Britishness- and multi culturalism

[lemonysnickett]

Do you think that the curent thinking of moving away from multi culturalism to a society that teaches more about Britishness, will give us a more cohesive and respectful society? I think there is a problem that too many indigenous British people are very unaware themselves about what being British means, apart from the fact that they were born in Britain.Rather than focus the argument on how immigrant populations do not accept British culture and values, should we not be asking if the indigenous white British population are truly willing to accept that someone of a different skin colour/race/religion are as British as they are.

SP I think the schools are causing as many issues with multiculturalism as they try to combat. I think it is ridiculous to change what are traditional songs to suit all faiths. If I go to a multi face service I would expect to sing as long as there are not provactive words in the songs of another faith. The nativity is traditonal just as celebrations of divali are traditional. I feel that I respect and embrace cultural difference and tolerance which doesnt infringe on the rights of the individual. However, because of multiculturalism, would I voluntarily send my child to a school which was predominantly asian, black or specific religion based.

should say ' i would not voluntarily send..'

but are schools really changing songs etc though? yes you read the odd story in the papers, but I've never heard any kid I know sing one of these altered versions of songs.

my nephews school were not allowed to have a nativity as it was culturally insensitive!

well no great loss there tbh, but most schools still have one.

I really don't understand this whole 'Britishness' thing, swearing allegiance and so on, of course I want people to integrate and get along, but everyone is different and I like that.

It seems no real definition of Britishness and it will lprobably depend on who you ask. ...which is why I am often perplexed when politicians talk about Britishness and core British values without elaborating. it seems a convenient way of shifting a lot of the responsibility for why people don't integrate and nationalities ghettoise themselves in cities onto those people....." If the ethnic minorities were to be a bit more british they would they would get on a lot better and have less reason to complain".
As for nativity plays, changing of the words of hymns etc, though we all read much about this, many of us would be pushed to say this actually occurs at schools we know of...but what I can say for sure having spoken to friends is that very little of this when it does occur is initiated by the ethnic minority.
Friends of mine from ethnic minorities are quite frustrated and fed up with always being perceived as a bunch of moaners who spend their time complaining about such things and other things such as St Georges cross being offensive to them.
In fact they found no problem with people flying the St Georges cross during the World Cup indeed if anyone had been in a predominanatly ethnic area during this time...they might be surprised at the number of flags being displayed. It might also be pointed out that my white middle class friends from affluent areas felt displaying the flag was slightly"tacky" ....how can flying your own flag be tacky?
Lets face it, until recently , we haven't really seen the St Georges cross flwn publicly, even before all the stories about "people objecting" ..it seems to me the union ljack has been the personal property of the far right for the last 30 years and the british public let that happen....maybe we should haev objected to that at the time.

I'm about to sit my British citizenship test and there's a lot of interesting information about typical British life, and what it means to be British. For me, it is really important to do the test, which includes British values, and my citizenship ceremony including swearing allegience, because I am proud (generally) of the country I live in.
Having said that, I am also keeping my Australian citizenship.

With regards to the anti-asian sentiments in Australia, my DH is of Chinese descent and copped a bit of abuse in his younger days when he was the only Chinese kid in his school. Now the kids of Chinese/south east asian descent are of much greater number so there generally isn't that much of an issue.

On the other hand, Australia is experiencing race issues within different migrant groups. My mum has had a few instances in her classes - eg Aremnian and Turkish kids not sitting next to each other. Or racism between the HongKong and mainland Chinese Australians.

It is odd how the English flag can be seen as offensive.

There's a much stronger sense of national identity in Scotland and Wales, flags used a lot, no shame attached.

And potoroo, thanks for your comments on AUstralia. Always thought it couldn't be sun and candy floss all the time!

I am always confused by 'Britishness'. I have far more in common with the people I went to school with/work with now whose ancestors are from a variety of different places than I would if I went 'back to my roots' (In my mum's case Fife, in my Dad's case the other side of London).

suzy I can lend you my two wiggles groupies......

it is interesting - can't comment on the britishness aspect but as an aussie - have always been aware of what aspects make us aussies - and yes we did terrible and still allow terrible things to occur to the aboriginals..... but there is still a real sense of what it means to be an aussie.

