there are places where you get institutional racism
What, like, Zimbabwe? I'm talking about Britain.
As TDS mentioned the American South, immediately after, means that Zimbabwe (with many problems, the 'reverse racism' of white farmers being evicted and replaced) is a small leap.
I understand that Institutional Racism was directly coined with respect to events in Birmingham, Alabama, rather than anywhere near Birmingham, UK. But it was 'popularised' over here with the whole Stephen Lawrence case in London.
Arguably, an amount of the 'racism' (here, if not elsewhere) is as much 'classism', but with a baseline of fewer minorities being at the privileged end and obvious appearance being far easier to 'profile' from afar (c.f. quips about Bond, in his souped-up Aston Martin, being stopped continually by the traffic police if Idris Elba were in the role). I can't really speak for the full gamut of UK experiences, and certainly not first-hand, so take this as a shaky attempt to be objective.
(Apart from my friend who
is racist, but not institutionally so, the closest thing to bias/assumption I came across was when I was mugged, a while ago, by some eastern-European-or-beyond-sounding guys, from their accents (not that I'm an expert). It was too dark to note their appearance much, and I daresay they were 'dusky' but I really couldn't have said whether they were classifiably caucasian or any of the other typical Caucasian ethnicities. That said, because I was passing an area with a high 'asian'
1 density
2, I
did first get asked by the officers if they were asians. Not the first question, but disconcertingly quickly, in a statement-taking that didn't
lead me, but left me feeling that they were trying to fill in a fixed questionaire of doubtlessly useful questions but constraining me somewhat in the actual narrative I was trying to give, stopping and starting my unfolding of events. But then maybe I ramble too much... c.f. this aside and its footnotes.)
1 In UK terms, where 'asian' tends to mean people from India/Pakistan (and has tended to cover those from Middle East or even spain through lazy racism), rather than China/Japan that we in the UK have traditionally lumped together in a different ethnic description/slur, mostly.
2 It's a bit of a melting point around here, though. There's a mosque next to a church, I know where there's a Sikh temple, there's (probable) Romanians, (possible) Turks, (definite) African/Afro-Carribeans, etc. I don't feel like a monority, but then I hear far too many 'foreign' faces talking in the broad local accent (I'm a bit of an incomer myself... I was born and brought up nearly 20 miles away, which gives me a detectibly different dialect.
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