I believe that learning about the people we live with in a society is essential and should begin from an early age. Implementing understanding and knowledge in children at a school age is important as it allows them to know about the different kinds of people that exist in our world.
Some people in older generations believe that people should stick to their own knid, but our society is forever changing and views are always changing, and now more than important to mix with different people.
As a country, for a long time, we have not been a single faith society, but a multi-faith society. Single faith schools in the UK are not necessarily a bad thing, but it is vital for those schools to educate the students about the different faiths and cultures. Restricting ourselves to knowing about only one faith or culture will inevitably lead to greater ignorance resulting in more segragation and marginalisation.
Tuesday 27 February 2007
Multiculturalism, racism and class in Britain today
Submitted on 12 February, 2007 - 20:45 :: Anti-Racism Solidarity 3/106, 9 February 2007
By Camila Bassi
Three phases mark the history of multiculturalism in Britain. The first starts after the period of immigration from the Commonwealth in the 1950s and 1960s.
The newly emergent black and Asian populations occupied certain labour market positions, lived in particular areas and faced particular forms of racism. People from Bangladesh, Pakistan and the Caribbean were some of most oppressed and exploited sections of the working class (they had the worst working and housing conditions). In general terms, they have remained there and been at the sharpest edge of racial tensions.
During these decades a New Right discourse emerged, famously summarised in 1968 by the then Conservative MP for Wolverhampton South-West, Enoch Powell, in his "Rivers of Blood" speech, depicting Britain as swamped with uncontrollable waves of immigrants which were throwing the country into impending doom. It was in this context that A Sivanandan (from the Race and Class journal) says multiculturalism first began to be used as a political policy and term (the phrase has other origins). This first phase (from the 1970s onwards) was, he says, partly a counter-Powellism built through grassroots, united anti-racist struggles and was based on a genuine respect for Britain's diverse cultural groups.
From the early 1980s an official stance emerged which said Britain's racial tensions were a result of disadvantage faced by ethnic minorities, fuelled by the consequences of individual prejudice. The Home Office commissioned Scarman report into the 1981 "race riots" offered such a conclusion and, to a degree, paved the ideological way for the local government appropriation of multiculturalism.
This new orthodoxy of citing ethnic minority disadvantage and individual prejudice - the underpinning rationale then to an appropriated multiculturalism - diverted attention away from the issues of class inequality and institutionalised racism, and rather conveniently left the bourgeois, predominantly white, status quo both out of sight and reach.
By the 1980s Britain had followed in the footsteps of Canada and Australia (countries that had first initiated policies of multiculturalism in the 1970s). Incidentally, the approach typically followed by the rest of Europe was that of encouraging national minority groups to assimilate to the national identity.
This then was the heyday of multiculturalism - when local governments promoted a celebration of cultural diversity, which was and is effectively devoid of anti-racist politics and which has opened up select aspects of discrete ethnic minority cultures to the capitalist market (aka "the united colours of capitalism").
But let's not be too crude here. The local government funds which did become available for specific ethnic minority initiatives were often a positive thing. Still, the consequence of such funding has been to pit one self-defined ethnic minority group against another, breeding resentment within the non-white populations and resentment from a by-standing white ethnic majority. Local government multiculturalism began a process that marketed and depoliticised cultural diversity, and which focused on getting a series of "communities" and "community leaders" to join the ranks. Fundamentally, it has shifted us away from being people affiliating to one another, first and foremost, on the basis of being workers.
In the 1980s, layers of the left (in part infected by a postmodern identity politics) came to embrace multiculturalism as a tool for social progress. One of the most well-known examples of such a leftist approach is that of Ken Livingstone: from his early days in the Greater London Council to his more recent exploits as the Mayor of London (hosting the sexist and homophobic Islamist cleric, Al-Qaradawi).
However, other sections of the left have long opposed multiculturalism on the basis that it ignores the socio-economic conditions that foster racism, decentres anti-racist politics and descends into a crude, apolitical cultural relativism. Trying to uphold the "tradition of the Enlightenment" some on the liberal left regard multiculturalism as going against its principle of the universality of humankind. Socialists too are in favour of a universality of humankind - not to be mistaken for a forced cultural homogenisation, but a coming together of people (previously separating themselves on the grounds of ethnicity, "race" religion, nationality and so on) on the basis of their class. Indeed an international workers' culture would entail a far greater degree of cultural differentiation, more fluid cultural differentiation, as opposed to the fetishisation and solidification of cultural difference that multiculturalism engenders. Multiculturalism does, of course, also have its critics on the right; the Conservative Party, for example equated it with "political correctness gone mad" and a threat to national identity and cohesion.
