Multiculturalism has betrayed the English, Archbishop says
Discussion
Multiculturalism has betrayed the English, Archbishop says
By Ruth Gledhill
St George's Day should be celebrated and the English should reclaim their national identity and culture, Dr John Sentamu says, a week before his enthronement in York
Dr John Sentamu at York Minster where he will be enthroned as Archbishop on November 30 (BEN GURR)
BRITAIN’S first black Archbishop has made a powerful attack on multiculturalism, urging English people to reclaim their national identity.
The Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, said that too many people were embarrassed about being English. “Multiculturalism has seemed to imply, wrongly for me, let other cultures be allowed to express themselves but do not let the majority culture at all tell us its glories, its struggles, its joys, its pains,” he said.
He said that the failure of England to rediscover its culture afresh would lead only to greater political extremism.
The new Archbishop also strongly criticised the Terrorism Bill, showing that he is likely to be even more robust in his criticism of the Government than the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams.
Dr Sentamu has consistently denied speculation that his was a political appointment and, as a former judge in Uganda, his attack on counter-terrorism legislation carries particular weight. “The moment you make your laws so tough, even the most law abiding will say, this is a chance to break them,” Dr Sentamu said.
He called for the English to rediscover their cultural identity by properly marking celebrations such as St George’s Day on April 23. “I speak as a foreigner really. The English are somehow embarrassed about some of the good things they have done. They have done some terrible things but not all the Empire was a bad idea. Because the Empire has gone there is almost the sense in which there is not a big idea that drives this nation.”
The Ugandan-born Archbishop, who fled Idi Amin’s regime in 1974, said he would not be where he was today were it not for the British Empire and the English teachers and missionaries who worked in Africa.
Dr Sentamu was speaking to The Times before his enthronement as the Church’s new No 2 at York Minster on November 30. As the most senior black churchman, who during his time as a bishop in London acted as an adviser to the Stephen Lawrence inquiry that found institutional racism in the police, he received racist and abusive letters, some covered in human excrement, after his appointment was announced earlier this year.
But as a direct product himself of the British Empire, he intends to make mission and a passion for English culture, and the Christian roots of that culture, driving forces of the next decade or more that he will spend as primate of England’s northern province.
“What is it to be English? It is a very serious question,” he said. “I think we have not engaged with English culture as it has developed. When you ask a lot of people in this country, ‘What is English culture?’, they are very vague. It is a culture that whether we like it or not has given us parliamentary democracy. It is the mother of it. It is the mother of arguing that if you want a change of government, you vote them in or you vote them out.
“It is a place that has allowed reason to be at the heart of all these things, that has allowed genuine dissent without resort to violence, that has allowed all the fantastic music that we experience in our culture.”
Multiculturalism as a concept failed to convey the essence of what it meant to be English. “England is the culture I have lived in, I have loved . . . My teachers were English. As a boy growing up, that is the culture I knew.”
He disliked the word “tolerance” when used in reference, for example, to people of different cultures. “It seems to be the word tolerance is bad because it just means putting up with it,” he said. “I was raised in the spirit of magnanimity. That is a better word than tolerance. If you are magnanimous in your judgments on other people, there is a chance that I will recognise that you will help me in my struggle.”
He described English culture as rooted in Christianity and, in spite of attempts by secularists to marginalise it, the Church still had a central role to play. “I think the Church in many ways has to be like a midwife, bringing to birth possibilities of what is authentically very good in the English mind.”
He will work closely with Dr Williams, and disclosed the precise nature of that relationship.
“We come from a similar stable,” he said. “He is my Moses. I have chosen in that analogy to try and be a Jethro to him. Jethro was Moses’s father-in-law who was always very practical, making suggestions. In the end it was Moses who had to put them out [into practice].
“People say to me, ‘are you going to play second fiddle to the Archbishop of Canterbury?’ That is not helpful. This is going to be a partnership.”
Referring to Dr Williams’s “incredible gifts of intellect” and deep spiritual life, he described him as “a person of prayer and a person who listens to God, a person who wants to be magnanimous about everybody, which some people don’t like. He is a Welshman, I know, but still his behaviour is the kind of tradition I was raised in.”
