Black and South Asian postwar immigrants to the UK and their descendants are often asked ‘Where are you from?’ – a question loaded with a queasy mixture of idle curiosity and unconscious or semiconscious racism.
Begun 2019 | Revised 2025 | 1,300 words | Contents
How should they respond to that loaded question? It’s a minefield.
For a white Briton like me, asking that question of a brown or blackBriton who’s a stranger or casual acquaintance is a bad idea. Much worse is asking as a follow-up question:
Where are you really from?
Such questions are inconsiderately intrusive and, at best, microracist. Although the questioner might not consciously realise it – the question, unpicked, is likely to mean:
Your skin colour and facial appearance suggests your ethnic origin isn’t north European – so in which country are your family origins? Actually, though, I don’t really care where you’re from. My question is mainly rhetorical and microracist. I’m really just drawing attention to your otherness.
A 2022 high-profile incident at a charity reception involving a UK royal aide, ‘Lady’ Susan Hussey, and a black British charity worker, Ngozi Fulani, is a good example of this phenomenon.
Hussey questioned Fulani’s origins, repeatedly asking where she was ‘really’ from. This was witnessed by several other people and then reported by TV and newspapers.
Former royal aide Susan Hussey | Photo: Getty
‘Lady’ Hussey – daughter of the 12th ‘Earl’ Waldegrave, widow of former BBC chairman and life peer ‘Baron’ Hussey, godmother to heir ‘Prince’ William, and a close friend of ‘King’ Charles, ‘Queen’ Camilla and the late ‘Queen’ Elizabeth – resigned after the incident.
At an arranged meeting two weeks later in Buckingham Palace, Hussey apologised to Fulani, and Fulani accepted Hussey’s apology.
However, in spite of that stage-managed resolution, the unpleasant incident supports Meghan Markle’s implied claim of racism in the royal household; and flags widespread casual racism amongst the ruling class.
If the question, as in that case, seems offensively rhetorical, the asker’s bluff can be called: ‘Why do you want to know?’
If the question seems genuine, and worthy of a helpful response, it might nevertheless be not so easy to answer.
For an answer to be accurate – and understood – both parties need good geopolitical and historical awareness. It can get complicated.
For instance, If a British person of South Asian appearance is known to be a Muslim, they might not be – as might be assumed – of Pakistani or Bangladeshi origin. Many UK Muslims have origins in the Indian state of Gujerat. (Almost 20 percent of Indian people are Muslims.)
Many South Asian people came to the UK from Kenya and Uganda. South Asian communities were established beforepartition in East Africa and the Caribbean, mainly in Kenya, Uganda and Trinidad. They were there because of another piece of clumsy and careless social engineering by the Brutish Empire:indentured servitude.
From 1834 to 1917, following the ending of slavery, many people were induced to move from India to other colonies as indentured labourers for the empire. Unsurprisingly, the conditions were harsh and the wages low. The workers were derogatively called ‘coolies’.
Indian indentured labourers, seeking to escape the poverty and famine frequent during colonial rule, came mainly from the Punjab and Bengal regions (both later severed during partition).
On completing their indenture, some Indian people stayed on in Africa or the Caribbean. They were joined by family members and formed thriving expatriate communities, albeit protected by the brutal stranglehold of empire.
After those colonies gained independence, many South Asian residents moved to the UK. Those in Uganda were famously expelled by Idi Amin. In Kenya, harsh changes to citizenship rules prompted mass voluntary emigration.
Those UK immigrants, whilst identifying by religion, often also identify by their diaspora community. For instance, people may identify as Kenyan Muslims.
My South Asian Muslim wife, when asked ‘Where are you from?’, sometimes says ‘Nairobi’. Her ethnicity is Punjabi but she was born in Kenya and spent her childhood there.
The person asked that question could give an informative reply, such as:
My family origins are Punjabi Muslim in what’s now Pakistan. In the late 1800s my grandfather went from the Punjab to work in what’s now Kenya. Our family lived there before coming to the UK in the late 1960s.
They could summarise it: ‘Pakistan’. But the question is more likely to provoke a passive-aggressive and deliberately obtuse reply, such as, ‘I’m from Leicester – where are you from?’ (or the deliberately annoying ‘from my mother’s womb’).
The hidden question, ‘Why are you here?’ at least offers the possibility of debate and reason; but behind that lurks the racist rhetorical question:
Why don’t you go back there?
For postwar immigrants to the UK and their descendants, such racism is never far below the surface.
Note: My post Racism explained as a redundant instinct suggests racism is a redundant anti-stranger instinct revived and twisted by colonialism and postcolonialism – and, sadly, provoked by the postwar mass immigration carelessly engineered by a patrician government. We antiracists choose to reject and oppose that twisted impulse and to embrace our brilliant multicultural society.
Thoughtful white Brits aware of all that – or just wary of the social minefield – don’t ask that awkward, loaded question. But it does get asked.
If I was a British person of colour asked by a white person, ‘Where are you from?’, and the question seemed intrusive, I’d want to challenge it, but it in a non-hostile way.
I’d initially bat it back by – politely – saying, ‘How do you mean?’ If they indicated they were asking about my ethnic origin rather than my place of residence, I’d ask – still politely, if possible:
Why do you want to know?
The questioner might well find it difficult to explain themselves. Serves them right.
British people of colour people also ask the question, ‘Where are you from?’ of each other. The purpose is to find out the other’s origins: country, religion, region, town, caste, class, whatever.
That’s a different can of worms – and it doesn’t excuse white Brits asking that question. As always, context is crucial. The context is the white west and – as always – racism is prejudice plus power.
Osler takes the question seriously, exploring her complex Empireland* family heritage, but she starts by explaining how that question can undermine one’s sense of belonging and nationality with its implied accusation:
You don’t belong here – you’re not British
Clearly, not everyone asking that question is aware of the toxic smog it stirs up – but ignorance is no excuse. Osler suggests a barbed comeback: having answered (or not answered) the question, turn it around and ask:
Where are you from?
* Note: The resonant name Empireland was used by award-winning British journalist Sathnam Sanghera as the title of his 2021 best-selling book, which shows how the Brutish Empire shaped modern Britain but has been airbrushed out of cultural awareness and is barely even taught in schools.
Recently in my workplace I overheard some jokey chat about ‘gingers’. It wasn’t directed at a particular person but I felt uneasy, as I always do when this casual prejudice happens. It felt like a form of racism.
Prejudice against red-haired people, known as gingerism, apparently exists only in England. It’s always framed as jokey banter and is often heard in the workplace or the pub.
If anyone objects, they’re likely to be chided: ‘It’s just a bit of fun. Can’t you take a joke?’ But is it a harmless joke? Or is it actually racism seeking an ‘acceptable’ form?
In the 1950s and 60s, racist comments were commonplace in the workplace and the pub, but now they’re unacceptable in public. Perhaps ‘harmless’ jokes about red-haired people or about the Welsh, (another similarly mocked group) constitute a new outlet for the redundant but dangerous and destructive anti-stranger instinct upon which racism is apparently built.
A UK Guardian article on the subject downplayed the idea of gingerism as racism, pointing out that people with red hair clearly don’t suffer the same devastating personal and institutional discrimination as people with black or brown skin.
However, the Guardian article suggested an interesting explanation for gingerism: English anti-Celtism, and – more specifically – anti-Irish feeling.
Many Irish people have red hair. Since Cromwell’s brutal colonisation of ireland, there’s been a tendency for the English to disdain the Irish. (Hence Irish ‘jokes’.)
In the 1950s, London boarding-house signs supposedly said, ‘No blacks, no dogs, no Irish‘. This seems to be apocryphal, but it illustrates a real prejudice.
English red-haired people bravely (Brave!) try to reappropriate the word ‘ginger’ – as African Americans have reappropriated the N-word. But the bullying ‘jokes’ continue regardless.
Red-haired Neanderthals
Neanderthal humans had red hair. Having lived in Europe for over 100,000 years, they were apparently wiped out 35,000 years ago by immigrating early modern humans. (Early modern humans emigrated everywhere – they’re the ancestors of all humans.)
Perhaps ‘jokey’ bullying of red-haired people and colonialist anti-Irish sentiments are echoes of that ancient hostility.
(As well as killing Neanderthals, early humans interbred with them. Most Europeans and Asians have 1-4% Neanderthal DNA. However, red hair in modern humans isn’t inherited from Neanderthals – apparently it’s a different gene.)
