Thank you for the first statement.
For the rest - talk to people more about their experiences, and see if your opinion changes (continuing my theme above).
"So maybe don't damn entire swathes of the country based on a run-in with some arsehole"
Maybe don't reduce the inevitable products of systemic racism to "a run-in with some arsehole". The individualisation of racism, and the essentialist attitude that lies behind it, is a massive problem in tackling discrimination - it keeps the whole edifice in place [equivalent in #metoo conversations is #notallmen]. You and I - and every other 'white' person - also need to deconstruct the racism inside us for anything to change, which is the principal theme of this whole conversation**. Using terms such as 'unfortunately' is also problematic - racism isn't 'unfortunate', it's the logical product of a very specific ideology/system of power (also interacting with other ideologies of power)
The 'racist things happen in London too' is missing the point dramatically, for similar reasons of not seeing/refusing to see the broader picture. While there are of course non-white people who live in Devon (as I say, I am broadly familiar with the place), there is a definite reason why not many non-white people choose to move there. This is pretty fucking obvious stuff, tbh.
Obviously the concept of microaggressions (choose another word if you don't like that one - what I mean is the consistent onslaught of low-level discrimination) is incredibly useful here. And one that is routinely disavowed by those who refuse to see reality.
** I refer to it principally because it happened yesterday, but the attack on Owen Jones is an example of this dynamic in a slightly different context. It's the climate of intolerance and hatred that lays the groundwork for things like this to happen, not rogue individuals, and it is exactly this that the far right is at pains to deny, as you'll see on Twitter this morning.
Baboon, I'm sorry your friend had a horrible experience with an awful racist cunt, but at the risk of stating the obvious, you're generalising from one person to a whole city of 130,000 people, or perhaps an entire quarter of England, and unfortunately prejudice like that an be found anywhere, including a supposedly much more enlightened and multicultural city such as London (which you presumably haven't totally written off on the basis of Stephen Lawrence's murder?) There are in fact non-white people who live here. I have colleagues from Bangladesh and China who don't even live in the city but in the smaller surrounding towns.
Now I don't doubt that many or even all of these people have experienced racism but the place is clearly not "off-limits" to them if they live here! So maybe don't damn entire swathes of the country based on a run-in with some arsehole?
In the Jeremy Deller rave programme that's on iplayer (excellent for so many reasons), there is a moment where a young woman wearing a hijab explains exactly what it feels like to travel outside London in the UK. She's talking about Oxford, in that case - a city that is 78% white (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_districts_and_their_ethnic_composition) and not 90-odd % white as so many in the UK [Exeter is 93% on that list]
PS Oxford is actually less white than a few outer London boroughs on that list