Is the united kingdom racist?

Question

I am scottish and have lived most of my life in England.
when I first moved to England I found that the irish scottish asian and afro-caribean were looked down on by certain people.
I lived in leeds and Bradford and became quite close to other families from different countries .when going about we would be told to get back to our own country and called names.
this was an every day thing,yet our country is not racist,or so the goverment say...
why do english people always tell jokes about the irish scotch and black man??we here in scotland think this is racist,what do you think....

Answer 1

everyone is racist at one point in their lives, whether they choose to admit it or not. its just a fact of life.

Answer 2

I think all countries are racist, not just England. I have lived in both Scotland and Ireland and found myself the target of much racial abuse, being English. Actually 'racial' is probably the wrong word when applied to the inter-UK situation seeing as most of the indigenous population of these islands are by and large of the same 'race'. But it seems perfectly acceptable for foreign nationals - I'm talking about England now, so i include the Scots the Irish and the Welsh in that description - to insult and denigrate the English.
But by and large i don't think that the UK is any different than any other nation when it comes to racism, and we're probably better than most.
I have no hard facts or statistics to back this up, so it might be interesting to look up some figures.

Answer 3

As you have deduced, it certainly is a faulty argument. I get very tired of hearing 'oh you British are all mutts because of the vikings, romans,saxons etc.' Why is this only ever thrown at people from britain? Every European country has had invasions over the years ! Half of the country borders we know today are modern! France for instance was one-time gaul,when it was celtic;the Romans were also there; it then became France through the franks, the Normans took over Normandy etc etc--yet no one says 'you Frenchmen are just a mix so your culture is valueless'. Infact, because it's an island with defined borders, britain probably had LESS mixing that some other countries,because mass population movement is less likely overseas than over land.Certainly dna tests seem to bear this out--if your maternal grandmother was british born and to her best knowledge of british descent, there's every chance you had an ancestor living here 6-10,000 years ago. No one group entering Britain ever totally obliterated the earliest people. That's not to say anyone should feel a sense of 'superiority' because of this, but it's wrong to imply that somehow we are 'different' than other Europeans and our traditions mean nothing. *oldknowall, a huge chunk of dna in Britain is similar to the basques; this seems to be where Britain was recolonised from after the ice Age. However, the beaker people didn't arrive till about 2400 BC,and there was a huge flourishing community here already of neolithic farmers.the beaker people were just a small group,easily distinguished by their round skulls,pottery and early metalwork, whose culture spread quickly but who seemed to have been quickly subsumed into the greater population.

Answer 4

I actualy find the scottish vey racist to be honist but i every country there is an element of racism in all of us to be honist evan if people cant admit 2 it we all have ideas about other countries/cultures it is ignorance as we do not understand but i do not think a simple irish joke should be seen as racist racist is a word used way 2 much these days and people should look at them self before throwing it around

Answer 5

This term racist is hard to define in a practical way.

Look at Scotland
Glasgow does not like Edinburgh,and vice versa
The Highlanders have no time for the Lowlanders
We all have no time for the English
As the UK we have doubts about the French
Northern Europe dismisses Southern Europe
Western Europe is wary of Central Europe
All of Europe looks at Asia with trepidation

On and on it goes,always has and always will BUT where does it become racism?

Answer 6

I do not think that the UK is racist in fact,everything is being done to integrate everyone into society.
Why do the Scots dislike the English so much they want an independent country and in the past have fought bloody battles to keep its independence,as has Ireland.
As for English people always telling jokes about the Scots you only have to listen to the likes of Billy Connolly who is always making jokes about the English.

Answer 7

PLEASE!!!!! its not just the english that are racist! there are racists all over the world. but you cant claim a whole nation of ppl are, just because of individuals. And for the record its not just the english that make fun of the scots and irish, im scottish and i make english and irish jokes, its not meant in badness, its just a bit of fun, because we're one country! Saying that you feel they are being racist for scotsman & Irishman joke is taking things to a whole new level of Political Correctness, its a JOKE mate, relax! we here in Scotland DO NOT think these jokes are racist :)

Answer 8

By and large, British people in general are not racist. Poking fun against a particular region or people within one country is practiced all over the world. Even within one family, one can find one person on whom other members poke fun. Thats not to say that the family is racist.

But its true that there are a lot of people in the UK, as would be elswhere, where they are openly racist. That does not make the entire people of the UK or majority of them to be racist. BNP is not representative of ll UK citizens.

Answer 9

I'm Scottish and when I lived in England, i experienced no racism of any kind. Now my English husband lives in Glasgow with me and that's when I saw the racists climbing out of their holes! I'm sick of this silly inbred scottish racism towards the english. Come off it, you telling me you've never heard one of the scotsman, english man and irish man jokes while you were in scotland? My husband has had bottles thrown at him (whilst pushing the baby in the param I might add) for being english and every cab driver delights in telling him how inferior he is.

Answer 10

Racism is unfortunately inherent anywhere you go, not just England.

Im from leeds, and studied in bradford. Last year i went to Italy to take part in the "antiracist world cup", and strangly most of the attending teams were from countries that you would stereotypically expect to harbour the most racism.

Just food for thought: Scotland is the only country ive ever suffered racism. Still love the place though.

Oh, and we won the world cup BTW :)

Answer 11

Racism exists in every community is some form or other. It is something left over from when we were evolving. It is a sort of defence mechanism that you are wary of strangers until you know if they are threat or not. Our civilised veneer has mainly overridden that but not in everyone. As to the joke thing that also appears to exist in most communities