Don’t know about racist, but damn this is a weird advert.
I can’t find the murder stats for the uk by religious group, so let’s assume for the sake of argument that there is no difference as you are want to believe like a good and proper liberally minded person and that my assertion was completely incorrect. Fine. Now look at this collection of stats surrounding the muslim population in the UK:
https://muslimstatistics.wordpress.com/category/europe/uk/page/4/
You will no doubt see that as some hit job hate site, but it is what it is. The stats are either true or false.
It’s not my country, I live in the US with an ocean acting as a natural moat against mass immigration from the middle east and muslim world so I don’t get to decide. But if I did live there I would not be so flippant and Pollyanna as you are being here. It’s so obvious to me that the beliefs held by people produce differential results and attitudes in the minds of men that it also puzzles me why so many act like these concerns are completely insane to entertain. But again, not my country. My only regret and sympathy for the increased strife and violence that comes (whether brexit succeeds or fails) will be towards those who fought and argued against mass unchecked immigration from any and all population groups. They did not ask for the recklessness you brush aside as rank bigotry, but they will suffer for it just like you will. It would be nice if they were spared the society you help degrade by ignoring the issue.
Just, FTR, Salvor, the leave campaign is quite excited about increasing immigration from India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, last two of whom are pretty muslim.
Well…
The leave campaign is a really awkward coalition. On the one hand you have a bunch of free-market libertarians who think the EU over-regulates Britain and have a dream of worldwide free trade which includes taking control of Britain’s borders so as to open them more fully to people around the world.
On the other, dominant, hand, you have the Faragist tendency, who (in his words) feel disturbed when they hear foreign languages on the train. These people (as Arcite hints above) want to take control of Britain’s borders so that they can close them to people of the wrong ethno-cultural identity.
So some leave campaigners (notably Priti Patel) have tried to make the case that about the problem with the EU is that by forcing us take Poles it stops us from welcoming people from the rest of the world in large numbers. That message has been on the backburner for the past few weeks, and the “Brown people are coming! Quick, to the barricades!” message has been amplified considerably.
I don’t know how to break this to you:
Wanting people of the wrong ethno-cultural identity kept out of your country so as to keep it pure *is *racism. It’s almost textbook.
It was racism when people wanted the Jews kept out of Britain because they didn’t fit and threatened our culture.
It was racism when people wanted the West Indians kept out of Britain because they didn’t fit and threatened our culture.
It was racism when people wanted South Asians kept out of Britain because they didn’t fit and threatened our culture.
Britain is still British. And the worst thing that’s happened to our culture is that people still flinch at the idea of foreigners living next door.
So, as I’ve said: there are lots of non-racist reasons for voting Leave. There are lots of non-racist Leave voters. But “Keep Britain British” by barring people of the wrong “ethnoculture”? Yeah, that’s racist.
If you’re one of those many people who define “British” as “white Anglo-Saxon Christian” then yes, it really is.
Of course, if the British didn’t want the rest of the world turning up on its doorstep, maybe it shouldn’t have spent several centuries invading countries, destroying their culture and telling them at gunpoint that Britain is the bestest place in the whole world and how everyone should be like them. It tends to make them want to come see for themselves, particularly when they’re already living in “Britain-lite”.
Personally I think it’s worked out pretty well. Millions of people eat curry and kebabs every week, the influx of West Indians did wonders for the music scene, and of course the NHS is virtually propped up by doctors and nurses who are immigrants or children of immigrants.
Translation: “Quick, look over there!” Nice blatant attempt at distraction from the weakness of your argument.
If you want to discuss Japan, go start a thread on it. We’ve certainly discussed Japanese racism/xenophobia at length before and I don’t recall anyone saying they were fine with it. This thread is about Britain.
Except that in reality it’s the non-Muslims chastising the Muslims. And in a disturbingly large number of cases Muslim women are having their niqabs ripped off by right-wing scum in the name of “Britishness”.
No one said that accepting immigrants means that they can do whatever they used to do in their home country while disregarding the laws and practices of the country in which they now live. But exclusion will not solve those problems.
How many is “too many”? Every time I see the “too many” number raised there never seems to be a specific target number they have in mind other than “less than what we have now”, which leads me to wonder whether any number other than zero would be considered acceptable. Certainly the “too many” camp seem to be prone to massive exaggeration about current numbers so any proposed numbers would need to be considered with a certain amount of rigor and caution.
Of course, one of the best ways to get populations with values “simpatico with the larger culture” is to welcome them into the larger culture and then assimilate them. Ostracism and exclusion has long been shown to exacerbate cultural differences in minority populations - assail them enough about their “otherness” and they will cling to the qualities of that “otherness” as the only source of their cultural identity. Welcome them into the fold while discouraging specific harmful practices - and the UK puts a lot of effort into addressing some of the worst cultural behaviors of immigrant populations - and celebrating the commonalities, and over time they will be as much a part of the cultural landscape as anyone else. Sure, there will still be reactionary monsters carrying out honor killings, beating women and attacking those that disagree with them - but they will be aberrations, not the norm, and their numbers will dwindle over time as successive generations see what the better life is like. And as I pointed out above, violent anti-social behavior is hardly restricted to immigrant populations anyway.
