I try to move away from politics for a day but that shit just seems to pop up EVERYWHERE!

Situation, this evening outside my house;

I live on a cul de sac, so it's quite a tightly packed,  close knit street. There is quite a mix here, black, white, Asian, working class mainly and varying levels of affluence, or lack of.

I kinda keep myself to myself mainly, I chat to folk but am not in and out of people's houses for cups of tea etc. But today, whilst sat at my bedroom window, I clocked a group of people back down the narrow road in a big white van. They all got out and were milling on the street, smoking and chatting. I then heard one of my neighbours, a black woman, in her 50's perhaps come out and ask one of the guys what he thought he was doing sat on her car. He immediately got defensive, which was wrong and just stupid of him, and started having a go at her for the way she asked him. The group of people were perhaps Albanian, not sure, which should not matter in the slightest, but as will become evident, it seemingly did.

The guy was really shouting at my neighbor, so I went out, as there were lots of them and I gathered she must feel threatened. I told him to back off, that he was in the wrong and should just accept he was wrong and apologise but he just kept banging on about how she had been rude and wouldn't accept that it's just not acceptable to sit on someone's car, that he deserved her coming out and firmly asking him to get off her car. She hadn't been rude, I'd been listening, my sense is that he possibly didn't like being told what to do by a woman, as he got pretty shirty with me too but then when a male neighbor came out he was fine. Still saying we (me and original woman) were the problem.

Then, the woman whose car it was started going on about how 'maybe this kind of shit is acceptable in your culture, but it's not over here' and 'you people' this and 'you people' that. Oh dear... So I had to point out to her that none of us in the group gathered outside were white British, and maybe it wasn't useful to be using someone's ethnic origin against them, because we all know what that feels like.

Seemingly this was the wrong thing to say.

Whose side are you on? She screeched at me? I couldn't tell if this was a race question or to do with the argument. I just said it wasn't to do with sides, explained that much as he had fucked up by sitting on her car and I had indeed come out to stand by her on that, i didn't think it was necessary or appropriate to be using racial abuse to tear each other down. Especially seeing as all of us were either immigrants or children of immigrants. She then started to go on about how 'our' parents had come over here 'to work' and build a life, not like these lot.

My response;

A) how do you know what they have come over here for, that they are not working and b) where do you think my parents are from? She said that had nothing to do with anything. I told her my dad was St Lucian. My mum was Indian. I knew this would shock her and it did.

'what, Indian Indian? Well, you're not like them proper Indians, (she said this motioning towards the house of a Pakistani family 😔) you've obviously taken on the black side more'

'actually, I identify more with the Indian side of my family, I didn't get on with my father, are you on about what I look like?'

'then what you coming out here defending me for?'

'not because you're black but because you're my neighbor and a woman who was getting shouted at, on her own in the street...'

She then sucked her teeth, gave me a dirty look, shouted at the original guy to get off the street or she'd call the police, turned on her heels and went back in. The guy smiled at me like somehow I was flirting with him and I, totally lost for words just stormed off inside too...

This kind of shit REALLY fucks me off. The guy was a dick, granted. I've met many dicks, from all backgrounds, colours, ethnic groups. Being a dick has no cultural identity, it's just a thing, in this particular sense that a lot of young guys do. It was a total lack of respect for women. Why will some people, on one hand be vocal about racism if it's against one group (I'm fairly sure my neighbor would hit the roof if she heard someone talking like that about black people) but think it's completely acceptable to be racist against another group. The answer is obviously ignorance and fear, the 2 main causes of racism. People will often justify their racism by quoting experiences, suggesting that their rational minds have led them to believe that people from such and such group are generally, stupid or lazy or criminal or rude but ultimately it's the filter of prejudice through which they view that group.  Being half Asian and half black means I've seen, felt and heard that first hand my whole life, from people I'm close to as well.

It annoys me from anyone but to be honest, I almost come to expect at least the occasional slip up from white folk, but when I hear racist shit coming out of the mouths of those who should know better, should know what it is to be on the recieving end, it just enrages me. Get a fucking grip, is what I want to shout but, I'm not sure how well that would tie in with my tactic of keeping myself to myself on the street. Anyways, my weird leftie ways and zero tolerance on racism has been outed it would seem... I always, in someway end up l'etranger...always :-)

(Picture is me at my brother's wedding waving my Indian and St Lucian flags ❤️)