BAME - Let's stop using it

Lenny Henry really did have a point when he used to joke “Enoch Powell says he wants to give me £1,000 to go back to where I came from. Which is great, because it’s only 20 pence on the bus from here to Dudley.”

AmberSpyglass

If it’s getting replaced, the communities in question should get to decide what the terminology is.

It would be interesting to see if there would ever be a consensus. Think of the ‘elderly’ discussion on here.
Some of people I know at work object to BAME as an acronym because it lumps them altogether, when they are very different, just as COW (cross old women) would not fit all the posters on GN.
As they point out, they don’t all fit into the communities the acronym is used for.
Let’s not have an acronym at all. When it’s necessary to identify a group who have a particular need, use the full words.

My obviously white grandson who has very tight curly hair, was approached by a stranger who happened to be black who asked him what was his heritage.

Grandson wasn’t at all offended, but it is just an illustration that almost everyone can be curious about another person regardless of colour.

Alegrias I don’t need to describe my neighbour as anything in RL. .
My point was that I don’t want to upset anyone I come into contact with and it occurred to me that my quite innocent question could do that. You may think that I am being nosy and have no right to ask the question. It was just a friendly conversation. Most people are very happy to talk about themselves.
In our village a lot of us come from somewhere else especially those of us of a certain age. The chap down the road has a Lancashire accent am I not allowed to ask him whereabouts he comes from? My family are from Lancashire too and an interesting chat followed when I did ask the question.
The reason I mentioned my neighbour is white is because we are having a discussion about the BAME community and the fact that the different nationalities don’t like the acronym.
I’m not surprised, they are very diverse groups of people.

Oldbutstilluseful

My obviously white grandson who has very tight curly hair, was approached by a stranger who happened to be black who asked him what was his heritage.

Grandson wasn’t at all offended, but it is just an illustration that almost everyone can be curious about another person regardless of colour.

How rude!

I can't imagine why any stranger would approach another and ask some about heritage. I doubt very much if this is more than anecdotal.

Mollygo

AmberSpyglass

If it’s getting replaced, the communities in question should get to decide what the terminology is.

It would be interesting to see if there would ever be a consensus. Think of the ‘elderly’ discussion on here.
Some of people I know at work object to BAME as an acronym because it lumps them altogether, when they are very different, just as COW (cross old women) would not fit all the posters on GN.
As they point out, they don’t all fit into the communities the acronym is used for.
Let’s not have an acronym at all. When it’s necessary to identify a group who have a particular need, use the full words.

Sorry, Mollygo, that made me giggle.

Yes, of course you're right. Many posters on GN aren't COWs.

I don't like hearing acronyms used as words, so BAME has always grated. I can see how it started though, as catch-all jargon to be used in meetings or amongst professionals who will have numerous other only roughly accurate terms that everyone knows to be generalisations.

It becomes offensive when terms like this seep out into everyday usage and enter the vocabulary of people who are not using them in this way and the fact that they are generalisations and short-cuts is forgotten.

To use less contentious examples, I dislike being referred to as 'a WASPI'. There is no such word - WASPI is an acronym which is the name of a pressure group whose aims I do not share. I am a woman who was born in the 1950s and who feels that her pension situation is very unfair, but I do not define as 'a WASPI' for reasons beyond the remit of this thread, and I dislike hearing it used to refer to all women who have lost out on their pension. My age also makes me 'a Boomer', but I also resent the implication that I have coasted through life getting everything handed to me with no effort, that I must have a valuable house that cost me pennies, a massive pension and a large inheritance, or that I voted for Brexit and dislike foreigners. None of that is true, and I think the assumption is lazy and offensive.

If people who think that others 'take offence too easily' stop to think about stereotypes that are applied to them in ways they dislike, maybe they would get closer to understanding why a lot of people don't like being called BAME.

Cross posted with Mollygo

PamelaJ1 I don't see any problem at all with asking a new neighbour where they've moved from (Sorry if I've just made up a backstory for your post ).

So I'm trying to imagine, if I met someone new, and was chatting with them, would I feel the need to ask them what their ethnic background was? No.

If that person said, "Oh, I've just moved here from ( some overseas place ) I'd ask them what brought them here, or if they missed the place they'd come from. And probably tell them how pleased I was they'd picked this country to come to. And say "welcome".

With all the people I know from diverse ethnic backgrounds, I've never felt the need to ask them, "Where is it you're from? Originally I mean? When did your family move here? What kind of childhood did you have?" If they want me to know, they'll tell me.

I don't like BAME either, it clumps people together who may be of entirely different ethnic origin.

Then again, I don't like the terms for different generations either as I think they are divisive too.

Growstuff, my 19 year old grandson was in a queue at the Golden Arches fast food restaurant when the incident occurred. I understand why you may think it was ‘anecdotal’, but I can assure you that it happened. I was hesitant about mentioning it, but grandson didn’t have a problem and didn’t think anything of it, but as an illustration that we all can be curious thought it might show another side of life.

