When did you first encounter racism?

[Default to the negative]

They were doing this rap which ended with the lines "there ain't no black in the union jack, so send those Pakis back"

The version of this I knew was "There ain't no black in the union jack, joooiiin the National Front! We'll pull that trigger and shoot that n**ger, joooiiin the National Front!" Must have been floating around the playground for about twenty years. None of us even knew what the NF was. It was a thing of the past by that time.

Another one was a play on the "knick-knack paddywhack" rhyme. "With a nig-nog gollywog, give the coon a bone, stick it through his nose and send the fucker home!" Nice and easy for the kids to remember!

I think racism became a thing in our class when I was about 8. It wasn't too serious though. It was just another version of the abuse that ginger/nerdy/buck-toothed/fat kids got. Never ideological or sincere, just a bunch of insults passed down from generations of children, repeated without any real understanding. It was pretty much gone from us by the time we left for secondary.

That said, at secondary school me and my friends would use racial slurs when we were talking between ourselves. That was a kind of cathartic coping mechanism though, and no worse than what we said about the white people who caused us bother. It wasn't real racism in my book. I think at least a few of you will have gone through a period in your teens in which everything that came out of your mouth was hateful, so if you were occasionally hateful towards ethnic minorities, it wasn't like you were singling them out for special attention.

[Cerys]

I remember being shocked when I found out that that was airing as late as 1978.  It was bad enough in the 60's I imagine, Welsh men in blackface singing the most unhip tunes from the late 19th century during Beatlemania, but for it to continue late into the '70s is just mind boggling.

I remember the conversation I had with my mum, in which she explained that they weren't really black.  I was about four, and I hadn't realised.  I said something like, 'why don't they get real black people to do it?' - I don't remember what answer my mum gave, but I also don't remember ever seeing it after that.

[Danger Man]

It was bad enough in the 60's I imagine, Welsh men in blackface singing the most unhip tunes from the late 19th century during Beatlemania...

Bad enough to get 18 million viewers.

If I ever get invited to write for The Ironic Review I think I'll choose "The Black and White Minstrel Show wasn't racist, it was rubbish" as my first article.

[Noodle Lizard]

I remember being about 8 and asking why black people were suppressed in South Africa and her reply was, "because they're black".

Well, it's partly true, isn't it?

[Ein Sof]

My first encounter with racism was an African kid making some remark about my skin. But, after 'checking my privilege', I realise it was my four-year-old self being a member of the Klu Klux Klan there.

The coprolites I had to hang around with at my sorry excuse for a high school/state school refused to call our mathematics teacher by his real name; instead, they would call him "p**i" - not to his face, of course (they were also found of using the word "Jew" with wanton abandon). But my first exposure to that word was when I was five. My mother's friend, her Indian husband and her family came over to our house, so Mum thought it best to direct me on a certain matter before they arrived. She said, "Whatever you do, don't use the word "p**i"." I had no idea what the word was, nor what it meant, so I wasn't thinking about unleashing it. However, now that my mother had cast that particular dye into the crucible, I enquired further when they came in. I asked the gentleman, "Why can't I call you p**i?" Once again, I fulfilling my position as Grand Wizard of the KKK with aplomb. Naturally, I was told off; but if my mother had instead opted to say nothing then I wouldn't have said it!

[syntaxerror]

My mum was racist. ( & a Thatcherite)
I remember being about 8 and asking why black people were suppressed in South Africa and her reply was, "because they're black".
I learned Larkin's This be the Verse a few years later. Was this on Saturday and  are you my five year old son?

yes

[billtheburger]

Well, it's partly true, isn't it?

Whilst being semantically precise, there was a malice and gloating in her subtext.

yes

He used the phrase "chocolate baby" rather than n**ger, though.

[Neville Chamberlain]

At school, everyone used to shout "Jew!" if you bent down to pick a coin off the ground. Sometimes, the racists would throw a couple of coins down deliberately and wait for someone to come along and pick them up just so they could then shout "Jew!". The most racist person I ever did meet though was a Muslim student at university. He was so mind-bogglingly racist it would make Nick Griffin's eyes water! Also, a couple of German fellows I met expressed views on people of foreign origin that you'd be hard pushed to find in respectable company here, I reckon.

[Noodle Lizard]

Actually, there was this rubbish wannabe hippie girl I knew who would accuse people of "n**ger-lipping" if the roach got wet whilst passing a joint around.  She once shouted "Hey, ma n**gers!" from the top of a car park at night at a couple of black guys walking on the street below.  My friend and I then had to figure out a way of leaving the car park without bumping into them.  This was in Cambridge.

