Hello.
I date a girl who just happens to be a Muslim. This is her choice and I accept it just like she accepts that I'm an atheist. We agree that our religion is down to complete personal choice and that it certainly shouldn't determine if we can be together or not. As my girlfriend is a Muslim, she wears the traditional Muslim attire this being the hijab and burqa.
We live in London but as it's the summer, she's staying with me at my parents house in a small town in Kent. Immediately I knew that we would stand out against the white crowd but we're quite resilient and we didn't particularly care for the opinions of others until we took a bus ride into our local town. This town is quite a low wealth area and the people who live here are very downtrodden and bigoted.
Yesterday we experienced what was obvious racism walking down the high street. I was holding my girlfriend's hand when a guy approached us. This guy was very short and unkempt in his appearance and I knew he was going to cause trouble.
He starting asking me personal questions I can't type on here as they're too explicit but they were sexual in nature. My girlfriend was intimidated and so was I and we couldn't seem to escape this man despite our every efforts. I told him to 'back off' and he immediately became 'offensive' and 'confrontational' to a point where other people were looking at us. So I got out my phone and dialed 999. He spat in my girlfriend's face and ran off.
I then had to tell the operator that we didn't need police assistance and that we were in a position to leave the area safely by ourselves.
My girlfriend was crying and now she wants to go back to London ASAP. I told my parents of this and they said 'Well, what do you expect. You brought a Muslim girlfriend into a rural area'.
I was honestly shocked at their words because I believed prior to this event that we live in a multicultural society. Evidently we do not and there are still people out there with severe racist views. These people aren't confined to the lower classes either. I've experienced racism throughout in the higher classes but it's more discrete than those people who can't control their anger in poorer areas...
I'm so annoyed.