[lbo-talk] What caused the bombers to bomb?

[Richard Harris]

> Pakistanis, being marginalized in British 
> society, probably didn't get much help to build the family and community
> structures needed to survive (and rationalize) life in somewhat hostile
> British industrial society. 
> 
> Watching your family and friends being treated like dirt... or even
> hearing about it through communal oral history... seeing it's effects 
> on the parents, and grandparents...general estrangement from the 
> adopted society... diffuse, obfuscated anger.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 

I'm sorry but this does not fit reality.  The Pakistani community has one of 
the most stable family bases in Britain.  I've NEVER met a person of 
Pakistani heritage who regards themselves as part of a Pakistani community - 
or, sometimes, of being of Pakistani heritage.  The owner of my local corner 
shop told me, when I asked him about this: 'I'm as British as you'.  And he 
is.  My experience, I'm sure, is skewed ... 

Family disintegration (i.e. a single mum - occasionally dad - with children) 
is seen most in the a) Afro-Caribbean working class b) white working class 
(Social Trends 2004). 

The text above is a just so story.  It is not true that British Pakistanis 
are all unerring victims of racism.  This treats the white? working class as 
a load of scum.  (I could not have written this twenty years ago). 

Can you find a British ethnic minority publication that claims that their 
readers are beleaguered by racism? 

It isn't helpful in thinking through these difficult issues to just sit at a 
keyboard and guess what the 'facts' must be: "probably didn't" 

******************** 

p.s. Comrade Remick, 

I'm sorry to have blasted you so heavily.  I have now read quite a few of 
your messages and realise that I must have misinterpreted the spirit of your 
messages, and thus their meaning. 

Keep well 

Richard.