I'm really not going to get into a back and forth diatribe with someone who ostensibly doesn't have much knowledge or experience of the subject at hand.
Apart from living and working with people from that part of the world which is the subject of this thread, including the Balkans, for 10 years. Still, disputes such as this rarely get solved on the internet. Nonetheless, allow me to respond.
Yet the message has been the same. You could spend years there as a white person and never see it. It won't come looking for you. You spend enough time there as a black person, you don't need to go searching for it as it will eventually find you.
You could spend years there as a white person
and never talk to anyone and not see it. ....'Massively, intrinsically, and institutionally racist' was the phrase you used, kind of hard to miss don't you think.
Unsurprisingly you missed the point about my Serbian girlfriend. Her parents paramount fear was that their daughter would suffer due to the embedded racist attitudes that they saw as prevalent in Serbia, just because of her association with me.
I'm afraid you missed mine. My point being how did you experience racism here - somebody else thought you might, but you never explained how that manifested itself, if at all.
My mother came to this country from Jamaica in 1959 on this boat
http://www.shipspotting.com/gallery/photo.php?lid=1263057. The stories of racism I heard from my her, my aunts and uncles were extraordinary though I suspect that
someone like you would say it wasn't really racism but some other leftist construct maybe?
Someone like me? Like who exactly? I have no idea how you formed this conclusion from my posts. You need to go easy on those wild inductive leaps. I have no doubt that the Windrush generation experienced terrible racism when they arrived, and to a certain extent still do to this day. You seem to steering dangerously close to the rather tired trope of crying racism simply to shut down any debate.
You may well be like the Bulgarian manager who didn't hear any racists chants even though he was standing next to the UEFA Officials and everyone else who did.
What? Where did I claim there were no racist chants at that football game? But I see where you're going with this - I disagree with you therefore I must be like the (presumably) racist football manager.
Again - 'massively, intrinsically, and institutionally racist. - your words. A football manager is not an institute, nor does he appear to represent one, UEFA for example. And you have provided nothing to back up those words.
I understand that a number of football fans where arrested after the event. The police are an institution.
You clearly do not want to accept anybodies view but your own. Until the technology emerges where you can relive my experiences and conversations then I suspect you will cling to them no matter what.
I respect your opinion and experience but it is just that, yours only. I will form my opinions based on a variety of sources including the opinions of others (pural).
Why is your experience more valid than this gentlemens?
Nope I'm black/mixed. The balkans in particularly Croatia is one area I have spent a lot of time in and have good friends. Along with Serbians, and Bulgarians.
Football isn't a good example. I expect you'd get more racism at a Chelsea game than you would living and working in most slavic, and other East/South European countries.
Finally, and again, you used the phrase - 'massively, intrinsically, and institutionally racist'. You're going to have to come up with a better justification that simply because I say so.
I wish you well.
Likewise. Genuinely.