#019 - Casual racism is not a black and white issue.

There comes a time in almost all of our lives when we realise that our parents might just be a tiny bit racist.
For me, the day came in the unlikeliest of places - the bread isle of a supermarket. It was my mothers choice of language when describing a particular type of bread that caught me off guard. I refer not to 'Mighty White' as you might imagine (though I believe their slogan 'I know what I like and it's white, white, white' has since been adopted by the BNP). No, instead she wanted the kind of bread Kingsmill call '50/50'. You've probably seen it on the commercials, if you haven't tasted it yourself. It claims to be white bread with 'all the goodness of brown'. Fair enough - I'm not having a go, I'm a fan. Anyway, my Mum (always favouring Hovis over Kingsmill as the mediocre brand of choice) asked me to pick her up a loaf of 'Hovis Halfcast'.
While this was certainly a genuine mistake (if my mum was capable of that kind of wit she'd be on tour supporting Jim Davidson right now for sure), I couldn't but think it’s the kind of mistake the liberals of my own generation could never have made.

I should have spotted the clues earlier. When growing up the Daily Mail was a regular in our house. When I got old and astute enough to start questioning why we bought this hate spreading source of evil, I was told by my father that "I only get it because it has a quality TV guide."
Bearing in mind there was perfectly good publications available, such as the (notably cheaper) TV times, I can only conclude that the regular section of the paper denouncing immigrants as the 'new black plague' (I may be paraphrasing) was at least part of the attraction.
Then there was the 'gollywog' doll (it makes me cringe just reading it), that my sister was definitely allowed, but had to hide once when a policeman came round on a social visit.

The thing is though; this kind of unacceptable behaviour is sort of understandable, if not partly forgivable. When my mum asks me things like "but WHY do we have to call them black people, most of them are brown!", I do die a bit inside. But I also know that at 62, she is a of a very different generation to me. When she was at the age where she picked up her values and learnt about what was acceptable, it was a very different world to the one we live in now (admittedly the last 30 years of living in the country and reading the Daily Mail probably didn't help).
Do we sort of let old people off a bit because they don't always understand what words are and aren't acceptable, and because they don't load them with any malicious intent? Or do we write them off as bigots who should take responsibility for educating themselves about what is clearly a very different Britain?
As something of a cretin in these matters I can't offer you an answer, but I would guess that a lot of language we use today might be unacceptable in 40 years. Only when that is the case will I be able to decide how easy change is, and whether it is fair to judge people for their apparent inability to do it.