I'm not sure that I follow the argument that what Mr Farage said *wasn't* racist, but I would be happy to hear an explanation.
Here's a hypothetical situation which I believe mirrors what Mr Farage has said...please let me know whether this is a form of racism.
You live in a nice tree-lined street in Billericay. Your neighbour is selling their house and you find that a black family, called The Campbells (dad works as an administrator in a care home, mum is a nurse, and their two kids are in the sixth form at a local college).
Now, if you pleaded with your neighbour not to sell their house to them, because you'd seen so many stories about black kids and knife crime, would that not count as overt racism?
Isn't Mr Farage saying them exact same thing?
He didn't say that he wouldn't want unemployed, hard drinking, noisy, criminal Romanians...he just said, 'Romanians'.
That sounds like a blanket coverage of everyone from a particular region.
I would have thought that perhaps he should be more sensitive to ignorant assumptions about someone based on their nationality. Not so many years ago I'm sure his German-born wife would have received much the same opposition from those who lost relatives in the Second World War.