Recent news stories about Nigel Farage’s racist behaviour in his youth have prompted a familiar public response. Some rush to minimise it: “It was a different time.” “He was young.” “People are too offended now.”
These reactions miss the point entirely.
Racism is not something people are born with. It is learned. It is absorbed from parents, family members, social circles, schools, media, and the environments we grow up in. Children and young people mirror what they see normalised around them. Language, attitudes, jokes, stereotypes; all of it is taught, modelled, and reinforced long before a person ever develops critical awareness.
But while racism is learned, the harm it causes is not temporary.
Racism Leaves an Imprint
Racist language and behaviour are not isolated “comments” that disappear with time. They leave an imprint. For the person on the receiving end, especially a child or teenager, racism is experienced at a formative stage of life. It shapes identity, belonging, safety, confidence, and self-worth.
The trauma does not fade simply because the person who caused harm has moved on or forgotten it.
Trauma is not measured by whether the person who caused harm remembers it.
It is measured by the impact on the person who lived it.
For many people who experienced racism growing up, the scars remain into adulthood, carried in how they move through the world, how safe they feel in public spaces, how they trust institutions, and how they see themselves.
Silence Was Survival, Not Consent
When commentators argue that “no one complained back then”, they reveal a lack of understanding of power, context, and history.
Children who experience racism do not have the power, language, or protection to challenge it. Many were actively discouraged from speaking out. They were told to tolerate abuse to survive, to keep their heads down, not to “cause trouble”, to accept racism as the price of belonging or simply to stay safe.
Silence was often a condition of survival, not agreement.
To retrospectively use that silence as evidence that harm did not occur is to misunderstand trauma entirely.
Minimising Lived Experience Causes Further Harm
There is a particular cruelty in watching people who have never experienced racism and often have never meaningfully mixed with ethnically diverse communities confidently deny or downplay the lived experiences of those who have.
When people minimise racism because it does not mirror their own experiences, they do not neutralise harm, they compound it.
They reinforce the message that some pain is valid, and some is not.
That some memories deserve dignity and others should be erased.
That comfort matters more than truth.
This denial does not happen in a vacuum. It adds to the harm already carried, sending a clear signal: your experience is inconvenient, therefore dismissible.
“People Are Too Offended Now” Is a Misleading Narrative
The claim that “people are too offended now” reframes accountability as fragility.
What has actually changed is not people’s resilience; it is society’s willingness to listen.
Naming harm is not about punishing the past. It is about acknowledging reality, interrupting patterns, and preventing repetition. It is about recognising that behaviour once dismissed as “normal” was never harmless; it was simply unchallenged.
Growth requires reflection. If we accept that adults should be more mature than teenagers, then maturity includes the ability to say:
“I didn’t understand then. I do now.”
That is not weakness. That is responsibility.
Intent Does Not Override Impact
Intent is often used as a shield: “I didn’t mean it.”
But intent is irrelevant without impact.
Impact is what shapes lives. Impact is what lingers. Impact is what must be addressed if trust is to be rebuilt and communities are to heal.
Refusing to acknowledge harm does not make society stronger. It protects comfort, not truth. It entrenches denial and ensures that the same patterns repeat for future generations.
Listening Is Not Optional
Those who have never experienced racism need to learn what it is and how it impacts lives — not through defensiveness, but through listening. Listening to learn. Listening to understand. Listening to empathise.
Empathy does not require shared experience. It requires humility.
It requires accepting that other people’s realities do not need validation through your own comfort.
This Is Not About Being “Offended”
This conversation is not about offence culture.
It is about dignity.
It is about memory.
It is about repair.
Racism may be learned, but the responsibility to unlearn it, to acknowledge its impact, and to do better belongs to all of us.
Only through honesty, accountability, and empathy can we ensure that future generations are spared the same damage.
A Checklist for Listening to Understand, Learn and Empathise
(Without Minimising Lived Experience)
Listening to experiences of racism is not passive. It is an active practice that requires humility, self-awareness, and restraint. The following checklist outlines what meaningful listening should look like.
1. Listen Without Defence
- Do not interrupt to explain, justify, or correct.
- Resist the urge to say, “That wasn’t the intention”.
- Notice if your first instinct is to protect someone’s reputation rather than acknowledge harm.
- Accept that discomfort is part of learning, not a signal to disengage.
2. Believe Lived Experience
- Do not question whether it “really happened” or “was that bad”.
- Avoid asking for proof, witnesses, or examples to validate someone’s pain.
- Understand that memory does not need to be perfect to be real.
- Remember: disbelief causes further harm.
3. Avoid Comparison and Competition
- Do not say “everyone had it hard” or “that happened to me too”.
- Avoid ranking suffering or turning the conversation back to yourself.
- Recognise that racism is not interchangeable with general hardship.
- Let the person’s experience stand on its own terms.
4. Do Not Minimise or Reframe
- Avoid phrases such as:
- “It was a different time”
- “They didn’t mean it”
- “People are too sensitive now”
- “It was just a joke”
- Do not reframe racism as misunderstanding, banter, or ignorance.
- Accept that normalised behaviour can still be harmful.
5. Understand Power and Context
- Remember that children and young people often could not speak out safely.
- Acknowledge that silence does not equal consent.
- Recognise that institutions and social norms protected perpetrators, not victims.
- Understand that racism often occurs alongside fear, isolation, and lack of support.
6. Sit With Impact, Not Intent
- Focus on how the experience affected the person’s sense of safety, belonging, and identity.
- Accept that good intentions do not erase harm.
- Understand that impact can last decades.
- Avoid centring the feelings of the person who caused harm.
7. Learn Without Demanding Education
- Do not expect the person sharing their experience to teach you everything.
- Take responsibility for your own learning beyond the conversation.
- Seek credible resources, voices, and histories independently.
- Understand that emotional labour is not owed.
8. Respond With Empathy, Not Solutions
- Say things like:
- “I’m sorry that happened to you.”
- “Thank you for trusting me with that.”
- “I believe you.”
- Avoid rushing to fix, explain, or resolve.
- Recognise that being heard is often more important than advice.
9. Reflect on Your Own Position
- Ask yourself what you have been shielded from.
- Consider whose experiences you have never had to learn about.
- Acknowledge the limits of your perspective.
- Stay open to being wrong and growing.
10. Commit to Change
- Let listening influence how you speak, act, and challenge others.
- Interrupt minimisation when you hear it.
- Support policies, practices, and conversations that prevent harm.
- Understand that empathy without action is incomplete.
A Final Reminder
Listening is not about agreeing with every detail.
It is about respecting someone’s humanity.
You do not have to have experienced racism to acknowledge its reality.
You only have to be willing to listen and not look away.