[krn]

It's interesting, how much this problem is specific to the US. As someone from a small Eastern European state, who hadn't met a single black person during the first 18 years of his life, I had zero negative attitude towards black people when I first met them at the university in the UK. Actually, many of them were like friends.

[Theodores]

I recently learned that I went to school with people of all kinds of colour. When I was at school I was genuinely colour blind.

How did I make this discovery?

At a funeral, meeting some of my dad's friends. One couple said 'you must know Marcus' and then proceeded to describe him by colour. That didn't help. But when they said that he did the posters for the school debating society I remembered who this Marcus character was, and quite clearly. It was his eloquence in the aforementioned debating society that I did remember, not his black skin.

There were other parents-of-contemporaries there who had kids that could not have been white. So I then clocked details I did remember - Asian style eyelids without the crease, darker skin tone etc. Seems as if there was more diversity at the school I went to than I can remember. I had assumed everyone was white, but this was definitely not the case.

We did actually have kids being teased for having ginger hair, I can't remember being the one using the shameful gingerist words but I must have been chuckling away though.

I can remember racist words and how there was no association between the words and the persons who were supposed to be derided by such words. I distinctly remember using a derogatory term for people from the Indian sub-continent and my parents correcting me about that. Beatings were allowed in the 1980's... The context of that was a retail establishment where us kids had a name for it that turned out to be quite racist. We didn't know that, we just thought it was the name of the place. The more backward folks in the older generation had 'taught' us this particular word, we didn't know the connotations.

So, think again, are you sure you didn't go to school with any black kids? You could have been genuinely oblivious.

I also wonder why I was so deluded and what the balance has to be between different shades of skin colour for 'them and us' racism to happen. Had our school been 50% black I am sure I would not have had my naive 'everyone was white' memories, but a small percentage of black folks in a white school would have been memorable too.

[krn]

> So, think again, are you sure you didn't go to school with any black kids? You could have been genuinely oblivious.

Haha, not only I didn't go to school with black kids, but I hadn't seen a single black person on a street until early 2000s in my post-soviet country.

[bloak]

But what does "black" mean in a UK context? It certainly doesn't mean the same as what it means in the US. Or in Australia, for that matter. Different history. Different cultures.

[idontpost]

While it is different, they are still discriminated against and perceived negatively. Most "black" people in the UK are descended from afro-Caribbean slaves. They may or may not be recent immigrants to the UK.

Given how even recent white European immigrants to the UK are treated by the general population (see: Brexit), I would expect afro-Caribbean individuals to not be treated much better, and have, anecdotally, heard as much.

[bloak]

The truth of the statement that most "black" people in the UK are descended from ... rather depends on the applicable definition of "black". In particular, people from the Indian subcontinent are sometimes referred to as "black". (For what it's worth, many people in Britain with Indian ancestry were brought up in Africa so could claim to be "real" Africans...)

I don't think it makes much sense to categorise people by skin colour. An Afro-Caribbean doesn't in general have more in common with an immigrant from Africa than with an immigrant from Syria or Hong Kong.

People with a different skin colour certainly do get discriminated against. However, if you really want to get discriminated against, try dressing in the wrong way and speaking a foreign language or with a foreign accent. In general, people get judged by their clothing and the way they speak far more than by any physical feature.

Perhaps it doesn't make sense to generalise across the UK, either. Afro-Caribbeans are much more common in the London area than elsewhere. Only in Bradford has someone made me feel like a foreigner by speaking to me slowly in Hindi/Urdu and rolling their eyes when I fail to understand. (Quite cool, I thought: I approve.)

[gammateam]

Hah yeah we are talking about a place that has “polish” separated from “white” on their census

The American condition doesnt have a way to relate to that