A spokesman for the Archbishop of Canterbury welcomed Dr Sentamu’s comments. He said: “I’m only embarrassed about being English when we lose a cricket match in the way we’ve just lost one.”
OUT OF AFRICA
Born in 1947 into Uganda’s Buffalo Clan as John Mugabi Tucker Sentamu, one of 13 children
Encouraged in education by English missionaries and teachers, he graduated in law from Makerere University, Kampala, in 1971 and practised law at the bar and the bench in the High Court of Uganda
Read theology at Selwyn College, Cambridge, gaining a master’s and a doctorate, and trained for ordination at Ridley Hall, Cambridge
After ordination in 1979 he served as assistant chaplain at Selwyn College and then as chaplain at Lachmere House remand centre. He also served as curate of St Andrew’s, Ham, in the Southwark diocese
In 1982 he became curate of St Paul, Herne Hill, and a year later, priest at the two churches of Holy Trinity and St Matthias, Tulse Hill, where he stayed until 1996
Word of his lively sermons, music and congregations dancing into the aisles spread through the capital and beyond. His was one of the first parishes to buck the trend of decline
In 1996 he was plucked out of parish life and sent to Stepney as an area bishop
In 2002 he became Bishop of Birmingham; in 2005, Archbishop of York
He has also served as adviser to the Stephen Lawrence judicial inquiry in 1997-99 and chaired the Damilola Taylor review in 2002
www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,171-1882591,00.html
By Ruth Gledhill
St George's Day should be celebrated and the English should reclaim their national identity and culture, Dr John Sentamu says, a week before his enthronement in York
Dr John Sentamu at York Minster where he will be enthroned as Archbishop on November 30 (BEN GURR)
BRITAIN’S first black Archbishop has made a powerful attack on multiculturalism, urging English people to reclaim their national identity.
The Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, said that too many people were embarrassed about being English. “Multiculturalism has seemed to imply, wrongly for me, let other cultures be allowed to express themselves but do not let the majority culture at all tell us its glories, its struggles, its joys, its pains,” he said.
He said that the failure of England to rediscover its culture afresh would lead only to greater political extremism.
The new Archbishop also strongly criticised the Terrorism Bill, showing that he is likely to be even more robust in his criticism of the Government than the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams.
Dr Sentamu has consistently denied speculation that his was a political appointment and, as a former judge in Uganda, his attack on counter-terrorism legislation carries particular weight. “The moment you make your laws so tough, even the most law abiding will say, this is a chance to break them,” Dr Sentamu said.
He called for the English to rediscover their cultural identity by properly marking celebrations such as St George’s Day on April 23. “I speak as a foreigner really. The English are somehow embarrassed about some of the good things they have done. They have done some terrible things but not all the Empire was a bad idea. Because the Empire has gone there is almost the sense in which there is not a big idea that drives this nation.”
The Ugandan-born Archbishop, who fled Idi Amin’s regime in 1974, said he would not be where he was today were it not for the British Empire and the English teachers and missionaries who worked in Africa.
Dr Sentamu was speaking to The Times before his enthronement as the Church’s new No 2 at York Minster on November 30. As the most senior black churchman, who during his time as a bishop in London acted as an adviser to the Stephen Lawrence inquiry that found institutional racism in the police, he received racist and abusive letters, some covered in human excrement, after his appointment was announced earlier this year.
But as a direct product himself of the British Empire, he intends to make mission and a passion for English culture, and the Christian roots of that culture, driving forces of the next decade or more that he will spend as primate of England’s northern province.
“What is it to be English? It is a very serious question,” he said. “I think we have not engaged with English culture as it has developed. When you ask a lot of people in this country, ‘What is English culture?’, they are very vague. It is a culture that whether we like it or not has given us parliamentary democracy. It is the mother of it. It is the mother of arguing that if you want a change of government, you vote them in or you vote them out.
“It is a place that has allowed reason to be at the heart of all these things, that has allowed genuine dissent without resort to violence, that has allowed all the fantastic music that we experience in our culture.”
Multiculturalism as a concept failed to convey the essence of what it meant to be English. “England is the culture I have lived in, I have loved . . . My teachers were English. As a boy growing up, that is the culture I knew.”
