Romanians, victims of racism in Brighton [Români, victime ale rasismului în Brighton]

Some four and a half years ago, in August 2008, a Romanian “was battered with fire estinguisher” in King’s Road, a well-known seafront street of Brighton.

What an awful thing to happen in the fun-loving Brighton, often praised as a European capital of tolerance, open-mindedness, political corectness and restless partying!



The man – aged 28, father of two, and owner of a little demolition and earth-moving firm – would die after eight days in hospital.

Tragic as it was, the incident didn’t bear racial connotations. The Romanian victim, described as “a really kind-hearted guy” happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.



This excuse doesn’t seem to be valid in relation to the last violent attack to which two Romanians fell prey in Brighton a couple of weeks ago, in late January.

The two Romanians were specifically asked where they were from before being punched. Again, the beating took place in central Brighton – on a bus stop near the Royal Pavilion (pics 1 & 7).

It is the Sussex Police, not I (nor the Romanian media), that treats the crime as a “racially aggravating assault”, appealing to witnesses to come forward and say what they known.

These are places where I personally felt safe. However, this is no longer the case for many third (or even fourth!) class European citizens from Romania and Bulgaria.

Less and less welcome in Britain, Romanians and Bulgarians have been the target of a smear campaign lately.

They steal the jobs of Brits, they overburden the social security system and they generally cause a mess that Britan would be better off without.

By the beginning of next year, the restrictions on the UK job market for Romanians and Bulgarians should be lifted, and tabloids are aghast with this perspective.

But they felt the same in late 2006, before Romania and Bulgaria joined the EU. And the hordes of unwanted immigrants didn’t plunder Britain, did they?

It is not this group of underprivileged immigrants – the target of prejudice just like the Irish workers were in Victorian Britain – that would make the UK’s situation much worse.

Sadly, even for flagbearers of democracy like Great Britain it is easier to put the blame on various scapegoats, rather than uproot the true ills of society which are of a moral nature.

[For all the posts on this blog go to/Pentru toate postările de pe acest blog mergi la: Contents/Cuprins]

Racism in the ranks of British Police [Rasism în rândurile Poliţiei Britanice]

Can you spot any black person in the picture (for which I must again give credit to my reader C.L.)? Or the Asian person?

No?! Then, apart from the size of the picture (compressed for easier uploading), another reason would be that you are not a racist.

Unlike many British police personnel, you are not accustomed with this kind of ‘quick spotting’, as this research supposedly reveals.

“Black people are 26 more likely to be stopped by the police in Britain,” it is claimed, and that wouldn’t be the greatest surprise.

A similar report, quoted by the same article in The Daily Mail, had reached the conclusion, some years ago, than Asians are 6.3 times more likely to be stopped by the police than whites.

Accounts of racism in the ranks of British police are not new, and not only the Communists from The Socialist Worker invoke them.

As long as even the political correct BBC or The Independent dealt with this issue, we can assume that there is no smoke without a fire.

Nevertheless, I find very peculiar the claim in The Daily Mail article that “the British figures showed the widest ‘race gap’ in stop and search that they had found across the world.”

What about racism within the American police forces?! Are they now ‘champions’ of political correctness, while the Brits have turned into ‘villains’?

Of course, I couldn’t have assessed the extent of racism among British police as long as I am white and I got only one such account from a ‘target of racism’ (Asian).

Anyway, I dare giving in to a conspiracy theory: what if the Brits are not as racist as some would like them to believe that they are?!

I guess I draw the ire of many with my examples of ‘sad truths from the UK’, but I am somehow reluctant to embrace the idea of a (more or less concealed) ‘racist Britain’.

From my humble experience, I got the strong impression that Britons are some of the most tolerant nations in the world. Or at least among the 27 EU countries.

Who and why wants to convince the world (and the Brits themselves) that they are more racist than others? If Britons were deemed ‘paramount racists’, what about the French?

On top of various weird studies, I stumbled upon one that feeds the appetite of any conspiracy theory pundit, and equals the absurdity of this situation.

How could anyone believe a study suggesting that 75% of the Britons are ‘racist’ just because they think that Islam provides a negative contribution to British society?

[For all the posts on this blog go to/Pentru toate postările de pe acest blog mergi la: Contents/Cuprins]