Typical rubbish.

actually have to live in these ethnic ghettos.

So when there’s a lot of brown people in an area, it’s a ghetto automatically. Your language is very instructive.

built on their contributions
…. because these immigrants don’t contribute to the welfare state of course.

encouraging migrants to entrench and celebrate their own distinctiveness;
It’s called civil liberties.

has done its utmost to deny a culture to its indigenous voters
How?

queuing system for council houses, which once kept established working-class communities together, but has now been adapted to meet the needs of new arrivals.
Try avoiding getting all your “data” from the Daily Mail. Council housing was always geared tpwards those who needed it most regardless of race.

the liberal elite have left the field clear for real bigots and real Nazis to make political gains.

Actually the nazis are a lot less powerful now than they were in the past.

Past migrations, of Jutes and Jews and Normans and Huguenots, have never been on anything like the current scale.
Where’s your data based on percentages?

The wish to preserve one’s identity and the identity of one’s nation requires no justification

Didn’t ask you to provide one.

Too rapid a change in the make-up of a community will inevitably lead to riots and resentment and alienation
“brown people moving into my neighbourhood make me want to riot,” in other words. Interesting logic.

Without patriotism – and increasingly we are without it – you surrender vital things: trust, companionship, altruism, manners, language, and charity
Only in your mind.

Anyway, the above rubbish aside, I thought my commentary on the original article was a bit lame too, apologies to my readers for that. Had to rush out in a hurry when writing it.

‘On this bit Alagiah displays some naivety.’

Piffle. George, unlike yourself, is a consistent anti-racist. Multiculturalism is founded on the fatalistic notion that communities will always ‘change’, are in a permanent state of ‘flux’ and that if you are white and live in Oldham or Burnley or Rochdale then you had better get used to the idea quickly. Your fish and chips shop is now a den for sheesha smokers? Your daughter’s school now has a majority of Urdu-speaking children? Good! Celebrate the change! Get over it.

The elite, of course, see this as very adventurous and exotic; yet they do not have to bring up their children in districts where the schools are multilingual, or where the familiar landmarks of their own childhoods have disappeared. They view multiculturalism as exciting – a matter of restaurants and alternative medicines, a wider range of cuisine and picturesque zones that they can visit as young people with few responsibilities.

BUT it is different for those who actually have to live in these ethnic ghettos. It is also different for those who believed that the welfare state set up after 1945 was for them, built on their contributions, who now see its benefits given generously to new arrivals.

It is also different for the indigenous white working-class. The Labour Party has spent the last 20 yrs encouraging migrants to entrench and celebrate their own distinctiveness; yet, paradoxically, has done its utmost to deny a culture to its indigenous voters. While it was accepted that immigrants would naturally wish to band together and preserve their cultural heritage, when the white-working class community made similar protestations, this was regarded, once again, as evidence of ‘bigotry’ and ‘intolerance.’ To make matters worse, a lot of bitterness has been caused by changes in the queuing system for council houses, which once kept established working-class communities together, but has now been adapted to meet the needs of new arrivals.

By shouting down the many thoughtful and civilised people who have tried to raise this issue in a responsible way, the liberal elite have left the field clear for real bigots and real Nazis to make political gains. Respectable, working-class people, in their increasing numbers, are voting for the BNP because politicians have lied and lied and lied and lied to them about immigration. Fashionable claims that this is a ‘nation of immigrants’ are simply not true. Past migrations, of Jutes and Jews and Normans and Huguenots, have never been on anything like the current scale. The immigration we have had since 1950 is already far greater and more unsettling than anything we have experienced since the Norman Conquest.

Well, enough’s enough. (Bravo to George Alagiah.) The wish to preserve one’s identity and the identity of one’s nation requires no justification – and no belief in superiority – any more than the wish to have one’s own children, and to continue one’s family through them need be justified or rationalized by a belief that they are superior to the children of others, or more fit, or better in business. One identifies with one’s family, because it is one’s family – not because they are better people than others. The same applies, mutatis mutandis, to one’s sense of belonging. One identifies with one’s town or one’s country, because it is one’s town or one’s country – not because it is more magnanimous than other towns or other countries.

Too rapid a change in the make-up of a community will inevitably lead to riots and resentment and alienation… on both sides of the equation. It is a tiresome truism to point out that people have ‘multiple identities’, since it is equally important for us to have shared identities. Without patriotism – and increasingly we are without it – you surrender vital things: trust, companionship, altruism, manners, language, and charity. It is time, I think, for more conservative Asians to step-forward and help us eradicate the cultural Marxism (known colloquially as ‘political correctness’), which, for the past twenty years, has been dividing our Great Nation.

Bravo George. Bravo.

Amir

Apart from being colonial subjects? Not very much.
Dunno about his parents though…

The irony is that in sri lankan schools we’re usually taught about the positive leftovers from colonialism (railways, wierd food/music, tea etc) rather than “ohhhh they raped our women & badgered our cows…”

There is plenty of racism at source in Eastern Europe the middle east and china without blaming it on the UK. Why are Jamaicans round my way so racist to Africans — was that my dads fault too?

Er…

I’m not surprised that George Aligiah has more nuanced stuff to say on identity than the Daily Mail would let on. In his earlier book A Passage to Africa, he talked of being an idealistic Nkhrumah era schoolboy in early ’60s Ghana and of how having lived with Muslims from an early age, he does not share the stereotypes expressed by some of his colleagues. Plus of course he was a BBC correspondent in South Africa…

Salman Rushdie biog : “The trials of English boarding school Before his journey West [at 13], his mother tried to prepare him for some of the horrors he would face there. “Such as,” he remembers, “having to wipe your bottom with paper.” This he had refused to believe. “I said, ‘What do you mean? It’s not possible. No water? Not possible.’” …

He brings up one of the great perceptions of such English educational establishments: “I managed to get through four and a half years of English boarding school without a single homosexual experience…I certainly never came anywhere close to it, either being hit on by anybody or the other way round. In that sense, I missed out on some apparently essential part of the experience.”