>> 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 ...
>
I'm not claiming the mantle of realism, although the current reality would seem to indicate whatever the historic relation between the Pakistani community and the rest of British society is, it's had, and has... problems.
For a start, I'm not sure:
> "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.
...is at all a *good thing*. One of the seriously FU'd things about the U.S.(IMHO) is that it's the "great melting pot", which in and of itself is not a bad thing... but it was supposed to be a stew, chunky... not a puree'. We are to learn how to RESPECT other people's cultures and traditions... not assimilate them(forcibly sometimes). The end results culturally must be very different, and no one has ever managed to convince me that homogenization is a good thing. Some would say that homogenization = death.
> 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).
>
Jamaicans living in Britain have a much higher rate of schizophrenia than Jamaicans in Jamaica. Funny thing, when repatriated the Schizophrenia fades...
Probably something to do with indigenous cultures and traditions. Intact family... and extended family unit... There must be much more social & psychological support available to indigenous Jamaicans that isn't available *at all* to Jamaican ex-pats. You brushed the logical extension to the Pakistani community in Britain aside with an ancedote from a shopkeeper.
> 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).
Some of every class is scum, and they make more trouble than their number would indicate. The Paki stompers fit the category of "scum", and caused socio-cultural interactions with the Pakistani community that *must* continue to this day. Please reserve the "historic amnesia" for us Americans.
We need our denial because we can't face the collective reality that, as Martin Luther King, Jr. said so succinctly: "MY COUNTRY is the GREATEST PURVEYOR of violence in the world today."
What would be the excuse from your side of the pond?
>
> Can you find a British ethnic minority publication that claims that
> their readers are beleaguered by racism?
No I can't... but I'm not looking, especially for British ethnic minority publication from 40 years ago. Were there any?
>
> 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"
Exuse me? I'm not guessing, I'm speculating.
>
> Richard.
>
Leigh http://www.leighm.net