The awful, shocking, terrible, horrible realisation…

If a large proportion of the population are feeling uncomfortable with where they feel their country is going do you solve it by calling them rasist or bigots?

The trouble is that most of the people who ‘feel uncomfortable with the way their country is going’ come out with made-up stories from the tabloids or chinese whispers heard down the pub to support their ‘feeling’ – and many of them aren’t interested in actual evidence that might contradict it.

It’s the very fact that there’s an atmosphere of fear when debating subjects like this that crimes like the grooming of young girls for sex by older Asian men has gone unchecked.

Unchecked? I could have sworn quite a lot of asian men have been arrested for that recently. How did the police manage to overcome the power of the secret lefties that control everything I wonder?

Fiji ? Do you mean the recent history of military coups or the period from 1874-1970 when it was a British Colony and 1000s of Indian workers were brought to the island ? Good old British Colonialism and the force for good that was.

If a large proportion of the population are feeling uncomfortable with where they feel their country is going do you solve it by calling them rasist or bigots?

No but that doe snot mean they are not racists or bigots

TBH if we deported everyone they disliked they would still be racist and bigots so the problem would not really be solved
what we need to do is educate them so that people can live side by side in harmony say over a cup of tea , some biscuits and a game of football

Grum:

Same kind of issues as sending your ethnic minority kids to a 90% white school I’d imagine (or 99.97% white like my school).

What are those issues then?

I’m well aware of that and I believe that on average immigrants tend to contribute more to the economy than the average UK born citizen, that doesn’t mean there are no issues though – in some small communities they have seen reasonably large (as a percentage of the total population of the community) numbers of people come from rural Pakistan, for example – often from the same village/area. Claiming there are no potential issues around that is just counter-productive IMO. Some of the problem is obviously just bigoted people who don’t like Jonny Foreigner, but I don’t think that’s all it is.

The issue there is insularity and closed communities. The fact that the people in question are from a different country is not actually the problem.

Immigrantion in itself doesn’t cause these problems, because we know there are plenty of immigrants who get along just fine. By all means solve the problems of language difficulties in schools, or insular communities not integrating, but if you want to avoid racist connotations then don’t call them immigrant problems.

Molgrips, I’m astounded that someone I thought had more than a modicum of intelligence would ask that question.

Is this an attempt by you to give someone enough rope in the hope that he’ll hang himself? Or do you genuinely think that’s not a problem?

I’m asking him to clarify his position. It’s not a rhetorical question so don’t infer that I don’t think it’s a problem.

I’m a little bit right of centre AND a Daily Mail reader. But five years ago when we moved to Derbyshire and were house hunting one of the things we steered clear of was imm…

No only joking. What we didn’t want was a house in our street to have a flagpole with an England flag in the garden.

What are those issues then?

Are you being deliberately obtuse?

The issue there is insularity and closed communities.

That’s part of it yes, but not the whole story – part of it is as I said that some people come from areas which have what is by our standards extreme levels of poverty, low education standards, religious fundamentalism, and social conservatism with little knowledge or understanding of concepts we value like equality and human rights. Quite a lot of people like that coming to a struggling ex-mill town is likely to cause issues. That’s not to remotely suggest we should send them all home, or that all immigrants are stupid or backward – just like I’m not suggesting all white working class people are racists.

There’s a danger of trying to defend deeply illiberal attitudes on the name of liberalism though.

This is at least my view from having worked in some of these areas and spoken to many people who have lived and worked in these communities for many years, who are about as far from being Daily Mail readers as you can imagine.

if you want to avoid racist connotations then don’t call them immigrant problems.

I believe I used the word issues not problems. And I don’t think there are any racist connotations to what I said. There’s clearly loads and loads of immigrants who don’t fit the picture described above.

Fiji ? Do you mean the recent history of military coups or the period from 1874-1970 when it was a British Colony and 1000s of Indian workers were brought to the island ? Good old British Colonialism and the force for good that was.

Yes, that’s the one.

Not a loaded question. Just haven’t seen much of the situation there lately.

*goes googling

“Racist” and “bigot” are strong words and a little over used by some on this forum.

I’m an immigrant and don’t automatically assume that people who have issues with me are racist. Some occasionally come out with things I consider xenophobic but calling them racists would be an exaggeration.

To be racist it has to be based on my race not just my status as an immigrant, religion, origin or accent. When I’ve be called a “white don’t-want-to-be-banned-for-swear-filter-avoidance”, that’s racist.

I was lucky enough to visit Fiji in the interim period when it had just started self governing and before the coups. Lovely people beautiful place but some crushing poverty, not helped by kicking out economically active groups of people and spending more money on the military (most of whom train in the British Army, as an aside). Good example though of what can happen when two communities absolutely do not mix, and one eventually outnumbers the original. Sad consequences.

Wow. Not sure I have ever seen so much disagreement sprout from essentially the same moderate standpoint. I guess fora breed heated debate, even when everyone essentially agrees.

