seeing racism first hand

The saddest part of the story.  I hate that racism of this kind is just accepted. 

I'm from Essex (outside of London) I know this is the norm for a lot of people  I now live in Australia where i find people to be very openly racist against anyone who isn't an Aussie - including us POMs.  It's very tongue in cheek and I can generally laugh it off.  What makes me really chuckle is that only the indigenous people are truly Australian a lot of everyone else is descended from English and other European criminals...

Horrific? Why, is it possible you felt sorry for him that you are white and your friend is not?

I am a white canadian male and have experienced that sort of verbiage (and worse) many times in the UK, US, etc.  (and my own country). I am not bothered by it for probably the same reason your friend was not. I don't take it personally. 

Look at it another way, if I or another caucasian from a different country was your companion that evening would you have reacted or felt the same way?

The proper response to "In this country we say thank you"  is, "In my country we say f#%K off!!!"  

Everybody gets something, and nobody feels left out.

Why is that racism and not nationalism? I could see if he said "white people say thank you", but he said "country". DH still the same... just saying.

I have lived all over the world, and I have never been to a place that loved foreigners. I was told to go home all the time.

Don't ever travel to many parts of the US then...I've seen/heard MUCH worse living and working in NW FL/Alabama and now Southeast VA.

Down here we experience racism on a daily basis. This doesn't sound racist at all, at least not from the OPs description. To me it sounds like just flat out rudeness. Why label it racism? 

Yeah, I don't know that this was necessarily racist... I think that xenophobic would be a good way to characterize this, at least from how the OP described it.

I tend to agree that it's probably more xenophobic than racist, but from the OP the PB was a Brit, so the cabbie is just a moron.

I often struggle with the whole racism argument because there are many examples of people being called racists when it's not even close to racism.  My personal experience is there's far more classism than there is racism.  I grew up poor as dirt living in a trailer park and I had white, black, mexican, and indian friends/neighbors and we all got treated like dirt.  Had nothing to do with anyone's skin color, but it could easily be construed as such if one happened to be a minority.

That being said, real racism does still exist but it's light years ahead of where it ever was.  My grandparents and both my parents were pretty bad racists, but it was all behind closed doors with snide comments.  I was always disgusted by it, even as a kid and the cycle was broken in my generation with my family as it was in many other families.

Let's see, not saying thank you is rude.  The cabbie was more rude back.   Hmmmmm funny how that happens.

I would like to relay to you what a coach of mine a long time ago used to say "There's no "I" in team, but there are 2 "U"s in "F___k You!" 

Rude?  Yes.  Racist?  Maybe.  No time for small mindedness like the cab driver.  I might be angry too if I had his job. 

Really interesting comments.  I've been reflecting on it today. 

I have a job where I'm lucky enough to work in a few different cities regularly (London, New York, Paris, Amsterdam, Brussels and Lisbon) and the differences between people fascinates me.  

I know that in this country I would not be able to find one person who would not call this racism.  I know in the US, the issue of race and discrimination is well developed, talked about and obviously still exists but I didn't think that we had different interpretations of what it was.

I'm not saying it's right or wrong, just interesting.

On a smaller scale, the Brits and Americans in our company often find that they have different findings from the same meetings that can lead to conclusion down the line - we've summed this up as 'two countries separated by the same language'

Also interested in the posted who cut the two sentences out of my original post and quoted them without comment.  I didn't realise I was going to a diversity conference last night originally (and wouldn't have bothered if it was labelled as such). It was called 'unintentional biases' which is interesting for me for work reasons but it was ok none the less.

Sounds more like a bad case of xenophobia, but there could have been some racist undercurrents.  The cabbie may have had his mind made up about the guy and was just looking for some reason to say something.

I deal with a lot of stereotype and racism at work.  An example of stereotyping would be jokes about Indians and hotels or convenience stores.  Like most stereotypes, there is some truth behind it.  Our loan portfolio shows that.  But that's not racism.  At least I don't see it that way.  There's no feelings of superiority over the other race when those jokes are made.  

Racism is the following, which was said to me in our break room by an older white lady...

"Go on and reach in there with your hands, you're not black."  - this was said to me as I looked for a cup to scoop some chex mix somebody had made out of a bowl

I hear a lot of things about our President that aren't exactly criticisms of his policies on a daily basis as well.  What's funny (in a sad way) is that most of the comments have to do with Muslims.

No worries Dan, you were there and you saw it first hand.  We're all just interpreting what we read on an internet forum.  The cool part is you know it was wrong which says a lot about you as a person.  For that I salute you.

I was suggesting, possibly more subtely than I thought, that the topic of your conference, and possibly your race/gender, had you primed to interpret the comment as racist.

Alright, this is racist.  And, as somewhat of a germaphobe, just nasty.

As a germaphobe myself, no worries, my hands were clean.  As for the comment, I wouldn't have been more shocked if I had woken up with my head sewn to the carpet.

This past summer while getting ready to swim at Ohio Beach in Chicago there was a guy who was just finishing his swim and we started chatting as he noticed my baseball hat had a maple leaf on it.  After finding out that I was Canadian and in the process of moving/getting my Green Card he told me to "go back to where I came from" and proceeded to tell me that "enough jobs for good Americans have already been given to foreigners".  Sadly I wasn't able to get my wetsuit on quickly enough to not hear all of the crap he was telling me that his taxes were paying for my free stay in his country (not true as Tony has been taking care of both of us) and that I was clearly lazy and just wanted to live off the government, etc., etc., etc. 

It wasn't racism, but it sure left me stunned, sad and angry. 

Excuse me, but:

http://www.beginnertriathlete.com/discussion/category-view.asp?showcat=6#l6.

I see it as racism - he made a judgement on someone's nationality based on how he appeared.  Non-white. Don't know the details. Either way it was an ignorant comment. 

People do this all the time, and it's not necessarily negative and certainly not necessarily racist.