AS THE WORLD GROWS EVER SMALLER........ (I'm Not Racist But...)

Member Name: Richada

Product:	I'm Not Racist But...
Date:	04/04/09 (189 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: There should be many benifits to living in a multi-racial, multi cultural society.

Disadvantages: Human beings are "programmed" to fear the unknown or "foreign".

I don't know about you, but I often think that anyone who starts a sentence with the line "I'm not racist but......" usually continues to dig themselves into a pit which quite clearly marks them out as being a racist, or rather more politely, in my own charmingly old fashioned terminology: prejudiced.

Yes, this is about racism, but surely it cannot have passed your notice that racism very often goes hand in hand with other prejudices including religion, homophobia, and even sex prejudice.

Why is this?

My simplistic theory, for what it is worth, is that as humans we are programmed to fear what we do not understand or have no experience of. Fear yes, but surely, also as humans, we should have intelligence enough not to turn that fear into bigotry and hatred?

As I said, it is a very simplistic theory and in an ideal world it should stand up, unfortunately none among us live in that ideal world, it is a theory tested on all sides by factors, generally, far beyond our control.

For very obvious reasons I hope that this "review":
a) does not turn into a tirade and that
b) having read it, you will not draw the conclusion that Richada is a racist.

MY BACKGOUND

I was born to white English parents in 1962, a very different era indeed, especially in the then "genteel" Home Counties. The world was so much larger then, the British Empire was still a vivid living memory for many, especially those retired in the very area in which I was bought up.

Indeed, our very own green and pleasant land actually ended at Watford Gap, beyond which the likes of "us" did not dare to venture.

Oh yes, Brighton had a smattering of Italians and Poles, even a few Chinese in the restaurant trade, but it was far from the cosmopolitan city that it has turned into during the last thirty years.

My father, particularly, grew up in frightfully middle class London suburbia before the Second World War and held very strong views.....somewhere to the right of Alf Garnet I used to think when I was in my young teens. Now in hindsight I realise his quite extreme views were only a reflection of his totally "white English" upbringing.

Until the age of nine, when I was set away to boarding school, I had no experience of "foreign" children at all, even holidaying in Austria and Italy we had not really come into contact with foreigners - merely staying aloof and maintaining that good old stiff upper lip.

At boarding school it was suddenly quite a novelty to be sharing dormitories and showers with boys (it was a single sex school) from all over the world. And do you know what? We were all exactly the same. No matter what the colour of our skin, nor even our native tongue, we were all in that same lonely boat together.

Quite unwittingly, my parents had sent me to a place that my father would have regarded as hell. My best friend was Jamaican; I had friends also from Ghana, Holland, America and one, oh yes, from Guildford!

This is indeed the only aspect of boarding school that I now, over thirty years later, feel REALLY benefited me - after six years I, nor any other boy that had been there at the time, could have walked out of that place a racist.

Returning to Brighton for the last two years of my education was a bit of a shock, the Sixth Form College here at that time seemed a very select establishment by comparison, I do not believe that any of my year were actually born more than about four miles away from the very building in which they were studying!

During the years that followed, my career brought me into contact with many nationalities in far too many situations and circumstances to go into here. I have actually suffered from "inverse racism", as I call it, on a couple of occasions, but more often than not it was the shocking and unexpected reaction of some of my older colleagues that really took me by surprise.

Inverse racism? Yes, one, totally lazy individual - "the world's laziest man" I used to refer to him as. Never done a stroke of work in 30 years, but that, at the very hint of a request to carry out a task would retort "you're only asking me to do that because of the colour of my skin", there was no way around it, director after director attempted to oust him, but with no success whatsoever.

With the approach of the current century our business had no choice but to become far more cosmopolitan - our largest customer started sub-contracting work around the globe - Malaysia, Australia, Poland, to name just a few. This lead to an extraordinary and life changing "happening" in my life, in 2000, I met a beautiful young Polish tool buyer over the telephone; we fell in love and were married the following year.

I rather hope that this preamble and my "international marriage" status will give some balance to the following paragraphs.


MY OPINION

Oh dear, heading into really deep water here now, I will try not to actually, but these are my own very personal views and 2008 was the year in which they actually crystallised in a sense.

Two completely divergent factors for us came together to throw into sharp focus the cause of racism in this country. I cannot speak about it in broader terms than nationally, as that is all that I have experience in.

The two "factors" are the recent and rapid growth of the predominantly young Catholic Polish community right here in Brighton, and the largely Muslim, Asian community in the north west of England - and I am going to highlight Nelson in Lancashire here - although many of the mill towns of that area are similarly populated ethnically.

Starting up in Nelson, we spent four days, on business, in the area back in late October - a whole day actually working in and around Nelson itself. Those not involved in the engineering industry may not realise quite how strong this sector of industry still is in today's depressed economic climate. Many small engineering companies and toolmakers are working flat out up in Lancashire to satisfy the demands, primarily, of the aerospace industry.

To me, as a southerner, this is an honest "working" area of the country, an area where extreme Pennine beauty rubs shoulders with grimy, rather old fashioned industry. It is an area where the industrial revolution took off thanks to the Victorian cotton mills, which in their day attracted huge numbers of cheap, largely Asian, immigrants. Driving around the area in 2008 we felt as never before the "them and us" factor, and it was in Nelson that I actually voiced for the first time my observation to my wife;

"I wonder why you never see mixed groups standing around chatting here?" It was lunch time in Nelson and there were groups of maybe six Asians standing around on street corners quite happily passing the time of day. At 3.00pm on those same street corners there was not an Asian in site, only the odd lone white person.