I was scolded on a local Facebook page for criticizing the phrase ‘mixed race’. The scolder said: ‘I’m mixed race – that’s what I call myself.’ ‘Yes, but…’ I thought.
Meghan Markle, aka Duchess of Sussex | Photo: Shutterstock
Here in the UK, people have their ethnicity labelled, like it or not. But the phrase ‘mixed-race’ is loaded with prejudice. Isn’t it?
We’re asked to tick a box for our ethnic identity on forms gathering data for marketing or discrimination-monitoring purposes. The UK police use ethnic identity codes to describe suspects. The UK census asks, ‘What is your ethnic group?’
People of colour might, on the one hand, see such labelling as a form of racism. On the other hand, the concept of ethnicity allows people of colour to identify themselves – in positive terms.
Either way, ethnic identification is here to stay. So… is it OK to say ‘mixed-race‘? No. How can it be OK? ‘Race‘ is known to be a false category cooked up by white supremacists with fake science which falsely claimed the different human populations are separate races in a hierarchy of superiority.
Racists, of course, don’t care about the science. They just discriminate against people who look different or have a different culture whether they’re a ‘race’ ot not.
Non-racists also fudge the issue – with the slippery postmodern ‘social construct’. The words ‘race’ and ‘mixed-race’ are in widespread use by both white people and people of colour. In that context, race is supposedly a neutral social construct which simply describes the different human populations.
Even the Guardian (centre-left, the UK’s only national daily newspaper not owned by billionaires) uses ‘mixed race‘ to describe, for instance, Meghan Markle. (The usually brilliant Guardian style guide is silent on the subject.)
When ‘mixed-race’ is used in a social-construct sense, the toxicity of the word ‘race‘ is somehow shut out. The vile supremacist ideology scratches at the door, but is just ignored. The usage may be considered harmless but it carries the baggage of slavery.
As a zealous and pedanticantiracist, I objected to the use of the phrase on a local Facebook page and got a hostile response. People said, ‘I’m mixed-race – that’s what I call myself’.
But why would anyone accept ‘mixed-race‘ as a description of themselves, loaded as it is with outmoded prejudice?
Science-denying racists say there are different human races, some of which are intrinsically superior to others. They’re wrong.
Pseudo-scientific racists, from ‘Enlightenment’ philosophers Kant and Locke onwards, tried to justify colonialism and slavery by claiming Europeans are inherently superior to other ‘races‘.
They aren’t, of course, but the pseudo-science rolled on. In the 1930s and 40s it reached its nadir, contributing to Nazi ‘justification’ for the Hollocaust.
In the 1960s US racists tried to prove white superiority by ‘intelligence testing’ black Americans against white Americans. The ‘tests’ were worthless – culturally loaded and fundamentally flawed.
Racist claims of white supremacy were bound to fail. The science of taxonomy shows there are no human ‘races’. All modern humans are a single species, Homo sapiens (the only surviving species of the genus Homo).
Some taxonomists say we’re all a subspecies, Homo sapiens sapiens (the only surviving subspecies of Homo sapiens).
(That difference of opinion doesn’t detract from the science. It shows the inevitable difficulty of establishing exact patterns of evolution.)
Either way, actual science says we’re all in the same category of creatures.
Some early Homo sapiens groups left Africa and settled elsewhere, evolving distinct characteristics and forming ethnic groups, known in biology as populations.
Race is a slippery concept, but in biology it’s an informal rank below the level of subspecies, the members of which are significantly distinct from other members of the subspecies.
Genetic research has confirmed the obvious: apart from some single-gene disorders*, the differences that evolved between different human populations, albeit visually and culturally obvious, are not significantly distinct. This means the different populations are not races in any scientifically meaningful sense.
* Single gene disorder: genetic disease caused by a mutation in a single gene Some single-gene disorders are specific for certain populations, like Tay-Sachs disease among Ashkenazi Jews, cystic fibrosis in Caucasians, thalassemias among people from Southeast Asia and the Mediterranean countries, and sickle cell disease in people of Western African origin.
In spite of the scientific account of one humanity, racist pseudo-science limps on. But in any case, most white racists don’t care if there are scientifically meaningful races or not. They just want to indulge in bullying people from a different group, regardless of whether that group is a ‘race’ or a ‘population’.
Anyway, regardless of the science, racists can freely call such different populations ‘races’. ‘Race’ is now supposedly a social construct – meaning population!
But for what it’s worth, real science has trashed the racist fake science: there are no different human races, just one humanity with different populations – which are becoming increasingly mixed.
The different human populations are becoming mixed. The historical causes are bad but the mixing is good.
Increased travel in recent centuries brought large numbers of people of different ethnicity face to face for the first time in human history. Unfortunately, most of that contact was colonial.
The consequent vile transatlantic slave trade to the Americas and carelessly engineered UK postwar mass immigration resulted in black and white people living in the same countries, mainly the USA and the UK. Inevitably, in spite of racism and conflict, they’ve mixed – and that’s a Good Thing.
Before pseudo-scientific racism was rumbled, racists sneered about ‘miscegenation‘. And amongst ethnic minorities there’s pressure to resist assimilation and preserve cultural heritage by not ‘marrying out’.
But marrying ‘out’ doesn’t have to mean loss of cultural heritage – it can be seen as marrying in. Some dodgy lyrics aside, Blue Mink were right: what we need is a great big melting pot.
Ethnicity is often related to religion, and there may be concern that marrying ‘out’ will dilute religion and therefore morality. But here in the western melting pot, we live in a post-religious age. God – as the source of morality – is dead.
Fortunately, as social animals we have innate goodness – and any innate badness can be constrained by the rule of law, preferably under liberal democracy (the worst form of government apart from all the others).
(Non-religious spirituality, on the other hand, is alive and well – and isn’t affected by inter-ethnic mingling.)
People say race is a social construct. But the word ‘race’ is still toxic, and the abstract idea of a social construct can be misunderstood – and misused.
Science shows there are no human races, but some say ‘race’ is a social construct which doesn’t have to be scientifically meaningful – it’s just a way of describing the different human populations.
A social construct is said to be a concept or category that exists due to shared agreement within a society, rather than being based on objective reality. It’s a fine example of slippery postmodern relativism.
Such usage is now widespread. ‘Race’ as shorthand for populations of different ethnicity is used by people of colour in speech; and by black and white writers and speakers in non-racist media. For instance, the liberal, antiracist UK Guardian newspaper happily describes Meghan Markle as ‘mixed race’.
But devious racists use the social construct idea to blur the issue and keep talking about ‘race’ despite the evidence there are no races. Confusion between ethnicity and race is the loophole in the social construct through which racists slip.
The social construct idea has complex theoretical academic origins. Not everyone gets it. Many people reading or hearing the word ‘race’ in the media, unaware of any ‘shared agreement’ about what it means, might understandably assume it refers to an objective reality and means what it says.
Many people reading or hearing the word ‘race’ will think – and will be encouraged to do so by loophole racists – that it means what it meant in the days of empire, slavery and Holocaust, when ‘races’, identified by appearance or culture (or both), were ranked in order of superiority, with white at the top and black at the bottom.
Despite its frequent use by non-racists as – supposedly – a social construct, the word ‘race’ is fundamentally toxic and redundant. For antiracists, the solution to this linguistic dilemma is to abandon the flimsy social construct context and stop using the word ‘race’.
Race as a social construct is fraught with difficulty. The idea that ‘race’, the toxic invention of fascists and greedy colonialists, can be used to mean ‘ethnic group’, a harmless biological reality, is typical of postmodern moral relativism. Postmodernism is fun – but dangerously unreliable .
(‘Race’ is, of course, implied in the word ‘racism’ but until the misnamed thing ends, the word will probably continue to be used, trailing its toxic root. Unless there’s a better word.)
Ethnic identity is used negatively by racists. But it’s used positively by people of colour – and usefully by public services such as the census and the police.
Racists use ethnic identity negatively to assert their imagined superiority. However, people of colour identify themselves positively as, for instance, black British, Asian British or mixed ethnicity, thereby identifying their family origins, the colour of their skin, and their cultural allegiances.
The UK censususefully records ethnicity statistics which can help shape progressive policies. And apparent ethnicity can be useful to describe an unknown person. In the Facebook warning that prompted this post, a man harassing women in a park was described as ‘mixed-race‘.
The UK police use radio shorthand identification codes, known – tautologically – as IC codes, to describe suspects to colleagues. For instance, IC3 stands for black, IC4 for South Asian and IC5 for East Asian. There’s no IC code for people whose appearance indicates mixed ethnicity. However, IC7 means unknown.
