This Has To Stop!

[davidgillon]

Sitting waiting for a blood test at my GP's surgery and the woman next to me starts ranting to the guy opposite that the receptionists are conspiring to let the non-white people waiting jump the queue 'I heard them talking in their language". It runs on a ticket system and I think what happened was the receptionist was helping a (non-white) wheelchair user and grabbed him a ticket while his wife was getting him into his wheelchair. I'd guess a good third-to a half of the people in the waiting area were non-white, they would all be able to hear her, and she was less than ten feet from the people she was railing against for being "foreigners". I bit my tongue the first couple of times, but eventually had to point out that there might be a very good reason behind it and there was no need to jump to race as the issue, which shut her up (after ranting at me that she had a good reason too).

This is what UKIP are doing to us and it has to stop.

Comments

[oursin]

I'm not sure we need to blame UKIP for a type of person who has been around for much longer - and I'm not convinced, whatever may be the moaning about PC conspiracy, that they ever shut up or felt that they should.

There are so many things, however, for which one legitimately can blame UKIP.

[davidgillon]

I think most of them probably felt this way before UKIP came along, but UKIP is making them confident they can express these views in public and that that doesn't make them racist. (It's just possible I disagree with this viewpoint).

Having had repeated instances of being abused as a benefit scrounger because I happen to walk with crutches I tend not to be very tolerant of views that allege minorities are all getting underhand advantages. IDS et all demonstrated how quickly a minority like mine can be talked up into being generally perceived as a group it's acceptable to abuse, so I see the rise of UKIP as very threatening.

[oursin]

On the List I Used To Run there was somebody who could, I suppose, be regarded as in a category that might be subject to discrimination themself, and did some really noxious slagging-off of the gay/ethnic minority all-sticking-together conspiracies they believed to be happening and preventing them from getting the kind of position they wanted. Sigh.

There was also quite recently the woman who at an event for Black History Month (and with a partner/friend with her who appeared to be BME) turned to me and said about the BME organiser that she bet they'd never experienced discrimination. WTF. I was gobsmacked.

People can be really toxic.

[davidgillon]

somebody who could, I suppose, be regarded as in a category that might be subject to discrimination themself

Yeah, sadly being a minority member doesn't mean you can't also be a bigot - there's a disability activist who has a habit of accusing people who disagree with him (like me) of wanting to kill him or supporting the Holocaust/Aktion T4. What egregious failing does it take to trigger this - suggesting that disability rights applies not just to 'classic' disabilities like his, but also to people with fatigue or pain-based disabilities, which he doesn't consider 'real' disabilities. On a less extreme level you get quite a few wheelchair users who refuse to accept that non-wheelies with mobility impairments have an equal need for disabled parking bays.

But today's encounter seemed to be an old-fashioned non-whites aren't really British, and are conspiring to deprive me of my legitimate place at the front of the queue majority-member racist.