This thread is restoring my faith on STW though. We really are a painfully fair, over educated, middle class (slightly Trotskyite) bunch. I’m welling up with it all. 😉

jambalaya – Member

@quartz – the UK Border control (therefore ONS) don’t know how many immigrants we have, people come in on education visas or as holiday makers from the EU and elsewhere and just stay illegally. We don’t track this, we don’t know whether they leave.

Completely wrong. We do track student visas very tightly- in fact, the constant politically-led tightening of student visas has put huge pressure on the further education sector, as it’s now a major deterrant on foreign students paying to study here. Getting a visa is harder and it’s more expensive. Every year, we lose students who have every right to study here but just haven’t managed to jump through the right hoops in the right timescale- this costs us hundreds of thousands of pounds in lost fees and in costs. Once here, attendance is tracked and reported, working is restricted, police registration is required for Tier 4 visa holders. Right to remain has also been restricted. And we track when they leave (which, in the overwhelming majority of cases, they do without being asked)

Ironically, as a result of these excessive and constantly changing rules, the UKBA hasn’t been able to keep up to date with enforcement so there is usually a substantial backlog of tens of thousands of expiring/cancelling T4 visas which could involve overstaying students, though in reality the number which actually do will be a fraction of that (as that backlog includes legitimate visa extensions, ongoing conversions from visitor visa to student visa or from student visa to working visa, and accidental overstays in the process of being fixed).

This is all idealogically led to “cut immigration”- they’ve targeted the softest and largest immigrant group, students, as it’s so easy to cut back and make headlines, despite the fact that this is a hugely succesful UK industry worth billions. If you took away international students tomorrow, many (perhaps most) UK universities would fold and the quality of teaching and research would be hammered. It would cost us influence on the world stage (since the UK is the world’s second-biggest educator of foreign students, british graduates are everywhere), it’d hurt education for UK citizens, and it’d actually achieve ****-all since students overstaying or breaching visas is actually a very small problem, made absolutely irrelevant by the immense benefit gained from foreign students.

However, they can fiddle immigration stats by simply reducing the number of students entering the country- as most graduating students leave the country, you can create a short-term imbalance by admitting fewer this year, as you’ll have more exiting from 2-4-6 years ago when numbers were higher. Of course, this won’t last, because in 2-4-6 years, you’ll have less students leaving as less arrived! But for the duration of their administration they can say “Look! Less net immigration!” and in a few years when the false fall vanishes they can say “Look! The new guys have let immigration rise!” Nobody believes that cutting student immigration is beneficial in any other way but sadly the government have set immigration targets which they’ll be unable to meet without doing this.

But do tell us more about this, you seem well informed.

Rusty – which Northern ex-mill town is your reference?

Burnley would be my guess.

Rusty – which Northern ex-mill town is your reference?

Don’t know him, but I reckon it’s Burnley.

Junkyard,i actually know the people who were racially abused and pelted with stones by Asians.I helped them move house when they had had enough of the area.
I’m sorry that the facts are unpalateable for you and that you readily dismiss as “pub talk” opinions and experiences from other contributors of this forum.

But do tell us more about this, you seem well informed.

That’s not likely to happen, seeing as he was banned for being Fred earlier today.

It can’t be Burnley, he states it has a perfectly integrated British Asian community…

@ Cougar- that was Jambalaya’s quote, not Quartzfred’s.

Bury

Its elementary my dear Watsons

@ Cougar- that was Jambalaya’s quote, not Quartzfred’s.

Ah yes. As you were.

Can’t be Bury either…

Are you being deliberately obtuse?

Of course not, I just want it spelled out, it all sounds a bit ‘isn’t it obvious?!’

Junkyard,i actually know the people who were racially abused and pelted with stones by Asians.I helped them move house when they had had enough of the area.

So is that an immigration issue?

It is Burnley I believe, or somewhere near there.

molgrips – my school, which was almost exclusively white, was pretty racist. We had to have a special assembly when a black kid came to our school to warn us not be racist towards him. I’d be surprised if a school with the opposite ethnic mix didn’t have some of the same issues in reverse. Plus the issues Junkyard mentioned.

I’d be surprised if a school with the opposite ethnic mix didn’t have some of the same issues in reverse.

Hmm, seems unlikely to me.

Molly. whilst the forum needs folk who question you have taken this to extremes here IMHO

I’m sorry that the facts are unpalateable for you and that you readily dismiss as “pub talk” opinions and experiences from other contributors of this forum.

I explained why i thought what I though and IMHO there is little mileage to be gained by us repeating this unless you can offer some proof that they were racially abused by Asians to the point they were driven from their home for a loss or you can prove house prices drop because asians buy homes. I doubt this happens but if it does could you show how it is their fault rather than racist white folks fault for not wanting to live there. If you cannot prove any of this shall we leave it there then? without getting personal?

offer some proof that they were racially abused by Asians

It’s them immigrant neo-nazis, innit.

