Livre d'Or

Yeah, lots of people seem to think that their and others' bigotry doesn't really apply to me because I'm white and have English as a first language. Travelling on a bus with a close friend and his five-year-old son, both of whom are very ethnically mixed and tend to present as east Asian, the people sitting near us started complaining loudly about how immigrants are terrible. Friend and I decided to get involved and pointed out that he's an immigrant, though not from "the Far East" as the loud xenophobes were assuming, but from Germany, and I am descended from immigrants a few generations back, and yes, they did come from Poland and other parts of Eastern Europe. The xenophobes tried to backtrack and claim they didn't mean people like us, but the only meaningful difference they could come up with was that we have jobs and don't claim benefits. Which I did not find at all reassuring; I could lose my job or become disabled, and then I would need to claim benefits!

Also after that altercation the five-year-old tearfully confirmed, I'm English, aren't I, Daddy? Which illustrated exactly the reason why my friend and I decided to confront the loudmouths rather than doing the British thing of pretending not to overhear.