05 November, 2005
Whose fault was Lozells? Ours, of course
Laban points out this piece of egregious nonsense, but overlooks the underlying core message:
In the 1970s and 1980s, reports of inter-ethnic squabbles were rightly greeted with suspicion and derision by anti-racists. This was for two reasons. Firstly, Asians and blacks more often shared a common experience of racial oppression under the authorities and freelance racists. Secondly, reports such as the Sun's loathsome 'Ten reasons why blacks and Asians hate each other' were a transparent attempt to excuse official white racism.So there you have it; it's all our fault. We evil indigenous Brits eventually got used to these exotic strangers that had been thrust upon us and largely overcame our not unnatural initial suspicion of them. While we didn't entirely embrace the aliens and their strange ways to our collective bosom, we came to tolerate their presence and to interact, on the whole, peacefully and constructively with them.
In today's climate, racial prejudice against ethnic minorities no longer has official backing. Without that common experience of racial oppression, fractures between ethnic groups can begin to emerge.
This, clearly, was the wrong thing to do. Because we stopped being beastly to these assorted resident foreign Johnnies, they were forced to turn on each other to satisfy their need for victimhood.
# posted by Edwin Greenwood @ 11:33 