To end on a lighter note, there’s an amusing story making the newsrounds you may have seen (here paraphrased by me):
How British is that?
High skilled immigrants of any type typically assimilate better into the society, and since higher skills are less common, it’s a natural limiter to large volumes by default.
There was a very good discussion of this from a Kurdish immigrant doctor in Sweden about this phenomenon.
I still think there can and will be some discord and strife from higher skilled muslim immigrants in terms of different cultural attitudes that clash with local standards, but it’s inside the line of being manageable whereas a flood and of all comers is not.
Highly skilled? You mean, like asignificant amount of terrorists who come fromwell off backgrounds?
Like a construction engineer? (Say Bin Laden)
A doctor (Aymen Al-Zawahiri)
Hell, its almost a trope thatterrorists are often ENgineers.
Oh I know, most of the terrorists that attack the west in the high profile attacks are not impoverished people struggling to get by.
I just don’t know how else to reduce the flow aside from a blanket ban on Muslims which would not fly and is too broad and abusive even for me. I am willing to accept some higher level of background issues from a reduced but highly skilled/educated muslim population because I don’t want to completely shut out the decent because of the indecent. Where I part ways with many above is I don’t want to open the flood gates to the point where it starts to really alter the dominant cultural dynamics.
A poster above is quite exercised about western, and only western, bigotry and attitudes towards the muslim population. I never hear a peep out of people like that about many MORE of the muslim population when it comes to their attitude and behavior towards Jews.
Muslim hostility = multiple incidence of people saying mean things to them and in some cases accosting them in the streets.
Vulgar behavior. And yet, it does not hold a candle to
Hostility from Muslims = multiple examples across europe of muslims gunnning down and murdering people in cold blood. Excess rapes in some countries from migrants, ghettos of muslims where the standards of the larger society are supplanted and put on the back burner.
One way to minimize this and still hold SOME semblance of a liberal policy, is to limit the numbers. Just banning muslims is a bridge too far.
I don’t condone anyone ripping anything off anyones head, but I understand where the animus towards the muslim population comes from. Do you? Do you think it’s based on nothing but rank bigotry? Based on skin color?
Do you think the native British population is hostile to asian buddhists in the same way they are towards muslims? Hindus? Zoroastrians?
This is something that is dreadfully difficult to get into the heads of liberally minded people regarding negative stereotypes. A large chunk of them are not baseless, they are based in empirical observation. People have negative perceptions of muslims and Islam because of the behavior and beliefs of too many of its adherants. When that stops being the case, the negative perceptions and stereotypes will be repeated shown to be incorrect and will evaporate.
The same is true for virtually all stereotypes with most people. I’m a mixed black guy in the US, I distinctly remember being watched when I went into a small dairy store as a child by the store owner to see if I was stealing. Was it fair or pleasant? No. Was it irritating? A bit, did I resent the store owner for it? No.
Why? Because even as a child I was not a god damn child. I knew that plenty of kids that went into that store did steal and cut into their profits and livelihood. If watching some people more closely helps reduce theft, then it’s a perfectly reasonable thing to do. I was not a thief, let them watch me more closely and see nothing is getting taken. If this happens repeatedly, and it turns out that black people are no more likely, or even better, LESS likely to be committing crime, then the repeated fruitless scrutiny will be seen as not worth the time and effort. Conversely, if the scrutiny of some subgroups turns up MORE issues, then that stereotype will persist that some groups are more likely to be engaged in negative activity.
There is nothing fair about stereotypes, we have to fight to maintain a policy and attitude that leaks out from these real observations that we give individuals the benefit of the doubt even if we expect more or less from certain groups. It’s clear for many people that fight is lost and they start snatching things from peoples heads. But to the people that are members of a group that are the recipients of negative stereotypes, I have a message.
When liberals shut down speech and try to sweep all talk of peoples negative perceptions of you under the rug, know they do NOT go away. They are alive and well. The one and ONLY way to remove those negative perceptions, is to show over time that the perceptions are WRONG. Every single time some muslim goes on a killing spree, shouting that allah is great as they fire bullets through peoples skulls, this darkens the perceptions of the entire group. IF you are angry at this reality, then the GREATEST hatred and RAGE you feel ought to be directed at the people who call themselves muslims, and are killing people IN YOUR NAME, with the sanction of Muhammad and Allah. THESE are the people that are by FAR the greatest source of negative perceptions of the so called bigots.
This viewpoint is really nothing more than a defense of bigotry and prejudice.
