Where’s the Horseradish? Racism In Reverse

Racism and colour prejudice has always been perceived as the ‘domain’ of ‘white folks’. Perhaps this harks back the The British Empire when we chopped off the thumbs of Bengali weavers to stop them making cotton goods more cheaply than Britain could during The Industrial Revolution. Bizarrely we then imported descendants of the Bengali weavers to work the night shifts in our cotton mills during the 1960’s. I presume they had their thumbs still attached. The ‘slave trade’ is also, of course, a part of ‘white’ history that is not something to be inordinately proud of.

However, I was distinctly unhappy when Blair apologised for the slave trade – was it him? Perhaps not, I can’t actually remember who it was for sure but no matter, whoever it was they shouldn’t have.

Chopping off Bengali weaver’s thumbs was, clearly, a bad thing to do. Dragging Africans from their homeland to work on cotton plantations was clearly a bad thing to do.

Would I like to apologise to Bengali’s or Africans? Nope. Bugger all to do with me guys. Tough call for your great great grandfather but there you go eh? Life’s a bitch.

Should German’s apologise for The Holocaust? Nope. The Japanese for their brutality in WWII? Nope.

The sins of the parents / grandparents etc are absolutely nothing to do with the children / grand children so there is absolutely no reason what so ever for me, as a white chap, to feel the remotest guilt about slavery nor Bengali weavers thumbs.

The thing is, racism and colour prejudice – along with the usual suspects of sexual discrimination and what have you – is still going strong. Not as strong as it did perhaps, but still stronger than most of us would like.

Lately though I have noticed that colour prejudice and racism in particular is no longer the ‘one way street’ it used to be. No longer is it necessarily a white person being racist to a black person. Increasingly ‘ethnic’ people in Britain seem to be jumping on the ‘let’s be prejudiced’ bandwagon.

I find this most odd and rather alarming.

Whilst it would not necessarily be entirely unfair to say to me, for example, ‘Hey whitey! You have no idea what it’s like to be a victim of racism’ I can now beg to differ.

I popped into a supermarket the other day in search of horseradish sauce. I couldn’t find it and asked a young black chap wearing the supermarkets uniform where I might find it. He looked completely blank and then admitted to me that he had no idea what horseradish sauce was.

Fair enough – although I would suggest that if you work in a supermarket then you probably should have some reasonable notion of what they sell and where it is – He then went in search of someone who could point me in the right direction.

An Asian lady followed him back to me and said “We don’t sell anything like that”.

“I bought some here two weeks ago. Have you stopped selling it?” I asked.

“We have never sold anything like that!” she exclaimed

“Oh yes you have” I said with a winning smile paraphrasing the British Pantomime tradition.

“I know what you people are like!!” she said loudly.

“I’m sorry?” I replied with some confusion.

“You come in here to insult us and humiliate us and you think because we aren’t white we don’t have the same rights as you and then you complain and get us into trouble and it’s just because we are black!!!” she screeched. (I realise that I can’t repeat her verbatim as I don’t have total recall but that’s pretty close to be honest).

Bloody hell.

All I wanted was some horseradish sauce.

Racism? Don’t talk to me about racism. I know what it’s like to be a victim!

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