He disliked the word “tolerance” when used in reference, for example, to people of different cultures. “It seems to be the word tolerance is bad because it just means putting up with it,” he said. “I was raised in the spirit of magnanimity. That is a better word than tolerance. If you are magnanimous in your judgments on other people, there is a chance that I will recognise that you will help me in my struggle.”
He described English culture as rooted in Christianity and, in spite of attempts by secularists to marginalise it, the Church still had a central role to play. “I think the Church in many ways has to be like a midwife, bringing to birth possibilities of what is authentically very good in the English mind.”
He will work closely with Dr Williams, and disclosed the precise nature of that relationship.
“We come from a similar stable,” he said. “He is my Moses. I have chosen in that analogy to try and be a Jethro to him. Jethro was Moses’s father-in-law who was always very practical, making suggestions. In the end it was Moses who had to put them out [into practice].
“People say to me, ‘are you going to play second fiddle to the Archbishop of Canterbury?’ That is not helpful. This is going to be a partnership.”
Referring to Dr Williams’s “incredible gifts of intellect” and deep spiritual life, he described him as “a person of prayer and a person who listens to God, a person who wants to be magnanimous about everybody, which some people don’t like. He is a Welshman, I know, but still his behaviour is the kind of tradition I was raised in.”
A spokesman for the Archbishop of Canterbury welcomed Dr Sentamu’s comments. He said: “I’m only embarrassed about being English when we lose a cricket match in the way we’ve just lost one.”
OUT OF AFRICA
Born in 1947 into Uganda’s Buffalo Clan as John Mugabi Tucker Sentamu, one of 13 children
Encouraged in education by English missionaries and teachers, he graduated in law from Makerere University, Kampala, in 1971 and practised law at the bar and the bench in the High Court of Uganda
Read theology at Selwyn College, Cambridge, gaining a master’s and a doctorate, and trained for ordination at Ridley Hall, Cambridge
After ordination in 1979 he served as assistant chaplain at Selwyn College and then as chaplain at Lachmere House remand centre. He also served as curate of St Andrew’s, Ham, in the Southwark diocese
In 1982 he became curate of St Paul, Herne Hill, and a year later, priest at the two churches of Holy Trinity and St Matthias, Tulse Hill, where he stayed until 1996
Word of his lively sermons, music and congregations dancing into the aisles spread through the capital and beyond. His was one of the first parishes to buck the trend of decline
In 1996 he was plucked out of parish life and sent to Stepney as an area bishop
In 2002 he became Bishop of Birmingham; in 2005, Archbishop of York
He has also served as adviser to the Stephen Lawrence judicial inquiry in 1997-99 and chaired the Damilola Taylor review in 2002
www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,171-1882591,00.html
Isn't this a case of the pot calling the kettle, er, um, multicultural? 
In all seriousness, he makes a great deal of sense - I just wish the liberal "intelligencia" would finally get it through their thick heads that we don't need to be ashamed to be British, or pander to every whim of every minority, or even assume we will offend them when we won't. And if we did, tough.
In all seriousness, he makes a great deal of sense - I just wish the liberal "intelligencia" would finally get it through their thick heads that we don't need to be ashamed to be British, or pander to every whim of every minority, or even assume we will offend them when we won't. And if we did, tough.
This is an interesting adjunct too - what an amazing path he has trodden.
'It is my job now to remind the English of what you taught me'
By Ruth Gledhill, Religion Correspondent
JOHN MORRIS, working as a young English teacher in Uganda, took pity on the scrawny kid who walked 12 miles barefoot to and from secondary school in Kampala each day. He never dreamed that the confident, laughing child destined to fulfil his dream of being a barrister in Uganda would end up as Archbishop of York in the Church of England.
Dr John Sentamu remembers Mr Morris for buying him a bicycle and keeping him supplied with inner tubes when the tyres gave way on rough tracks that passed for roads.
Mr Morris went on to become ordained himself, at the age of 58, and now, back in England, works as chaplain at Twyford School in the Winchester diocese.
