The sacking of Sam Mason for her ‘racist’ comments to a taxi company has not only made the national news but has generated an astonishing amount of local comment (I gave up before I got to the bottom of the comments listed). Although there are big pockets of the west country which are not at all culturally / ethnically mixed, Bristol to me has always seemed a pretty cosmopolitan city. But having moved back to the area after 10+ years away I can see that the local mix has changed quite significantly and I guess that’s a learning experience for everyone.
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It’s really quite interesting (depressing?) looking at the comments on the At Bristol report of this story to see how people articulate their very different views about these things. There seems to be no community consensus about what is or is not racist and what is or is not acceptable or lawful, and no common language through which to discuss these issues. My two penn’orth: one can make an unacceptable or discriminatory comment without intending to. Identifying a ‘racist’ is more complicated than simply saying anyone who has ever acted in a discriminatory way or who has upset someone by a remark pertaining to race is de facto ‘a racist’. If you’ll excuse the pun (I can’t think of a metaphor which doesn’t involve one) it’s not a black and white issue, but a spectrum. I would hazard that all of us have said or done something that might be reasonably called ‘discriminatory’ or which may have offended someone (most of us hopefully inadvertently) but I don’t think we are all racists. Language is complicated and we don’t always wield it well.