skinny

Every race, colour, nation and religion on earth | UK news | guardian.co.uk

London in 2005 can lay claim to being the most diverse city ever. Leo Benedictus has spent months travelling across the capital, locating and visiting the immigrant communities that give the city its vibrancy and, more importantly, its food. Here he profiles some of the more unexpected of them

Yes, i know it is old news, but has it got better os worse.

The Relic

I think multiculturalism left the question of whether it's a good or bad thing for dead long ago, Skinny. It's like global warming: it's here, and we have to deal with it and attempt to minimise its long term effects.

The received wisdom is that multiculturalism feeds the local culture and that a rapid intake of immigrants galvanises the economy. This cheerful pairing of arguments holds that this island's culture has fed on and been informed by successive migrations for two millennia, with the implication that nothing has really changed recently, while a rapidly growing economy requires a large and willing skilled labour force. The problem is that both arguments are bollocks. as they don't take timescales into account.

It's all very well absorbing trickles of Celts, Jutes, Hugenots and whoever over centuries, where the process has time to be organic, but if you introduce large pockets of alien culture over a period of a few years into a mass media society the impact is multiplied, and so is the potential for conflict.

Too pessimistic? Actually there are historic precedents for friction caused by sudden arrivals from abroad, which somehow get ignored by the optimists: they prefer to forget the discord produced by the intrusion of the likes of Romans, Vikings and Normans, and that a large part of the problem with armed invasions is that they are also very speedy cultural invasions. Further, humanity's ingrained tribalism has a tendency to demand that the culture they have known from birth be seen as superior to any it is expected to co-exist with. Put any three people in a room of varying race and creed and eventually they will argue about politics and religion. Now we have whole cities where people from multiple races and creeds are expected to happily co-exist like a big happy family, and that's elephant bollocks - human nature says it ain't gonna happen.

As for high immigration fuelling the economy, it's true that it does so when the economic rollercoaster is being cranked upwards, but when it hits those dips and the unemployment figures start to rise, they become an ecomomic liability, and the pockets of culture they occupy are liable to become more reactive.

All of which makes me wish I was a racist. If I was I wouldn't feel so bad about facing the facts and stating them.

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The Relic

Richard Dawkins for Pope.

White_Knight

Multiculturalism may be here, and we do have to deal with it, but it doesn't mean to say it has to be here forever. If different cultures were compatible with our own then it wouldn't be a problem, but imported cultures constantly clash with ours. Whether it's opressing women, slave trafficking, or sacrificing goats! We can deal with Multiculturalism by sending home anyone who doesn't want to be part of our one single culture.

The Relic

Except that second, third and even fourth generation representatives of foriegn cultures to whome this is home, retaining vitually no contact with the homelands of their forefathers beyond a maintained cultural identity.

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The Relic

Richard Dawkins for Pope.

White_Knight

If they've maintained their cultural identities and traditions then they are no more adapted to British life then their forefathers. If they're clinging on to their old cultures in this way, then they haven't embraced Britain, so how can it be their home?

poppy

exactly Relic, Whitenight how many generations have to live in the UK before you consider them British? I am only second generation immigrant.

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Wherever we go, every one knows
It's me and my arrow

White_Knight

I ask again, if they've maintained their own cultural identities and traditions, and stayed in areas where you mainly only find people from the same other country - Spark Hill springs to mind. How have they embraced Britain?
Brixton is another example, why haven't more black people migrated around the country? Why have they stuck in dominantly black areas?
It doesn't seem to matter how many generations, in fact the more generations there are, the more insular they become as their local population
increases and is swelled further by more immigrants.
Case in point, a while ago another one of the government's crackpot schemes was to encourage more non-white people to visit the countryside. We heard little after that, but it's fairly safe to assume it was another failed and pointless initiative.

poppy

You only ever talk about black immigrants,
what of the Irish areas, or the Ozzy parts of London, the Jewish areas, little Italy and many others. Brick lane has changed ethnicity so many times it is difficult to keep up.
I am second generation wap and the family lived in Hammersmith and then Richmond, with masses of other Italian families around, it is the natural way of things.
I spent last week teaching at a summer play scheme, Bengalis Poles Pakistanis, Irish and English and Chinese.
The one thing that was obvious was that the kids made no distinction. They all played and worked together.
It is a shame that adults with hate in their hearts will destroy that for some of the kids as they get older.

__________________
Wherever we go, every one knows
It's me and my arrow

skinny

So what do you suggest we do?

White_Knight

Really? Last time I checked Spark Hill was full of Indians and Arabs.

They all have near identical cultures to our own.

As they get older they will become more aware of thier differences, their families and communities will ensure that.

Now then, I've answer all your questions, perhaps you should show some guts and answer mine.