immediate vicinity... And more!

[Ian Benson]

Two most recent for me, both in the last year, both involving the n-word. I am a white person, as are all the people in the following two anecdotes.

1) i was quite drunk at a pub and a drunk guy I kind of know came up to the bar and I said "my man!" (because doing a dead-on impersonation of Aquaman saying that in the trailer for 'Justice League' was my thing at the time) and he goes "my man! my [n-word]!" I tutted and stopped smiling and said "you can't say that," and he smiled and said "why not?" as if genuinely confused and I said "you just can't" and sort of sadly moved somewhere else.

2) met my bro and sis for lunch. Sis was talking about someone on insta and said "she describes herself as a [n-word] lover." Me and my bro both kind of recoiled and said words to the effect of "don't say that. What on earth?" She hasn't said the word since, as far as I know, but then there hasn't really been the opportunity. She is the kind of person who thinks political correctness has gone too far, in that crap kind of faux-confused, pub chat way. Like she probably wouldn't post "Are we even allowed to say "Hash Browns" anymore? 😂😂😂" on facebook, but if someone else posted that she would definitely consider liking it with a 😂.

Is this good going? Is your world full of this shit or does it simply not happen? My girlfriend's mixed-race, and I have wondered if people are checking themselves a bit more around me as a result (not that I would put up with it if I wasn't in said relationship but you get what I mean). In the past I've had friends who I've had to kind of train out of it, but I don't know what they're like when I'm not about. I also found out that my dad is anti-BLM and won't shut up about it in the family home, but around me he doesn't say shit. He just talks endlessly about his cameras, and all the settings they've got.

At the pub a lot of questions come my way about this sort of thing, and LGBTQIAPK+ stuff, because I've convinced them all that I'm clever by doing well in the quizzes, and I do my best, but sometimes I have to say that I don't know, because I don't, and this seems troubling to them sometimes (to be clear, I don't say that I don't know in that kind of resigned, "the world is just crazy" kind of way, more in a kind of raised eyebrows, "I don't know actually, that's an interesting question" manner). Even just hearing the words "I don't know" in a pub is bizarre it seems. Time was when a white bloke in a pub could know the answer to just about every question going, because, generally speaking, it was a simpler time where everyone was a white bloke in a pub living the exact same life as everyone they knew as well as their dads before them. Now though, at quite a comparitively rapid rate, previously marginalised people are part of the story, and it seems that, rather than deal with the steep learning curve, or simply say "I don't know about this, but I'm willing to learn," there seems to be an attitude of "well they're just fucking weird," and an inability to see outside of their own experience, like anyone who doesn't fit the sort of classic template is an annoyance. My girlfriend had to deal with a lot of "you wouldn't catch me looting" facebook posts from white pals for example, including one from a guy who'd previously kicked out a bakery's biggest window because he'd had a row with his gf about how much time he was spending on his Xbox.

But, yes, I would like to hear from you all about this. Also let me know if I've dropped any absolute clangers in this post. It's a tricky thing to talk about and I appreciate that I still have much to learn.

[JaDanketies]

Just the other day a house guest was saying that their mum and dad complained about 'n*g nog music'.  :o

I recalled this anecdote recently of me saying a racist word. Racist language was relatively normal among my friends when I was 16 to 18 so it was pretty easy to slip into it.

One day, at the end of university, aged 21, very drunk. We got a taxi back to a friends' house so we could sleep off the alcohol. Two different taxis were ordered. Taxi one arrived way before the taxi I was in - the driver, who was a South Asian man, drove all over the place, clearly didn't know where he was going.

I arrived back at the house and the guests asked 'why did you guys take so long?' and I said something about a p*ki taxi driver. A fellow there called Mohammed immediately wanted to fight me and I was very apologetic.

....

Several years later, Margaret Thatcher died and social media / real life erupted in an orgy of people mocking her. Some Tories said, "she's got children, y'know - imagine reading this about your mother!"

I was now far more mature than to use the word p*ki in any kind of company, except when discussing the word p*ki itself. I worked with a bunch of South Asian people, and my bosses were South Asian-heritage, as were some of my most important business associates.

I posted a Facebook update saying something along the lines of "fuck Thatchers' kids - Mark was involved in a failed military coup to overthrow a democratic government, and Carol Thatcher compared a black man to a gollywog on the TV and then refused to apologise for it."