Here’s one shortly after arriving at Heathrow :

I’d be surprised if a school with the opposite ethnic mix didn’t have some of the same issues in reverse.
Hmm, seems unlikely to me.

Why?

Molgrips, it can and does happen.

When I arrived in multi-cultural Brum aged ten, I was not Asian enough for some of the Indians and Pakistanis, nor English enough for some of the whites. I couldn’t bloody win. I also was attacked for somehow upsetting some of the Asian children – attacked by some of the white children. Even better some of the white children were at most second generation immigrants…

Also I was lambasted for being both a toff and a Cockney. You couldn’t make it up!

There was no racism at my 99% white school- all the non-white pupils were either Razaks or Nazirs and they were all either massive or mental. I think this is a good model.

I experienced zero racism in my previous 99.9% white populated school in Surrey. I was simply accepted as me…

I experienced zero racism in my previous 99.9% white populated school in Surrey. I was simply accepted as me…

They probably had the special assembly too. 😛 Good to hear though.

I went back to my home town at Christmas several years after leaving and was briefly having a drink with some old school acquaintances when one of them actually started telling me how Hitler wasn’t such a bad guy and he was just trying to do what was right for his country at the time, blah blah blah. 😯

I can’t quite believe that wrecker knew nothing about Idi Amin and the expulsion of the Ugandan Asian population! That’s very recent British history, I’ve even seen it mentioned on TV within the last couple of months or so.
Is our education system that fubared, or is talking about such aspects of our history frowned on for getting too close to the ‘immigration’ question?
And I’ve realised my understanding of ‘shibboleth’ is wrong, I always thought it meant;

shibboleth
a manner of speaking that is distinctive of a particular group of people,
motto, slogan, catchword, shibboleth
a favorite saying of a sect or political group

I realise now it means a long pole, paddle or stick, used for the stirring of excrement or manure… 😉

I did a phone interview with a chap from Bangalore for a computer programmer job. He was bright, enthusiastic, easy to talk to and knew his stuff. Chances are quite good we’ll hire him and bring him over to the UK. Is this wrong? Will Rusty’s friend be cross with me?

…made-up stories from the tabloids or chinese whispers heard down the pub.

Racist.

😉

On the house selling issue, sad to report, there are people who will be swayed by their preconceptions. When my parents sold their house to a brown-skinned family, in a leafy suburb of Cramond (itself a posh-ish suburb of Edinburgh), our next door neighbours came round and berated my mother for bringing down the tone of the neighbourhood!

My mum is half Chinese 😀

Racist.

🙂

I just Wikipedia’d it – never knew it’s an expression that ‘contains an implied racist stereotype’. You learn something (is racist) every day. 😛

For a dissertation I followed up work regarding different types of prejudice within different cultures and supported the findings of the parent research – although to lower statistical significance (c95%). Let no-one tell you that all groups cannot be prejudiced… I was able to: –
– identify that a proportionately larger population is more likely to be more sophisticated in it’s articulation of prejudice towards other groups
– the more recent the large-scale immigration of individuals from a particular culture had occurred, the more likely that they are to be prejudiced in their attitudes towards other cultures
– in terms or articulation in prejudice of higher or lower sophistication, broadly individuals from Afro-Carribean cultures were least likely to display attitudes of prejudice, then individuals from white-European cultures and finally individuals from cultures originating on the Indian sub-continent

Obviously, there were significant caveats on my research but still…

It can’t be Burnley, he states it has a perfectly integrated British Asian community…

Correct, I’m afraid. Burnley has a very polarised population of embittered white working class and resentful Asians. Asian gangs control parts of Burnley and on two occasions I’ve experienced them in action intimidating white people who happen to have strayed into their area.

Thirty years of travel to Africa and sub-continental Asia has shown me that there’s no love lost between the two races. This has got me wondering how moderate Asian Muslims must be feeling about last week’s murder in Woolwich where a huge muscular testosterone-fuelled African, a former devout Catholic who had “converted” to Islam, slaughtered somebody in the most public and casual way possible in the name of their religion. No wonder they rushed to disassociate themselves from him.

jamj1974 – I was also attacked at school fairly regularly, despite everyone including me being white.

Kids always fight in schools. If it’s not race it’s something else, isnt’ it? So is it really an immigration or race issue?

Are there any studies into incidence of violence in schools compared to ethnic diversity, adjusted for socio-economic factors? If not, there should be.

There was no racism at my 99% white school

Why am I NOT surprised by ^that^ lil snippet…

And the OP becomes null and void by associating ‘Northern ex-mill town’ and ‘perfectly integrated British Asian community’.

If you think this is true then you need to remove your head from up your arse.

Ignorance is indeed alive and well.

Kids always fight in schools. If it’s not race it’s something else, isnt’ it? So is it really an immigration or race issue?

FFS molgrips – racism has nothing to do with race? Ok then. 😕

There was no racism at my 99% white school

Why am I NOT surprised by ^that^ lil snippet…

I don’t understand what point you’re trying to make.