She also complained about the Jews all the time, said they were stealing her dad's business, even though she looked pretty Jewish herself and her surname was Baum which sounds a bit Jewy.  We later saw pictures of her dad on Facebook and, no joke ... if I say the words "Nazi Propaganda Greedy Jew Cartoon", a certain image will come to your mind.  That's exactly what he looked like.

No idea what the fuck was going on there.

[checkoutgirl]

"How was the Grand Canyon formed? A Jew dropped a penny down a rabbit hole"

I sniggered a bit at that one and not because it was Jews particularly, it works if you substitute any group of people who you are trying to say are mean, Scots, for example. That's the problem with racist jokes, sometimes they're funny.

[Ein Sof]

Actually, there was this rubbish wannabe hippie girl I knew who would accuse people of "n**ger-lipping" if the roach got wet whilst passing a joint around.  She once shouted "Hey, ma n**gers!" from the top of a car park at night at a couple of black guys walking on the street below.  My friend and I then had to figure out a way of leaving the car park without bumping into them.  This was in Cambridge.

She also complained about the Jews all the time, said they were stealing her dad's business, even though she looked pretty Jewish herself and her surname was Baum which sounds a bit Jewy.  We later saw pictures of her dad on Facebook and, no joke ... if I say the words "Nazi Propaganda Greedy Jew Cartoon", a certain image will come to your mind.  That's exactly what he looked like.

No idea what the fuck was going on there.

I think a few Jews have a perverse relationship with their own group, the far-right and anti-Semitism; the stereotype of the "self-hating Jew" is an overblown indication of this trait. I'm certain there are a few "self-hating Europeans" in the world, so it's not something idiosyncratic amongst the Jewish people. I believe one of the most prominent neo-Nazi parties in America was discovered to have a Jew as a prominent member, and I recall reading about a top KKK member who was discovered to be a Sephardi Jew.

[Default to the negative]

if I say the words "Nazi Propaganda Greedy Jew Cartoon", a certain image will come to your mind.

What could it be?

[holyzombiejesus]

Not really racism but the first time I ever saw a black person, apparently I screamed and ran away. Subsequently, every time I saw one I would smile out of pity.

[Noodle Lizard]

I think a few Jews have a perverse relationship with their own group, the far-right and anti-Semitism; the stereotype of the "self-hating Jew" is an overblown indication of this trait. I'm certain there are a few "self-hating Europeans" in the world, so it's not something idiosyncratic amongst the Jewish people. I believe one of the most prominent neo-Nazi parties in America was discovered to have a Jew as a prominent member, and I recall reading about a top KKK member who was discovered to be a Sephardi Jew.

She vehemently denied any Jewish lineage, though.  That might fit into the self-hating Jew stereotype, but it was strange nevertheless.

[Big Jack McBastard]

While in an Asda carpark my 2 year old nephew pointed out a massive black guy to his folks and said my name.

Not quite sure how that skews what with my being white as a sheet and thin as a rake.. Opposite day in his head maybe.

[clingfilm portent]

Hearing those delightful ditties like DttN mentioned, probably.

It seems Roy Chubby Brown was all the rage when I was in primary school. No end of racist sing-a-longs were bandied around in my presence, once by my best friend, cutting me off mid-sentence.

For balance, I used the word 'p**i' at school a handful of times. It was just something picked up knew it referred to a group of people- but I never really made the connection, and certainly didn't think of it as a slur. Well, I never aimed it at anyone it applied to, so there's that.

[Noodle Lizard]

While in an Asda carpark my 2 year old nephew pointed out a massive black guy to his folks and said my name.

Not quite sure how that skews what with my being white as a sheet and thin as a rake.. Opposite day in his head maybe.

Are you sure he didn't say "Big Black Bastard"?

(EDIT: Oh I hope that wasn't the joke and I've just spelled it out for everyone)

[Hangthebuggers]

I got called a white boy or 'boi' as THEY[nb]Black people, all of them (I assume)[/nb] call it, by a black chap in Huddersfield. He also told me to fuck off.

Admittedly I was drunk and had been shouting at the wrong window like some pasty-faced Romeo for fifteen minutes, so his racial abuse was entirely justified.