A guy who was at the party where I referred to a taxi driver as a p*ki - and who I'd probably not spoken to for five years - then posted a reply saying, "Yeah you hypocrite JaDanketies, don't you remember when you called that taxi driver a p*ki? Who are you to criticise Carol Thatcher?"

I kinda blew a fuse - number one, I apologised immediately, unlike Carol Thatcher, and number two, I've got a bunch of people on my Facebook that I have professional relationships with, and who might not want to work with me if they think I consider them p*kis. Deleted the comment immediately and ended up unfriending the guy. Fuckin prick. 

[Chedney Honks]

Bang their fucking head into 2D with any dense object.

[madhair60]

My dad said "n****r in the woodpile" the other day. again

[timebug]

Years ago we had a corner shop that stocked everything; think 'Arkwright's' and you would be on the right lines. I went down one evening for a bottle of milk, and there was a middle aged bloke in front of me, of Jamaican heritage. In front of him was an Irishman buying his tea. The shopkeeper was a smarmy middle aged turd called Norman.
As the Irish guy slowly decided what he wanted, the door burst open and a really elderly bloke came in, a real Colonel Blimp type if ever there was. Ignoring me and the Jamaican guy, he went straight to the counter, pushed the Irish bloke aside,and bellowed
'Hey Norman! Have you got any N****r Brown Boot Polish?
The Irish guy looked bemused; the jamaican guy grinned at me and shrugged,and Norm in all fairness went bright red in the face.
Norman trying to deflate the situation,pointed out that there was in fact a small queue before him.
'Oh bugger that!' he snarled and left.  Charming old fellow, I bet his cronies thought he was the salt of the earth!

[touchingcloth]

But, yes, I would like to hear from you all about this. Also let me know if I've dropped any absolute clangers in this post. It's a tricky thing to talk about and I appreciate that I still have much to learn.

I don't think you've dropped any clangers :)

I'm mixed race but with white skin, blue eyes and fair hair, and people definitely let their guard down around me in ways that I suspect they wouldn't around my darker skinned brother and father. My in-laws for instance are tedious dog whistle racists who are always trying to bait me and my partner by talking about "Mus-rats" or "the Lol-ocaust" around us, but they also go on a lot about the difference in mental faculties and other features between the races. They talk a load of old shite about how British men are becoming feminised leading to a degradation of our culture, so the racism in their case is very much one of many wrong-headed opinions they have.



I spoke in another thread about how due to my background I always felt like I had a licence to use the n-word and other epithets because to my mind I understood what oppression was and that I could use the word in an informed and/or ironic way, but the recent BLM stuff has made me reassess that completely and I now don't think I'd use the word without ludicrously strong justification - quoting someone else is the only time I can imagine using it in the future, and even then only if not saying the word would be somehow problematic.

The two examples you gave in your OP are I think basically fine. Well not fine, but they don't necessarily point to your pals being irredeemable bad racists unless there are other clear warning signs. The first "'sup, my n-word" example is pretty widely used by people trying to make a point of their non-coolness and non-street-smartness - think of Nathan Barley using it, for example - and isn't something I would associate actual hardened racists using; if you're the KKK and hate black people, are you going to use that word about a white friend? You were definitely right to challenge them using it, but without more information I'd personally think the correct response would be a "hey, that's not cool!" one rather than shouting them down - a useful start to a discussion rather than a reason to not ever speak to that person again.

The second "n-word lover" example is less defensible I would say, but assuming the person isn't overtly bigoted they were probably thinking "well she loves black guys, so if she uses that word, then surely I can, too?", though I wouldn't be surprised if they were using their friend as an excuse to crowbar the word into a conversation for the sake of it. Shock jock tactics. Again without knowing anything more about that person I'd hope they were someone you could have a reasoned discussion with about why that word is one which people owe it to history to at least spend a second or two deciding whether they really want to use it.

So my position is that the word isn't banned as such, but I do think people shouldn't use it casually. I also think we should be careful when upbraiding people for using it, and I suspect going in too strong on a first offence might end up further entrenching people like the one in your second anecdote - "do you know liberals say you can't even say the n-word if you enjoy fucking black people? PC gone mad." kind of thing.

I also found out that my dad is anti-BLM and won't shut up about it in the family home, but around me he doesn't say shit. He just talks endlessly about his cameras, and all the settings they've got.