Again - guess other than the aboriginals we all came from somewhere else - I am only 1st generation aussie on my dad's side and second on my mums - ethnic background - Welsh, French and English.

There has been at times disquiet between ethnic groups - some of it has been carried from home countries and issues and it spills over here - when you have people escaping terrible conditions and arriving in a country where there is somewhat of a melting pot then these issues will rear their ugly head - fact of life......

Just what does it mean to be British? Or should it be English, Scottish, Irish and Welsh?

Whilst those disputes do occur - the occasions are in the minority. I guess it also comes down to the person - friend of ours - Britain ( England) is god's own country - can do no wrong, everything in Aus is something to complain about - makes me wonder why he came sometimes....... dh - loves Aus and all it entails.... sees Aus as his home and whilst there is still that affinity with England and his beloved Chelsea - really has no desire to go back except for seeing family and friends.

Re changing the words to hymns - I can confirm that the words to "Away in a Manger" were changed at ds' primary school. Both dh and I noticed that the line didn't quite scan and then worked out why.

Having said that, in general the school is very good at mult-culturalism (my tow example aside) and has developed an ant-racist pack/policy (based on an acceptance of difference and of people as indiviuals) which is now being rolled out across the Education Authority.

There does seem to be two uses of the term "multi-cuturalism". Most people here see it as appreciating that there are lots of different systems, and that they usually have some merit.
This leads to enrichment of our culture, by taking up the interesting ideas.

However there is the one used by activists and politicians which is that people "should" be members of "recognised communities", else they will get shafted.
Thus if you belong to a big gang, you can get away with any number of wrongdoings, with the defence of "it's our culture".
As someone of Irish ancestry, raised in Britain, I must say I find the notion of "Britishness" both silly and bad.
Britain is a federation of sorts, being several indigenous nationalities who manage to mostly live in peace. It is common for white British people to regard Indian cooking as "British", and express the desire for it when spending long stretches abroad. A high % of the rest of British cooking is French, the language is a mutant cross between German, French and Latin, with bits of Hindi chucked in.
"Britain" is actually a relatively new country, younger than (say) the USA.
In as much as there is a "Britishness", it is not caring about differences. This is very different to respecting them. The multiculturalists go one about how great other cultures might be, and rather dishonestly "forget" to talk of their defects.
They believe (wrongly) that knowledge of different cultures makes people live in peace. This is utter rubbish. People live in peace when they don't care about what others do.
In Iraq two factions of Islam murder each other, even though they know each other rather well. My Israeli and Arab friends demonstrate understanding of each other's culture far superior to mine. Not a lot of peace there, and of course the various European and American oppressions of Jews were not based upon ignorance at all.
The Christian terorism in Ireland was between two groups who knew each other's culture well. Indeed pretty much the only people who understand the collective insanity of that province are from it.

Religious schools do seem to be on the increase and that's bad. Not because they fail to teach about other cultures, since most actually do this better than those without imaginary friends, but because of the mixing that leads to indifference.

What we need is kids to see other kids, and not care that their culture is good or bad. We need them to hate each other in the random and less destructive mode of supporting different football teams. Kids will hate each other, form gangs etc, whatever you do, the trick is to make sure that these are weak and small.
Religious or ethnic gangs can be big enough to threaten civil order, so it is simply stupid for the state to encourage them.
We don't need stronger communities, we need weaker ones. Look at the last dozen atrocities you've seen on the news. Typically they were "inter-communal". Football fans are thuggish louts, but the scale makes them relatively harmless.

Its interesting - I'm over in the Gulf with thousands of other expats and its sometimes like a competition to see who can life up to their national stereotype the most. The one thing we all have in common is that we adhere to the cultural and social mores of the country to a certain extent - ie I'll observe Ramadan although not Muslim, I cover myself (western clothes), I follow the coffee rituals etc etc. To be fair we have to, the authorities are pretty strict here. But for me coming here and being part of the community here meant respecting the culture of this land, even though it frustrates me at times.

I don't know how a person going to the UK would be able to assess what is British culture - TV etc is dominated by US, we have a cosmopolitan food and music scene, its very liberal - what are British values? Its something we were talking about here last night - what symbolised Britain to us now we're away from it - the majority verdict seemed to think that the classic British country pub summed up all that was good in British culture - place of community and discussion, warmth, hospitality and beer.