During ‘stop and search’ operations, police use more complex ‘self-defined ethnicity‘ codes. People stopped are asked to choose one of 18 codes. The codes follow census categories (see below) by including options for mixed ethnicity.
(Although such ‘racial profiling‘ is useful to the police, it’s also abused by them. For instance, the controversial practice of stop and search is overused against young black men by a force repeatedly said to be institutionally racist.)
Which words are acceptable alternatives to ‘race’? Ethnicity? Heritage? Ancestry?
‘Race’ is used in what’s meant to be a neutral social-construct sense to describe the different human populations. But the supposed neutrality of that context doesn’t mask the word’s stench of bigotry. An alternative to the toxic word ‘race’ is needed.
Ethnicity
The UK governmentstyle guide recommends the word ‘ethnicity’:
We refer to ethnicity and not race…We don’t say ‘mixed people’ or ‘mixed race people’. We usually say ‘people with a mixed ethnic background’…
‘Ethnicity’ is an awkward mouthful of a word, and might seem blunt. But its meaning is clear – and it’s neutral.
The UK census uses the phrase ‘ethnic group‘. It quacks like a nerdy Dalek:
‘What is your ethnic group?’
Under ‘Mixed or multiple ethnic groups’, the UK census lists several options, including write-it-yourself in 18 characters or less (good luck with quadruple ethnicity):
(The insensitive Dalek means well. UK public services being mainly multicultural, the data can shape progressive policy.)
Heritage
The government guide and the census don’t use the word ‘heritage‘ – perhaps partly because there’s a connotation problem.
‘Heritage‘ could sound like something to do with the National Trust collection of stately homes – many of which, according to a 2020 NT report, have links to the slave trade and colonialism.
But ‘heritage’ has some merit as an alternative to ‘race’. ‘Mixed heritage‘ is a syllable shorter than ‘mixed ethnicity‘; and ‘heritage’ is easier to say than ‘ethnicity’, lacking that awkward ‘thn‘ sound.
Also, ‘heritage‘ sounds less personal and direct than ‘ethnicity‘. ‘Your heritage‘ sounds more discreet and less intrusive than ‘your ethnicity‘.
And when addressing someone’s cultural background, ‘heritage’ is more meaningful than ethnicity.
Note: The notion of cultural heritage might not be as innocuous as it sounds. Perhaps racism is boosted by culturism, in that the ‘strangerness’ of people of African or Asian ethnicity living in the west indicates a different culture. That cultural difference – perhaps perceived unconsciously – might elicit fear and prejudice in the ignorant.
Ancestry
Then there’s ‘ancestry‘, which is acceptable if the context is understood.
So…
‘Heritage‘ and ‘ancestry‘ are useful non-toxic alternatives to ‘race‘ and they’re less direct than ‘ethnicity‘. But they’re ambiguous and euphemistic. We’ve all got mixed heritage and ancestry – we haven’t all got mixed ethnicity.
So – with some reservation – I’ll mainly use ‘ethnicity‘ in this post – it’s more meaningful.
If you have more than one ethnic identity, would you want to say how many? If so, how would you say it – and when?
Some people describe themselves as having dual ethnicity. They want people to be aware of the challenges and benefits of having two different ethnic backgrounds.
That’s understandable. But ‘dual ethnicity‘ or the occasionaly used ‘biracial‘ – which includes that word – can be seen as pointlessly limiting.
(It brings to mind the horrible word ‘half-caste‘, which leads to a hell-hole of outdated racist numerical classifications like ‘quadroon‘.)
What if you have more than two ethnicities? If, say, one of your parents has African ethnicity and the other parent has dual South Asian and European ethnicity, would you say you have triple ethnicity (or you’re triracial)?
What if your parents have four ethnicities? It’s increasingly possible: say, East Asian, South Asian, African and European. Would you say you have quadruple ethnicity? (It sounds a bit like ‘quadroon’…)
‘Mixed ethnicity‘ is discreet and flexible, giving enough information without a number. It says, in effect:
As you may infer from my facial appearance, I have more than one ethnic identity and that’s an important part of my character. I’ll give more information if and when it’s appropriate.
Some black antiracist campaigners say mixed-ethnicity people should identify as black – but how can it be right to deny part of your ethnic identity?
Some radical black antiracists say: ‘If you’re not white, you’re black’. They’re saying people of mixed ethnicity should identify solely as black (meaning non-white, ie black or brown).
One such proponent was the late Darcus Howe, the black UK broadcaster and antiracist campaigner. Fellow UK activist Sunder Katwala has recalled being on the receiving end of Howe’s rhetoric.
Katwala, the mixed-ethnicity director of immigration think-tank British Future, wrote about the encounter in the conclusion to his 2012 BF report The Melting Pot Generation.
Katwala and Howe were chatting after a TV discussion (about a controversial remark made by a black politician). Katwala apparently referred to himself as ‘mixed-race’, and Howe objected. Katwala recalled their exchange:
“Mixed race? What’s all this mixed race nonsense? If you’re not white, you’re black.”
That old point was jovially roared at me with some emphasis by one of this country’s leading public raconteurs on race and racism.
“But I’ve never thought I was black. Shouldn’t it be up to me to decide?”
“What are you then?”
“British. And English. My parents are from India and Ireland, so I’m half-Asian and mixed race as well.”
“British? Why don’t you call yourself Indian? Are you ashamed of your father, boy?”
Howe was forcefully expressing the well-known position of radical antiracism: ‘mixed‘ is nonsense – if you’re not white, you’re black.
It’s an understandably angry political response to mixed-ethnicity people experiencing racism because they’re not white.
It’s a proud and noble gesture. But should people of mixed ethnicity feel obliged to deny a significant part of their heritage? Isn’t the antiracist cause best served by people of colour feeling free to express their full identity?
Some mixed-ethnicity people call themselves ‘mixed-race’. It’s easy to say – and difficult to criticise.
Some people of mixed ethnicity say:
‘I’m mixed-race – that’s what I call myself. Don’t tell me what to say!’
It must be difficult enough being brown-skinned in a white world, facing microracism (‘Where are you from?’) and conscious and unconscious personal and institutional bias – without having a would-be white saviour (I’m white – hi!) tell you how you should or shouldn’t describe yourself.
Whitesplaining word-nerd virtue-signaller – who do I think I am? It’s like a white person telling black Americans not to use the N-word: ‘I say, you rapper chappies – you really shouldn’t use that bad word.’
Except it’s not like that. When a mixed-ethnicity person uses the phrase ‘mixed-race‘ to describe themselves, they’re not re-appropriating the word ‘race‘ in a playfully political way.
They’re giving white people permission to use that phrase – and they’re inadvertently agreeing with zealous racists, the only people who think there actually aredifferent races.
The question remains: why would anyone choose ‘mixed-race‘ as a description of themselves, knowing it to be loaded with outmoded prejudice?
Perhaps mixed-ethnicity people call themselves ‘mixed-race‘, thinking, ‘So what? Who cares? It’s a social construct. It’s just what people say. And it’s only two syllables.’
Fair enough. Also, maybe they’re winding up mitherers like me. If so, damn – you got me!
I just hope it’s not an example of that depressing phenomenon, internalised racism.
‘Mixed race’ is easy to say and ‘race’ is now supposedly a neutral social construct. But shouldn’t that toxic word be retired?
Some people choose to describe themselves as ‘mixed-race‘. The word ‘race‘ has ugly roots, but when it’s understood as a social construct rather than a fake biological category, perhaps it seems better than the non-toxic alternatives.
The main alternative, ‘ethnicity‘, isn’t an easy word. Although it’s harmless and clear in meaning, it’s a difficult, official-sounding word. It doesn’t roll off the tongue easily – it’s definitely not a people’s word.
But in spite of that, ‘ethnicity‘ is still better than ‘race‘, isn’t it? The phrase ‘mixed race‘ is easy to say but even in a social-construct context it remains loaded with fake science and colonial notions of white superiority.
Shouldn’t the word ‘race’ be left in the shameful past where it belongs?
‘Mixed ethnicity‘ is a mouthful. It’s got academic roots, three extra syllables and an awkward ‘thn‘ sound. But it obviates the toxic word ‘race’, and in its neutral clarity it celebrates our differences and embraces their mixing.
A commenter on this post (see below) points out that young people of mixed ethnicity tend to refer to themselves simply as ‘mixed’. That’s a cool solution. When used in context, the abbreviation ‘mixed’ keeps the meaning while avoiding bothuncool words – ‘race’and‘ethnicity’.
