Dogs & blacks lodging & living in Manchester

As an American/French Phd student of color having a dog (Daisy Mae) and willing to travel, what should I expect on the social and accommodation front. Should I be on my guard for those subtle forms of housing and social discrimination so prevalent in American inner-cities like Chicago, Baltimore, Washington, DC and Milwaukee?

With the current right-wing momentum on the up swing even in my own adopted country of France I ask myself:

Is my French bouledogue Daisy Mae going to be accepted more easily than I am?

Dogs can be a problem as the homeowner's insurance can increase if they allow pets.

"No blacks" went out with the ark officially and would be seriously illegal, but that doesn't mean some soft fool wouldn't refuse you for whatever reason, hiding their true intent.

PS - I'm also of colour, but I spell is correctly :D

My colour depends on which bit you look at, my arms are a rather nice light suntanned brown, but bits covered from the sun are pretty white.
Some pretty ladies are aware of this.










(They've seen me in swimming trunks at the local pool)

Steady on there Fred!

I hope you and the 'ladies' are practing safe sex.

As for your comment on my spelling, I'll take that as a bit of provocation and not ignorance of the American spelling.

Love how you turned my invite to a political discussion into a moment of self-promotion. I bet you're great at parties.

You're right : we should never take ourselves too seriously (place emoticon here).

Except of course in the face of injustices like housing discrimination.

Pretty sure no one will really care in Manchester what colour you are but the dog might take a little work. As for Fred's language; Welcome to the north of England. It's too cold to mess with words so they say it as it is.

Thanks for the heads up, Norse interpreter. You see it's moments like these when I am glad to meet new people.

Sincerely,

2nd finger

secondfinger wrote:

Is my French bouledogue Daisy Mae going to be accepted more easily than I am?


Yes.

lukereg wrote:

As for Fred's language; Welcome to the north of England. It's too cold to mess with words so they say it as it is.


We don't do diplomacy in Yorkshire. :D

secondfinger wrote:

Steady on there Fred!


Ner, I'm wild and crazy.

secondfinger wrote:

I hope you and the 'ladies' are practing safe sex.


I see you missed the last line of my post :D

secondfinger wrote:

As for your comment on my spelling, I'll take that as a bit of provocation and not ignorance of the American spelling.


Noah Webster, destroyer of the English language.
You pronounce it " toe may toe", we pronounce it correctly. :D
The English commonly love to knock American English, but we aren't too serious when we do so.
Please feel free to mention our teeth at your pleasure.

secondfinger wrote:

Love how you turned my invite to a political discussion into a moment of self-promotion. I bet you're great at parties.


Ah, that's why the invitations stopped.

Self promotion, me? NEVER!
https://www.expat.com/forum/viewtopic.p … 573#527221

secondfinger wrote:

Except of course in the face of injustices like housing discrimination.


Discrimination is daft in the extreme.
Quite how skin colour changes someone's personality I have yet to work out.

I sometimes wonder what my life would have been like if I had remained the uneducated, bigoted, racist pillock I was almost permanently turned into by peer pressure as I grew up.
I would have missed out on loads of wonderful food from around the world, never travelled to foreign climes, never met my wife, and never been father to my two wonderful kids.

Secondfinger, have some advice.
If anyone sends you away due to skin colour, supply them with a view of your third finger and be thankful you got away from living in a house occupied by idiots.

lukereg wrote:

As for Fred's language; Welcome to the north of England. It's too cold to mess with words so they say it as it is.


Damn, busted :D

Thanks Fred..

In terms of renting a property the dog will be a problem, but your skin colour won't be.  Many landlords don't want pets, particularly dogs.......for one thing, its difficult get rid of the 'doggy' smell and with future tenants in mind, not everyone likes dogs.

As for discrimination, my daughter is black (the term 'person of colour' isn't really used in the UK) and lives in Manchester.  She does have some racial comments directed at her, such as 'Go home' and these have become more frequent since the 'Brexit' referendum and tend to come from older people.

Hello Logonot62,

Thank you for taking the time to respond.

I have already found pet-friendly places in Manchester to rent. The choices are more limited but it is 'doable'.

That said,  the 'go home' statement is a little unsettling, but having lived in France and Italy (I'm a French citizen) for many years and being around other non-whites all my life, I am used to those micro-aggressions and know how to handle them.

Having a dog forces me to live off- campus with more limited choices. There are always creative solutions even in these hard times(NHS, Brexit).

Hello secondfinger,

I would take this as a learning exercise we all go through at different patches in our life. mind it, these problems will only last while you are struggling as a 'common man (or a woman)'.

