Northwich - A British teenager has gone public about a
torrent of antisemitic invective she has faced in recent months,
including taunts about the Holocaust.
Charlotte Nathan, 17, who attends school in
Northwich, England, was moved to speak about her experiences after
she received a derogatory message on her Snapchat account that said,
“I wanna fart in your face to remind you of how your grandparents
died.”
The
Manchester-based Jewish
Telegraph quoted her
as saying, “Casual racism is a common feature of daily life,
especially among the millennial generation, who perceive racism as a
form of humor and so-called ‘banter.’”
“Catalysts,
such as memes used on social media, seem to justify and sugarcoat the
underlying racial tensions that as a society we fail to address,”
she stated. “This can be exemplified through the lack of education
supplied about different cultural groups to schools and other
communities, exacerbating ignorance.”
“I
am no stranger to antisemitic abuse,” she added, “and for the
last six years, being in secular education and interacting with other
cultures, I have encountered a fair share of comments and remarks.”
“This is evidence of inherited, underlying racism we see daily,” she said.
“The
antisemitism I have encountered has been from someone with so-called
‘white privilege’ — a member of our white British
middle-class,” Nathan explained. “But I am not insinuating that
racial ignorance is a feature in all of our white middle-class.”
“The
most worrying thing about casual racism is that these so-called jokes
are based around horrifying historical occurrences,” she said.
“Jokes are being made with an understanding and education of
events.”
“People
will joke about the Holocaust with reference to the murder of six
million Jewish people, and they will joke about concepts such as
slavery, with no restrictions on using the N- word,” she continued.
“This is the unfortunate world we live in.”