For older people (like me) the – less cool – solution is:
Don’t say: mixed-race
Do say (if you must): mixed-ethnicity
In which I suggest racism is a nasty modern twist on an ancient anti-stranger instinct.
Started August 2016 | last updated May 2025 | 40,500 words | 1hr 45m | Contents | They say…
Racism hurts | Photo: Alamy
Digest
Q: How come there’s so much racism around?
A: It’s basically genetic, an ancient anti-stranger instinct revived and twisted by colonialism supported by pseudoscientific racism. More recently, Nazism, postcolonialism, mass migration, populist nationalism and western separatist Islam have kept it going.
Note: Some readers, seeing the words ‘genetic’, ‘mass migration’ and ‘Islam’, may have read no further, assuming this to be a standard pseudoscientific justification for nationalist ultraracism. It isn’t – it’s just the opposite. Let me explain…
Purple: countries that were colonised by Europe | Image: Black Maps / Freepik Flaticon
All black and brown people in the west experience racism. See, for instance, this study of black students’ experiences at a UK university. As a white person – hi – I can only imagine how horrible that is and – for what it’s worth – apologise for it. I’m very sorry.
But why the racism?
In this post, I suggest racism – meaning power plus prejudice – is an ancient anti-stranger instinct revived and twisted by colonialism.
European colonialism and postcolonialism have fucked up the whole world. See the map above.
(Imagine if European expansion had been like Star Trek instead. Go boldly – if you must – but don’t fuck everything up when you get there.)
Apologists for colonialism say empire ‘civilised’ the world. But the brutality, theft and genocide carried out by European colonialists – my forebears – vastly outweighs any benefits allegedly due the empire’s so-called ‘civilising’ effect (for instance, railways).
European colonialism and racism went hand-in-hand. We white Europeans – encouraged by the pseudoscientific racism of ‘Enlightenment’ philosophers Kant & co. – believed we were a superior race. We weren’t.
Now we know there are no different human ‘races’. It was always a fake concept. So-called ‘racial’ differences are superficial. Everyone with half a brain knows that. Now.
So if there are no ‘races’, how come there’s so much postcolonial racism around? Mainly because racists don’t care whether there are ‘races’ or not. They’re simply prejudiced against non-white or non-western groups, call them what you will.
This post is my attempt to understand that inexcusable prejudice. The purpose of understanding it is to end it.
I start by admitting to my own (unwanted) racist feelings, and suggesting we’re all racist. I also:
Address black-on-black colour prejudice, or ‘shadism’
Suggest racism might be innate
Explain how ‘scientific’ racism is rubbish but was used to justify the slave trade and the Holocaust
Suggest mass immigration and separatist Islam have provoked innate/postcolonial racism in the UK and Europe
Conclude that if we acknowledge and address evolved prejudice, humanist goodness can prevail
Present much additional information and comment in addenda
Note: This post links to academic sources and comments, but it’s not academic. I’m not academic. Academia, for all its proclaimed intellectual rigour, doesn’t have a monopoly on thinking and writing about the causes of racism. In fact, when it comes to explaining racism, academia is torn apart by pointless factionalism. See below.
So, I’m antiracist, but I’m sorry to say I have racist feelings. I don’t want them, and there’s no justification for them. Having acknowledged the unwanted impulse, I choose not to indulge it, but to live above it, and to challenge its expression by others.
But it’s still there – and I don’t think it’s just me. I think probably we’re all racist.
If that’s true, there’s clearly a difference between voluntary racists – people who consciously indulge racism – and involuntary racists – people who are unconsciously racist, who probably don’t realise it and might well deny it.
Unconscious racism (also known as aversive racism), especially when expressed through institutional racism, blights millions of lives. But for the sake of simplicity, this post uses ‘racism’ mostly to mean voluntary racism – the public face of unconscious racism.
We white liberals rightly resist any feeling of racism, or we understandably suppress it – but it’s still there. An irrational suspicion of strangers, especially dark-skinned strangers, persists – and has been intensified in the west by recent circumstances and pressures.
Part of it is colour prejudice, a phrase fallen out of fashion, having been replaced by the blander catch-all, ‘racism’. But colour prejudice, now sometimes known as ‘colourism‘, is still a real thing.
Racism and colourism are rubbish – so why do they persist? One clue might be shadism.
Shades of dark | Poster for documentary film Dark Girls by Bill Dukes and Donald Channsin Berry
Liberal idealists might be surprised and dismayed (I know I was) to learn there’s a strong undercurrent of colourism among people with brown or black skin.
In this semi-secret culture of prejudice, sometimes known as ‘shadism‘, lighter skin is considered good, and darker skin is considered bad.
James Brown, 1971: black and proud | Photo: Evening Standard/Getty
The global skin-lightening market is growing. It’s forecast to be worth over $12bn a year by 2027. The biggest market is South Asia (the geographically vague but politically correct UK name for the Indian subcontinent – see my post, Asian, Indian, Pakistani: what’s in a name?) and, perhaps to a lesser extent, the South Asian diaspora.
South Asian shadism is often mixed with prejudice based on class, caste or region, but there’s also shadism within such groups. There’s almost an obsession with skin tone. For instance, someone with a lighter skin will typically be considered a better marriage prospect than someone with darker skin. Encouraged by adverts featuring Bollywood stars, many South Asians – mainly women – use skin lightening products.
Shady business – skin-lightening advert
So…finding out about shadism, and reflecting on my own unwanted racist feelings made me wonder: might there be a gene for racism and colourism?
After starting this post as speculation, I realised there’s evidence for evolved group prejudice, of which racism might be a modern version; and for unconscious colour prejudice which might be innate. See below.
European colonialism and postcolonialism have fucked up the whole world, with any alleged benefit hugely outweighed by the brutality, murder and theft. That can’t be said often enough.
Postcolonial culturally ingrained white delusions of superiority, combined with white institutional power, is the conventional explanation for white-on-black racism, conscious or unconscious. But perhaps that’s not the whole story.
Similarly, black-on-black and brown-on-brown shadism might be mainly explained by internalised racism caused by the historical domination of much of India and Africa by light-skinned West Asian* and European invaders; and by colonialism, slavery and postcolonialism. But there might be more to it.
*Note: West Asia is the politically and geographically correct name for the region labelled by Eurocentric colonialists as the Middle East.
There’s evidence: a cognitive neuroscience study found that infants as young as 3–6 months could discriminate between European American (EA) and African American (AA) faces, and that both EA and AA adults had heightened amygdala response to AA faces – indicating fear.
However, the researchers suggested that such bias was unlikely to be innate but instead emerges through learning. So perhaps there isno more to shadism than internalised racism.
But can recent history really be the only explanation? What if there’s something wider, deeper and older going on? Is there a nasty gene for prejudice lurking in our ancestral woodshed?
Evolutionary psychology says such behaviour may have evolved as inter-group protection against communicable disease. Has an ancient defence been revived and twisted by modern colonialism into modern racism?
Racist gene | Getty Images
Some scientists dismiss the idea of a gene for racism, but their dismissal seems to be a horrified denial rather than an evidence-based conclusion. Our genes haven’t been fully decoded yet, and perhaps never will be. A racist gene can’t be ruled out – except by wishful thinking.
Racism is usually considered to be a belief. But what if it’s actually an instinct?
To be fair to the horrified scientists, it’s unlikely our early ancestors encountered other population groups, so it’s unlikely we could have evolved a specifically racist gene.
However, evolutionary psychology suggests racism is built on the scaffolding of an anti-stranger instinct evolved to protect against danger and communicable disease. Presumably, darker skin emphasises strangerness and boosts the bias – hence colour prejudice.
There’s good reason to think of racism as an instinct. If it’s a twisted version of a mainly redundant but reactivated anti-stranger instinct, it’d be widespread and irrational – and it is.
There’s no reason to think of racism as a belief. Supremacist racists often hold associated political or religious beliefs, but all attempts to rationalise and dignify racism with ideology or ‘science’ are rubbish – like a drunk trying to act sober.
Racism doesn’t need ‘scientific’ justification – it lurches on regardless. But pseudoscientific racism also lurches on, stalking mainstream science.
Science now knows better, but a few hundred years ago, pseudoscientific racist ideology was all the rage. An early example of bad science, it was used to justify two of the worst things in human history: the slave trade and the Holocaust.
‘Scientific’ or ideological racism is based on the obnoxious and fallacious idea that the different human populations are separate races in a hierarchy of superiority.