Ask him about the white balance.

[Brundle-Fly]

I kinda blew a fuse - number one, I apologised immediately, unlike Carol Thatcher, and number two, I've got a bunch of people on my Facebook that I have professional relationships with, and who might not want to work with me if they think I consider them p*kis. Deleted the comment immediately and ended up unfriending the guy. Fuckin prick.

Your misjudged comment was always going to be the ace up his sleeve at some point. I knew someone like that. The dossier.  Remembered every single faux pas/ indiscretions/ dodgy comment anyone had ever made from years back like Charles Augustus Magnussen in Sherlock.

[shagatha crustie]

At uni I was friends with a completely insane girl from somewhere rural outside of Bradford who had been raised by her grandma and thus internalised a lot of dodgy views, despite frequently relying on said P-words and N-words to feed her gluttonous cannabis habit. Shamefully I put up with it at the time save for a lot of tutting and scolding and one or two drunken arguments.

A few years later she rang me again to catch up and ask if I wanted to hang out - I was hoping she'd have grown up but then she said something about Tommy Robinson. Blocked her number after the call - nah. Just no.

Honestly, she was completely mad. The maddest person I've ever met - you couldn't make her up. Like a female Yorkshire Mark E Smith, a sort of untutored genius, pearls of obscene wisdom and poetry falling from her lips without even realising it.

I'm more angry about my parents, who have never made any racist utterances around me that I can remember, but are racist in a quieter, more cowardly and hypocritical way.

[Twonty Gostelow]

Years ago we had a corner shop that stocked everything; think 'Arkwright's' and you would be on the right lines. I went down one evening for a bottle of milk, and there was a middle aged bloke in front of me, of Jamaican heritage. In front of him was an Irishman buying his tea. The shopkeeper was a smarmy middle aged turd called Norman.
As the Irish guy slowly decided what he wanted, the door burst open and a really elderly bloke came in, a real Colonel Blimp type if ever there was. Ignoring me and the Jamaican guy, he went straight to the counter, pushed the Irish bloke aside,and bellowed
'Hey Norman! Have you got any N****r Brown Boot Polish?
The Irish guy looked bemused; the jamaican guy grinned at me and shrugged,and Norm in all fairness went bright red in the face.
Norman trying to deflate the situation,pointed out that there was in fact a small queue before him.
'Oh bugger that!' he snarled and left.  Charming old fellow, I bet his cronies thought he was the salt of the earth!

*Dom Joly scribbles furiously*

[Rizla]

I've had the discussion with my dad on numerous occasions about the fact that just because some black people might use or call each other the N-word, or asian people might reclaim slurs used against them for whatever reason, that doesn't give him carte blanche to use these words, even in jest, and those person's use of those words does not make them hypocrites, and no, no black person has ever referred to him as a "cracker" and even if they did, that is not a racial insult. Ibdon't think it's sunk in though.

I wish I could remember this clip I saw of some black professor or other explaining that when, say, a black person decides they want to be referred to as, say, persons of colour rather than coloured people, that that isn't political correctness gone mad, it's their way of sussing out if you're going to be a fucking dick or not.

I have not wrote this very well cos  I'm typing with one hand as there is a baby on my knee. A black baby aaah no she's very white.

[Lisa Jesusandmarychain]

Your misjudged comment was always going to be the ace up his sleeve at some point. I knew someone like that. The dossier.  Remembered every single faux pas/ indiscretions/ dodgy comment anyone had ever made from years back like Charles Augustus Magnussen in Sherlock.

Also, tbf to the feller calling the OP out, I wasn't going round using Alf Garnett- like racial epithets when I was 21 years of age.

[JaDanketies]

Also, tbf to the feller calling the OP out, I wasn't going round using Alf Garnett- like racial epithets when I was 21 years of age.

to be fair to me, I wasn't going around saying it all the time, hence him only having one instance of me saying it to critique me on.

also when I was 21 I was an ancap and I thought climate change probably wasn't a big deal and if it was the Market would sort it out

[Lisa Jesusandmarychain]

Bet you were taking shitloads of LSD, too.

