I feel like a bigot

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I feel like a bigot for 3 reasons.

1 Someone I know was going on about 'bland, white people food'. I like bland food more than spicy food. I prefer vinegar food but I'm sure she'd call that 'white people food' too. I have taste sensitivity and I am white, from a town which wasn't very multi-ethnic at all. The way she was going on about it made 'bland, white people food' sound racist and like only bigots would like that food.

2 I feel afraid when I go through council estates especially at night. I was brought up to think such areas are more likely to be high crime. I feel scared even going through my own neighbourhood at night but I feel like that in strange council estates during the day. I think that makes me seem like a snob. I was bullied by extremely working class teens growing up and the kids were in gangs linked to stuff like actual violence with knives etc. I'm afraid to be confronted by a gang like that.

3 I have synaesthesia and touch sensitivity and I don't like being around people who drool or eat with their mouths wide open. I know that people who do this are severely disabled but it brings me back to that school (previously mentioned in 2) where I was put in with such kids because I couldn't cope with the bullies. And it makes me feel nauseous to smell the mix of food and saliva together.

My friends pride themselves on being very 'woke' and non-bigoted. I work towards being that way myself but these attitudes inside of me scare me, and being forced to confront them and change them scares me, too. It feels like they're not taking my sensory needs or poor social skills into account.

I take it you're English.

As far as I gather, English protestant cooking became a thing after Queen Elizabeth I. It was bland, nutritious food. Flavour was seen as a temptation and vulgar. "Good" people did not excite their senses.

Hence, English cooking is a bit meh.

They looked down on covering meat in a tasty sauce because that meant your meat was bad and you were trying to hide the taste.

There are a lot of cultural and historic reasons for our meat-and-two-veg culture.

It's not racist. It's just ingrained into our national structure. If you were brought up on bland food, that's what you're going to like. A palette has be cultivated. My Mum liked spicey food, so I am just used to it.

Here's an interesting video about chillies if you're interested.

I grew up on farms, so I wouldn't probably wander round towns I was unfamiliar with in the middle of the night either. I grew up near coal-mining towns, so the council estates were full of mostly white people. I don't avoid them because I'm racist, but because I'm an outsider. From their point of view it's suspicious for an outsider to be wandering around their street late at night. They're going to be a bit defensive.

I now live in a house right opposite council houses. So I do wander down a council estate at night when I get off the bus. But I live here and I belong here. People recognise me, so I'm safe.

The last point. What disability trumps another disability? I don't know. Syntheasia is real.

What is most important is how you treat people. If you met someone of colour from a council house estate would you ignore them. I'm guessing no.

The older you get the less you will worry about what people think of you. Who cares if your friends don't think you're woke enough. Being woke is a fad that is always changing. One week you're in. The next you're cancelled.

It's more important to develop empathy and to treat people as individuals and get to know them. It doesn't matter what you eat or where you feel safe walking.

It is quite normal to find certain areas intimidating to walk through alone at night. Some council estates contain a lot of drug-addicts in my city. It doesn't mean everyone living on a council estate are drug-addicts though, but the council are known to lump druggies and alcoholics together on one council estate in a town.
It is not snobby to not want to walk through a council estate at night.

I don't really shop at primark or Aldi because I find those too ''chavvy'' but I don't like the high class shops either like John Lewis or Waitrose. I tend to go for lower-middle class shops like Tesco and Co-op, and I like to shop at places like Dorothy Perkins, Debenhams and New Look. OK, I like Marks and Spencer too.

But I am not a snob. I have always lived in council/private rented, and I've always only had cleaning jobs, and I mix with lower-class people like myself. I just don't like chavs because they are the sort of people that seem to always have unruly, screaming kids with them.

You're not a bigot.

1- There is nothing wrong with being white or liking bland food. If a person is giving you a difficult time for eating "bland white people food" then it is them who is being a bigot and a bully. While it is not a systemic problem in Western countries, it is still possible to be racist against white people. I don't care what the SJWs say.

2- Perhaps this neighborhood does have an above average crime rate, at which point your fears are perfectly rational. If you feel like you might have an implicit bias toward certain minority groups, that's not your fault. We all have subconscious biases and that isn't our fault' its just part of being human. You still cognitively understand that minorities are not synonymous with crime or violence. If you think that might be the case then talk to a therapist about it.

3- You can't help how your gut reacts to certain things. If you have to you can wait until you're away from disabled people to eat. I've worked with disabled people a lot and I've found that as I get used to these things over time they stop bothering me. And again, talk to your therapist about what you're struggling with.

Bigots don't feel remorse or strive to improve themselves, and they never think that they are bigots. Just by starting this discussion you've demonstrated that you aren't a bigot.

I'm a white dude who loves spicy food to what's almost a weird degree. My neighbour brought over a bunch of spare veggies before our first freeze & she was pretty confused when I gladly took most of her jalapeños. Sure, I still get all sweaty & out of sorts, but I guess I like the buzz from the chiles anyway.

I guess my point is this is all relative.