It started when influential 18th-century European Enlightenment philosophers, claiming to rationally explain the natural world, defamed non-white populations as inferior, thereby providing intellectual justification for the racist brutality of empire – including four hundred years of the slave trade.
Racists have historically used pseudoscience to claim African populations were genetically less intelligent then other populations. But the intelligence ‘tests’ used were culturally biased. Wikipedia:
Pseudoscientific claims of inherent differences in intelligence between races have played a central role in the history of scientific racism. In the late 19th and early 20th century, group differences in intelligence were often assumed to be racial in nature. Apart from intelligence tests, research relied on measurements such as brain size or reaction times. By the mid-1940s most psychologists had adopted the view that environmental and cultural factors predominated.
In the mid-1960s, physicist William Shockley sparked controversy by claiming there might be genetic reasons that black people in the United States tended to score lower on IQ tests than white people. In 1969 the educational psychologist Arthur Jensen published a long article with the suggestion that compensatory education could have failed to that date because of genetic group differences. A similar debate among academics followed the publication in 1994 of The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray. Their book prompted a renewal of debate on the issue and the publication of several interdisciplinary books on the issue.
A 1995 report from the American Psychological Association responded to the controversy, finding no conclusive explanation for the observed differences between average IQ scores of racial groups. More recent work by James Flynn, William Dickens and Richard Nisbett has highlighted the narrowing gap between racial groups in IQ test performance, along with other corroborating evidence that environmental rather than genetic factors are the cause of these differences.
So, although most psychologists said environmental and cultural factors had twisted the ‘results’, biased professionals persisted in claiming evidence for an inherent ‘racial’ difference in intelligence. They were full of shit.
Taxonomically, all modern humans are Homo sapiens sapiens, the only surviving subspecies of the species Homo sapiens, the only surviving species of the genus Homo[1].
Racists say there are different human races, some of which are intrinsically superior to others. They’re wrong.
In biology, ‘race’ is an informal rank below the level of subspecies, the members of which are significantly distinct from other members of the subspecies.
Interpreters of genetic research have confirmed the obvious: the different human populations are not races in any scientifically meaningful sense – they’re just people with superficial evolved differences from one another. In other words, there are no human races.
However, racists ignore such technicalities. They continue to call ethnic groups ‘races’, regardless of scientific evidence.
The problem is – so does everyone else, whether non-racist or antiracist. ‘Race’ is now widely considered to be a ‘social construct’. In that context, the word ‘race’ is used as a synonym for ethnicity.
The problem with that is that, as implied by the abstruse terminology, the concept of ‘social construct’ has complex academic origins. Not everyone gets it – and racists take full advantage of that confusion.
(There’s also no such thing, strictly speaking, as ‘the human race’ – but ‘the human subspecies’ isn’t catchy. ‘The human race’ is a harmless and inclusive phrase in common use – but ‘humanity’ is better.)
Racial profiling using IC codes can be useful to the UK police when identifying a suspect to other officers. However, it can also be abused by the police, for instance in the controversial and problematic practice of ‘stop and search‘. This dragnet practice continues to be used, especially in London, and especially against young black men.
The 1999 Macpherson inquiry into police mishandling of the racist murder of black Briton Stephen Lawrence famously concluded the London Metropolitan police force was institutionally racist.
Over 20 years later in 2020, the Met chiefsaid she’d implemented Macpherson’s recommendations, and the Met was now not institutionally racist.
However, in June 2021, a former Met chief superintendent, the highest-ranked ethnic-minority woman in the force (who retired in 2019 after being cleared of a gross misconduct charge, suing the Met for ethnicity and gender discrimination, and agreeing a confidential settlement), said the Met was still institutionally racist.
In December 2021, UK police chiefs were reported to be considering a public admission of institutional racism.
In March 2023, in the wake of the rape and murder of Sarah Everard by a serving Metropolitan police officer, it was reported that a government review found the Met to be not only institutionally misogynistic but also racist, corrupt and homophobic.
The superficial differences between populations are used – and abused – by the UK police. However, they also feature more positively in the complex self-declared ethnic categories used for the UK census and for discrimination monitoring.
Ethnicity is clearly related to ‘race’, but it’s relatively non-toxic. It’s used mainly to implement anti-discrimination practices and to support ideas of multiculturalism.
The concept of ethnicity allows people to identify themselves as, for instance, black British or Asian British, thereby voicing their own feelings about who they are in positive terms which include family origins, the colour of their skin, their nationality and their cultural allegiances.
(The word ‘Asian’ in ‘Asian British’ is short for South Asian and means having ethnic origins in the Indian subcontinent. See my post Asian, Indian, Pakistani – what’s in a name?)
‘Mixed race’ is frequently used as a description or self-description in the context of ethnicity. The problem with this epithet is that there are no human races. ‘Mixed ethnicity’ is better.
The widely used acronym for non-white ethnic minorities in the UK, BAME (black, Asian and minority ethnic), and its less-used alternatives BME (black and minority ethnic) and BEM (black and ethnic minorities), not to mention BAMO (black, Asian, mixed or other ethnic group) are used to support antiracist and multicultural policies.
The intention is to redress the effects of personal and institutional colour prejudice (for instance, on mental health), but, perhaps because the phrase ‘colour prejudice’ is not in current use, linguistic difficulty and consequent controversy have ensued.
The US import, ‘person of colour‘, is considered acceptable (at the time of writing) but, perhaps inevitably, causes controversy.
Acronyms such as BAME are criticised for suggesting people whose ethnicity includes African ethnicity (‘black’) are racially different from those whose ethnicity includes South Asian ethnicity (‘Asian’) and from other ethnic minorities.
In 2021 the gov.uk website, under the heading ‘Writing about ethnicity’, said ‘BAME’ was ‘not helpful’:
The terms BAME (black, Asian and minority ethnic) and BME (black and minority ethnic) are not helpful descriptors because they emphasise certain ethnic minority groups (Asian and black) and exclude others (mixed, other and white ethnic minority groups). The terms can also mask disparities between different ethnic groups and create misleading interpretation of data.
In March 2021, the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities recommended the government stop using the term BAME.
One of the recommendations in our final report on COVID-19 disparities, published in December 2021, was to address specific ethnic minority groups rather than address ethnic minorities as a single group (through for example use of the term ‘BAME’). This was supported by research commissioned by the Race Disparity Unit (RDU), which found that British ethnic minority people are three times more likely to agree that the term ‘BAME’ is unhelpful than disagree.
[The wording of this government style guide has since been changed. but the gist is the same.]
That may seem reasonable, but without a collective term, how can the effects of institutional racism be understood? The Conservative government elected in 2019 was accused of seeking to downplay or even deny institutional racism.
The term ‘BAME’ might be disliked by most ethnic minority people, but a collective descriptor is essential to rooting out institutional racism. It’s been suggested the phrase ‘ethnic minority’ is better.
Then there’s the hot potato of identity politics[6], which enables people of a particular ethnicity or other identifying factor to develop a political agenda based on their identity and their sense of oppression.
The genetic variations found in different human populations are mainly superficial but they may:
have health implications
be used by the police to describe you
be used to discriminate against you
be part of your positive self-identity
inform your political action
The different populations aren’t races. There are no different races – we’re all ‘just’ human. But that makes no difference to racists. They’re happy to discriminate against their fellow humans if they’re not white.
Science shows there are no human races, but some say ‘race’ is a social construct that doesn’t have to be scientifically meaningful – it’s just a way of describing the different human populations.
According to Wikipedia, a social construct is a concept or category that exists due to shared agreement within a society, rather than being based on objective reality.
‘Race‘ as a social construct is used by non-racists as shorthand for populations of different ethnicity. It’s used in that way in speech by people of colour; and by both black and white writers and speakers in non-racist media. For instance, the liberal, antiracist UK Guardian happily describes Meghan Markle as ‘mixed race’.
But devious racists use the social construct idea to blur the issue and keep talking about ‘race‘ despite the evidence there are no races. Confusion between ethnicity and race is the loophole in the social construct through which racists can slip.
The social construct idea has complex theoretical academic origins. Not everyone gets it. Many people reading or hearing the word ‘race’ in the media, unaware of any ‘shared agreement’ about what it means, might understandably assume it refers to an objective reality and means what it says.
Many people reading or hearing the word ‘race’ will think – and will be encouraged to do so by loophole racists – that it means what it meant in the days of empire, slavery and Holocaust, when ‘races’, identified by appearance or culture (or both), were ranked in order of superiority, with white at the top and black at the bottom.