[The Mollusk]

Here's one that will raise a few eyebrows:

I've got a friend who claims to be "the wokest bloke alive" basically because he's extremely liberal-minded, and subsequently thinks that just because he himself has long surpassed the need for pussy-footing around prejudices, the whole world will immediately understand where he's coming from and follow suit. He lives in a fucking fantasy world basically. It's utterly bizarre because he holds no actual malice no any particular race or sexual orientation, but he thinks it's completely acceptable for him to chuck words about in polite conversation as though he's cured prejudice of all kinds. The homophobic F-word, the N-word, it's no holds barred. I have heard him say the F-word a few times but it's a fucking weird grey area because he is very evidently bisexual and has been for many years, so I'm not sure about that. I have never heard him say the N-word in my presence but I would certainly use the opportunity to pull him up on it if I did.

He went to Glastonbury with a load of other mutual friends last year when Wu-Tang played. Another friend of ours has the most toe-curling 5-second video on his phone of our pal stood there in his bucket hat yelling the chorus to "Shame on a N****" with a black woman stood behind him looking absolutely fucking disgusted. After Glasto, another mate of ours came round to my house about a week after he'd got back from the festival. He's Indian. He'd clearly spent some time with the dude as well because he'd been in my kitchen less than 5 minutes before using the N-word as a matey term as if it was the most normal thing in the world. I immediately scolded him for it, and in his defence he said "Ah it's because I heard [dude] saying it all weekend it's rubbed off on me!" I said that was in no way acceptable and to never say it around me, or anywhere else, ever again. Fucking 10 minutes later and he did it again completely without even thinking. I cut him off mid-sentence and said if he did it once more I would kick him out of the house. It stopped there.

Normalisation is a bizarre thing. On the internet where you're anonymous it's very easy for absolutely anyone to drop an N-bomb with a soft "a" and go unchecked. For a while a year or two back, even blatantly white people on Facebook were using the term "ni🅱️🅱️a" (it's some stupid meme where using that emoji was a joke or something, I don't know how it came about but it got used a lot). Fucks sake. I don't really have a point to make at the end of this post, because the point is obvious. It's dumb and if you get your head kicked in for saying it around the wrong people one day, you deserve it.

[flotemysost]

My brother and I had a sort-of argument with my dad a couple of years ago, because (off the back of something that was in the news at the time) my dad was saying that he didn't see the value in censoring the N-word in direct reports of speech/stuff people have written on Twitter, etc.

(He's very liberal and would never, ever use the term with racist intent, but for some reason he couldn't seem to get his head around how even reading the full, uncensored word in print or hearing it spoken by a news reporter would be incredibly insensitive and upsetting for a lot of people.) (And yes, I realise this is a very middle class thing to have a family argument about.)

My mum on the other hand (who is Indian) sardonically drops the odd causal racist epiphet, especially ones that would have been familiar from her youth - 'let's go to the Chinky', or describing something black (as in, a household object that actually is black, like a bin bag or something) in an exaggerated Afrikaner accent ('blick') - she's likewise a non-racist liberal, but being a lifelong observer and target of racist insults herself I think she's just developed a rather gallows sense of humour about it.

I've heard some pretty shocking stuff from my black colleagues about comments they've had over the years at my supposedly liberal modern media workplace. "All your people smoke weed and love fried chicken" type stuff.

[JaDanketies]

Bet you were taking shitloads of LSD, too.

Let's not blame LSD for this.

I would still argue, if talking about the etymology of racist slurs in a private space with well-meaning and apparently anti racist adults who you know well, it is acceptable to say the full word. I mean, the p word is piss and the c is cunt.


For the sake of clarity, and perhaps being able to articulate yourself when drunk, if you are not using it to denigrate minorities, then it is okay to say the words. Also if you are rapping by yourself.

[thenoise]

My dad said "n****r in the woodpile" the other day. again

My mum defended that awful MP who said this a few years ago, insisting that this was just a phrase that people of their generation used. Funny,in the 37 years I've known her I've never once heard her say it (had to look up what it meant when the news story broke), even privately at home let alone in a professional setting - she was a primary school teacher for 30 years, cant imagine parents' evening going that smoothly if she was dropping n-bombs all over their asses.

She still thinks it was a charming outdated mistake, rather than a deliberate bit of race baiting smuggled in to appeal to her demographic of old racist cunts.

[The Mollusk]

My brother and I had a sort-of argument with my dad a couple of years ago, because (off the back of something that was in the news at the time) my dad was saying that he didn't see the value in censoring the N-word in direct reports of speech/stuff people have written on Twitter, etc.

