As a Scottish person living in England I feel this on a personal level, when people say shit like “well it’s not the genuine asylum seekers I’m bothered by, it’s the people who just move here to get a better job and take advantage of our welfare system” and I’m like “Mate, I literally moved 500 miles south to a different country just to get a better job and better weather, if you’re going to hate on anyone for that hate on me.”
Then they try to back-track and say things like “Well you already speak perfect English so it’s fine” and I’m like “My grandma didn’t speak very good English when my grandparents settled in the UK from Finland, what are you trying to say?”
And they’re like “Well I’m sure you’re grandparents had useful jobs and weren’t just sponging off the system.” like… nah, my grandma mended clothes and my grandad sold garden sheds, they weren’t exactly brain surgeons
“But they…” just admit it, it’s not white immigrants that bother you, I doubt Americans go on marches protesting the Canadian undergrad students who overstay their visas or all the germans and scandinavians who just rocked up in the Midwest one day and decided to call it their own.
This was how I finally started to understand white privilege.