Despite its frequent use by non-racists as – supposedly – a social construct, the word ‘race‘ is fundamentally toxic and redundant. For antiracists, the solution to this linguistic dilemma is to abandon the flimsy social construct and stop using the word ‘race‘.
(‘Race‘ is, of course, implied in the word ‘racism‘ but until the misnamed thing ends, the word ‘racism’ will probably continue to be used, trailing its toxic root.)
‘Racism’ is the wrong word – because there are no races. However, until racism the thing ends, racism the word will probably continue to be used, trailing its toxic root, the word ‘race’ (long overdue for retirement, but surviving as a supposedly neutral social construct). But is there a better word or phrase?
‘Colour prejudice’ is more accurate than ‘racism’, but the phrase is out of fashion – and it doesn’t account for white-on-white anti-Judaism. Culture prejudice, also known as culturism could account for anti-Judaism.
But ‘culturism’ won’t do as a replacement for ‘racism’ – it’s too polite. ‘Prejudice’ might be thought a better term than ‘racism’ – but it’s too broad. There’s prejudice against minorities not identified by ethnicity or culture – like single mothers or the super-rich.
Other near-synonyms for racism, such as ‘bigotry’ and ‘bias’ are also too broad. The obscure term ‘ethnicism’ can be used as a more accurate synonym for racism but it also has different meanings, making it unsuitable.
As long as the thing (mis)named as racism exists, we need a word for it – and the word ‘racism’ apparently has no alternative. So for the time being, it’ll have to do – misnomer or not.
The misery of slavery has, of course, existed in nearly every culture, nationality, and religion from ancient times to the present day – with or without any ‘justification’. Estimates of the number of slaves today range from 21 to 46 million. Perhaps this shows humans have an innate capacity to see certain ‘categories’ of our fellow humans as ‘other‘.
Thought to be rare amongst hunter-gatherer populations, slavery really took off after the invention of agriculture about 11,000 years ago. Perhaps hunting and gathering was an interesting and sociable activity, whereas farming was boring and tedious. Perhaps thoughts turned to how to get someone else to do it for you, preferably for free. Farming led to city states, which led to warfare and captive slaves (and which later led to capitalism and wage slavery). Bingo!
The Bible condones slavery. Its claimed moral superiority was used by cynical racist colonialists and deluded missionaries to destroy indigenous African culture, but the ‘Good Book’ blithely accepts the fundamentally immoral practice of slavery.
For instance, in the Old Testament check the terms and conditions that follow the Ten Commandments. In Exodus 21:26 slavery is clearly accepted as perfectly normal.
The New Testament continues to accept slavery. For instance, in Ephesians 6:5, the letter writer, possibly ‘Saint’ Paul, urges slaves to obey their masters.
Jesus’s powerful message of meekness triumphant was cynically exploited by colonialist Christian missionaries to encourage African acceptance of the European occupation – and of slavery in the Americas.
(What would Jesus – apparently a real person and a radical teacher – think of such wickedness done in his name? Jesus said, Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, but that was coming from an occupied Jew, not from an imperialist Roman.)
The much-romanticised Anglo-Saxon age in Britain featured slavery, known as chattel slavery. Norman invader William the Conqueror is rightly hated for his legacy of land-grabbing aristocracy – see my post, The super-rich – law and order – but he did at least one good thing: he ended chattel slavery.
Four hundred years after the end of Saxon chattel slavery, European colonialists reinvented slavery. Bolstered by ideological racism, they latched onto existing African slavery systems and created the massive Atlantic slave trade, thereby instituting a whole new level of organised vicious inhumanity.
An estimated 12 million slaves were forced into the Atlantic trade between the 16th and 19th centuries. About four million died in Africa after capture, 1.5 million died on board ships, and 10.5 million reached the Americas to work on plantations.
The death rate on plantations was high, a result of overwork, poor nutrition and work conditions, brutality and disease. Many plantation owners preferred to import new slaves rather than provide the means and conditions for the survival of their existing slaves.
Kindness and conscience eventually prevailed. Opposition to slavery and to the slave trade began in the 1770s. The abolition of slavery was completed in the Caribbean by 1850; and in the US by 1865.
The US didn’t compensate the ‘owners’ of enslaved people, but the British did. Disgustingly, the 1833 Slavery Abolition Act required British ‘owners’ to be compensated.
The UK government borrowed £20m, equivalent today to £17bn. (It took until 2015 to complete the loan repayment.) 47,000 ‘owners’ got compensation.
No money and no apology has ever been given by the UK or the US to the enslaved people or their descendants.
As well as compensating ‘owners’, Britain managed to continue the racist brutality. Instead of being freed, enslaved people under British rule were forced to continue their slavery for four more years in the name of ‘apprenticeship‘.
Under the ‘apprenticeship’ regime, the brutal punishment for working too slowly or taking time off included being hung by the hands from a plank and forced to ‘dance’ a treadmill [2].
The legacy of slavery wasn’t quite so bad in the Caribbean. After abolition, former slaves were in the majority in the islands, and, after independence – achieved between 1962 (Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago) and 1983 (St Kitts and Nevis) – their descendants went on to assume power.
However, the UK African Caribbean minority – those who migrated to the UK in the 1950s and 60s and their descendants living in the UK – have faced, like the African American minority, prejudice and disadvantage (see below) due in part to the legacy of slavery.
The profits from slavery created vast wealth for white UK and US ‘owners’ of enslaved people. None of the perpetrators of that vile crime were held to account – and none of the proceeds were confiscated.
On the contrary, after the abolition of slavery, 47.000 – yes, 47 thousand – UK ‘owners’ were compensated by the UK government. On average, they got about £400,000 each by today’s values.
The African enslaved people were given nothing – except, in the case of US freed people, the famous broken promise of forty acres and a mule.
We white Europeans and Americans can humanely forgive our dead forebears their crimes against humanity if we want, but we’re obliged by justice to compensate the
victims’ heirs.
The German government has rightly paid over $90bn in compensation to the Holocaust survivors and the victims’ heirs.
But there’s a shameful lack of any equivalent compensation paid to the heirs of the victims of the Atlantic slave trade and slavery in the Americas by the governments that permitted, colluded with and perpetrated those terrible crimes.
The descendants of enslaved people have been given nothing except the after-effect of slavery: devastating personal and institutional postcolonial racism.
Black descendants of the victims of slavery understandably resist being seen wholly as victims themselves because it undermines their fight against racism. Nevertheless, they are victims – of post-slavery racism and, as such, they’re entitled by natural justice to compensation.
In this post, the nonsensical phrases ‘antisemitic’ and ‘antisemitism’ aren’t used. ‘Anti-Jewish’ and ‘anti-Judaism’ are used instead.
This post claims racism is caused by a dormant anti-stranger instinct revived by European colonialism. But anti-Jewish racism predates colonialism. See my section on culturism.
The holocaust is hard to think about – but think about it we must. First, some history…
There’s been anti-Jewish racism since the Jews’ most recent exile from Israel by the Roman empire, and their consequent dispersion throughout Europe.
Exile and diaspora is the conventional narrative – but apparently it’s more complicated than that. Apparently, historically, there was no expulsion two thousand years ago.
But however it came about, Jewish diaspora communities lived in Europe. They lived mainly in productive harmony with host communities, but cynical anti-Jewish rabble-rousing led to outbreaks of racist violence, or ‘pogroms‘; and Christian and Muslim extremism led to persecution and expulsion.
The Granada massacre of 1066, a Muslim pogrom in which approximately 4,000 Jews were killed, marked the end of centuries of peaceful coexistence with a liberal Muslim regime in Spain.
In 1290, increasing anti-Judaism led to 3,000 Jews being expelled from England by the king. They were allowed to take cash and personal possessions, but the debts they were owed, their homes and other properties – including synagogues and cemeteries – were stolen by the king.
The final Christian reconquest of Spain in the late 1400s led to approximately 2,000 Jews being murdered by the Spanish Inquisition and to the eventual expulsion from Spain of over 50,000 Jews.
The final Christian reconquest of Spain in the late 1400s led to approximately 2,000 Jews being executed by the Spanish Inquisition and to the eventual expulsion from Spain of over 50,000 Jews.
Savage pogroms continued all over Europe until as recently as the 1940s.
16th-century Christianity reformer Martin Luther publicly recommended the burning of synagogues. Protestant Luther’s beef with Judaism was supposedly theological – but his bitter hatred betrays something less ethereal.
