Like many of my liberal leftie cappuccino drinking iPod luvvies, I was a bit offended by the Express front page today for two reasons. The first is factual inaccuracy (obviously). One in Five: That means that all white people will only make up 80% of the entire population, eek! Oh no, hold on, that doesn’t include Australians, Irish, French, Scottish, Polish, Lithuanian, Dutch, German, Swiss, American, err… help me out here. So it’s not that one in five people in England will have ‘orrible brown skin, just that one in five won’t be proper English, like with no familial ties to any other country in the world ever at all.
The second objection I had was that it paints all white people over here (tee-hee) as having no ethnicity, as if you’re all a blank canvas of ethnicity just waiting to “find yourself” (or lose yourself?) on a package holiday to India or China or Japan or whatever other ethnic place is in right now. I know exactly two people who can trace their Englishness back further than three generations. One of them was lying (well, he forgot his great grandmother was Polish-Jewish until he asked his mum about it) and the other is from the sticks, which I would imagine doesn’t get many foreigners, those sticks. He described people from Hampshire as “foreigners” the other day lol.
We really can’t win, can we? When we try and integrate by having the same interests and hobbies, maybe marrying or having kids with white people, we’re “taking over”, but when we try and stay out of it, set up schools to not tread on the toes of state school education or put adverts on dating sites for Asians only, we’re “not integrating”. Make your bloody minds up FFS or fuck off back to your imaginary white island.
Us immigrants, all of us, the first and second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, nth generations since, came to the UK for thousands of reasons. Some of us fled parts of Europe during WW2, some of us were shipped in to build the railways in the 1950s, some of us were flown over as qualified doctors and nurses in the 60s and 70s, and some of us were just looking for a better life, who can blame us? It’s pretty good here. We’ve got Dr Who, a fine selection of cheese, recycling, black cabs, libraries, festivals, beer gardens, loadsa cool stuff.
I’m surprised it’s as low as one in five to be honest, we’re all a bit ethnic on the inside.
Cx
(Y)
(here via r.howard)
Living in Birmingham, I was agog to learn last year that the UK pop’n is 92% White British. It took me some time to recall the entirety of rural and small-town Britain – even the amount of majority white suburbs in big cities. d’oh.
Lol a “very English” ex boyfriend and I had an argument about this, as he genuinely believed that non white ethnic minorities made up a significant proportion of the UK population. The ONS statistics he looked up (because he didn’t trust me to!) only had figures for all ethnic minorities (including white) and you’re absolutely right! He was gobsmacked. With the sheer volume of coverage ethnic minorities get in mainstream media, it’s hardly surprising that some people draw such incoherent conclusions.
Thanks for commenting
Cx
Good point about the media actually – I wasn’t even thinking of that but of the damned chapter in my OU textbook which tries to argue that people first and foremost understand their place in a population via statistics. Er, no, you relate it to the faces you see on the street (and in the media!). It’s politically that you start to look at stats (e.g. when claiming rights) not in everyday life.
B’ham is 70.4% white which feels much more like my perception of the population. I know that me being stunned by the 92% is definitely very much white-girl blindness though too – probably much like your ex. That said, I felt SUPER weird when I visited Sutton Coldfield (90% white by residence) on a Saturday morning a while ago… total sea of pink faces. Genuinely discomfiting. It’s nowt like any out-of-place experience felt like a non-white person, but I’ve just worked out it can go in my counterargument to those damn chapter authors
Does this mean that Scots will get our own ethnic restaurants where we can have deep fried Mars bars, chip sauce and proper heart attacks like we do in the Old Country?
If you can come up with a viable business model, I will try and get you funding. Can’t help but wonder why there isn’t a market for deep fried Mars bars in England.
I once had haggis from a kebab shop in Aberdeen at 2am. It looked like something I wouldn’t want to look at whilst eating but actually tasted ok. I respect your culture for integrating with the kebab shop to provide a wider range of semi-delicious carbs!
Cx
[...] Ethnics, Ethnics, EVERYWHERE « Carmen Gets Around (II) We really can’t win, can we? When we try and integrate by having the same interests and hobbies, maybe marrying or having kids with white people, we’re “taking over”, but when we try and stay out of it, set up schools to not tread on the toes of state school education or put adverts on dating sites for Asians only, we’re “not integrating”. Make your bloody minds up FFS or fuck off back to your imaginary white island. (tags: migration multiculturalism uk tabloids daily.express) [...]
