Anyone but England?

I grew up in Scotland. They hate the English! OK, this is hardly ‘news’ but it’s true none the less. It’s not a real hatred like, say, you might hate someone who gravely insulted your wife or mother. Or the boss that mistreated you for years and fired you for complaining about it. Or the ex-lover who cheated on you. Or….

It’s not real hatred, this Scottish hating the English. You can, as an English person, walk around in Scotland unaccosted. Mostly. I wouldn’t recommend going into a council estate pub in Aberdeen wearing an England football shirt, but you don’t have to keep your English secret in mainstream Scotland.

There’s a chain of t-shirts shops (see link here) selling ‘Anyone but England’ t-shirts. Of course they are referring to the World Cup 2010. As an Englishman, I feel the need to point out that the same t-shirt shop would be selling ‘Scotland’ t-shirts for the same tournament, had they not failed to qualify. Again. However, this is not why the t-shirt shop made the news. Indeed, they’d been selling these t-shirts for several months and no one cared. A few thought them mildly amusing apparently, including, even, a few ‘Sassenachs’. What made these t-shirts newsworthy is that someone thought they were ‘racist’. Racist? How the heck can calling someone of the same race be racist?

Person A: “Hey Anglo-Saxon white person from the same small island as me, I don’t like your football team”.

Person B: “Stop being racist”.

It’s utterly ridiculous. In Britain, that includes all the ‘races’ (even the Welsh), we have got a ridiculous level of ‘human rights’ and PC bullshit going on. Not all of it is bullshit, but we seem to be the world leaders in taking-it-too-far. Not being able to call coloured pencils ‘coloured’ because it might offend someone is frankly absurd. Especially when it says ‘coloured pencils’ on the packet.

Anyway, it grinds my gears that people are far too ready to use the word racist. Let’s be clear about this. If you say ‘I hate scousers’ (for example) that’s NOT racist. If you say ‘I hate Germans’ that’s not racist either. Because they are the same race. One is regionalism, and the other, I suppose, is nationalism (though ‘nationalism’ has a different meaning in political circles, especially in Germany!).

So stop being so eager to use the word racist when race isn’t ‘in the game’. Being called a ‘racist’ is one of the worst things to be called, almost as bad as being labeled a paedophile in some quarters. Let’s stop bandying the word around like ill-educated cheeky teenagers. We should know better. Thank you.