Does this make me racist?

Now, I have always been pretty sure that I am not racist. I have genuinely to my knowledge never once found myself looking down on anyone because of race, creed or colour.

I think this goes back to my school days. I went to an expensive fee-paying school that had a high proportion of students from other countries, other creeds and other cultures.

However, this school also had an entrance examination, a school uniform and a strict set of rules. The upshot of this was that everyone looked the same, acted the same, and, because we had a pretty good standard of basic education already, we all talked the same. Of course there were minor differences in religious practices and accent, but, pretty much, the school system homogenised us all.

As I say, there was a huge cultural and ethnic mix at that school, but in my five years there, I was never once aware of a single act of racist behaviour. I never heard of anyone being disparaged purely on the grounds of race, creed or colour. Mind you, there was no inverse-racism either; the foreigners were in for just as much stick as the locals when they deserved it.

Now, I have found that the same thing has followed me into adult life. Of course, I notice what skin colouration people have, or if they are exhibiting some overt sign of their religion, but I have never found myself taking that into any form of consideration, apart from “general interest”.

However, I have now found myself making value judgements about people based purely on innate characteristics that they cannot help and that can in no way affect who they are as people.

Does this make me racist?

I am talking, here, about call-centre operators. When I am struggling with some technical problem with the latest bit of hardware or software, eventually I get around to calling the dreaded help-line.

Swerving aside for a nanosecond, what is it with people and manuals? Whenever I buy a new computer, phone, car, gizmo, I have a read through the manual to find out what it can do and how it works (likewise, when I buy a new computer game, I read through the whole manual first, so that can get at least some sort of grip on the best way to use it.)

Oddly enough, I have noticed a distinct element of sexism sneaking into this subject. It may be something that is peculiar to this side of the pond, but I have noticed a definite and significant anti-masculine bias here. It always seems to be women complaining and generalising that men refuse to read instruction manuals. It is, according to the XX crowd, something that “men” do. Personally, I would say that my experience leads to the exact opposite conclusion, but who am I to notice?

But, anyway, back to the subject in hand: racism and call centres. The hypothesis is that I have bought said computer programme (note the spelling of the word programme there, Yankee people…) and, even though I have read the manual, I cannot get it to work.

(Oh, yes, and note how the word colour is also spelled.)

So, as said, I have this hypothetical problem for which I need technical support and therefore, gritting my teeth, I dial the number.

The meat behind the original question is this. When the call is answered at the call centre, and I hear a voice that is clearly belonging to someone from another country, my heart sinks. Why, I scream silently, cannot I have someone from a British call-centre who will be able to understand my question and whose answer I will, in turn, be able to comprehend.

I realise that it is probably wrong, but when I get someone on the other end of the line, for whom English is clearly not their first language, whose accent makes it difficult for me to understand and who is patently reading pre-determined answers from a screen; I find myself just wanting to scream. “Will you go away and let me talk to someone with whom I can actually have a rational conversation.”

Does this make me racist?

The other day, I had to take a fiend into hospital. We were seen by a doctor who appeared to be of Indian or Pakistani origin. His accent was incredibly thick, and we had to get him to repeat himself several times.

Again, I found myself, thinking “Please, go away and send me a doctor with whom I can talk”.

The important thing here, however, is the communication. I got ticked off of by the fact that I could not get answers to the questions that I was asking, It wasn’t actually that I couldn’t get them, it was that couldn’t understand them when I did.

Does that make me racist?

Oddly enough, however, it never even occurred to me to question anything else about the doctor in question. Whatever, he told me, I accepted as fact – once I had managed to get it translated. I never assumed that because he was from an ethnic minority then he must be incompetent, or that his degree was not as good as an English equivalent, or whatever.

Personally, I think that the latter means that I am not racist – and this is backed up by the fact that if my call-centred was answered by someone with an impenetrably geordie or scouser accent, I would feel much the same about them.

But what do I know...