alienated and unsafe

Bad craziness…

Muslim ghettos which have become no-go areas for whites must be broken up, Labour will declare today.

In a speech which is set to spark a storm Communities Secretary Hazel Blears will say there is a need to take a hard look at the impact of immigration on cities.

It will be the first time a senior Government minister has called for the break-up of areas dominated by racial or religious groups.

And it follows Church of England Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali attack on Islamic extremists for creating no-go areas across Britain.

Trevor Phillips, chairman of the Commission for Equalities and Human Rights, has also warned Britain is "sleepwalking into segregation". But Ms Blears risks provoking fury with claims Labour are "pandering to the right" by attacking immigrants.

She will tell the Left-wing Fabian Society: "No neighbourhood should be dominated by one group in ways which make others feel alienated or unsafe.

"We must ensure community cohesion is maintained. No one faith or ethnic group can dominate a locality to the exclusion of all others."

She went on to say there was "nothing wrong" with unthreatening cultural enclaves, such as traditional China Towns.

via. It’s worth reprinting in detail because you can see how the meme spread, in reverse order: lifelong race relations bureaucrat Trevor Philips senses and exploits a change in the political atmosphere; Bishop Ali builds on that and starts burbling about no-go areas; Hazel Blears starts driveling on about the forced resettlement of populations. Nobody actually names a Muslim ghetto, for the perfectly obvious reason that there aren’t any.

Having said that, Blears is the MP for the nearest Manchester has to a ghetto community, namely Salford which is overwhelmingly white. That’s going to change in the next election with the creation of the Blackley and Broughton constituency, which inserts my mixed bit of Manchester into Salford. Up the road in Lancashire people like Phil Woolas play the communalist card because the local Asian vote is fairly solidly Lib Dem, so the crypto BNP stuff is designed to shore up votes with Whites. I wonder if she’s playing the same game. (see update below)

The Chinatown comment just reveals the depth of her ignorance. Nobody lives in Chinatowns; they’re just business districts. One peculiarity of Chinese demographics in the UK is that they’re extremely thinly and evenly spread. The highest Chinese population anywhere is in Barnet, at around 3%. Conversely, there are only three or four constituencies in the UK with no Chinese population. So every Chinese family in the country is at least potentially in the position of being made to fell “alienated and unsafe” through the domination of other groups.

Anyway, I very much hope that Blears inherits the new seat. I’d crawl on my hands and knees to find a place to vote against her. UPDATE Where the cakes come from apparently.

Comments

[ejh]

She will tell the Left-wing Fabian Society: "No neighbourhood should be dominated by one group in ways which make others feel alienated or unsafe.

Regardless of whether or not they deserve (or aspire to) that description, do you think there is any chance that they will tell her to fuck off?

[Simon]

Sadly, Blears has been selected for Salford and Eccles.

[Nick L]

Seems like a good enough time to ask as any: I've been wondering for a while if any worthwhile sociological survey of the British Chinese population exists. Has there been much research in this area? Are British Chinese successful because they are thinly spread and have to integrate; or because they don't integrate into broader society and instead rely on other networks of support? Or is there no single British Chinese community?

[jamie]

Ah, right. A relief actually, since she'd almost certainly be representing me otherwise. I wonder if the five percent of her constituency recorded as non white might not feel somewhat alienated by certain of her opinions.

ejh: I don't think the fbians tell anyone to fuck off, except maybe in Latin

[jamie]

Nick: My old company did a bit of research on this a while back. I may dig it up. Basically: a)not much b)no c) yes and d) not any more - been quite a big influx of non-Cantonese/Hakka people over the past ten years.

[ejh]

except maybe in Latin

That would be fine, and it would add to my vocabulary since I never learned any obscenities when doing my O-Level (probably due to the absence of a Latin Exchange).

[Alex]

Unthreatening cultural enclaves; the first thing that comes to mind is that Lisa Simpson is a subscriber to a magazine entitled "Non-Threatening Boys".

The second is that, of course, London Chinatown is in the process of being murdered by government-sponsored private turdbastards (the technical term is "property developers"). I perceive a pattern.

