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You know it's about time when even the Labour Home Secretary endorses it

December 10, 2001 ~ 11:23 p.m.

Home Secretary David Blunkett�a conservative ray of hope within the current Labour government�has stirred up a firestorm of controversy. He recently suggested that immigrants to Britain not only learn English but to actually use it in their daily interactions with the British populace. Oh, the insensitivity!

Blunkett went even further. He also wants current and future immigrants to abandon certain traditional customs such as forced marriages and female circumcision. Oh, Mr. Blunkett, you have lost the plot, dear fellow. Time to send you to sensitivity training, which your own lefty Labour peers will happily provide for you after they�ve shot your proposals down.

Newscasts opined that the Home Secretary�s proposals would �be a gift to British fascists,� and that it is pandering to racists in this country. This merits some in-depth discussion:

There is no doubt that racism exists in Britain, some of it of a serious nature. When riots erupted during the summer in certain industrial communities in the North such as Burnley, Bradford, and Oldham, pundits immediately laid the blame on the National Front (England�s version of the Ku Klux Klan). No doubt that the National Front did stir up aggression in these Northern cities, but only after Asian unrest and provoked attacks on whites. I would be the first to join forces to chase the National Front crackers out of town if they were ever to plague our area of London with their ugly presence, but there is something wrong with the carte blanche blaming of white racists, as so many news telecasts and editorial pages across Britain did.

The lefties are quick to point out that the ethnic minorities are not racist, but that they are merely acting out against what they perceive as hopelessness and a feeling of desperation. Is that supposed to be an excuse for confronting a 78-year-old man, on his innocent way home from watching his beloved rugby team in a pub, telling him that the road he�s on is a �no go� area for whites, and beating him just short of a pulp? This is not the result of minorities feeling hopeless with their lives or bored in their lifeless communities. Hard work and strong morals are what you need to rise above when you find yourself in that situation. These Asian kids don�t have those morals, and you don�t kick an elderly man nearly to death because of boredom. Let�s call these minority lads what they are: racists. I don�t believe in �reverse racism,� which is why I refuse to use the term. White, black, Asian, green-colored with spots�I don�t care, racism is racism.

What is actually happening, as in so many minority communities both in America and Britain, is that minorities have gotten to the stage where they are ghettoizing themselves, deliberately setting themselves apart from the mainstream society, and thus denying themselves the opportunities that are there. That is why liberals will never endorse a meritocracy, because they know certain communities will always be left behind. Why is that society�s fault? You can lead a horse to water but can�t make him drink; you can present folks from a wide range of race and class with education and training and career opportunities, but you cannot make them take part in any of it. However, there are also those who will, and the best way of ensuring a multicultural society where the lines between race and ethnicity are comfortably blurred, and class envy largely a thing of the past, is to make performance in our schools and our workplaces merit based. Instead, the left indulges in a pernicious racism of their own, presenting minorities with affirmative action to shut them up and keep them in their ghettos and tell generations of poor blacks or Asians, �you need us to provide for you, because you can�t do it yourself.� To come out and say that minorities are inherently inferior would make you persona non grata for life; yet the Left can engage subliminally in this very form of racist societal engineering and be lauded as caring? Oh, please!

Mr. Blunkett�s proposals are a good first step toward trying to bring about a healthy multicultural society in Britain. If coupled with a true understanding that a meritocracy and individual entrepreneurship and achievement determine one�s success in the world, regardless of one�s race or ethnicity, then we could well be on our way toward seeing a change for the better in society.

Diversity is a good thing. You don�t get much more multicultural than London. A list of all the ethnicities of the world that are represented in this city would make your head spin. On the buses or in the shops, you won�t always hear English being spoken, and you won�t always see Western style fashions. That is of no concern to me. Immigrants can, and do, hang on to several traditions and ways of life that don�t disrupt the dominant culture of their new homeland. After all, as an American �migr�, my preference for baseball over soccer is not going to threaten your average Liverpool, Chelsea or Manchester United fan, and my accent is not going to suddenly �flatten� the speech patterns of my fellow Londoners overnight. But, as I continue to live here, there are certain practices of British life that will begin to intrigue me and, eventually, I may actually find myself adopting them. In a way, it is natural to expect that I will.

It always warmed my heart whenever I went to Fenway Park in Boston and looked at the mix of people in the stands. In addition to the die-hard white fans, there were ethnicities from all over the several and varied immigrant enclaves of inner-city Boston present. They all stood up in unison to cheer the team on or moaned as a collective whole when the team committed an error. They were all baseball fans. Many of the people in the stands probably didn�t understand baseball before they came to America and probably didn�t listen to rock�n�roll. But here they were, partaking in the local culture, all of them cheering on the local team and dancing to the music between innings. It doesn�t get any sweeter than that.

But, if you expect a Western society, which believes in democracy and values individual freedom, such as Britain or the U.S., to endorse sinister practices such as forced marriages, female circumcision, or blood-drinking voodoo-ism, then sorry. As an immigrant, you must decide which is more important to you�customs and traditions that harm others and which do threaten society or a chance to live in a first-world nation.

About the English language proposal: This only certifies an argument that I�ve been debating for many years. If you cannot understand the language that 95% of the population speaks, then how do you expect to succeed? A nation has a right to formally announce a language as its official tongue. And, strangely enough, neither the U.S. nor Britain officially declare English as their official language. In the past, neither country really had to, but in today�s multicultural world, the necessity for a de facto language is stronger than ever before. One common language is the glue that binds a diverse society together. No-one cares what tongue you speak within the borders of your own home or among friends of your own ethnic group. But, if you want me to understand you, then please speak English. A nation that allows multilingualism is a society willing to trash its very sense of nationhood.

Proposals dealing with race, culture, ethnicity and language are always very interconnected, and sometimes it�s hard to find common ground. But Blunkett�s ideas in favor of accepted cultural norms, meritocracy, and one common language are a good way to smooth out the rough edges.

� M.E.M.

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Copyright � 2001-2007 by M.E. Manning. All material is written by me, unless explicitly stated otherwise by use of footnotes or bylines. Do not copy or redistribute without my permission.

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