The most recent phase of multiculturalism is still unravelling and, to some extent, signifies a new dual existence of continued lip service to "cultural diversity" alongside that of calls for assimilation to the national identity. A number of things happened in 2001 which prompted a government policy shift away from multiculturalism toward that of assimilation: the riots in the northern cities of Oldham, Burnley and Bradford; the Home Office commissioned Cantle report; the media hysteria over asylum seekers (echoing the earlier New Right discourse of Britain being "flooded"); and, of course, 9/11. The Cantle report summoned up the language of "community cohesion", and concluded that the problem of Britain's "race relations" is one of barriers between different cultures and a lack of civic pride, and that the solution is one of bringing Britain's ethnic minorities into the fold of its national institutions.
Similar to multiculturalism, "community cohesion" bypasses the very roots of racism, poverty and class inequality. The subtle difference between the two being that whilst the former suggested that Britain's "race relations problem" was borne out by ethnic minorities suffering from too little opportunity to express their cultures, the latter supposes that ethnic minorities have been given too much cultural expression and that this, in itself, has led to racial segregation. This new parameter of the debate has realigned populist "race" pundits, for instance, Trevor Phillips (the chair of the Commission for Racial Equality) calls for the multiculturalism project to be abandoned on the basis that it has bred separateness. The latest policy offering by David Cameron's Tory Party (a Policy Exchange report which attacked multiculturalism and promoted "community cohesion") is in the same vein. Now Sivanandan (a staunch critic of multiculturalism in the 1980s and 1990s) defends a form of multiculturalism in the face of what he describes as government talk of integration which in reality, he says, spells assimilation, monoculturalism and nativism.
Submitted on 12 February, 2007 - 20:45 :: Anti-Racism Solidarity 3/106, 9 February 2007
By Camila Bassi
Three phases mark the history of multiculturalism in Britain. The first starts after the period of immigration from the Commonwealth in the 1950s and 1960s.
The newly emergent black and Asian populations occupied certain labour market positions, lived in particular areas and faced particular forms of racism. People from Bangladesh, Pakistan and the Caribbean were some of most oppressed and exploited sections of the working class (they had the worst working and housing conditions). In general terms, they have remained there and been at the sharpest edge of racial tensions.
During these decades a New Right discourse emerged, famously summarised in 1968 by the then Conservative MP for Wolverhampton South-West, Enoch Powell, in his "Rivers of Blood" speech, depicting Britain as swamped with uncontrollable waves of immigrants which were throwing the country into impending doom. It was in this context that A Sivanandan (from the Race and Class journal) says multiculturalism first began to be used as a political policy and term (the phrase has other origins). This first phase (from the 1970s onwards) was, he says, partly a counter-Powellism built through grassroots, united anti-racist struggles and was based on a genuine respect for Britain's diverse cultural groups.
From the early 1980s an official stance emerged which said Britain's racial tensions were a result of disadvantage faced by ethnic minorities, fuelled by the consequences of individual prejudice. The Home Office commissioned Scarman report into the 1981 "race riots" offered such a conclusion and, to a degree, paved the ideological way for the local government appropriation of multiculturalism.
This new orthodoxy of citing ethnic minority disadvantage and individual prejudice - the underpinning rationale then to an appropriated multiculturalism - diverted attention away from the issues of class inequality and institutionalised racism, and rather conveniently left the bourgeois, predominantly white, status quo both out of sight and reach.
By the 1980s Britain had followed in the footsteps of Canada and Australia (countries that had first initiated policies of multiculturalism in the 1970s). Incidentally, the approach typically followed by the rest of Europe was that of encouraging national minority groups to assimilate to the national identity.
This then was the heyday of multiculturalism - when local governments promoted a celebration of cultural diversity, which was and is effectively devoid of anti-racist politics and which has opened up select aspects of discrete ethnic minority cultures to the capitalist market (aka "the united colours of capitalism").
But let's not be too crude here. The local government funds which did become available for specific ethnic minority initiatives were often a positive thing. Still, the consequence of such funding has been to pit one self-defined ethnic minority group against another, breeding resentment within the non-white populations and resentment from a by-standing white ethnic majority. Local government multiculturalism began a process that marketed and depoliticised cultural diversity, and which focused on getting a series of "communities" and "community leaders" to join the ranks. Fundamentally, it has shifted us away from being people affiliating to one another, first and foremost, on the basis of being workers.