(He's very liberal and would never, ever use the term with racist intent, but for some reason he couldn't seem to get his head around how even reading the full, uncensored word in print or hearing it spoken by a news reporter would be incredibly insensitive and upsetting for a lot of people.) (And yes, I realise this is a very middle class thing to have a family argument about.)

Disgraced Wankbeast had a bit in one of his old sets which (even as a massive fan of his work at that point) always rubbed me the wrong way. It was about how non-black people in the media/news etc. would paraphrase the use of a racial slur by saying "the N-word", and how that was "basically white people finding a way to say the word n****r". I don't agree with his point, whatever the fuck it is, and I find it a dumb observation, and what's more he actually says the word at the end of that sentence. Sooo like, what, your way of handling it is way better yeah? A white guy with an enormous public platform just saying the word in front of hundreds of people, on film? Have a word mate.

[Lisa Jesusandmarychain]

Let's not blame LSD for this

I should think not- we went decimal years ago !!!!!! :-D ( one for all the Ted Chippington fans out there).
I don't want you to think I'm having a go at you Danky,  but that slur you used was very bad form. Still they were different times, even Del Boy was using that term, and that feller who went on to appear in " The Full Monty" didn't threaten him with a bashing.

[JaDanketies]

I should think not- we went decimal years ago !!!!!! :-D ( one for all the Ted Chippington fans out there).
I don't want you think I'm having a go at you Danky,  but that slur you used was very bad form. Still they were different times, even Del Boy was using that term, and that feller who went on to appear in " The Full Monty" didn't threaten him with a bashing.

I agree it was very bad. I don't defend it. You could argue he was right to alert all my FB friends that I said p*ki in an offensive context many years ago. As it was, self-protection meant I tried to prevent that from happening.

[Beagle 2]

I warned my wife about my local pub where I grew up in rural Yorkshire and how dense and racist people could be in there, but she was like nah I'm from a rural area I get it, it's fine. First time we go in there it's a pub quiz, the quizmaster says over the PA "God bless her (barmaid), she's been working like a n***er tonight!". Whole pub erupts in laughter. God bless one burly regular for at least pulling a surprised face and saying "bloody 'ell, it's back tut 70's in ere toneet".

The worst sort of words are still normalised there, and it's not like they don't know. There's always a face when they're deployed, a challenge to see if you'll pull them up on it.

[Lisa Jesusandmarychain]

I agree it was very bad. I don't defend it. You could argue he was right to alert all my FB friends that I said p*ki in an offensive context many years ago. As it was, self-protection meant I tried to prevent that from happening.

Nah, he shouldn't have been dredging it up many years later , to be fair. Unpleasant as it was, it wasn't " Piccaninnies with watermelon smiles" standard.

[Smeraldina Rima]

One time I came out of a grocery shop in the Chinese Quarter (forget it Jake, it's the Chinese Quarter) and a middle aged White woman - who looked down on her luck and might have been addicted to drugs - was shouting at an East Asian family of three: a mum, dad and child in a push chair. The mum was asking her to stop, saying that she was frightening the little boy, and the woman threatened to hit the child in the face in his pushchair. I moved in the way without having a clue what I was going to do - beat up a poor woman? - the family ran off, and the woman started weakly hitting my arm and shopping bags and having a go at me for having been to 'their fridge'. The other side of this is me telling the story partly because I find that phrase funny. There's lots of racism towards East Asians on the trains around the football, and it's less likely to be shouted down than other forms of racism ™.

A friend from Hong Kong was once called a 'dear little thing' by an elderly family friend. I asked some friends of friends (of friends even, honestly nowhere near me) not to say 'Chinky' one time in all-White company and there was a sense of divided opinion over whether it had been worth souring the mood to complain even in my own head. A friend from South Korea got a lot of abuse in England but most of that amused him. I don't know enough about bows but he was telling me people were doing other Asian countries' bows to him sometimes and he'd just do it back even though he doesn't normally bow at all. He plays up to some stereotypes for fun but maybe also because it makes life easier. I sometimes worry about thinking of him too much as a comedy character and then - shit - I'm denying him the right to be funny. Example of him being funny because where else would I put this: taking a James Bond style photo with finger guns up in front of a war memorial poster in England in solidarity because he was in the South Korean army and posting it on facebook.