I'm looking at that bit and wondering what would happen if you asked those friends the question,

"What am I to you; am I a real actual unique person with specific individual needs that you see and affirm, or am I just a generalized concept you happen to sometimes notice outside your absorption with your causes?"

Yes, it is a bit confrontational.

I didn't grow up in a coal mining town but every town I've lived in has been majority white by a huge margin, so I don't associate council estate = black people or other ethnic minorities.

I think it's a case of discomfort not with people but with how things are set up. And in general with people. For eg there was a posh guy yesterday who made me uncomfortable. I know he was posh cos he had an accent which was more posh than our normal, bland RP which you tend to hear on my street. Sounded like royalty

It's when people yell it intimidates me. I grew up in a horrible neighbourhood with a lot of crime and a drunk neighbour from our flats used to deliberately yell at people and intimidate them and he hated me. I know people aren't mostly like that but when they talk too loudly it reminds me of it.

What makes it intimidating is my parents' house where I'm living at the moment has the doors side to side rather than at the front of the house. And my neighbour goes outside and yells to her husband or whoever's passing by. It puts me on edge. I know she's a nice person but it doesn't stop me from feeling intimidated.

Actually we can all work on #2 you mentioned. Being aware of it and being honest with ourselves is a good start.

Your food tastes don't make you a bigot. Did eating a taco bowl make Loser Donald less of a bigot? You have good reasons to prefer the food you prefer and your friend was kinda needlessly being judgmental (unless you misjudged their tone, which is always a possibility with ASD unfortunately; if they have ASD they might not have noticed how their tone sounded either).

Being worried about being mugged doesn't make one a bigot.

Some people are gross to watch eat. You're not a bigot because you're sensitive to this.

She was moaning about free food she'd been given, calling it white people food. I quite liked what we got given except there were way too many apples and, yes, some of it was aimed at the over 70s (who they assumed to be white, as well, so like food which was only popular in 1960s Britain such as tinned pilchards etc). We got it too and we treated it as an extra, giving most of it to the food bank. Unless you're really old or poor (she isn't poor and she's in her 20s), why not just shop online?...

Mum's Indian friend forces food on us when we visit her. Then she goes 'oh that is because you like bland food', really annoyed at me for liking plain foods. Mum's white friends are also pushy about drink but never about food. They push tea and coffee at you. I'd like go to somewhere and just visit someone without having to eat or drink. I just take a water when they do the drink thing and naan bread/rice when she does the food thing.

My friends are middle class. I'm middle class but I've grown up in poorer neighbourhoods and they haven't. They don't seem to understand that some neighbourhoods have violence etc. I'm scared of ending up in misplaced gang violence or beaten up for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, nothing to do with race but it has to do with class prejudice, sure.

I live in area full of apartments and the school near us is rated 1. 1 is a bad score. Plus in our neighborhood, many residents here are either black or Hispanic. We have houses here too but we also have lot of apartments and a light rail that comes by.

But my son needed to be in a better school because he had language delayed and needed more help and the teachers at our school here would have been too overwhelmed and busy with other students who are bilingual and would also need help too. I also felt like I was being racist and it was not because I didn't want my son to go to school with a bunch of Mexicans or didn't want him to be around another language, this was for his education and to develop language and getting more attention for his needs where there would be less students with needing extra help and less students who speak another language. Even the school district recommended a better school for him than the one near our house so we got a boundary exemption.

It's a good idea.

I actually went to a different primary school in a similar class/ethnicity neighbourhood but a long way from home because my teacher in the first school I went to didn't understand autism. It was the school mum worked in as a TA at the time.

You are not a bigot KT67 just a realist with common sense.

My husband who is not white says this all the time as a joke, "we're having the white food again!" It's not a bad thing it's just joking around. Although I'll make him like Mexican spicy food and still I get "WHITE FOOD YAYYYYY" lol

I highly doubt she's making you out to be a bigot or something, it's more to referred to as just British food.

We eat more root vegetables and meat stuff over here as a nation because we live in the freezing cold, the stuff they eat won't grow over here that's why we still have it, out of tradition too.



This is an insecurity that you developed from the past that's all.

Look at it realistically - Council estates these days, you're lucky if you can even get a house, you have people on really decent wages over 25k living in council estates because the housing market has crashed, if you have a council property you're basically living the life because it's next to nothing to pay for and they're pretty big properties. They give you free everything too as opposed to private rented property.

This notion is from the past, nowadays no one will even blink at you wrong because social media has everyone zombified lacking social skills.



I have this as well but I've learned to cope with it now - before I had to go and eat on my own away from people and everyone knew why. I ended up throwing up on my food because it makes you feel ill when people eat like that.
I think put headphones on or something when you eat with others, it might help a bit, I used to do that a while ago.



It's probably best to explain that you have a condition that makes you seem a bit funny but you have the best of intentions and never intend to upset or hurt anyone but there are reasons why you have to do things a bit differently because of sensory issues, you can only eat certain stuff etc. Just be honest, if they are your friends they will listen to you.

I think you are more scared of losing them as friends because you're focused too much on what they think of you, just be yourself, if they fall out with you, so what? There's plenty more people you can hang out with, you don't have to make yourself fit into a box.

All the best.