Hi Carmen nice blog!
I’m amazed the White British population is 92% but I do believe it. I’ve been to deepest Devon where me & the daughter (has a Nigerian dad) play ‘spot the BME’. Even in the city (Exeter) which has a uni they are still thin on the ground.
We Londoners kind of forget that much of the country still lives in, well, the country, or at least small country towns.
However, getting some white people to believe that they won’t be in a minority in 50 years time can sometimes be a struggle. They won’t believe the stats if you hit them over the head (and that’s tempting) with them. What to do?
I’ve been rubbish and replied to your comment below instead, as a reply to Tessa’s! Sorry!
You come over here, take our jobs, steal our women…
One of the downsides of getting a tan in the summer is that I get asked when I’m from. Yes, even me, spawn of many many generations of yokels. People are dumb.
This is making me think, actually. I’ve gone on a bit above about my textbook and the flawed argument its authors put forward. I’m beginning to think that demographics can actually be damaging – if you take a city’s demographic statistics, as is usually the case I think when people start talking about white-British minorities, it doesn’t really come close to the experience of demographics people actually *have* in that city. People are only truly aware of a tiny proportion of the population of their city or town, really. Quoting whole-city stats is pretty scaremongery.
erm damn damn damn! That reply was supposed to go to Claire! I’m a fool.
I have just discovered this blog, and am now irrevocably in e-love with you.
Er, to get on topic, I’m from a proper white little Northern town, which didn’t bother me, being Little Miss White Girl, until I started uni in Leeds and got me some real life experience. Now I’ve gone home to finish off my MA and wait to become dolescum, and all of a sudden the blinding whiteness and attitude that goes with it is not so pleasant.
What a horrid cover. The fact they are talking to an actor about menopause rather than a doctor says alot though.
Cracking post. Us ethnics can’t win can we? Sticking to our own makes us look like we’re all insular inbred terrorists, and if we venture out and integrate we’re over ‘ere stealing jobs/women/houses/anything white working class folk can’t get hold of for any other reason.
But then again, we are discussing an article in the Daily Express – WTF did we expect…?!
x
I did actually steal a white persons job. I worked really hard in school and college, and then temped for years before gaining the experience to become a legal secretary (my first full time job) and then poof! All of a sudden, after months of jobhunting, rejection letters and failed interviews I waltzed into my current job, all because I was qualified, and had more than enough experience, and outstanding references. My company even (cheekily) sent me a letter saying they were “pleased” to offer me the job! Bold as brass they were!!
Cx
When your family all live in the country you can have many fun culture-shocking times…
Cousin [looking at photos in my sister's room]:”Is this when you went on holiday to Turkey?”
Sister:”Erm no that’s just some photos from the last day of school.”
I can trace my ancestry back to anglo saxon times and I still consider myself something of a mongrel. Because despite that trace, done simply because a friend said it couldn’t be, there’s still going to be folks who married into the family that were not entirely of British descent. But frankly does it matter? Does it matter what accident of birth determined our nationality? No, of course it bloody doesn’t. I haven’t yet met an immigrant I wasn’t able to get along with in some capacity. A shared interest, a shared sense of (very dark) humour. Just something that creates a common bond. It does bother me when immigrant communities don’t integrate, that I will admit, but I’m well aware of why this happens. It’s not just because they don’t want to, it’s because headlines and stories like this scare folks into thinking the people who’ve come over here just want to rob our houses and steal the women. I do believe in freedom of the press, but I believe it should be free to write the truth as it’s meant to appear, not as they’d like it to appear to fuel their own paranoid imaginings.
Preach brother!
I’ve found that a lot of my leisure activities involve alcohol in some way – even a picnic involves pork pies and cava. Integration is as much about “us” as it is “them”
Thank you for commenting!
(Same goes to everyone, sorry I haven’t replied to all comments!)
Cx
Good Lord, the Ethnics are coming!! Head for the hills!
At least 80% of the population will still be, um, “normal”.
[...] Carmen gets around (II) – Ethnics, Ethnics, EVERYWHERE [...]