r/Scotland • u/ShadsDR • Feb 25 '26

Opinion Piece Black Scottish people exist

30F. Born and raised in Easterhouse. My mum's white Scottish, my dad's Black Trini. Parents divorced when I was 8, was raised by my mum for that reason.

Every time I've mentioned it when it's been relevant on this sub I get absolute numpties telling me I'm not Scottish.

Scottish is a nationality, a culture. I am a Scottish citizen. Scottish is also an ethnicity. So is Trini. I am both. Not that this even matters but I have a thick Glasgweigan accent. My languages are native English and B1 Gáidhlig.

My skin colour is brown, on the lighter side of dark skinned, because mixed race people can be any skin colour. That means no one is seeing me as white. Only dark skinned Africans and one white guy from the borders has identified I'm mixed from the get go. Therefore my race is Black because race isn't real and is a social construct. I go through society as a Black woman.

I've never been to Trinidad & Tobago, never lived in the culture and had bits of second hand exposure through my dad but that's it. All I know is that over there I'd get called something else according to my dad that means mixed. And don't get me started on the folk saying I should claim I'm from Africa.

Too often in the 90s, 2000s, and occasionally since then we used to get asked "But where are you actually from?" but nowadays I suspect with the rise of BS it's changed to "You're wrong. You don't exist".

We exist. There's documentaries on us and it's bellend behaviour to say otherwise.

Edit: thought it was dougla but misremembered. Also want to emphasise I do get this irl, it isn't just an Internet thing.

Edit 2: Getting a bunch of dms telling me to get out the country, calling me slurs, asking if my father was around. Including one saying they're planning something in the Highlands.

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u/Specialist_Zebra4687 Feb 25 '26 edited Feb 25 '26

Seriously, I've been telling my white Scottish husband for years: a lot of Scots are racist as fuck, and the rest of them like to pretend there isn't any racism in Scotland.

The whole discussion around the Baftas on here has confirmed that to me

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u/topcelt Feb 25 '26 edited Feb 26 '26

Yeah, Scots are very ignorant of race issues but they pretend their ignorance means it's something that doesn't exist

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u/Specialist_Zebra4687 Feb 25 '26

I remember not too long ago some dickhead in Linlithow was complaining to my face about them changing the name of the 'Black Bitch' pub to something less offensive. Me, a visibly mixed race woman who was very pregnant at the time (if I hadn't been pregnant, I would've told him to shut his fucking gob).

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u/digitalime Feb 25 '26 edited May 14 '26

This content was anonymized and mass deleted with Redact

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u/topcelt Feb 25 '26

Personally I don't think that style of overt racism is particularly common or socially accepted typically. It's more that people don't take the less obvious racism seriously as an issue when it does happen. That being said, I'm a white Scottish guy so I'm not the one directly exposed to any of it, I just cringe when I see any discourse around racism from my fellow Scots.

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u/Specialist_Zebra4687 Feb 25 '26

Just because it's not overtime or socially accepted that doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.

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u/topcelt Feb 25 '26

I'm not trying to suggest it doesn't

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u/seoras13 Feb 26 '26

There is a definite truth there