In the 1980s, layers of the left (in part infected by a postmodern identity politics) came to embrace multiculturalism as a tool for social progress. One of the most well-known examples of such a leftist approach is that of Ken Livingstone: from his early days in the Greater London Council to his more recent exploits as the Mayor of London (hosting the sexist and homophobic Islamist cleric, Al-Qaradawi).
However, other sections of the left have long opposed multiculturalism on the basis that it ignores the socio-economic conditions that foster racism, decentres anti-racist politics and descends into a crude, apolitical cultural relativism. Trying to uphold the "tradition of the Enlightenment" some on the liberal left regard multiculturalism as going against its principle of the universality of humankind. Socialists too are in favour of a universality of humankind - not to be mistaken for a forced cultural homogenisation, but a coming together of people (previously separating themselves on the grounds of ethnicity, "race" religion, nationality and so on) on the basis of their class. Indeed an international workers' culture would entail a far greater degree of cultural differentiation, more fluid cultural differentiation, as opposed to the fetishisation and solidification of cultural difference that multiculturalism engenders. Multiculturalism does, of course, also have its critics on the right; the Conservative Party, for example equated it with "political correctness gone mad" and a threat to national identity and cohesion.
The most recent phase of multiculturalism is still unravelling and, to some extent, signifies a new dual existence of continued lip service to "cultural diversity" alongside that of calls for assimilation to the national identity. A number of things happened in 2001 which prompted a government policy shift away from multiculturalism toward that of assimilation: the riots in the northern cities of Oldham, Burnley and Bradford; the Home Office commissioned Cantle report; the media hysteria over asylum seekers (echoing the earlier New Right discourse of Britain being "flooded"); and, of course, 9/11. The Cantle report summoned up the language of "community cohesion", and concluded that the problem of Britain's "race relations" is one of barriers between different cultures and a lack of civic pride, and that the solution is one of bringing Britain's ethnic minorities into the fold of its national institutions.
Similar to multiculturalism, "community cohesion" bypasses the very roots of racism, poverty and class inequality. The subtle difference between the two being that whilst the former suggested that Britain's "race relations problem" was borne out by ethnic minorities suffering from too little opportunity to express their cultures, the latter supposes that ethnic minorities have been given too much cultural expression and that this, in itself, has led to racial segregation. This new parameter of the debate has realigned populist "race" pundits, for instance, Trevor Phillips (the chair of the Commission for Racial Equality) calls for the multiculturalism project to be abandoned on the basis that it has bred separateness. The latest policy offering by David Cameron's Tory Party (a Policy Exchange report which attacked multiculturalism and promoted "community cohesion") is in the same vein. Now Sivanandan (a staunch critic of multiculturalism in the 1980s and 1990s) defends a form of multiculturalism in the face of what he describes as government talk of integration which in reality, he says, spells assimilation, monoculturalism and nativism.
Ethnic Minorities
People in society have become marginalised, where certain groups of people depending on the colour of their skin tend to live in certain areas of the UK.
This is more apparent in London, where groups of people have been segragated in relation to the colour of their skin. This isn't necessarily down to the coour of their skin but more about finding people of their own kind and creating a society out of that.
So who's at fault for this divide between people? The ethnic groups themselves or society in a larger sense for pushing people away?
The British government is forever making promises to promote multi-culturalism by introducing policies. But introducing policies will not automatically mean that people will become more tolerant or understand different cultures better.
We need to learn about each other and the cultures that we come from in order to truly become a multi-cultural society.
This is more apparent in London, where groups of people have been segragated in relation to the colour of their skin. This isn't necessarily down to the coour of their skin but more about finding people of their own kind and creating a society out of that.
So who's at fault for this divide between people? The ethnic groups themselves or society in a larger sense for pushing people away?
The British government is forever making promises to promote multi-culturalism by introducing policies. But introducing policies will not automatically mean that people will become more tolerant or understand different cultures better.
We need to learn about each other and the cultures that we come from in order to truly become a multi-cultural society.
Tuesday 20 February 2007
Britain
Segragation is ever more eminant in the UK. White and black, and black and asian conflict groups have formed in the UK.
Are we more tolerant of people with different cultural backgrounds?
Or do we as a society alienate people and create divisions in other parts of our social lives where we are reluctant to integrate?
Are we more tolerant of people with different cultural backgrounds?
Or do we as a society alienate people and create divisions in other parts of our social lives where we are reluctant to integrate?
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