Racism Today.
One thing that I find hard to deal with at my current workplace is the inherent racism that seems to be held by most of the centres staff. Perhaps they think it doesn't count if they are not talking about 'black' people?
One aspect is probably that, to many of them, any-one with roots outside of Chesham is a foreigner, including myself, so people that come from from a different cultural background are a particular challenge, even though a good proportion were probably born locally. I grew up in a place like that, and was always seen as outside stock even though I lived there from a baby, though rapid expansion of the market town/Cathedral city meant that there were many incomers like my family so it wasn't much of a problem.
One of the annoying factors is the assumption that I will have the same views as them about perceived immigrants, and specifically Asian or Arab origin people (which they seem to lump together as one somehow), as themselves.
When I try to challenge a statement I get a deluge of anecdotal stories to back up why 'they' are iffy. These are about a mixture of individual situations which do sound dodgy, assumptions that don't stack up (like if some-one has a nice car they are obviously a criminal somehow) and cultural misunderstandings - like one party trying to barter a price that the other considers to be fixed. I haven't been able to win, so now I completely blank such topics until the conversation turns again. Peer pressure is a very strong force but in this case it is no problem to resist!
I haven't experienced such blatant racism since Liverpool, when a middle aged white guy on the crowded top deck of a bus was continually haranguing a cowering young black guy several rows away. Things like 'we didn't win the war so the likes of you could move here' - WRONG! 'We' won the war so that the likes of YOU didn't take over, Mate! I think the fact that a very young woman plucked up the courage to stand up & tell him to shut up was so shocking it worked. Every one else on the bus was pretending not to be there, which I can kind of understand, but felt was awful in itself.
Mostly since then my experience of racism has been from staff trying to use it as a tool to manipulate me when I was a manager - accusing me of it in the hope that I let them get away with something I am trying to confront them about, or accusing me of favouritism of white workers in order to get an easy deal when I over react and swing the other way. This never went down well, and usually resulted in me using the VOICE on them. But I still went home and examined myself thoroughly in fear that I had somehow deserved the attack. It is not a pleasant trick to pull on anyone, and did not help the stress levels. Good documentation is the only tool to hand to use back (including a record of their allegations, which did tend to phase them!).
One aspect is probably that, to many of them, any-one with roots outside of Chesham is a foreigner, including myself, so people that come from from a different cultural background are a particular challenge, even though a good proportion were probably born locally. I grew up in a place like that, and was always seen as outside stock even though I lived there from a baby, though rapid expansion of the market town/Cathedral city meant that there were many incomers like my family so it wasn't much of a problem.
One of the annoying factors is the assumption that I will have the same views as them about perceived immigrants, and specifically Asian or Arab origin people (which they seem to lump together as one somehow), as themselves.
When I try to challenge a statement I get a deluge of anecdotal stories to back up why 'they' are iffy. These are about a mixture of individual situations which do sound dodgy, assumptions that don't stack up (like if some-one has a nice car they are obviously a criminal somehow) and cultural misunderstandings - like one party trying to barter a price that the other considers to be fixed. I haven't been able to win, so now I completely blank such topics until the conversation turns again. Peer pressure is a very strong force but in this case it is no problem to resist!
I haven't experienced such blatant racism since Liverpool, when a middle aged white guy on the crowded top deck of a bus was continually haranguing a cowering young black guy several rows away. Things like 'we didn't win the war so the likes of you could move here' - WRONG! 'We' won the war so that the likes of YOU didn't take over, Mate! I think the fact that a very young woman plucked up the courage to stand up & tell him to shut up was so shocking it worked. Every one else on the bus was pretending not to be there, which I can kind of understand, but felt was awful in itself.
Mostly since then my experience of racism has been from staff trying to use it as a tool to manipulate me when I was a manager - accusing me of it in the hope that I let them get away with something I am trying to confront them about, or accusing me of favouritism of white workers in order to get an easy deal when I over react and swing the other way. This never went down well, and usually resulted in me using the VOICE on them. But I still went home and examined myself thoroughly in fear that I had somehow deserved the attack. It is not a pleasant trick to pull on anyone, and did not help the stress levels. Good documentation is the only tool to hand to use back (including a record of their allegations, which did tend to phase them!).