No no. The honesty in it is refreshing. Its a viewpoint which is held by many, only they are too shy/polite/scared to express it.
That doesn’t contradict anything I said. Taking as granted your assertion that it’s refreshingly honest, it is nothing more than refreshingly honest bigotry.
“I am justified in judging an individual based on superficial characteristics or memberships in broad categories such as ethnicity, religion, etc.” is the very definition of racism.
It’s exactly what a liberal society says that individuals should not be judged on.
Surely you must have a ‘darkened perception’ of most of America, if you judge all ethnic groups by their history of lethal gun violence?
And Muslims are welcome to come to England as far as I’m concerned. The rain will eventually turn them Atheist like the rest of us.
I still think everyone should strive to judge everyone as an individual, but to me things like profiling are more of a grey area. Particularly when actual behaviors and attitudes are being made manifest and affecting the larger society in a negative way.
Case in point. Israel. Now I’m sure many people here are rah rah on the Palestinian side and much more sympathetic with their cause. But Israel was facing consistent suicide bombings and assaults from Palestinians. They built a wall to make it harder for a lot of the malcontents in the palestinian territories to get into Israeli population centers and murder large chunks of people.
I am generally against walls. I don’t want a wall on the southern border in the US, the idea of building the great wall of china down south to keep mexicans out strikes me as offensive and vulgar. But The bulk of immigrants that cross there are not seeking to murder US citizens, they are trying to get a better life economically.
In Israel? Some were doing the same, but a lot of others, enough to cause issues were crossing into Israeli territories and bombing people. Building a wall to keep “those” people out is kind of pre judging the intentions of an entire people, or at least a large chunk of them. If I was like some of the liberals here I would have been against such a thing, and more people would be vulnerable to suicide bombers and been slaughtered.
Sometimes the less liberal policy is the right one. The preservation of civilization and liberal society might sometimes need to dip a few toes into the waters of more protectionist policies.
The second point was not about right and wrong of negative stereotypes, it’s just reality. We can say that negative stereotypes should never be believed all we want, but that goes against millions of years of human nature fine tuned by natural selection in these exaggerated monkey brains of ours.
Our brains are error checking machines, sometimes the machinery can get hijacked by group think and other human capacities for confirmation bias, but if a person repeated sees something reinforced in nature, or vice versa, that affects the perceptions of people.
Period.
That’s actually the one glimmer of hope, atheism is on the rise and with luck it will infect the muslim population and turn them away from the beliefs I find both silly and illiberal.
And no, I try to keep by judgments to individuals, but as far as my expectations, I do have differential group perceptions based on my observations in life. They are not static, they are subject to change based on updated feedback, but they will not change based on liberals asserting the perceptions away.
While ripping off anyone’s clothing is something beyond the decency of anyone, the niqab and the hijab are un-British, and yes, un-American. In the US, 43% of Muslim women wear the hijab or niqab in non-Mosque occasions. (In Britain, there’s no reason to believe that number is lower.) However, only 10% of American Jews are Orthodox of any sort, and 6% Hassidic. Why can’t more Muslims get with the program? Barely any Indians in Britain (or America) wear the traditional dress outside of Indian themed parties.
the difference tho is that Jews, West Indians, and South Asians didn’t have large amounts of people who supported any equivalent to violent jihad, didn’t try to have anti-blasphemy laws made to elevate them, and did not, in large number, believe in violence towards women, gays, etc. While not all Muslims do think those things, a large enough number do, as shown in polls, or by how many join savage groups like ISIS, to make people wonder about the wisdom of letting more in, and no, it doesn’t make them racist. Also, as mentioned above, why do Muslims assimilate far less than other groups?
Oh yea; Islam is NOT A RACE. Most people who have a problem with the spread of Islam wouldn’t care less if the person were white or not. Do some? Yes, but every cause has people in it for the wrong reasons.
Salvor, you are the clearest eyed person on this discussion I’ve seen. Please be seen more in other discussions.
If you think this is a rational calculation then prove your point using actual data.
So if Switzerland refused 10 million German immigrants to keep Switzerland Swiss then that would be textbook racism? I don’t think you know what racism means. With your point of view all borders are to some degree racist. That’s absurd if the idea of nations is to mean anything.
You don’t have to break anything to me. I’m well aware that for white, Western people to prefer to associate with others like ourselves is considered evil (aka, “racist.”) I don’t agree that it’s evil.
So because Britain colonized other countries in the past, it now has a moral obligation to surrender its own identity and let anyone in the world who wants to come live there do so?
If those other countries didn’t want the British showing up on their doorstep, was that racist of them?
Talk about a “quick, look over there” blatant attempt at distraction. It’s racist for British people to oppose nonwhite immigration because now they have spicy food and exotic music?
Well, at least you’re consistent. I guess it’s racist for any people to prefer the company of others like them and not want to associate with foreigners. That’s hardly reassuring.