“His [Dr Sentamu's] qualities are leadership and straight talking,” Mr Morris says. The Church of England is in great need of straight talkers. John does not mince words. He gets straight to the point. He’s a very alive person.”
Mr Morris took him and other children to the local Anglican church each Sunday. Dr Sentamu’s vocation came after his friend, Archbishop Janani Luwum, was murdered, making him vow: “You kill my friend, I take his place.”
Dr Sentamu remembers Mr Morris as one of the teachers and missionaries in Uganda who educated him in what it means to be English. “As I was being raised as one of 13 children in a four bedroom house I learnt that you are totally dependent on one another and not a single individualistic sort of person. The missionaries I saw and the teachers I saw in my country were not bringing an individualistic thing. It was always a communal thing.”
Without the English, Dr Sentamu says, his life would have been of a different order.“I come from a clan called the Buffalo clan. Its responsibilities are to be the guardians and protectors of the king. Sentamu means the one who keeps the king’s fire burning. If I had not gone to university I would be outside the palace stoking the fire. That would have been my job, stoking the fire. I just hope with Rowan [Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury] I will be stoking the fire.”
He says the Ugandan experience was preferable to that of French colonies. “What the English tried to do in Uganda was not a replication of the English way of life. They seriously looked at Ugandan culture and tried to have a blend of what was good in Ugandan culture as well as the English.”
He arrived from Uganda in 1974 at the height of Idi Amin’s terrible persecution. A High Court judge, he had been beaten severely by a hit squad and his life was in danger after he ignored an order to deliver a not guilty verdict on a cousin of the dictator. He was able to escape because he had a place at Cambridge to read theology.
“I had been here four months and because I was from the Commonwealth I actually voted for the first time in my life. I was not able to do it in Uganda.”
Now a naturalised British citizen — he finds that an “odd” word, as though he was not natural before — he compares his experience with what is happening in France. “I feel what France has not done is to make those who are living there feel they are part of, feel they could be citizens. They speak French but they know they are not.”
At his enthronement, he has decided to make public what the diocese wanted in their new archbishop. “They were looking for someone who would be a leader in mission, together with the Archbishop of Canterbury.” His aim will be to put English culture back at the heart of English identity, and Christianity back at the heart of English culture. “At heart I have been a creature of English culture. If the English culture does not rediscover itself afresh, that is what is going to lead in the end to these extreme political parties.”
He imitates the average English vicar praising God with an unenthusiastic allelujah to a near empty church. Then he gives his version, thumping the table and crying allelujah to the skies. The miserable, ancient cottage at Lambeth Palace where we are talking, with its false ceiling, laminate doors, storage freezers and cold white lights, suddenly feels an awful lot hotter, a bit more Africa than England.
I tell the archbishop this and he looks momentarily shocked. “I was raised an Anglican on 1662 [the Book of Common Prayer],” he says.
“The gospel I got in my country was so good. I am simply telling the English, it is my job now, to simply remind you of what you taught me.”
A MULTITUDE OF VIEWS
April 3, 2004
Trevor Phillips, chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality, says in a Times interview that multiculturalism is outdated as it encourages “separateness” between communities and calls for a greater emphasis on integration. He says: “We need to assert that there is a core of Britishness”
August 3, 2005
Speaking after the July 7 bombs, David Davis, the Shadow Home Secretary and Tory leadership candidate, calls for a re-examination of multiculturalism and says Britain should learn from the US, “where pride in the nation’s values is much more prevalent among minorities than here”
September 22, 2005
Trevor Phillips says that Britons are “sleepwalking our way to segregation”. Citing the racial inequality highlighted by Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, he says: “For all of us who care about racial equality and integration, America is not our dream, but our nightmare”
October 12, 2005
Lee Jasper, the Mayor of London’s director of policing and equality, says commentators have been too quick to dismiss multiculturalism — “a model that actually works” — and calls Trevor Phillips’s remarks counter-productive. “Everyone is entitled to celebrate their own culture as long as they do not prevent others from doing so,” he writes
October 24, 2005
David Lammy, Labour MP for Tottenham, marking Black History Month, also defends multiculturalism, saying: “I am very nervous at the haste with which multiculturalism is being sent to the knacker’s yard, as if it had achieved nothing for this country. It is all well and good to call for greater integration. But people from different backgrounds cannot integrate unless they have some sense of where each other is coming from . . . ”
November 1, 2005
After the Lozells riots, Lord Ouseley, former CRE chair, accuses it of focusing on “soft cultural questions” rather than deprivation and discrimination
www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,171-1882589,00.html
'It is my job now to remind the English of what you taught me'
By Ruth Gledhill, Religion Correspondent
JOHN MORRIS, working as a young English teacher in Uganda, took pity on the scrawny kid who walked 12 miles barefoot to and from secondary school in Kampala each day. He never dreamed that the confident, laughing child destined to fulfil his dream of being a barrister in Uganda would end up as Archbishop of York in the Church of England.