Once you have a Dr. before your name and you are a professor at a famous university living in your own house driving fancy cars, you will wonder if you ever raised this issue. :cool:

Well thank you for the encouragement. I'm sure you will agree that some lessons are harder to learn than others.

However for me, I measure success by other criteria which do not include material possessions and monetary wealth.

Education is my freedom. It is the most valuable thing I possess.

Longonot62 wrote:

As for discrimination, my daughter is black (the term 'person of colour' isn't really used in the UK) and lives in Manchester.  She does have some racial comments directed at her, such as 'Go home' and these have become more frequent since the 'Brexit' referendum and tend to come from older people.


Some people of foreign-backgrounds voted for Brexit, like turkeys voting for Christmas. Only to then get told to 'go home' by some people who voted the same. Bet they regret it now.

@ secondfinger: I also know many people like yourself. They study and lecture and research and that's what makes their life so exciting. Then, getting something accepted by a government department or published in a journal is the topping on the cake.

@ XB23: Yeah it's a funny old world. People get ideas into their heads and go with it without ever realizing the consequences of what they are doing.

It's nice to be understood. One feels less alone in the world....

As for the voting and then regretting, I am a citizen of two countries FRANCE and the U.S which are both facing major elections. It seems we vote with our hearts and not our heads. I myself am an' 'issue voter' , but I try to make an informed decision on that issue.

It's going to be an interesting 4 years on both sides of the  Atlantic.

Hansson wrote:

Yeah it's a funny old world. People get ideas into their heads and go with it without ever realizing the consequences of what they are doing.


You know things are bad when some foreigners themselves are sick & tired of other foreigners and vote for anyone promising less immigration. If we treat each other like this, looking down at each other, with the view the other shouldn't be living here just because we came before them, what do we expect from the natives...I've had equally bad treatment from people of foreign-backgrounds, and sometimes even worse. Some seem to think my Geordie accent means I must of arrived from outside the UK. Anyway when I had problems to sort out, I was always happy to find out it will be someone of a foreign background dealing with my case rather than a potentially racist English. So I would turn up believing they might be more sympathetic and understanding as we are both foreigners. How wrong was I at times! I think because these people get looked down upon by the English, and treated badly, probably shouted at, they take out their frustration on other foreigners. They need someone to look down on. Or maybe they have an English boss, who avoids allegations of racism by getting his foreign workers to do it instead. Or they are trying to impress him or something.

This might be hard to believe, but some English would go and live in certain parts of Wales and get abuse, in the lines you are not welcome. The hardline abuse is not so much these days but it was only 20 years ago car would be torched.

In genera,l you will be fine, and as soon as learn that you are a student I can see no trouble as you are here to further your studies.

SimCityAT wrote:

This might be hard to believe, but some English would go and live in certain parts of Wales and get abuse, in the lines you are not welcome..


The more nationalistic section of the Welsh population can be really anti English, making it very clear they don't want us in their country.
I recall one trip in Wales where I walked into a pub with my girlfriend, hearing groups of people talking in English, but they switched to Welsh the moment they heard us speak.
That could be dismissed as a tourist thing, but the dark looks on their faces negated that possibility.

Whilst Welsh history is one of injustice caused by the English royals and English government, that was all way before any of us were born and holding hate in that way is daft in the extreme.

Sadly for the world, a lot of people hang on to moronic stupidity as if being horrible to people is good in some way. Their stupidity astounds me.

"That said,  the 'go home' statement is a little unsettling, but having lived in France and Italy (I'm a French citizen) for many years and being around other non-whites all my life"

My daughter is a British Citizen.  She just tends to ignore the remarks of ignorant people.  She doesn't experience anything more than a comment here and there.  A few years ago she would have confronted anyone making such remarks, but now that she is older, she just ignores them.

As an expat living in Kazakhstan, I am having difficulty relating to what it means to be 'accepted' or not.

Maybe because I am a tall,  well-built white male and therefore accepted  in most parts of the world that I have not experience 'non-acceptance' to any worrying degree. But I do have a variety of friends including  people of various skin colour and women  who also seem to have not-too-dissimilar experiences to my self.
I have also seen expats-with-attitude who despise where they live and the people around them even though they choose to be there...
I am concluding that its more about attitude. As a teacher, I recognise that if I go into a classroom expecting trouble from a lively bunch of 9th -graders, it usually it happens. I am sure that the same can be said of our attitudes as expats and that how we carry ourselves and how we 'meet' the locals will strongly influence their reaction to us. Is that what you mean by acceptance? the reaction from locals. I believe a large proportion of their response will be in your hands.

As for Manchester, the people there are said to be pretty down to Earth and I can believe it.