I'm never sure where I am with ironic racism and political correctness, usually go on instinct or increasingly just follow the trends while defending Jerry Sadowitz against all the odds.

When I was at school, I would get nervous around most people and then one day I was walking home with another kid that nobody respected (a White one called Kevin) and I noticed that I didn't feel nervous at all with him. That was the first time I thought that the other side of me being friendly to an outsider was that I didn't have the usual problem of feeling inferior and deferential, and that one way of reading me being nice was that I was feeling superior. Reading the recent billy no mates thread and reflecting on having most of my easiest friendships with visiting foreigners from countries in East Asia made me think of this passage from a book:

I could have put up with him as a friend, but unfortunately he found me disgusting, as did Johnson, Wilson, Nicholson, and Watson, all whoresons. I then tried, for a space, to lay hold of a kindred spirit among the inferior races, red, yellow, chocolate, and so on. And if the plague-stricken had been less difficult of access I would have intruded on them too, ogling, sidling, leering, ineffing and conating, my heart palpitating. With the insane too I failed, by a hair's-breadth. That must have been the way with me then.

Ineffing is what Phil Minton does.

[touchingcloth]

One time I came out of a grocery shop in the Chinese Quarter (forget it Jake, it's the Chinese Quarter) and a middle aged White woman - who looked down on her luck and might have been addicted to drugs - was shouting at an East Asian family of three: a mum, dad and child in a push chair. The mum was asking her to stop, saying that she was frightening the little boy, and the woman threatened to hit the child in the face in his pushchair. I moved in the way without having a clue what I was going to do - beat up a poor woman? - the family ran off, and the woman started weakly hitting my arm and shopping bags and having a go at me for having been to 'their fridge'. The other side of this is me telling the story partly because I find that phrase funny. There's lots of racism towards East Asians on the trains around the football, and it's less likely to be shouted down than other forms of racism ™.

A friend from Hong Kong was once called a 'dear little thing' by an elderly family friend. I asked some friends of friends (of friends even, honestly nowhere near me) not to say 'Chinky' one time in all-White company and there was a sense of divided opinion over whether it had been worth souring the mood to complain even in my own head. A friend from South Korea got a lot of abuse in England but most of that amused him. I don't know enough about bows but he was telling me people were doing other Asian countries' bows to him sometimes and he'd just do it back even though he doesn't normally bow at all. He plays up to some stereotypes for fun but maybe also because it makes life easier. I sometimes worry about thinking of him too much as a comedy character and then - shit - I'm denying him the right to be funny. Example of him being funny because where else would I put this: taking a James Bond style photo with finger guns up in front of a war memorial poster in England in solidarity because he was in the South Korean army and posting it on facebook.

I'm never sure where I am with ironic racism and political correctness, usually go on instinct or increasingly just follow the trends while defending Jerry Sadowitz against all the odds.

When I was at school, I would get nervous around most people and then one day I was walking home with another kid that nobody respected (a White one called Kevin) and I noticed that I didn't feel nervous at all with him. That was the first time I thought that the other side of me being friendly to an outsider was that I didn't have the usual problem of feeling inferior and deferential, and that one way of reading me being nice was that I was feeling superior. Reading the recent billy no mates thread and reflecting on having most of my easiest friendships with visiting foreigners from countries in East Asia made me think of this passage from a book:

Ineffing is what Phil Minton does.

The bit about racism towards Asians on the footie trains rings true. I'm not a fan of the sport but I've used the trams in Manchester on match days and seen a lot of that kind of thing, the most memorable being hearing a drunk guy getting off shout "look at you - you've got a face like burnt toast!" before an Asian man got on.

On the flip side, the only time I've been aware of receiving racist abuse myself as a white man has been from Asian people, specifically Chinese. I went to a Chinese grocery with my friend from Hong Kong, and we split up while in the store to do our own shopping. When we left he told that a couple of the staff had laughed at me for buying some unusual things for a westerner (a sushi rolling mat, from memory) and used the epithet "gweilo" about me. Now that I'm aware of it I hear that word used quite a lot, though of course I could be mishearing other innocent words and even if I hear it correctly there could be some context to it which forgives its use.

But yeah, the Chinese: a racist bunch of lads.

[Gregory Torso]

used the epithet "gweilo" about me. Now that I'm aware of it I hear that word used quite a lot, though of course I could be mishearing other innocent words and even if I hear it correctly there could be some context to it which forgives its use.

