It was a busy Friday night in central London. My friend and I grabbed a drink after work and began the usual game of table roulette, weaving through the after-work crowds in search of somewhere to sit. Eventually, we hit the jackpot and found a space all to ourselves.
A group of contractors were nearby, mostly white men, and they ended up chatting to us all evening. They shared cigarettes. One kept drifting over to flirt. At one point he interrupted our deep and meaningful conversation to ask for a dance.
We politely declined but it was one of those perfect Friday nights where the drinks and the jokes between strangers flowed easily. Then he joked: “Are you two sisters?” We laughed. “Would you say that to two white people? That’s a bit racist, lol!” We expected banter back. Instead, the night took a very unexpected turn.
He started shouting, calling us c***s, his friends having to hold him back. Being called racist, even as a joke, seemed to short-circuit him completely. We tried to calmly reason with him, explaining why that question might land differently for women of colour and why we said that. After all, you don’t go around asking two white women in the pub if they’re related. But he was having none of it, however much we tried soften the situation.
Look, I get it. Being called racist isn’t a nice thing to hear. In an ideal world it might be met with follow-up questions like: “I’m sorry if I said something offensive”, “I didn’t realise there were racist undertones” or my fave, “Can you tell me what I said that made you call me racist, so I can learn?”
Those questions can lead to a conversation. What completely threw us was the sheer fury it provoked. I’ve challenged racially loaded comments before and, at worst, it’s met with awkward defensiveness. Occasionally people even apologise, though that’s rare. What I had never witnessed was someone going from banter to outright rage in seconds. It made me wonder whether the word “racist” itself has become so loaded that people hear it as a personal attack rather than a moment for reflection.
We sat back down at our table, the atmosphere suddenly hostile. Still reeling from how quickly the situation had flipped, we sat there in stunned silence for about five seconds before deciding to go back, apologise and smooth things over.
Maybe there had been a misunderstanding, we thought. After all, he’d been friendly all night. He’d even whispered in our ears that we were “very pretty”. How could this man be racist? He fancied brown girls. But going back made things so much worse.
Another man from the group, started shouting too, telling us to fuck off back to our table. Born and raised in the melting pot that is London, I had never experienced anything like it. I still don’t know exactly what to call it.
The racism I grew up recognising was overt. This felt different. The manager came over and asked if she should remove them. We said absolutely not. We didn’t want to make this any worse, so we left.
What has stayed with me most about that night isn’t just the incident. It’s how confused I felt afterwards. I’m still not entirely sure what happened in that pub. Was it racism? Was it drunken defensiveness? Was it something else entirely? Why was he so triggered by it?
What I do know is that by the end of the night we were the ones apologising, trying to smooth things over, telling the manager not to intervene and quietly removing ourselves. Somehow we became responsible for keeping the peace.Do I regret jokingly calling that man racist? No. But I probably wouldn’t use that word so casually again. Not because the comment wasn’t racially loaded, but because I now understand just how explosive that word can be in the wrong moment.
We were outnumbered. Two women surrounded by a group of men. Suddenly the atmosphere felt unpredictable, and we were scared. Sometimes the smartest thing to do in those moments is simply get out. We were just trying to enjoy a Friday night.
I still don’t know exactly what happened in that pub. But what I do know is that night, the word “racist” caused more outrage than the comment that prompted it. That is deeply unnerving.
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