Re: WC 150K Post Challenge - You Ready?!
So you may have heard about this thing called 'Brexit' over here in the UK. Not sure how much coverage you got of this but we tend to get a lot of US news, more than we get of EU news interestingly...
Anyway, one of the issues that was high in the eyes of those wanting to leave the EU was immigration. With the refugee crisis and other issues related to being part of the EU, this has become a sore spot for a lot of 'British' people. In a way I can understand the issues with wanting to control migration to a point, it's a rather small island with limited resources so any large influx of population can cause real issues. So it's not without it's merits, however the immigration issue has reared a rather ugly head in the process.
That of course is the underlying racism of the UK white population. I will put this simply. I'm not saying all British born white UK people are racist but there sure seems to be a lot them. It's in many forms of course and has been for some time. However it's gotten very blatant now.
There seems to be some justification to be able to tell anyone who has a European accent to 'go home', 'get out of our country' or 'we voted out so you need to leave'. Even worse is those with different coloured skin being told the same, even though they've lived their whole lives in the UK and may be TV personalities, recording artists or Olympic athletes. This is out in public, on public transport, on the street. Can you imagine being yelled at by someone just for being different? What year are we in again???
Though neither my wife or myself has had any issues, yet, I know that sounds weird but in this climate anything is possible. The area we live in is one of the areas that had one of the highest votes to leave based on immigration. We do know someone that was verbally abused for being from the Ukraine on a college campus while talking to her friends. That's pretty sad and just goes to show you age isn't the issue here either. There was lots of talk of the elderly being the bigger issue here wanting their country back to how it was and possibly being the more racist.
The reason I'm saying this is that the same crop of people who voted for leaving the EU is pretty much the same crop voting for Trump. The same mentality and being told the same lies. Of course Trump is probably more dangerous than the clowns we had here, all of whom seemed to have vanished from the spotlight. The scary part here is that where we have had lots of verbal abuse and yes some violence, including possible racist murder of a polish person, I can see the US being a lot worse if Trump gets in. The feeling of justification the racists would have there would make anything here in the UK look tame in comparison. That's a scary thought.
Anyway, just passing this on. It's a weird time to be in this country.