[amnesiac]

It was either a documentary on Channel 4 where an Asian reporter went to work in a takeaway in Matlock Bath, a fairly short drive away, for a couple of weeks and while they were there someone put a brick through the window and did some racist graffiti, which I remember making me angry, or a classmate who was a bit of a bullshitter claiming that he'd been to Normanton, the local predominantly Asian area, with his brother to 'kick Pakis' heads in'. I didn't like him anyway so I would have been angry whatever he said. Both would have happened when I was about nine or ten, I guess.

oh this is interesting! I was in Matlock Bath a few weeks ago, and being Asian I experienced some racism there for the first time in ages (I live in London).

so yeah, not going there again.

[Ein Sof]

I got called a white boy or 'boi' as THEY[nb]Black people, all of them (I assume)[/nb] call it, by a black chap in Huddersfield. He also told me to fuck off.

Admittedly I was drunk and had been shouting at the wrong window like some pasty-faced Romeo for fifteen minutes, so his racial abuse was entirely justified.

You don't live there, do you?[nb]It's my hometown, sadly.[/nb]

[Mildly Diverting]

I grew up in Cornwall and Devon. Therefore my first experience with a non-racist person would have been in my mid teens on a school trip to somewhere more cosmopolitan. Surrey, maybe.

[paolozzi]

My mother's friend, her Indian husband and her family came over to our house, so Mum thought it best to direct me on a certain matter before they arrived. She said, "Whatever you do, don't use the word "p**i".

Racists who get the countries wrong are the worst.

Maybe she meant to say, "Whatever you do, don't use the word 'p**i'. Say 'Cow-kissing buttonhead' instead."

[thenoise]

I have only ever heard the old fashioned version of 'eeny meeny', from the playground to the climax of 'Kind Hearts and Coronets'.  At school I thought it was a kind of fish, oddly enough, even though fish don't have toes and they don't generally holler.  Weird.

I also grew up in Devon.

I would also like to add:
Pakistani Pakistani
Has your Granny got a fanny
Does it smell?
*sniff sniff*
Bloomin' 'ell.

[Artemis]

One of the first Australians I met when I lived there told me to "fuck off back to England", and proceeded to launch into a tirade about how I was taking the university place of an Aussie (I wasn't), how I was costing the country a fortune (I wasn't) and how the country is overloaded with immigrants (it's not). I was a bit stunned, but later encountered racism, albeit less explicit, from others. My impression was that racism seems surprisingly prevalent in Australia, for some reason.

[Hangthebuggers]

You don't live there, do you?[nb]It's my hometown, sadly.[/nb]

Studied there for two years and had sex with a Pakistani girl, which makes me NOT racist.

[Noodle Lizard]

My impression was that racism seems surprisingly prevalent in Australia, for some reason.

I'm with you.  I know four Australians pretty well, used to date one, and they've all been a bit racist.  Not rallying war speech racist, but they definitely don't appear to have the same filters that we have.  It might be that because they don't have all that much immigration that any instance of it is more of a shock to their system, I don't know.

They all seem pissed off by the Aborigines, too, for some insane reason - even in the US, it's not common for someone to complain about the Natives. 

[bigfatheart]

oh this is interesting! I was in Matlock Bath a few weeks ago, and being Asian I experienced some racism there for the first time in ages (I live in London).

so yeah, not going there again.

Yeah, unfortunately most of Derbyshire is like that - places like Amber Valley and in particular Heanor have a reputation as BNP strongholds, and they used to hold (maybe still do?) their party conference in Derby[nb]partly because of the central location, but the local racism was also a factor apparently[/nb]. Apparently Derby itself has a reputation for being overly cosmopolitan out that way, as a girlfriend from Heanor once remarked that she was 'surprised that I didn't smell of curry' when she learned I was from the city.

It's a really, really nice place.

[amnesiac]

Yeah, unfortunately most of Derbyshire is like that - places like Amber Valley and in particular Heanor have a reputation as BNP strongholds, and they used to hold (maybe still do?) their party conference in Derby[nb]partly because of the central location, but the local racism was also a factor apparently[/nb]. Apparently Derby itself has a reputation for being overly cosmopolitan out that way, as a girlfriend from Heanor once remarked that she was 'surprised that I didn't smell of curry' when she learned I was from the city.

It's a really, really nice place.

the Snake Pass was nice though, no racism on the Snakey

[Thomas]

Derby makes me sad.

[bigfatheart]

You must have gone when the 'Wogs Go Home' banner they normally lay out along the Pass was in the wash.