Here’s an example of some blatant racism in the UK :
Andrew Pierce, a senior editor at the Daily Mail who is a regular guest on British TV and radio shows, was hosting a talk radio show Wednesday when a caller suggested that Meghan had never been “fully accepted because of her skin color.”
Pierce, who is white, responded, “Oh God, that one again! Do you look at her… and see a Black woman? Because I don’t. I see a very attractive, a very attractive woman. It’s never occurred to me. I never look at her and think, ‘Gosh she’s Black!’ in the way you look at Oprah Winfrey, you would be in no doubt. When they sit down and do that interview, you will see a Black woman called Oprah Winfrey and you will see a woman who describes [herself] as a woman of color. Her mother is Black, she’s from a mixed-race family of course. But I just don’t think people look at Meghan and think, ‘Oh I hate her, because of her skin color.’ I don’t see it. I don’t buy it.”
I have heard exactly this sort of thing among my right wing relatives for years. They truly can’t see the racist assumptions in such a comment and when it’s pointed out they get very, very angry.
Older, white, liberal, people of good will are looking at many of our assumptions these days and discovering all kinds of blind spots, micro-aggressive behavior and structural forms of racism that we need to recognize, confront and change. I am more than willing to recognize my own failings in all these areas and will strive to continue the work of dealing with them.
But never in my life would I have made a comment like that younger, white, British man made about a biracial woman. That sort of thinking was just never in my head and I rebelled against it even when I was a child back in the dark ages. It’s shocking, frankly, in this day and age to see such a crude, oblivious racist statement from a journalist.