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Immigration

An interesting concept here

We have to avoid ‘integration’ becoming another form of racism
Afua Hirsch

Assimilation is an invidious concept. No one in Britain should have to give up their heritage to fit in

Eh?

Iwill never forget the day I joined an English Defence League march in Chelmsford, Essex, in the run-up to the Brexit vote. I went as a journalist, and I wasn’t expecting it to be a comfortable experience. But the most shocking moment was not what I predicted. Instead of threatening me with directly racist slurs, a senior figure at the march told me he wasn’t fussed by my presence. “You’re OK,” he said. “You speak English properly. You know our ways. You’re like us. It’s the others we have a problem with.”

By “others”, he meant Muslims – the EDL’s most frequent target – or any other visible minorities he deemed to have made insufficient effort to assimilate into British culture. It struck me as the most chilling and insidious form of racism of all: he was, in effect, saying, “People who come to England are acceptable to the extent they attempt to mimic us.” Underpinning that is a confidence in one culture’s inherent superiority over others. It’s for exactly this reason that it is becoming more widely recognised that assimilationist thinking – the idea that a particular culture is preferable, and that others should therefore adopt it – is a racist ideology.

Why come if you don’t want to join the culture?

Our Word Indeed

‘We are a target’: wave of xenophobic attacks sweeps Johannesburg
Men with homemade weapons march along a street in Johannesburg on Sunday. Photograph: AP
Migrants in South Africa’s commercial capital face looting, violence and sometimes even death

by Jason Burke

In the Kismayo meat restaurant at the heart of the Mayfair neighbourhood of Johannesburg, the elders of the city’s Somali community hold urgent meetings about the attacks on foreign-owned businesses and traders that have been surging for more than a week.

D’ye mean that it’s not just Whitey who is sometimes xenophobic and racist?

Gosh!

Hey, maybe right and maybe wrong but….

How well’s this going to play in Peoria?

The Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren called the initiative “immoral”.

“Our laws and values compel us to help those fleeing violence and oppression,” she wrote. “As president, I’ll welcome at least 175,000 refugees per year by the end of my first term.”

Let’s hope she does. Shaking each hand individually will leave her with no time to do anything more dangerous.

Boys of no appearance

Four teenage boys have denied harassing two women in a homophobically aggravated attack after they refused to perform a sex act on a bus.

Two 17-year-olds, a 16-year-old and another boy, 15, appeared at Highbury Corner Youth Court in London on Wednesday to enter not guilty pleas to a charge of causing harassment by using threatening or abusive words or behaviour.

They’re not named – that guide to appearance and backgrouind – because they’re under age.

Not that I’ve checked the numbers but

A British University has closed its Student Union bar because of a dwindling demand for alcohol from its students who increasingly prefer coffee to beer.

Abertay University, located in Dundee, Scotland, said that stocking alcohol at Bar One was no longer viable as the income generated from sales has “dropped drastically” in recent years.

Alcohol sales at the venue, which opened in 2005, have plummeted by two-thirds since 2014, as young people are choosing to spend their money on non-alcoholic alternatives such as coffee.

Might there be religious reasons for this? The religious structure of the population, as with that of race, being very different across the age cohorts.

Yes love

There appears to be some uncertainty as to which “home” the four congresswomen could go back to (Trump’s ‘go back’ racism is crude, but may yet be effective, 17 July). Is it too much to hope that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s family tree might reveal roots in the UK that she could return to? She would be most welcome.
Ginny Gough
Cottenham, Cambridgeshire

And much of America would like her to take the opportunity too.

Fun thought, isn’t it?

in a country where the Swedish Democrats, (Sverigedemokraterna) strongly influenced by the idea of keeping different cultures apart – as well as the idea of ethnicity as the basis for nationhood-

Anyone want to come up with alternative measures of nationhood? Sharing the same piece of geography maybe? A common culture?

Family, clan, tribe, they obviously depend upon that ethnicity. Nation maybe not so much. But what is that glue?

A statement for which you can get fired these days

Given that it’s the only one actually selected as an example this must be verboten speech:

On OpenPsych, a non-peer-reviewed journal, Carl alleged in 2016 that the percentage of Muslims in a country’s population are positively “associated with Islamist terrorism across Western countries”. Carl has also spoken at the London Conference on Intelligence – a conference on race intelligence and eugenics which in the past has been covertly held at University College London.

I’ve no idea whether it’s true or not of course. It would be interesting either way. There is a correlation with the Muslim percentage of the population? There isn’t?

After all, if Britain had zero Islamic population then 7/7 would not have happened…..

Hmm, well, yes, Bradford, eh?

Basharat Khaliq, of Glaisdale Court, Allerton, Bradford, was found guilty of five counts of rape and one count of sexual assault, police said. He was jailed for 20 years.

Saeed Akhtar, 55, of Back Girlington Road, Bradford, was found guilty of one charge of rape and two charges of causing or inciting child prostitution. He was jailed for 20 years.

Naveed Akhtar, 43, of Newport Place, Bradford, was found guilty of two counts of rape. He was jailed for 17 years.

Parvaze Ahmed, 36, of Farcliffe Road, Bradford, was found guilty of three charges of rape. He was jailed for 17 years.

Izar Hussain, 32, of St Leonard’s Road, Bradford, was found guilty of rape. He was jailed for 16 years.

Zeeshan Ali, 32, of Durham Terrace, Bradford, was found guilty of sexual assault. He was jailed for 18 months.

