Have any of your loved ones been racially abused in the UK?

About a month ago my wife was walking past a park on her way home from work when she was approached by three what she thought to be 14 or 15 year old boys on bikes.

One of the boys said to her "are you a chinky", "are you Japanese", "or are you a f*****g n****r." to which my wife didn't reply and walked on by. Luckily for me and her, it has not affected her in any way and we have both put it down to cheeky kids and me of course putting it down to bad parenting . Needless to say I have told her to point the kids out if we ever see them again when we are out together, I said they will get a thick ear soon enough if they are going around abusing people like that.

I would have been a lot more worried in adults had been involved as you can imagine.

Yes. Within 12 hours of her being in the UK by an adult male. He shouted "me love you long time". I mentioned in a previous post about it. I think John got the you tube clip from the film from where the term comes from. If the lad hadn't of been on his bike I'd of punched his lights out

Ah right, I remember now, as we discussed before most people think our Filipinas are Thai brides like Ting Tong off little Britain

That's it Timmers. Generalised ignorance I guess. A shame but true

I don't necessarily think that's a regional thing I think it's the mentality of some of the employees in those establishments, plus the low standards of the care homes for their employees of which they are paying a pittance for a job that nobody really want to do.

I imagine a busy hospital nowadays will be very cosmopolitan due to the large amount of foreign Nationals required to keep it running.

I have walked into a couple of pubs with my wife and it has gone all quiet but I have had that when I've been on my own, like you say, it is probably more likely to happen in small work places or communities.

My wife hasn't, but my ex wife was a couple of times. Once going through a fairground, when one of the workers threw chips at her and started putting on a fake foreign accent, and another when a homeless person shouted "f*** off home" to her as we were walking along. I shouted back "that's where we are going, mate".

My wife is a bit racist herself anyway in a Filipino sort of way, so is a bit philisophical about it! She reckons if she did get any abuse it's fair enough because she's not English. She was very shocked by the number of immigrants in England when she got here and was expecting everyone to be white. This was a disappointment to her because, in Philippines, white is seen as being more attractive.

Her own take on the English now is that they are obsessed with racism to a degree where we're nearly all privately racist but we're all afraid to admit it because it's against the law. Just be racist and get on with it, and nobody will care, she reckons!

The result of this is that we tend to racially abuse each other in private, but are too afraid to do it publicly because we might get arrested.

She often gets mistaken for being Thai - though not in any racist way, just in general conversation. Even by Thai people! This winds her up no end, as her impression of Thai people is that they are all a bit flaky and not very attractive. She got this impression from watching Bangkok Airport on TV.

Well racist, my missus! In an entertaining sort of way.

Yes, its more likely to be someone who is ignorant or at the bottom of the pile for the want of another word who shouts racist abuse in the street.

We all know it is around us and something could flare up at any time we are out together, I suppose its all about how we handle it, I would never like to be in a situation where I knew my wife was threatened because that would probably make me want to resort to violence if I saw she was upset.

But sometimes a man has got to do what a man has got to do

Yep. My wife told me to laugh it off. I guess if she isn't offended then I'm okay with it but it's a natural instinct to protect loved ones, even if it's idiots shouting the odds

You made some extremely good points and observations in your post Graham, our loved ones do not get as upset as us regarding racism, they are a little racist themselves (my missus gets this from the unwelcome attention she got in the Middle East) and yes my missus mentioned loads of times about the bad Thai skin from watching Bangkok Airport

Funny how they can laugh it off and we cant, I mean I can laugh the incident off regarding what happened with the missus and the three kids but maybe not so much if it had been three grown men.

My wife is quite alert to racism in the Britain. She normally picks up on issues that come out in the news.
Racism is not so much of an issue here, for her. Most of the foreign population are Filipino and fill a role here.

No nasty occurrences here yet.

I think my Mrs was in the UK about 8 years before she had her first problem..
Queuing up in Icelands with a push chair containing my son, she was kicked very hard in the leg by a drunken racist hooligan which laid her out flat on the floor. She weighed 6 1/2 stone at the time.
No one helped her as they were obviously afraid of him...WTF??
I got the call at work from a mate and I went straight home..
When I saw her swollen leg,anger enraged me so much that I went down there to try to get this persons identity or even find out what the Police knew..No one had even reported it!!
Every time we went out after I asked my wife to point this **** out if she saw him..Never mentioned to her that it was for me to seek my vengeance..
She never did.
To this day,I remain angry and vengeful.
Apart from that..21 years no bad events.. Unlike me,she still loves the UK.

That's the sort of thing that would infuriate me too, like yourself I would be looking for retribution no matter how long it took.

Sorry to hear about her experience, I can tell that it stays with you to this day from the way you have written your post, which I fully understand as I would be exactly the same. The fact that nobody helped her is terrible, and shameful on their part.

Thank you.. Sounds like we come from a similar mold.
To be honest,I wish I had not replied to this thread now as the anger from what happened has re emerged.
Oh....Memories!

None so far so good. .

But about a month ago my husband shared to me that his colleague's 16-year-old grandson was almost slashed by a machete because he punched (happened few days back) a kid defending his friend who's black. Good thing he managed to get away from those bullies.

Its amazing how many people standing up for the right of others always come out worse off, more often than not.

My wife has only had one incident in the five years she has been in the UK and I am not sure it was racially motivated.

She was walking near to where we lived and came home a little shaken.
Apparently three young boys on bikes drove by and called her a "bitch".
She never said anything and walked on.

These sort of things seem to happen to anyone so I am assuming it was just some youngsters mouthing off.

Where we now live there are so many different nationalities and I am inclined to believe there will be less racially motivated incidents because of the diversity.
I see this diversity when I take my daughter to school.
I suppose it also depends where you live to a certain extent.

Would it have been any different if he had been defending a friend who's white?

Was the machete wielded by a white kid or a black kid?

Did racism have anything to do with it?

Did all the kids have machetes?

So many questions.