Reformer and anti-Jewish racist Martin Luther | Painting: Lucas Cranach the Elder
(Ironically, Luther’s modern namesake, Protestant minister and black civil rights leader Martin Luther King, publicly spoke out against black anti-Judaism. He acknowledged Jewish participation in the civil rights movement and he actively – controversially – supported the state of Israel.)f
Encouraged by the original Luther’s widely disseminated anti-Jewish rhetoric and by ‘Enlightenment’ philosophers blathering about white supremacy, 19th-century German ‘race theorists’ and public figures boosted anti-Judaism into proto-Nazism.
(One such ‘race theorist’ invented the pseudoscientific word ‘antisemitic’. See my post about that ridiculous word for a tragic phenomenon, Antisemitism – anti-what??)
For instance, the Burschenschaft group declared that German Jews were un-German. Karl Marx, in his essay On the Jewish Question, reinforced anti-Jewish stereotypes. German ‘race theorists’ transformed ‘Aryans’ (meaning, in this context, white Europeans) into a mythical ‘race’, supposedly superior to other races. They denigrated Jews, black people, and Romani people as ‘non-Aryans’ who diluted Germany’s ‘racial purity’.
German composer Richard Wagner, notoriously anti-Judaic, wrote, for instance, that Jewish people were incapable of authentic artistic expression. Some 60 years later Adolf Hitler used Wagner’s music and ideas in his rabble-rousing hate-propaganda.
German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche is often accused of anti-Judaism. However, that reputation was created by his sister Elizabeth Förster-Nietzsche, who edited his works after his mental breakdown in 1889 (from which he never recovered) and his death in 1900.
Nietzsche’s sister systematically falsified his writings to match her own virulent anti-Jewish racism. Nietzsche was arguably a proto-fascist, but he was deeply contemptuous of anti-Judaism and nationalism. (This ended his early friendship with Wagner.)
Förster-Nietzsche’s falsifications have since been corrected, but they were current in the 1920s and 30s. The main fakery was in Förster-Nietzsche’s collection of her late brother’s notes, published in 1906 as a book, The Will to Power, which contributed to Nazi ideology.
Wagner and Förster-Nietzsche were perpetuating derogatory stereotypes of Jews common in Europe for centuries and exemplified in literature by Shakespeare’s Shylock and Dickens’s Fagin.
For instance, the ‘blood libel’ was a widespread anti-Jewish slur dating back at least as far as the tenth century CE. The blood libel – ridiculously – accused Jews of murdering Christian children to use their blood in the baking of Passover bread.
Such stereotypes found their ultimate expression in the fake but influential 1903 document, The Protocols of The Elders of Zion. The highly detailed document purported to reveal a Jewish plot for world domination. The document was exposed as completely fraudulent in the early 1920s but was taught as factual to schoolchildren in 1930s Nazi Germany.
(The Protocols of The Elders of Zion is still touted around amongst modern fringe conspiracy theorist. David Icke thinks the Elders of Zion are extradimensional beings!) Anti-Jewish prejudice, unlike most other forms of racism, isn’t colour prejudice. It’s not a reaction to people’s skin colour – it’s white-on-white prejudice.
As with Islam, Judaism is a religion, not a ‘race’. But, although Judaism contains different ethnic strands, the European Jewish diaspora can be said to be a ‘population’, like African or South Asian people. In the social construct sense, they’re a ‘race’. But they’re not a population easily identifiable by appearance. So how does the prejudice arise?
Anti-Jewish prejudice must be a form of culturist racism: specifically – historically – prejudice against the Jewish diaspora, where people of a different culture came to live in or near a settled neighbourhood, not as individuals but as a self-contained community.
Such Jewish diaspora groups arrived at established communities throughout Europe as fringe communities. Romani travellers, also known as Gypsies, who kept moving rather than settling, were similarly outsiders – and were similarly wiped out in the Holocaust.
Jews – like Gypsies – are voluntarily outsiders, not wanting to integrate but keeping to themselves and to their own culture. This marks them out for prejudice – in that being different means being seen as a threat.
The cultural differences are actually harmless – Jews aren’t actually plotting to rule the world – it’s the difference itself that causes fear, probably mainly unconsciously, which manifests as racism.
Culturism, of course, works one way. Racism is power plus prejudice, so the power is with the European majority and the prejudice is against the outsider minority.
(Culturism, as well as underlying white-on-white anti-Judaism, probably also boosts white-on-black colour prejudice, in that a different skin colour indicates a different culture.)
European anti-Judaism climaxed in the 1940s in Nazi Germany with the Holocaust, Adolf Hitler’s insane, genocidal ‘final solution to the Jewish question’.
Hitler’s anti-Jewish fascism was boosted by:
Widespread, centuries-old European anti-Jewish stereotypes and culturist racism
The anti-Jewish writings of German uber-Protestant Martin Luther
Racist 19th-century German pseudoscientific ‘race’ theory
The protofascist ‘übermensch‘ writings of German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche
The anti-Jewish falsifications by Nietzsche’s fascist sister, Elizabeth Förster-Nietzsche in his posthumous book, The Will to Power.
The 1903 document The Protocols of Zion, exposed as fake in the 1920s but taught as factual in German schools in the 1930s
Racist, pseudoscientific eugenics programmes founded in the UK by Francis Galton and developed in the US by the Carnegie Institution, the Rockefeller Foundation and John Kellogg.
Nazi Germany’s increasingly brutal 1930s anti-Jewish campaign ended in genocide when Jews were sent to extermination camps. In the death camps, the German state systematically murdered six million Jews.
Between 150,000 and 1.5 million Romani people were also murdered by the state.
For those of us who oppose racist anti-Judaism, the Holocaust’s meticulously organised murder of six million Jews haunts our imagination. It’s difficult to imagine how people could have done that.
During his 1961trial in Israel, high-ranking Nazi and Holocaust organiserAdolph Eichmann famously said he’d merely obeyed orders.
Yale professor Stanley Milgram, a US Jewish social psychologist, heard about Eichmann’s defence and posed this question:
What is there in human nature that allows an individual to act without any restraints whatsoever, so that he can act inhumanely, harshly, severely, and in no ways limited by feelings of compassion or conscience? My bolding
Milgram then conducted a famous and controversial series of ingenious experiments – with shocking results.
Milgram showed that ordinary people in thrall to white-coated authority figures were willing to inflict what they believed to be severe pain and even death on strangers. (The strangers were played by actors.)
Questions have understandably been raised about the ethics and methodology of Milgram’s experiments. Their relevance to the Holocaust has been questioned. But Milgram’s basic findings still hold true.
The Holocaust authority figures themselves must have had some form of empathy-deficient mental disorder such as psychopathy. But more disturbingly, in that situation ordinary people were able to set aside their empathy.
Perhaps, however, the Holocaust executioners were not only acting in blind obedience to authority, but were also indulging an instinctive racist urge.
Ironically, extreme nationalism – a main factor in the Holocaust – is now a charge made against the powerful US-backed state of Israel in its ongoing conflict with Palestinian people, many of whom were expelled from their homes and homeland during the controversial establishment of the state, which began in 1948.
Equally ironically, the number of Palestinian people registered as refugees (in 2025) is six million. (There are about seven million Jewish people living in Israel.)
Following an attack on Israel in October 2023 by Hamas, the militant group running the Palestinian Gaza Strip, Israel launched the one-sided Gaza ‘war’ against Hamas during which many tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians, including children, have been killed or seriously injured by the IDF – the Israeli ‘defence’ forces.
Mahmoud Ajjour, nine, lost both arms during an Israeli attack on Gaza City | Photo: Samar Abu Elouf / New York Times
The International Criminal Court (ICC) accused the Israeli premier of war crimes and crimes against humanity, and – in the final irony – Israel was accused of genocide.
Note, May 2025: Rightwing Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu, accused by the ICC in 2024 of war crimes and crimes against humanity, has been on trial in Israel since 2020 on multiple charges of corruption. In the last (proportional representation) election in 2022, his party got 24% of the vote and was able to form a governing coalition with far-right groups (17%). To keep their support and stay in power, he continued the all-out war on Hamas and continued killing Gazan civilians. Are Israelis – or at least the 41% who voted for the government – suffering from collective post-Holocaust PTSD psychosis? The next election is due in October 2026.
Supporters of the Palestinian cause who criticise Israeli Zionism are accused (perhaps correctly in some cases) of anti-Jewish racism. And so it goes.