If you saw exactly what the curly hair is like, you could understand why why the question had been asked.

Alegrias1

It's Doric Elegran. Not prickly, quite proud actually. Even when people think I'm speaking Dutch or try to make out I'm a bit thick.

Nobody ever asks people with "Queen's English" where their accent is from, do they? Never heard that anyway.

Did you ask this person what their ethnic background was? Or just where their accent was from?

Anyway, BAME....

Actually they do! I had the audacity to be born in SE England but now live in the Midlands. People often comment on the lines that “you’re not from round here are you?”. I just tell them where I was born and give more information if they are interested or have time. I

get to hear about people’s holidays in the South and was also told that everyone in the South lives in oast houses and drives Ferrari s!

It’s called being friendly and welcoming communication from others, in my world. Feel sorry for people who are so uptight and secretive about their origins.

My DH has Queen's English. He's as Scottish as I am. Gets asked a lot where he's from. So I can see your point Kamiso, I think I was wrong about that.

If the "secretive about my origin" was directed at me, I think you should read some of my posts

That’s true, Kamiso. I grew up in the south and when working in a Manchester, I was called ‘posh’ because of my lack of a local accent. It was quite amusing as it couldn’t be further from the truth!

Oldbutstilluseful

*Growstuff*, my 19 year old grandson was in a queue at the Golden Arches fast food restaurant when the incident occurred. I understand why you may think it was ‘anecdotal’, but I can assure you that it happened. I was hesitant about mentioning it, but grandson didn’t have a problem and didn’t think anything of it, but as an illustration that we all can be curious thought it might show another side of life.

If you saw exactly what the curly hair is like, you could understand why why the question had been asked.

It is anecdotal because. as far as I know, it only happened once and is not typical behaviour of anybody.

I don't think I've ever been asked where I'm from, unless I've spoken about my childhood in an area quite different from where I now live and that's not very often.

All of my DC have RP accents. In Scotland they get asked all the time where they’re from. Apparently, being born & raised in Scotland isn’t enough to make to make you Scottish. Dd2 has a public-facing job and she gets fed up of the questioning of her background. She has unusual looks and over the years has been told that she must be Italian/French/Greek/Egyptian/South African(!)/Swedish or simply ‘exotic’, the last voiced by one of her teachers.

Being asked where I’m from was extremely common where I grew up. I went to school with children from about 60 nationalities so when someone new turned up it was a question that was asked. There were always lots of children coming and going.
Didn’t seem to matter what colour or creed you were. Except the catholics. They used to be excused religious study. The Muslims , the Jews and everyone else just mucked in together.

I do remember being asked by some boys where I came from. We were on leave in Lancashire and my accent was different. At that point in my life, I was about 10, it didn’t occur to me that I didn’t come from HK so that’s what I said. They just thought I was weird I think.

Well the scenario Oldbutstilluseful described certainly not a one off anecdote growstuff as something similar happened to my daughter a few years ago.

She and her husband were on holiday in the Far East.
They tend to avoid tourist areas so were a bit off the beaten track walking along a beach. They were the only westerners there.
A group of teenage girls came up to them and asked where they were from. England they were told.
One of them shyly asked if she could touch my daughter’s very fair straight hair which obviously fascinated her.

My daughter wasn’t in the slightest bothered and told me that the girls were so sweet and clearly very taken by her hair.

Were those girls rude, firstly to ask where my daughter was from? Of course not.
Were they rude to ask to touch her hair? I do appreciate that some people in my daughter’s position might have felt uncomfortable having their hair stroked but she went along with it, albeit slightly amused.

I don't like labelling people and grouping them as in BAME.

My sister did a test to see where our ancestors lived. We found that there was East European, Irish, West European and a small amount of African in our predecessors. Many others have found similar so can we really say where we come from?
Only where we have been in the recent past.

Thank you JenniferEccles. It might have been a one off but it did happen and, like your girls, my grandson wasn’t upset at all.

JenniferEccles, we have had similar experiences in both India and Sri Lanka. I’m very fair, and was asked several time to pose for selfies. We were quite mobbed unless we were with a guide!
There were very few white faces in many areas, and as we are used to such a mix of people here it seemed strange.
My husband visited a school in a mosque where he was charmed by the children who were extremely curious about where he came from, and he showed them on a map. They knew where England was but wanted the exact city.

Another post here to say my very blonde, blue eyed daughters got into a lift in a hotel abroad and the occupants asked if they were Germanic. They weren't upset.

Why would anyone get offended if asked about their accent? I grew up with a very strong Bristolian accent which I moderated when I started work which means some people can't work out where I come from - I don't mind if they ask.

I got chatting to a lady in a supermarket a little while ago and said that she had an interesting accent and asked where it was from - she told me she had been born in Egypt but having moved around and lived in several countries her accent had gradually modified. We had a very interesting chat and she certainly didn't appear to be offended.

I am from Canada so I have never heard of the word BAME before but I do know that in Canada the government uses the term visible minorities. Visible Minorities refers to anyone that is not Aboriginal or white.