The point that I am rather clumsily trying to make here is that after well over 100 years, the two groups simply are not integrated, large parts of Nelson are "little Asia". Obviously I was not around when the mill workers arrived in Lancashire......

......but fascinatingly, I was very much around, and in a sense, right in the "thick of it" when, about five years ago, the large influx of Poles first took place in my own home town.

My Polish wife came here in 2001 and married me before Poland became part of the EEC. By choice she fully integrated with English society, although obviously retains deep roots in Poland. Our home here is a happy fusion of English and Polish culture.

Through our local church, we have an elderly female Polish friend, who following capture by the Nazi's lost everything and was eventually shipped to England - traded for her brother who was forced to labour for the Germans, she never saw him again. Arriving here not speaking a word of English, she later married an Englishman and brought up her family here. She has very strong views, views which I actually find myself increasingly sharing, about immigrants, of all nationalities, integrating into the country in which they choose to settle. So strongly does she feel about this, that she will actually refuse to speak in Polish to any of our Polish guests who are capable of speaking English. I am often amused by the fact that she speaks in English to my wife - even if I am not in their company!

In the case of Polish workers coming here, the majority have a surprisingly good command of English language. One tends to expect this to improve once they live in England. In one notable case of my acquaintance, due to living in an entirely Polish household and only associating socially with Poles, her English has actually become progressively worse during the past year.

Our elderly Polish friend's views are, in my opinion at least, formed by circumstance, age and wisdom. Regrettably they are not shared by the majority of, much younger, foreign nationals entering this country, all too many of whom wish to extract the benefits that we have to offer, whilst making no effort to integrate whatsoever with society here.

Many of these immigrants, or migrant workers as they start out, no matter how well educated, are simply not well adjusted to living and working abroad. I am of the mind that exactly the same path was trodden by the Asian mill workers in the Victorian era as is now being followed by the recent, and continuing, influx of Eastern Europeans who are currently here merely to work.

Just as their forebears, many are attracted to this country by the idea that the streets are paved with gold. Many that come here are actually not very bright intellectually, cannot speak a word of English and are at once prey to fellow countrymen acting virtually as slave masters.

I often wonder what it must be like for many who get off a bus at Victoria Coach Station, having travelled over a thousand miles across Europe, only to be faced with the stark realisation that not a single word is written in their native tongue.

Seeing one fully developed ethnic minority (very much a majority in the area in which they live) in Nelson, albeit a much smaller and less cosmopolitan centre than Brighton, leaves me with an uneasy feeling about my wife's compatriots here in my own town.

Just like the Asians in Victorian times, the Poles are a willing (usually more skilled and educated too) workforce who have filled a lot of mundane jobs that English people simply regard as inferior or too poorly paid. Initially this may well be seen to our advantage, although personally I feel that in many cases they are carrying out work so far below their capabilities that this in itself will lead to problems eventually.

As we all know, there is far more to life than purely work, you cannot keep any section of the community imprisoned in their work twenty-four seven. Many Poles draw comfort from and build a life around their local (Polish) church. Most towns of any size where there is a Polish community have a Polish priest conducting a Polish Mass. Unusually, here in Brighton, thanks to a still strong ex-pat Polish community after the Second World War, that actually pre-dates the falling of the borders.

However, the old Polish priest is now gone - replaced by the "new guard". Indeed the elderly War evacuees have now been totally swamped by 18 to 25 year old Poles who have arrived over the last five years. It is a young and vibrant community now, centred in an area close to the centre of the city, the very good Polish shop on one side, the charming old English church in which the Polish Mass is held on the other.

98% of Poles are Catholic and obviously the Catholic church in England has, quite naturally, very much welcomed this considerable swelling of its ranks here. Understandable as that is, unfortunately, from what I have witnessed, it is also actually furthering the segregation of the Polish community. My wife and I were both shocked at the Polish priests' very obvious disapproval of my wife's' attendance at English Mass in her local community, rather than in "his" Polish church. Such a pity our elderly Polish friend was not in attendance at that meeting, I rather suspect that the priest would not have had any legs left to stand on!

Apart from on purely racial grounds, what possible motivation could a priest have for separating husband and wife in worship I wonder?

Regrettably, until the powers that be - in the Polish case, the church - start actually "preaching" integration, we are rapidly heading for yet another minority, foreign speaking and living "enclave" within English society.

There are some that will tell you that this will only be a temporary situation, that all of our guest workers will go home to start a prosperous new life in their own countries. Had we been in Nelson 150 years ago, I am sure that we would have been hearing exactly the same thing.

Integration is not a one way street. It is a mutually beneficial process, unlike in 1962, or 1862 come to that, the world is a very small place now, a very cosmopolitan place, we either choose to integrate or, by nature of circumstance, continue, through no positive choice of our own, to become ever more racist.

A sad, but inevitable conclusion.


Richada / Dooyoo © April 2009.

Summary: Another century brings another ethnic minority and the inevitable problems that accompany it.