"You ain't British, you're black! Go back to your 'effing' countries."
This video isn't simply distressing - it is also extremely sad. After years of the tabloid press whipping up popular sentiment against immigrants, is it surprising this young woman vents against blacks, the Polish and Asians? These menacing 'others' have stolen her country. She is carrying a child on her lap. How does the child not grow up spewing forth the same evil?
The tram is is a microcosm of multi-cultural Britain. White, Black, Brown commuters, numerous cultures and races represented. One black passenger on the tram says something many immigrants feel and the film 'Dirty Pretty Things' depicted - "Native English don't want to work, we come here to do the jobs you don't want."
The young barely incoherent lady whose vocabulary is littered with F this and F that, is to be pitied. Her country has let her down - she sounds poorly educated, in a country where a contracting economy means hope is fast fading, where newly arrived immigrants pick up jobs within a week while native British are on the dole for years. Fear, poverty and a shrinking economy is causing people to turn against their neighbours, to blame others for their lack of jobs, instead of blaming a poor education and no qualifications which leaves them ill-prepared for the real world.
Racism is deep and ugly but its ugly tentacles have spread everywhere. I have heard black British people talk about how Eastern Europeans are stealing their jobs and advocate that Eastern Europeans should go back home. The face of racism is ugly and distorted whether it is white or black, yellow or brown.
Have a look at the video - the subject matter will upset some - however, she's only saying what a lot of people feel inside but stay silent about. I believe it's better to have the ugly words out in the open so they can begin a national discourse, than to bury them and pretend everything is okay. British Racism is nice and polite, it is so subtle that you don't realise it is there until you get an itch beneath your skin; when you are followed by security guards in expensive shops in the West End, when the police pull you over for the crime of driving a nice car, and neighbours assume you must be renting if you live in an expensive neighbourhood.
The racist lady ranter has been arrested. It is nice that another White passenger on the tram told her to keep quiet. This video does not demonstrate all the UK, just a very ugly part of it.
The retrial of the alleged killers of Stephen Lawrence is currently taking place. The inquiry into the first handling of that case 18 years ago stated there was a culture of institutional racism in the police force. Some things have changed for the better, other things have stayed the same.
The economic collapse and fear for the future has fuelled the rise of the EDL (English Defence League), a racist organisation that organises marches and demonstrations and like the BNP claims to want to keep Britain for the British.
These racists need to know Britain has always been a country of immigrants; the Romans, the French, Scandanavians, Polish, Spanish Jews, African sailors, Jewish refugees, Ugandan Asians, West Indians etc. Wave after wave of immigrants over the centuries have contributed and left their stamp upon the melting pot that Britain is today. Inter-racial unions and marriages in Britain are probably the highest percentage of any European country. It is reckoned that about 10% of the Brtitish population is mixed race.
I like Britain. In general it is a friendly country. However it only takes a bigot like this to blow the lid off the civilized veneer and show the ugly pockets of racism that still lurk and bubble below.
xx
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