What to Do About Racist Behaviour?

It can be incredibly distressing if you are on the receiving end of any kind of racism, especially from neighbours. Thankfully, reported racist behaviour is quite rare in the UK and there are stringent laws in place to ensure that it stays that way.

What’s Considered to be Racist Behaviour?

If you’re a victim of racism or racist behaviour, it means you’ve been treated differently by your neighbours by virtue of your race, colour, nationality, citizenship, or ethnic or national origins. You can even suffer from racial discrimination just because somebody thinks you are a certain race or nationality, even though you’re not. The legal system is a little confusing when it comes to judging what counts as ‘racial’ discrimination, and what’s discrimination due to religious belief. There have been legal cases identifying Romany Gypsies, Jewish people, Sikhs and Irish Travellers as a race, yet Rastafarians and Muslims can complain about discrimination due to religious belief.The kind of racist behaviour you might experience from neighbours could include harassment or intimidation by them, members of their family, their friends or visitors to their home. It includes any type of discrimination against you that’s based on your colour or race.

Racial harassment is anything unwelcome or hostile that happens just because of someone's race, including physical and verbal threats and violence.

Racist Behaviour when you’re Looking for a Home

When you’re looking for somewhere to live, the law ensures that you can’t be refused a home because of your race. It’s illegal for private and social landlords to treat you differently whether favouring another person on a social housing waiting list, refusing to rent to you, or treating you differently once you’ve moved in. A private seller is not allowed to refuse to sell you a property on the grounds of your race either.

Racist Behaviour Once You’ve Moved In

At first, you might not be sure whether you’re actually being discriminated against anyway. It could just be ‘funny looks’ or you could think you’re overhearing people talking about you. Perhaps you get the silent treatment from the locals and you can’t quite put your finger on it?

People can sometimes be suspicious of a new neighbour and so you could try to nip any tensions in the bud by attempting to befriend new neighbours, inviting them round for a cuppa, saying hello at the local shop or school gates. You might find that you were being over sensitive after all and the problem’s solved.

Unfortunately, life’s not always that easy, and sometimes people can be ignorant enough to get involved in racist behaviour against you. Start taking note of specific incidents, what happened, when and where, how often the racism happens, how it affected you and anyone else. If you can establish that the harassment is racially motivated then you may have grounds to make a complaint. If you’re in social housing, most local authorities and housing associations have policies in place to deal with accusations of racist behaviour, which include mediation to start with, but could result in an Anti Social Behaviour Order (ASBO), an Injunction or even eviction. If you own your property your first port of call should be your local police.

Racial Victimisation

If you are forced to make a complaint about any kind of racial discrimination, you shouldn’t be victimised because of it, or treated differently. If things do start to become difficult for you where you live and your neighbours are behaving badly, you could be entitled to get help with any bullying, harassment or worse. Victimising someone who has made a complaint about racism is illegal in itself, and it’s also possible to get protection from discrimination if you’re simply helping another person make a complaint about discrimination, by giving evidence in court for example.

Unusual Cases

A woman from Suffolk was recently accused of racial harassment when she placed an old-fashioned golliwog in her front window. Although the charges were eventually dropped due to insufficient evidence, the woman was arrested after a black neighbour complained that seeing the doll had offended her and her family. Prosecutors said that in order to establish that an offence had been committed, they would have had to prove that the doll had been placed there deliberately by the accused woman, who was alleging that a family member had inadvertently left it there.

If they had been able to prove this, however, it would technically have been possible to convict her of racially aggravated harassment, causing alarm and/or distress.