[godoggo]

I know nada about Chinese in Britain, but I think it's pretty typical for overseas Chinese to be successful wherever they are. I have some thoughts about why, but don't have them quite straight in my head at the moment. Incidentally, here in L.A./L.A. county we have a bunch of communities with very large Chinese populations (I don't think any majority Chinese, though there are majority Asian, of which maybe a majority is Chinese, say 60% of 60% - and I'm pretty sure that some of the wealthy Taiwanese communities have very substantial Chinese majorities among kids, because the regular white people fled so their kids wouldn't have to compete with them in school). And downtown's old Chinatown is partly residential. Fascinating, no? No?

[ejh]

You have old things in LA?

[jamie]

The way it generally worked in Britain postwar was that nearly everybody who came established themselves through the catering trade, and specifically through takeaways. These were spaced out to prevent too much competition, though for that reason you obviously have more of them closer together in places with higher population densities. That also provides the basis for mother tongue business, professional and social services and restaurants providing actual rather than anglo Chinese food to cluster together for convenience, and Chinatowns grew from that. The exceptions are London and Liverpool, where Chinatowns originated in the 19th century, basically as a berth for Chinese seamen.

[Simon]

(I think) the UK's only ethnic Chinese Parliamentarian is Anna Lo, Alliance MLA for South Belfast.

[godoggo]

OK, thought about it for 2 minutes (while other people made comments I haven't looked at yet). Most of what I know about Chinese in America comes from this OK book I read a long time ago called Ethnic America by Thomas Sowell (who's famous as a conservatarian pundit, of course), and he also supported c) above. He also noted that they tend not to be economic refugees or other kinds of refugees (hmm, I guess that's not strictly the case in the case of Vietnamese Chinese, but of course they self-selected when they went to Vietam). Especially when they come to the West, it's a difficult and expensive trip, which they make with the positive intention of economic success, rather than to escape.

I also tend to think that a cultural emphasis on education has something to do with it - the effects of the old civil service exam system. I guess the Cultural Revolution messed this up some, and I suppose it's not so important for success as an entrepreneur, but I pigheadedly persist in believing it anyway. Which leads me to stick in a couple more tangentially relevant thoughts: a) Taiwanese immigrants I meet tend to be way better educated than mainlanders. There are various reasons (e.g. rich parents), but I do think a lot of it is because Taiwan has a better educational system, which the Japanese set up for them. b) I recently read an article about how an inner-city L.A. school achieved impressive results by switching to Singapore Math books, which use a system devised under Stalin, which is apparently pretty common in Asia and Eastern Europe (the Singapore books are used because they're in English). Again, I think it's interesting...

[godoggo]

...ok, still not straight in my head...

[godoggo]

Sorry if this is annoying, really. Sowell chapter on Chinese Americans in google books.

[Alex]

I recently read an article about how an inner-city L.A. school achieved impressive results by switching to Singapore Math books, which use a system devised under Stalin

If Uncle Joe has 12 million potential comrades of the rural proletariat, and he recovers 30% of the calories from the grasping bloodsuckers of the kulaks' families...

[dsquared]

If the party says that 2+2=5 ...

[Igor Belanov]

I think it would be quite a good thing if immigrants and ethnic minorities were spread more widely throughout residential areas, it might help to reduce some of the wild stereotypes held in the white ghettoes.

It's fairly typical that Blears should confuse 'Muslim ghettoes' with the areas where practically all groups live together with the exception of white British. In areas of Leeds the population is almost entirely composed of minority groups- but these include Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Indian, Zimbabwean, Polish, Turkish, Somalian, Romanian etc, etc. Rather multicultural in fact.

[ejh]

It would be good if somebody asked her to specify exactly which areas she means. Bethnal Green? I have a white friend lives there, unsurprisingly has no problems at all. And I think that would be a bonus: as with Brixton (where I lived for two and a half good years) it's often the white locals who will go out of their way to say there's nothing "no go" about these areas at all.

[Chris Williams]

If there's a Muslim ghetto in Leicester, it's where I live. No probs to report as yet. On the other hand, if I ever see the Bishop of Rochester round here, I will give him a piece of my mind in a robust stylee.

[DonaldS]

How did communities ever survive before we had a Communities Secretary? Britain must have been a dark place indeed.