I guess I should have made an entry in my diary when it was revealed during the competition to be Leader of the Opposition in Parliament that one of the men, Iain Duncan-Smith has connections through his campaign manager to the British National Party (far right extremist Party).
If he does get in, let alone becomes Prime Minister, it will absolutely affect me on a very day-to-day level. But I guess it doesn't yet so I'm not sure it belongs here...
What I did want to put in here today was a memory of something that recently happened but I didn't include it because it didn't really strike me at the time:
I had a friend over here from Japan. She'd never been to Britain before, though she has been to 'the West'. We were walking her to her gallery from our place and crossed the path of a woman wearing a full veil. I saw she was about to comment and rallied myself, knowing Japanese people to be racist. (of course I don't know this. I've been told by other people that it's so and I chose to believe it, on some level).
Instead she said how interesting it was that the woman chose to wear a veil. It showed a great respect for the country she had come from.
In none of the time that I spent in Japan did I encounter racism, though I was warned about it a lot before I went.
A lot of our prejudices come down to us from history, wars, past injustices, that kind of thing. I was brought up to mistrust Japanese people because of World War 2. In Japan, I actually talked about World War 2 and Hiroshima/Nagasaki with one Japanese woman in particular. I discovered they also have battle scars. Saying that, I didn't experience any prejudice in her behaviour to me or any other non-Japanese person. But she is still angry about the past... but then so am I.