Dr John Sentamu remembers Mr Morris for buying him a bicycle and keeping him supplied with inner tubes when the tyres gave way on rough tracks that passed for roads.
Mr Morris went on to become ordained himself, at the age of 58, and now, back in England, works as chaplain at Twyford School in the Winchester diocese.
“His [Dr Sentamu's] qualities are leadership and straight talking,” Mr Morris says. The Church of England is in great need of straight talkers. John does not mince words. He gets straight to the point. He’s a very alive person.”
Mr Morris took him and other children to the local Anglican church each Sunday. Dr Sentamu’s vocation came after his friend, Archbishop Janani Luwum, was murdered, making him vow: “You kill my friend, I take his place.”
Dr Sentamu remembers Mr Morris as one of the teachers and missionaries in Uganda who educated him in what it means to be English. “As I was being raised as one of 13 children in a four bedroom house I learnt that you are totally dependent on one another and not a single individualistic sort of person. The missionaries I saw and the teachers I saw in my country were not bringing an individualistic thing. It was always a communal thing.”
Without the English, Dr Sentamu says, his life would have been of a different order.“I come from a clan called the Buffalo clan. Its responsibilities are to be the guardians and protectors of the king. Sentamu means the one who keeps the king’s fire burning. If I had not gone to university I would be outside the palace stoking the fire. That would have been my job, stoking the fire. I just hope with Rowan [Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury] I will be stoking the fire.”
He says the Ugandan experience was preferable to that of French colonies. “What the English tried to do in Uganda was not a replication of the English way of life. They seriously looked at Ugandan culture and tried to have a blend of what was good in Ugandan culture as well as the English.”
He arrived from Uganda in 1974 at the height of Idi Amin’s terrible persecution. A High Court judge, he had been beaten severely by a hit squad and his life was in danger after he ignored an order to deliver a not guilty verdict on a cousin of the dictator. He was able to escape because he had a place at Cambridge to read theology.
“I had been here four months and because I was from the Commonwealth I actually voted for the first time in my life. I was not able to do it in Uganda.”
Now a naturalised British citizen — he finds that an “odd” word, as though he was not natural before — he compares his experience with what is happening in France. “I feel what France has not done is to make those who are living there feel they are part of, feel they could be citizens. They speak French but they know they are not.”
At his enthronement, he has decided to make public what the diocese wanted in their new archbishop. “They were looking for someone who would be a leader in mission, together with the Archbishop of Canterbury.” His aim will be to put English culture back at the heart of English identity, and Christianity back at the heart of English culture. “At heart I have been a creature of English culture. If the English culture does not rediscover itself afresh, that is what is going to lead in the end to these extreme political parties.”
He imitates the average English vicar praising God with an unenthusiastic allelujah to a near empty church. Then he gives his version, thumping the table and crying allelujah to the skies. The miserable, ancient cottage at Lambeth Palace where we are talking, with its false ceiling, laminate doors, storage freezers and cold white lights, suddenly feels an awful lot hotter, a bit more Africa than England.
I tell the archbishop this and he looks momentarily shocked. “I was raised an Anglican on 1662 [the Book of Common Prayer],” he says.
“The gospel I got in my country was so good. I am simply telling the English, it is my job now, to simply remind you of what you taught me.”
