Is it really racist to call someone English ? Apparently it is if you are Welsh.
It is odd, because I have been told in the past that it would be racist to refer to a Welsh person as "a stupid Welshman" during a football match, but now you can also be called a racist for calling a Welsh person English too ?
It seems crazy in the extreme and a massive amount of overkill for what appears to have been a misunderstanding (isn't that the word we are using about the British teacher in Sudan ?) . There is a difference between being ignorant and being racist. In this case it appears the convicted man was not singling her out because she was English, or even calling her English as an insult. Instead he called her English because that was a way to describe her given her accent. If he had called a stupid cow instead of English, he could not have been accused of being racist, although arguably it would have been much more offensive.
Of course, racist behaviour has to be tackled head on and should not be tolerated, but if we cannot use terms like "English" in the UK to describe someone, we really have got problems.
4 comments:
In this instance the man was charged with 'racially aggravated' harrassment. In other words his racism was just a part of the offence. If he had just said to the woman that she was English then there would have been no case. It was the aggressive manner in which he said it. I suspect that if I accused you of being Welsh in the same way then I would be subject to the same charge.
What does one call someone from Norfolk, Nich?
I have not got a clue.
a human?
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