Azizi: I think the reason I was so shocked and upset was that it went without saying for me that this young woman, whom I shall call "Betty" here, was never thought of by anyone (including herself) as being part of a minority. The incident happened at a college in the North West of Britain. Betty was a talented, intelligent, attractive and industrious student. She had lovely manners and was popular with the other students.
In her final year, she received threatening letters, with disgusting insults from another student. I believe the main issue was one of sexual jealousy. However, the fact that she had Sri Lankan origins was seen as a lever by the bully. The letters were horribly racist. I was actually told of these letters and shown them by the management of the college. Unfortunately, Betty would not make a complaint or approach me directly. Officially I did not know about it. So there was nothing I could do. I believe I would have found and proved the culprit had I been in a position to do so.
I think that a lot of what comes over as racism is simply the identification of a physical characteristic to identify someone, whom one is in dispute with. For instance, if a fat man shoves me, I might call him, "A fat bastard". Of course, the problem I have is not that he is fat, but that he has shoved me. However, in the heat of the moment I would shout out the first (and possibly unkindest) thing I could to identify my antagonist.
Had Betty's tormentor been exposed as a racist and a writer of hate mail, I have no doubt at all that she herself would have been shunned by most of the other students. Racism was not even partly respectable at our college and most students despised it. That is probably why a series of racist insults came as such a shock to Betty - and indeed myself. First and foremost she was a fellow student - and it would never have occurred to most of us to identify her in any other way.
I do not know what Betty's reasons were for not coming to me directly. She may have been so humiliated by the horrible content of the letters that she did not feel able to tell me. At any rate, I was very upset at not being able to act and I was very upset that she was not able to enjoy her final months at college because of a cowardly bully. I suppose it upset me a lot because it showed me very clearly that there were limitations to what I was able to do about bullying. I expect that Betty has long since got over it. I feel choked about it to this day.