Casual racism in your place of work

pillphil

My mother once said about the street her brother lives on "It's full of foreigners."
She's Irish, her brother is Irish and he lives in England.

padd b1975

In the haulage industry, anyone not of Irish or UK nationality are referred to as "Taliban".

TheDoc

Suppose what you define as casual racism, and how long your working there.

I had a job where our team was extremely diverse. We had a guy from Clare, a guy from Limerick, me from Northside Dublin, guy from Southside Dublin, a girl from Nigeria, a bloke from China and an Australian boss.

If you walked in and stood there for two hours, maybe you would take offense and find it to be highly racist. But in the context of the team, it was all good spirited and a right laugh, and everyone knew where the line was. It wasn't personal or aggressive, normally jibes on stereotypes and the likes.

I think context goes along way, and it's worth remembering that different people have different humour and what others find offensive some might find hilarious.

Of course it depends on what the comments are. Obviously some things are outrageously inappropriate.

But for me personally, I find myself working mostly in diverse offices, and normally for some reason the only northside Dubliner. I'll get some stick over the stereotype, I'll give some back to southsiders or whatever. But I've never once felt seriously offended or that it impacted my reputation or work in anyway.

Then again I suppose its hard to take from the OP's post. Normally the experiences I've had is colleagues slagging each other. For example I havn't had a case where a team collectively gives it large about muslims or islam etc.