It's very tempting to see Britain as "dominated" by foreign cultures, especially the US.
It is of course the case that much "American" culture is in effect recycled European, with British culture so pervasive that almost uniquely there are no "British americans", in the way almost ever other group hyphens itself.

In any case this makes us stronger, we suck in stuff from everywhere, and thus Britian is both diverse and dynamic. Try to think of some recent French scientific or cultural invention. Think of a big German pop group ? Hint: ( U2 is not German) (or British for that matter). Ireland has more globally important groups than Germany and France put together. Have you seen German TV ? Trust me it gains in translation.

The Germans didn't even invent their own death capms, they nicked the idea off us.

I also regularly entertained by the Daily Mail and other shallow thinkers going on about the Human Rights Act as being foreign thinking.
Fact is that Europe had the notion of "human rights" imposed upon it by Britain bombing the shitheads until they saw sense. Human rights law in Europe is mostly a British creation. We sent legal experts ot explain it to them in short words and with pictures wheree necessary.
Where do you think they got the idea of "freedom" from ? Europe has no tradition of that whatsoever, they hard to learn it from scratch. To be fair, they learned very fast, and we are in danger of foretting. The US constitution drew from European, especially French thinking, but not in any way from the French implementation which until quite recently was a succession of thugs and dictators.

The difference is that in Western Europe and the USA they implemented laws, we rely upon process.

That works better, if you can get it right.
Under socialism Eastern Europeans had huge piles of legal rights, more than any civilised society.
Of course the reality was entirely different.

hmm as someone who travels frequently in France and Germany I suspect the reason we Brits don't recognise their achievements are down to lack of language (TGV vs. Intercity 125 anyone? Airbus? ). Also those are both countries with high levels of immigration (moroccan/algerian/bosnian.turkish/polish) too. But both retain a sense of culture that can be recognised as unique.

but the fact that we do absorb cultures is what makes the british unique, and is probably the thing i like most about the british. we're not snobby about other nations' food (like the French, the spanish and the Italians can be), we're prepared to try new things wherever they're from (lots of music, including rock and roll may have originated elsewhere but became popular in the uk first) and, as a rule, we don't mind outsiders making fun of us.

plus of course there is the british sense of humour (totally unshared by most of europe with the possible exception of the germans), british scientific acheivements (the most nobel prizes per head in the world), a truly free press (which admiteddly can be a bad thing as well as a good thing), the british ability to moan about bloody anything, and most importantly, british puddings and pies. mmmm. who needs a tgv?

Sadly the Nobel prize thing is a historical anomaly. These days we're nothing special. A free press is not unique since we imposed that on much of Europe by force. We also have a concentration of media ownership that puts us on a par with Italy and below Germany and France.
About the only thing that's banned in French & German mediathat is not banned here is Nazi symbols.

As for British humour, my darling wife has elbowed her way to getting tickets to the Monty Python Musical
Right at the front

so does culture have to be recent to count then?

I didn't say any of those things were unique, but I would argue that we have a freer press than, say, Germany because we don't have any holocaust denial laws. and how is the concentration of media ownership "on a par with Italy" when we have so many more national titles than other countries? there are only 6 national papers in spain, so presumably whoever owns the bestselling one owns about 40% of the market - that's more than Murdoch owns in the uk.

and actually, the nobel thing isn't a historical anomoly and I can't really believe I'm looking this up. baby musty be overdue.

It is a good question whether culture should be "recent". My view is that although there is great value in the stuff you inherit, the health of your culture is what it is doing, not what people did 200 years ago. Dickens or Newton are now part of mankind's heritage not just Britain. Indeed, people like Locke or Swift are better known to Americans than their descendant countrymen.

On that score, we're doing pretty well, we do lots of stuff. Of course most of it is rubbish, but it was ever thus. Shakespeare had lots of competitors, but no peers, we just don't think about them much.

As for Noble prizes, senapostrophe back my argument nicely.
We have 5 in the last 15 years.
To put that in perspective the USA has more than 3 dozen, and such "leading" nations as Timor has two as does S.Africa.
There was a time when there were individual Cambridge colleges who won more Nobels than France.
The so-called Sussex "university" has shut down it's Nobel prize winning Chemistry department, by diverting specially allocated funds to media studies and other non subjects.