I wish we could deport people who throw around the "racist" label casually. There is nothing racist about believing that big, complex, interdependent societies function best when people share basic values, beliefs, and culture. It's the difference between multiculturalism as practiced in the U.S., where e.g. asian immigrants to the west coast have assimilated the basic values of american society while remaining distinctive, and multiculturalism as expressed in the U.K., where e.g. many muslim immigrants refuse to assimilate to the point of wanting to be governed by separate sets of laws.
I would never say people of a minority culture/ethnicity can't be racist against that culture, but I think we often have a more nuanced view of "racism" than people of the majority culture/ethnicity. My family immigrated to the U.S. from Bangladesh, and integration is an important issue to us. We see a lot of immigrants who refuse to assimilate, and we believe that it's detrimental both for them, because it makes it harder for them to take advantage of all of the opportunities of American society, and detrimental to the people who live around them, because there presence creates cultural schisms within communities that cannot be reconciled. I don't think there is anything "racist" about pointing these basic facts out.
> where e.g. many muslim immigrants refuse to assimilate to the point of wanting to be governed by separate sets of laws.
(Mildly interesting that you mention Muslims and sharia, but don't mention Jews and Beth Din).
There are some serious failures of the UK method - faith schools are a scary abomination; Beth Din and Sharia courts have led to child abusers and wife beaters not being reported to police, but just moving to a different part of the country (to continue abusing), women are unable to obtain a religious divorce, etc.
But there is a problem with "assimilation" - it means different things to different people. I'm happy if people can either speak the language or are learning the language or have made some effort to learn the language. And I'd like people to have some understanding of the EU human rights stuff we've signed up to. And I'd prefer people not to wear a full face cover when they're providing me medical treatment. And I'd prefer schools to conform to a national curriculum.
But other people are just racist, and they'll use "assimilation" to complain about other people. They'll often talk about things that just are not true (IMMIGRANTS GET HOUSES QUICKER!!) or they'll confuse terms ("Asylum Seeker" vs "illegal immigrant" vs "immigrant" vs "migrant worker"). As a nasty example of this see the GreenWave group, set up by the far right National Front as a stealth recruiting group, campaigning on ritual slaughter and drawing people into other far right issues once they've signed up.
We address assimilation by giving people a computerised quiz: "Life in the UK".
That's an interesting word - Assimilation. I have no idea if you're maybe trying to rather quote "integration", or if in the UK the word "assimilation" is used some other way then it is in the US, but...
Assimilation is something that the Borg does. It can be forceful and is primarily an act of the collective.
"Integration" on the other hand comes from a desire to be part of a society. It's more of a soft osmosis type effect.
> There are some serious failures of the UK method - faith schools are a scary abomination; Beth Din and Sharia courts have led to child abusers and wife beaters not being reported to police, but just moving to a different part of the country (to continue abusing), women are unable to obtain a religious divorce, etc.
Wait, why is the grandparent post considered racist and yours is not ?
Wife beating ("preferably" using nothing more than locking them up and a twig) and doing anything you want to (your own, or bought) children, is perfectly legal in islam (/sharia, which is the same thing). So you claiming that those things are bad, is no different from saying islam is bad, which is far more racist than what the grandparent post was saying. He merely claimed that large amounts of muslim-only areas are causing problems, whereas you're the way of life that makes someone a muslim is immoral.
Believe it or not, different religions don't just differ in dress and the form of the cross in the front of the building, they have different values. Islam was created by a military conqueror, it's values center around that. The basic promise of islam is not that allah will give muslims a good or healthy or happy life like Christianity promises, it's that allah will make them victorious over others. The return effort that is demanded from muslims is that they should make allah victorious. And yes, that last statement is followed by, if possible without fighting if needed by any means necessary.
As if that wasn't enough to make your post racist, you put another whopper in there : "And I'd prefer schools to conform to a national curriculum". You want to take the right of people to educate their children as they see fit away ... How is forced education into a state-sanctioned ideology any different than what's called indoctrination in China ?
Your post is not just far more racist than the posts you're complaining about, it's also far more worrying. If the state thought like you did, we might as well ask Saudi Arabians to take over our government.