A MULTITUDE OF VIEWS
April 3, 2004
Trevor Phillips, chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality, says in a Times interview that multiculturalism is outdated as it encourages “separateness” between communities and calls for a greater emphasis on integration. He says: “We need to assert that there is a core of Britishness”
August 3, 2005
Speaking after the July 7 bombs, David Davis, the Shadow Home Secretary and Tory leadership candidate, calls for a re-examination of multiculturalism and says Britain should learn from the US, “where pride in the nation’s values is much more prevalent among minorities than here”
September 22, 2005
Trevor Phillips says that Britons are “sleepwalking our way to segregation”. Citing the racial inequality highlighted by Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, he says: “For all of us who care about racial equality and integration, America is not our dream, but our nightmare”
October 12, 2005
Lee Jasper, the Mayor of London’s director of policing and equality, says commentators have been too quick to dismiss multiculturalism — “a model that actually works” — and calls Trevor Phillips’s remarks counter-productive. “Everyone is entitled to celebrate their own culture as long as they do not prevent others from doing so,” he writes
October 24, 2005
David Lammy, Labour MP for Tottenham, marking Black History Month, also defends multiculturalism, saying: “I am very nervous at the haste with which multiculturalism is being sent to the knacker’s yard, as if it had achieved nothing for this country. It is all well and good to call for greater integration. But people from different backgrounds cannot integrate unless they have some sense of where each other is coming from . . . ”
November 1, 2005
After the Lozells riots, Lord Ouseley, former CRE chair, accuses it of focusing on “soft cultural questions” rather than deprivation and discrimination
www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,171-1882589,00.html
timmy30 said:
I agree with what he says.
It's an interesting sign of the times that only a black man feels that he can say those things without the danger of being branded as a racist.
Sadly true
Tolerance is a two way street. We need to have tolerance of immigrants and they need to have tolerance for our way of life.
they keep saying england should celebrate st. georges day just to get their sense of identity back.....but have england ever celebrated it?.....i mean in wales st davids day has been celebrated for years in the schools (or it used to!), ireland is famous for st patricks day, i'm not sure if scotland has a record of doing stuff on on st andrews day.......but as far as i can make out, there's no history of celebration of st georges day, so why should it matter now?
[quote=JagloverTolerance is a two way street. We need to have tolerance of immigrants and they need to have tolerance for our way of life.
[/quote]
Exactly right JL.
There was a piece on Midlands today regional news last night about a bronze statue of a boar being put back in a Derby park, as the first one had been destroyed in the last war. It then said that there 'were concerns about the statue as it may offend muslims'.
For goodness sake, the woolly minded liberals that come up with such crap are the ones who create more racist tension. It is people like the Archbishop (well said archbishop) who reduce it IMHO.
[/quote]
Exactly right JL.
There was a piece on Midlands today regional news last night about a bronze statue of a boar being put back in a Derby park, as the first one had been destroyed in the last war. It then said that there 'were concerns about the statue as it may offend muslims'.
For goodness sake, the woolly minded liberals that come up with such crap are the ones who create more racist tension. It is people like the Archbishop (well said archbishop) who reduce it IMHO.
Jaglover said:No, I don't have to be tolerant of immigrants. If they don't like it they can
Sadly true
Tolerance is a two way street. We need to have tolerance of immigrants and they need to have tolerance for our way of life.
off back to where they came from. I don't see any Australian or American immigrants moaning about being offended over every little thing.eccles said:
when you get to the bottom of a lot of these "ban it because it may offend" stories, it turns out no one has actually complained, and when they interview members of the minority that "may" get offended, they dont give a monkies!
It couldn't possibly be that the local authority "Minority and ethnic relations" teams indulge in a bit of self justifying job creation could it?
Bitter'n'twisted said:
the woolly minded liberals that come up with such crap are the ones who create more racist tension.
theres a chap, same age as me, who is a muslim, was out on site with him the other day, and this subject came up.. in relation to christams lights...
his thoughts where he was more offended by people implying it was his culture that was intolerant, and wanted to suppress christmas... ie being made a scapegoat for the repression of christians. he was free to be a Muslim, why shouldnt others be free to be christian, plus he liked the lights - brighten the town up for a bit.
Blimey , it took CupraR a whole hour and 25 minutes to post his anti immigrant prejudice in this thread.He must be losing his touch...