The arguments I've had about this word with my wife (she's Cantonese). I got called it constantly when i lived in China, even by her dickhead uncle at a family dinner, who knew my name. "Oh it's not racist, it just means foreigner", no it means foreign devil or something like that. So it's used to refer to (white) foreigners in a non-racist way, but then I ask her, "so what's your bad word for foreigner, you know, if you really want to get double racist against a white dude", oh, it's the same word is it? She'd be talking to her parents and mention a friend of ours, a black American guy, and instead of using his name, call him 'the fat black ghost man' and I'd be saying 'why not just use his name, it is Reginald, we have all met him, what is wrong with you?' and she'd make some excuse about it being easier for her parents to understand that urgh brrr whatevs fffff just exhausting eventually. So next time I was on the phone to my mum and dad, I'm going "oh yeah do you wanna talk to that screaming yellow lass I married" and she just laughed it off instead of learning An Important Lesson.

BUT

racism towards East Asians [...], and it's less likely to be shouted down than other forms of racism ™.

I have noticed this too in the UK. My manager has made several comments about 'chinkys' and their funny names and how they all seem to look the same, ha ha, the bants, despite knowing full well my wife is Chinese. I've never heard him be racist in any way about any other ethnicity or culture, so he may be trying to wind me up (though he did have the sense to at least look a bit embarrassed when he was talking to a colleague about the amount of "them" in Nottingham and I helpfully reminded him that I'd be bringing two more of "them" over soon so perhaps he'd better breathe in and make some more room).

[Sin Agog]

Some straight-edge twat I'd just met once tried to message me on MSN with the opening gambit: "Sup my [N-word]," but I was too lazy to look at it so got my extremely sensitive friend Tanny Chiu who was in the room with me to answer it. When I say sensitive, I mean he once flew into a restaurant as we were walking down the street, tore a lovey-dovey couple apart from their romantic reveries, and screamed at the woman, "Did you just fucking mouth 'Bruce Lee' as I was walking past?  Did you just fucking do that?!" (She didn't). When he saw that message on my computer, he immediately trapped the person in a three-hour lecture on racial sensitivity, which I thought was pretty cool and amusing.

[Jerzy Bondov]

A lot of white people have very begrudgingly given up saying the n word, on the unspoken understanding that they would no longer have to think about racism in exchange. They are very annoyed that it has turned out not to be quite so simple. People like my parents-in-law, who are refusing to buy their favourite tea bags because the company 'has gone woke to BLM'. It's nice that they don't say n****r, but it's not really enough, is it?

[Blinder Data]

Father-in-law says "coloured" which is thankfully as bad as it gets. In fact, I've haven't heard a proper racist utterance in my vicinity for a long time now - how lucky!

One memorable case happened shortly after the 2008 US election when my uncle offered chocolates around at a family do, asking "if we wanted an Obama?". He's got strong Italian heritage and has talked about being called "eyetye" when growing up, so maybe he feels he has more licence due to his own persecution - or maybe he's just that bit more racist than us, like most Italians? Anyway, it happened 12 years ago, a different time... 😜

A guy at work has talked idly about his Romanian neighbours stealing things and young Asian lads driving too fast on the road outside his house. He's quite matter-of-fact with it, not angry. I know I should challenge him about why he mentions their ethnicity/nationality, but I'd rather not encourage an open and honest discussion about diversity in my open-plan office of 100% white colleagues. I don't think it would go so well.

[El Unicornio, mang]

Two most recent for me, both in the last year, both involving the n-word. I am a white person, as are all the people in the following two anecdotes.

1) i was quite drunk at a pub and a drunk guy I kind of know came up to the bar and I said "my man!" (because doing a dead-on impersonation of Aquaman saying that in the trailer for 'Justice League' was my thing at the time) and he goes "my man! my [n-word]!" I tutted and stopped smiling and said "you can't say that," and he smiled and said "why not?" as if genuinely confused and I said "you just can't" and sort of sadly moved somewhere else.

When I was at uni in the late 90s I shared a house with a black guy and one time another housemate brought his mate over and he said "wassup n****r" to him. I think he was expecting "sup bro" (even though he was white) or something back but there was just an awful painful silence. Not to much being "racist" as being horribly unaware that if you're white you don't use that word in any context.