> many muslim immigrants refuse to assimilate to the point of wanting to be governed by separate sets of laws
That's a tiny minority of the UK's immigrant community. Drawing general conclusions from such an unrepresentative sample is intellectually dishonest. It's the kind of argument seized upon by hate-mongers.
Just go ahead and pretend that this is not a bomb ready to go off in about 10-30 years when the minority becomes the majority.
Then ignore facts and basic crime stats, dangerous religious views being encouraged, increases in violence and hostility, the formation of no-go zones, active tribalism practices amongst the immigrant groups even passed the 3rd generation, rejection of democracy, etc.
Pretend those are all just figments of our imagination.
Then use words like "racist" and "hate-monger" towards anyone that does not subscribe to your fiction.
The truth is a badly implemented immigration policy based on false premises dose nothing but change a society with a few miserable people to a society completely full of miserable people (on both sides - native and non-native).
It does not even matter it is only a "minority"...
It takes 100s of people, and 1000s of man-years, to construct a building.
It takes 1 person 5 minutes and 1 gallon of gasoline to burn that building down.
You are seriously quoting The Centre for Social Cohesion (now merged with the Henry Jackson Society - a "neocon think tank" which is connected with that epitome of rational thought, "The Committee on the Present Danger") and the Daily Mail (which needs no introduction)?
One third of British Muslim students say they support killing for Islam. What about their actions, though? Cognitive dissonance is pretty common among religious people. A lot of Christians agree with the statement, "If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away", but there still aren't many actual eye-gouging cases.
You do realize that the "But they just can't be like us" argument has been used on nearly every minority ethnicity coming to the US - you can find similar diatribes against Italian and Irish migrants from the turn of the century before they became white.
No, actually. He used the same argument, siting some group that he thinks has successfully "assimilated" (assimilated is a rather colonialist notion anyway, and the "model minority" concept is hardly racially just) and some group(s) that he thinks can't or won't. But that same argument, well the X were here, but now the Y people just aren't like us and want to stay on their own has been used against the first generation(s) of nearly every immigration wave
I'm confused, are you accusing the idea that multiculturalism doesn't work as being racist? There is ample evidence that it in fact doesn't work: that an underclass is inevitable and that status applied to an entire culture is immensely damaging.
The idea that there is a "poor, uneducated, unacculturate" immigrant underclass in the UK is a racist lie. Recently arrived immigrants often find themselves at a disadvantage, but 2nd & 3rd generation communities are often wealthier, and better educated than "natives".
Five or ten years ago, I would have told you that this kind of politicised bigotry was entirely outside the British mainstream... only practised by a tiny, shabby fringe. These days, I'm dismayed to admit that the BNP and their UKIP mini-me's have managed to spread their filthy ideas much more widely.
I'm not really familiar with the situation in the UK. My very vague understanding is that the native Britons are so bad, with their chavs and yobs and twelve-year-old moms, that no group of immigrants, no matter how poor or uneducated, could make things worse. [1]
However, it seems to me that you feel so strongly about the issue that, even if immigration did create big social problems that wouldn't otherwise exist, you still would be accusing anyone who pointed that out of being racist. Basically, "that's racist" is not the conclusion of your argument, but rather the premise, and you're using it as a thought-terminating cliché.
Or at least that's my impression as an uninvolved observer, even though I'm more sympathetic to your position.
[1: I hope the British hackers don't get too offended, that was largely tongue-in-cheek.]
Obviously you are right, the situation is more nuanced. However, it's futile to debate those nuances with someone who is simply looking for sound-bites to push a hateful agenda. Example:
1. I did not expect my comment to get that much attention.
2. My LOL is sarcastic - I am sad that tolerance approached such a level that it hurts the country.
3. That phrase is what the current country leader said:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-12371994
When issues are not addressed on time they produce nazi states.
On the flip side, loudmouth, self-appointed, "spokesmen" of the Asian Muslim community such as Mehdi Hasan or Anjem Choudhry really don't help matters very much.
Politicised Islam in Britain - and the associated terrorist actions that result - has done a great deal to generate support for parties and groups such as BNP, UKIP, or EDL.