Anyway, most of the political correctness, instigated by authorities in different counties over the UK concerning other cultures living in Britain,never took into consideration the opinions of those people concerned.Had they consulted British Muslims/Sikhs/Hindous/Jews or Budhists, they would probably find out that most of them have no problems and no objections to the words "Christmas", "Jesus" , "black" or any other word that these bureaucrats consider taboo so as not to offend the Ethnic minorities.
These ethnic minorities are clearly embarrassed by these overzealous politically correct men in charge who are actually doing more harm than good trying to decide on other cultures they cannot understand.It breeds resentment in people's hearts when Christmas cannot be celebrated in certain towns because some ignorant bureaucrat decided it would be offensive to non Christians.Talk about patronising these non Christians !
I read an article by a British Muslim in the Daily Mail the other day who strongly objected to this political correctness going mad, and added that even in their religion(Islam) they recognize Jesus Christ as a prophet as well as Moses and other prophets.This however begs the question: Why on earth don't these bureaucrats ask these people first before dreaming up some cockeyed policy which is going to jeopardize race relations and risk breeding resentment against non Christians living in this country?
Anyway, most of the political correctness, instigated by authorities in different counties over the UK concerning other cultures living in Britain,never took into consideration the opinions of those people concerned.Had they consulted British Muslims/Sikhs/Hindous/Jews or Budhists, they would probably find out that most of them have no problems and no objections to the words "Christmas", "Jesus" , "black" or any other word that these bureaucrats consider taboo so as not to offend the Ethnic minorities.
These ethnic minorities are clearly embarrassed by these overzealous politically correct men in charge who are actually doing more harm than good trying to decide on other cultures they cannot understand.It breeds resentment in people's hearts when Christmas cannot be celebrated in certain towns because some ignorant bureaucrat decided it would be offensive to non Christians.Talk about patronising these non Christians !
I read an article by a British Muslim in the Daily Mail the other day who strongly objected to this political correctness going mad, and added that even in their religion(Islam) they recognize Jesus Christ as a prophet as well as Moses and other prophets.This however begs the question: Why on earth don't these bureaucrats ask these people first before dreaming up some cockeyed policy which is going to jeopardize race relations and risk breeding resentment against non Christians living in this country?
Isn't it nice to see the question of race divorced from the question of Culture...and by one of the few men who can say such things freely. Good for the man.
I am not English.
I, however, love England and, largely, the English who are a fine people. I have chosen to live here. I have married an English girl. All my mates are English but they certainly aren't all white.
What matters to most of us is that the people we interact with on a daily basis think in a similar manner, hold dear the same ideals and respect us as we respect them. This matters to us as it makes our existence comfortable. We can be "multicultural" provided our core culture is congruent across all our population.
I am not English.
I, however, love England and, largely, the English who are a fine people. I have chosen to live here. I have married an English girl. All my mates are English but they certainly aren't all white.
What matters to most of us is that the people we interact with on a daily basis think in a similar manner, hold dear the same ideals and respect us as we respect them. This matters to us as it makes our existence comfortable. We can be "multicultural" provided our core culture is congruent across all our population.
allnighter said:
This however begs the question: Why on earth don't these bureaucrats ask these people first before dreaming up some cockeyed policy which is going to jeopardize race relations and risk breeding resentment against non Christians living in this country?
Because they have been employed by the government to deal with the problem of race relations, and if it turns out that there is no problem, well that's just tough, they're going to deal with it anyway. Otherwise there would be no need for their department would there Sir Humphrey, and we couldn't have that could we?
CupraR said:
No, I don't have to be tolerant of immigrants. If they don't like it they can
Did you get that from the Little Book of Racist Cliches? I only ask because you trot out that same tired comment every time someone so much as hints at anything race or immigration-related like some sort of one man Pavlov's dogs. Maybe if you learnt to express and debate your views with a little more intelligence then people wouldn't call you a cock (as they did on the French Riot thread).
Personally, I don't believe that multiculturalism is wrong in itself, it's the lack of respect and tolerance that all cultures appear to have for each other that is wrong, IMO.
Gassing Station | The Pie & Piston Archive | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff