[Closed] What will racism look like in 20-30 years time ?

Yes, great to have a fair interview process, but it’s very late in the game to inact any real change.

That was one granular example.

Your general thrust seems to be that small improvements are pointless because it's such a big problem (which I agree it is)?

I have a view on this despite not being affected by racism directly.

I think that humans are indeed predisposed to distrust and think negatively of out-groups. If a country is totally white, would everyone love each other? Of course not, they'd find something else. In the same way that we aren't species-ist, because there's only one developed species on the planet.

In the last few centuries we've moved on from racism as a pseudo-scientific theory that black people were somehow inherently less evovled or more primitive than whites, for the most part. What we're left with is racial discrimination and it's joined the general barrel of shittiness along with sexism, xenophobia (plenty of shite directed at eastern Europeans after all, who're as white as us), Islamophobia and the rest.

If we can work towards dissipating that by 2050 we'll all be in a far better place. And for all the shittiness we see on a daily basis, there are also good people doing the right thing - don't forget that.

This is the kind of political fearmongering that drives racism.

Frankly I think in 30 years there will have been a backlash against the current populist driven racism, but I fear how far it will go before that happens.

The real war is being fought, and currently won, by the 1%ers against the majority, the nationalistic narrative is the distraction to cover it up.

No it isn't.

It's a reality that the west is going to become increasingly irrelevant over the next century, China, India and South East Asia were always the strongest economies in the world and western imperialism was blip in that narrative.

Now either the west can start to think about that now and interact with the newly developed world and it's myriad of non-democratic cultures in a healthy manner or they can - as I suspect they will - resort to petty nationalism.

What a lot of people on here seem to think is that racism is a one way street, i.e. 'whites' victimising 'blacks'. It actually can go both ways.

I grew up in inner city Manchester in the 80's and blacks actively persecuted whites and vice versa, Indians fought with ****stani's (over stuff that was happening in their countries would you believe?!) and occasionally everyone would fight with everyone in one way or another ....there were areas that were a no go for white lads or anyone who wasn't black. The Irish were also thrown in the mix at the height of the troubles too. There were awful problems and tensions in schools, on the streets and in the pubs / clubs. You get the gist.

That said, i've still got a great bunch of mates from school...Caribbean lads and girls (incidentally, they do great wedding parties!), ****stani lads, Indian lads and caucasian....some fell by the way the wayside in terms of crime and prison...others who saw that if they segregate themselves they'll be stuck in the hood, a few did, many didn't....

To me, what it boils down to is the media love to create these divisions and people either knowingly or unknowingly buy into for whatever reason. In my experience of life and i've been fortunate enough to have a life where i've travelled, broke out of working class Manchester via education and a change in city... Melanin is irrelevant, education is key, a small percentage of people are truly nasty and bitter and the large majority are generally nice, but can be swayed and some people are just absolutely sound.

The minute one starts putting race in as an argument, both parties have lost. How can people expect to move on when the race barrier is immediately placed as an obstacle. BLM has been proof of this, you can never have equality when people put subsets into anything.

Assuming the Chinese haven't got us under control in the next 20-30 years, i'd like to think that people will wise up about this segregation, history is history...the only thing we can do is ensure stuff that caused problems doesn't happen again. If we stick to these political groups who advocate division albeit subtly we won't have moved on much at all.

I do believe things have gotten better over the last 20 years....don't read the papers, stay away from the news and just be sound with people. Thats my input!! 🙂

Lamp I agree with a lot of that, racism is endemic in all parts of society. To truly move beyond racism and race politics we need to move beyond grouping people. BLM has been a fully understandable reaction to horrific institutional racism in the states which might actually reduce a little bit of a result, it's also deepened some divides and increased the them and us mentality as well.

We're in period of regression in the West which will eventually turn back into progression, hopefully the back sliding will not be significant in the face of improvements since the 60s. It might have woken up a few in cost bubbles with the realisation a significant part of our population is still very sexist, racist and generally bigoted.

Assuming the Chinese haven’t got us under control in the next 20-30 years

Hasn’t that been the sentiment in the West for centuries now?

Or is it finally at our door?

It’s a reality that the west is going to become increasingly irrelevant over the next century, China, India and South East Asia were always the strongest economies in the world and western imperialism was blip in that narrative.

That's an extraordinarily simplistic view in my opinion.

or they can – as I suspect they will – resort to petty nationalism

Well given the EU goes from strength to strength, especially without us, I think this is exactly what they are not doing.

Or is it finally at our door?

It's fine as long as they don't all jump at the same time.

The experience I'm going to share here isn't perhaps totally relevant today, but was only 10-12 years ago. I grew up and live in a very rural county where you didn't, and still don't very often meet people from other ethnic backgrounds than 'white British', particularly so in the very rural circles I mostly mix in. Some may point at that as an issue in itself, which perhaps it is, but that's a very complex matter to address, and it must be taken into account that there is a lack of opportunity and disparity between average wages and property price here already, which affects an awful lot of people. Rural poverty and deprivation are very real.

Anyway, having grown up among farmers, grand parents, tradesmen, and generally rural folk who'd had little contact with people of ethnicities other than their own, ignorant use of racist language, and perhaps some prejudice was always present. You'd hear (and still do) the odd outdated term used, you'd hear talk of someone seeing a black or Asian person for example as it was unusual. Essentially the countryside seemed to be stuck a generation behind urban areas, or so I thought...

In 2008 I started a course at a technical college in the Midlands, perhaps an hour out of Birmingham, and what I heard astonished me. For all my expectations and assumptions that a lot of the other lads on the course would have had a much more diverse and multicultural upbringing than my own owing to their respective locations, and would, as a result have much more liberal and tolerant views on matters of race and ethnicity than a lot of my peers, the reverse was in fact true.

These were lads who'd grown up all over the West Midlands, gone to multicultural schools and had a far broader experience than my own. But on the whole they held the most racist views and shared their active dislike for certain races races or religions in a manner I'd never heard before. I was frankly stunned, I thought I'd need to watch my tongue, but what they came out with made the lazy and outdated terminology I'd heard up until then seem like nothing. They passionately disliked certain groups, one lad was even convicted of a race related crime after a taxi scam turned nasty on a night out and he was heard to make some remark on video during the ensuing fight with the taxi driver (and his associates in the following car).

I still don't really understand how people who'd lived in integrated and multicultural communities for 20+ years could hold such actively negative views towards people of different race or religion, because they weren't ignorant, isolated or living in monocultures. It did seem that some groups perhaps isolated themselves (maybe through fear?) and created their own closed communities, even no-go areas, which may have exacerbated issues.

Now mixed groups are forced together in towns, I don't think that means they integrate much at all.
When its a struggle to get by in life, any outsider will be seen as a competitor. Its easy to find someone or some group to blame for life's problems.

But if mixed groups share a common experience or goal, then things are likely to be better. Each side is not seen as Other.

I still don’t really understand how people who’d lived in integrated and multicultural communities for 20+ years could hold such actively negative views towards people of different race or religion, because they weren’t ignorant, isolated or living in monocultures.

Because it's not really about race. That's why we end up with the 'not you, you're alright, it's those other brown people' thing. It's about the being a dick towards out-groups. So if your colleagues are disposed towards being dicks, they'll just pick any group they like. And racial groups are visible.

Until the last few years I would have said we were making great strides, but all these new divisive terms like Gammon, Karen, etc.. are doing more harm than good. If you are not fluent in social media lexicon, you are forever branded a racist.

As a child of the 90s we grew up watching sitcoms with all black casts (sister, sister, fresh prince, cosby show, hanging with mr cooper etc) and never thought anything about race, now a lot of American shows define their characters by their ethnicity, making endless jokes about differences.

As a child of the 90s we grew up watching sitcoms with all black casts (sister, sister, fresh prince, cosby show, hanging with mr cooper etc) and never thought anything about race, now a lot of American shows define their characters by their ethnicity

Why do you think those all-black shows existed? It wasn't a coincidence that all the actors were black. Don't you think that's defining characters by their ethnicity? As a Brit you probably didn't think about race in the same way that Americans do.

Don’t you think that’s defining characters by their ethnicity?

None of the shows were about ethnicity really, at least I did not pick up on this at the time. They just happened to be all blacks casts, but it felt very universal. Fresh prince for example is all about class.

We have our own little Megan & Harry style drama in my family. My sister married a tanzanian, we flew out there for 3 weeks, my Dad paid for everything and walked her down the aisle, making a real effort with all the extended family (we stayed with them, without running water or electricity the whole time). He cashed in his pension early so the husband could come over to the UK and try and find work. He also lived with my Dad for a while. Despite this another of my sisters starting telling people my Dad was a racist. This is purely because he does speak the language of my sisters social media feeds. How about we judge people by their actions and not assume the worst all the time