Kieran Harris, 28, of Fir Parade, Dewsbury, was found guilty of two counts of rape. He was jailed for 17 years.

Fahim Iqbal, 28, of Quarry Road, Dewsbury, was found guilty of aiding and abetting one of Harris’s rapes. He was jailed for seven years.

Mohammed Usman, 31, of Quaker Street, Bradford, was found guilty of two counts of rape. He was jailed for 17 years.

This is fun

The newborn baby of Shamima Begum is a British citizen and could return to the UK despite the teenage mother losing her citizenship over her support for the terror group Isil, according to lawyers.

For there’s a concept similar to anchor babies in EU law. Mother of an EU citizen under 18 presumptively gains EU residence…..

They say not but I don’t believe them:

Jihadi bride Shamima Begum will be barred from using her baby’s British citizenship as a backdoor route to return to the UK, Government sources have indicated.

It emerged on Wednesday that the newborn baby of Ms Begum, who left east London to join Islamic state in Syria four years ago, is a British citizen because he was born at the weekend before his 19-year old mother was stripped of her British citizenship on Tuesday.

Home Secretary Sajid Javid confirmed the boy’s status to MPs: “If a parent does lose their British citizenship it does not affect the rights of their child.”

Haven’t things changed?

Only 14 per cent of police officers in the capital are from BAME (black and ethnic minority) communities, compared to 43 per cent of the London population.

Not to say that this is better or worse. But it’s certainly different from what it was.

Part of the political disconnect is that those doing national politics – and national media etc – think this reflects the nation, not London alone.

From 2011 Census, 14% BAME for England and Wales (less for UK as whole).

And rather lower for many other areas. Always been amused by the cast in Vera. Get quite a few you’d not think ethnically Geordie in there. Not as a plot point, just as a general member of the cast, with local accents ‘n’ all. You know, this is what modern GeordieLand looks like.

Not really. Take Hartlepool – in the region, think there’s an episode or two there. 92,000 people odd. 89,000 of whom are white. Maybe 600 in total British Indian/Pakistani. 200 more Bangladeshis, perhaps 200 total of all varieties of Black (ie, African and Caribbean). (From “2011 Census: Ethnic group, local authorities in England and Wales”).

No casting director in London’s going to believe that. No one in national media’s going to believe that. We should have no more than token BAME in Vera because that’s what the BAME presence is up there, token? Gerraway wi’ya.

And thus is built that gap. London’s very different from the rest of Britain. Might well be better – but it’s definitely different.

Well, no, not so much

Arizona: Four women convicted after leaving food and water in desert for migrants

A lot of weight upon that “after” there.

A federal judge has found four women guilty of entering a national wildlife refuge without a permit

That’s the misdemeanor – think £5 fine from the magistrates level of crime – they’ve been found guilty of.

And so say all of us

‘We would rather die at sea than go back to France,’ say migrants in Calais

All inhabitants of these sceptered isles are, far enough back in he genealogy, refugees from France of course. It’d just that the way these things work we get to decide who is allowed to join us…..

And how we are diminished

A decade ago it was an argument among such female labourers that suddenly flared into an accusation of blasphemy and set in train bloody events that are still unresolved.

The accusation against a Christian mother-of-five called Asia Bibi and the death sentence that followed divided Pakistan and prompted religious extremists to assassinate two senior politicians who spoke out for her.

The 54-year-old was in October acquitted on appeal, but remains in protective custody until the ruling has been reviewed. She is widely expected to be freed to flee to the West and claim asylum.

Pakistan’s supreme court demolished her conviction saying it was fatally undermined by procedural problems, contradictory testimony from her accusers and an apparently forced confession.

But even settling her abroad is not without complications. Wary of a reaction from Britain’s Muslim community, prime minister Theresa May reportedly shrugged off the pleas of cabinet ministers that the UK step forward and offer a route to safety. Australia, the US or Canada are likely alternatives.

Is that actually true?

Sure, there’s no legal reason why we should offer Bibi asylum or refuge. No real reason at all other than being the ex-colonial power and thus the grown ups in the room.

But the reason why not? There’re enough from there here that’ll cut up rough if we do?

Time to bring Charlie Napier’s management method back from there to here then isn’t it?

Fascinating really

Sajid Javid has defended his right to highlight the Pakistani Asian background of grooming gangs.

The home secretary said it would be wrong not to investigate why more than 50 per cent of those involved in recent child sexual abuse grooming cases were of Pakistani heritage.

Mr Javid, himself of Pakistani heritage and a Muslim, warned that ignoring the ethnicity of abusers would give “oxygen” to extremists.

He also defended his previous comments in a tweet in October in which he described a Huddersfield gang as “sick Asian paedophiles.”

Isn’t is remarkable that a defence is thought necessary? Rather than it just being an obvious statement of truth?

No, it is not true that all men of Pakistani background are kiddie fiddlers. It is true that a preponderance of child grooming gangs are of Pakistani background. Yet to say so requires a defence?

Is this racism?

Now my experience of “the question” is laid bare in the data: within the last month alone, one in five BAME people has had someone assume they aren’t British on the basis of their ethnicity.

The BAME content of the population has changed in the last generation. Cultures take time to change.

And, well, what actually is the percentage of BAME population that isn’t native born? It’s possible that it’s 20% or more isn’t it? Note, percentage of BAME, not percentage of total population.