A June 2018 news report said a major Israeli winery faced calls for a customer boycott after its chief executive admitted to discriminating against employees of Ethiopian origin to accommodate demands from devout Ashkenazi (Jews of European origin) hardliners, who’d questioned whether all the Ethiopians were Jewish, and, therefore, whether the wine was kosher.
A Sephardi (Jews of North African origin) chief rabbi reportedly said there could be no explanation other than ‘pure racism’.
Outside Israel, despite the terrible lesson of the Holocaust, anti-Judaism continues to thrive.
A 2008report by the US department of state found there was an increase in anti-Judaism across the world, and both old and new expressions of anti-Judaism persisted.
A 2012report by the US bureau of democracy, human rights and labor noted a continued global increase in anti-Judaism, and found Holocaust denial and opposition to Israeli policy were used to promote or justify anti-Judaism.
Is there a gene for racism? Ideological, ‘scientific’ racism is now known to be rubbish, but still it creeps on. The racist legacy of the slave trade and the Holocaust continues to grow and spread, perhaps feeding on an instinctive drive.
We now know there are no different human ‘races’, but racism persists. The name’s wrong, but the thing’s real – real but wrong. Racism persist because racists don’t really care about science. They’re just prejudiced against non-white ethnic groups – and Jews (see above).
I’m disgusted – perhaps with presentist hindsight – by my colonising, slave-trading, Jew-hating European forbears. Like Roy Harper, (in that context) I hate the white man and his plastic excuse – but I also blame the genes.
As for being disgusted with one’s criminal ancestors, that only helps if it leads to justice for the victims.
The German government has paid substantial compensation to the victims and survivors of the Holocaust and their heirs. Disgracefully, the heirs of the victims of the Atlantic slave trade and slavery in the Americas have been paid nothing.
I’m pro-immigration but I suggest the careless implementation of postwar mass immigration and the more recent adoption by many UK Muslims of separatist Salafism have inevitably provoked racism.
If racism’s based on an instinct that’s mainly redundant but still active, then it can be provoked by mass immigration.
As a pro-immigration liberal antiracist married to a Muslim woman of Pakistani ethnic origin (whose family emigrated to the UK from Kenya in the 1960s), I’m well aware this is a thorny subject. However, donning the gardening gloves of reason and goodwill, I’ll, er, grasp the nettle.
This section addresses in detail the painful truth – understandably but unhelpfully much avoided by liberals – that mass immigration to the UK has provoked racism in the host community.
The immigrants – apart from the minority of UK Muslims who now practice racism-provoking self-segregation (see below) – are blameless. The blame lies with the patrician administrators who – twice recently – have ordained mass immigration for economic reasons with no thought for the social wellbeing of host or immigrant communities.
On the first occasion, at the end of World War II mass immigration from colonies and former colonies was considered necessary to help rebuild Britain. Cue Enoch Powell (see below) and the ultraracist National Front.
On the second occasion, the enlargement of the European Union and the UK’s post-enlargement lax implementation of the EU principle of free movement of people led to unrestricted immigration to the UK from relatively poor East European countries (see below). Cue UKIP and Brexit.
In both instances, if the host community had been consulted, had agreed large-scale immigration was necessary and had been prepared for two-way cultural integration, there might have been a more welcoming atmosphere.
Recent large-scale migrations to Europe from West Asia (labelled the Middle East by colonialists) and Africa (see below) have also provoked racism.
Those refugees and economic migrants are driven to leave their homes (often going into debt to pay traffickers) by the cruelty of corrupt autocrats who go effectively unchallenged by the international community.
The former corrupt and brutal Assad autocracy in Syria (where civil war created 14 million displaced people and refugees, one million of whom sought refuge in Europe) was not only unchallenged by the international community but was supported by a superstate, Putin’s corrupt and brutal Russia.
(The Assad regime was eventually overthrown internally.)
Warning
The idea that mass immigration provokes racism can be misunderstood as racist propaganda. Some antiracists, wedded to the liberal defence of immigration, see any criticism of mass immigration as victim-blaming and a racist ‘numbers game’.
It’s a bit like any criticism of Zionism being seen as anti-Jewish.
(For instance, see the hostile response by UK antiracist thinktank the Institute for Race Relations to a letter from me in the UK Guardian newspaper [3].)
There’s not much racism in the UK, is there? We might have been brutal in the empire and in Ireland, but back home, on the whole, we’re a welcoming, tolerant country, aren’t we?
Well, not really. Our mainly dormant – possibly innate – racism has been provoked by recent mass immigration.
There have, of course, been invasions and migrations of people from far and wide into Britain for thousands of years (including, briefly, North African Roman soldiers and their families). We’re a mongrel nation.
The last successful invasion was the Norman conquest in 1066. (The so-called Glorious Revolution in 1688 was technically a successful invasion, but was actually a relatively bloodless coup by the ruling elite.)
After 1066, we English were mainly Anglo-Saxon peasants (English-speaking, of German origin) with a French-Norman ruling class (French-speaking, of Scandinavian origin), with some Britons and Vikings.
People from all over the world continued to migrate here from time to time – but mass immigration is a recent phenomenon.
Mass migration to the UK began in 1948 after World War Two (with the arrival of the Empire Windrush ship from Jamaica) when a paternalistic government, without consulting the people, enabled and encouraged large-scale immigration from some countries in the colonies and the Commonwealth (a voluntary association of former UK colonies).
The British Nationality Act 1948 gave all colonial and Commonwealth citizens the status of ‘citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies’ and recognised their right to work and settle in the UK and to bring their families with them.
There was a perceived need for large-scale immigration to help rebuild Britain’s shattered economy – and to boost falling population numbers.
The 1949Royal Commission on Population Report said (in Chapter 12) that to prevent a decline in the numbers of young people, 170,000 immigrants a year would be required. But the report cautioned:
Even, however, if it were found practicable to secure a net inward balance of migration on anything like this scale, we should have to face serious problems of assimilation … Immigration on a large scale into a fully established society like ours could only be welcomed without reserve if the immigrants were of good human stock and were not prevented by their religion or race from intermarrying with the host population and becoming merged in it … There is little or no prospect that we should be able to apply these conditions to large scale immigration.
In revealing contrast, the UK’s great and good said, in effect:
Give me immigrants of good human stock
Disregarding that snobbish patrician crap, the commission gave a sobering warning: there was little or no prospect of a friendly welcome or of successful assimilation.
The tragic fulfilment of that forecast had nothing to do with the quality of the ‘human stock’, and everything to do with their racist reception.
In spite of the commission’s clear verdict that mass immigration would not succeed, politicians ploughed ahead with their policy of encouraging it.
(Policy makers continue to sanction mass immigration for economic reasons or due to neoliberal ideology with the same lack of concern for the social well-being of either host or immigrant communities.)
Most postwar immigrants came from the Caribbean, India and Pakistan. This immigration continued through the 1950s, 60s and 70s.
Also, from 1968-74, South Asian communities in Kenya and Uganda (former British colonies in East Africa) were made or encouraged to leave, and were able to come to the UK.
Indigenous British people hadn’t been consulted. Sadly, many resented the sudden appearance of large numbers of dark-skinned foreigners – with, in the case of those from India and Pakistan, foreign languages and religions.
Poignantly, many immigrants say they expected a welcoming atmosphere. Instead, they faced hostility, personal racism and an unofficial colour-bar, meaning exclusion from lodgings, pubs and churches, etc.
Polls have repeatedly shown that opposition to immigration persists. However, that persistent undercurrent of resentment isn’t only anti-immigrant – it’s also a resentment of imposed change.
For instance, the 1950s exercise was repeated more recently when the UK government, again without consulting the people, allowed mass immigration from poor east European countries under the freedom of movement rule of the European Union (EU). (See below.) Most western EU member states exercised their right to restrict such immigration, but the UK didn’t.
Finally given a say, in a 2016referendum, the UK electorate then voted – by a small majority, but unexpectedly – to leave the EU.
An insightful post-referendum analysis* by acclaimed UK weekly The Economist showed that although immigration was a major factor, the high numbers of migrants didn’t bother Britons so much as the high rate of change.
* The Economist article isn’t readable without a subscription.
In the 1950s there was also large-scale immigration from Ireland. Many Irish immigrants experienced racism (if not colourism). Signs in lodging house windows are supposed – perhaps apocryphally (deep googling produced no convincing photos) – to have said, ‘No blacks, no Irish, no dogs’.
Such white-on-white English prejudice against Irish people is no doubt a relic of the long and troubled history of England’s brutal colonialisation of Ireland.
The 1950s immigrants were – supposedly – needed to meet the labour requirements of postwar reconstruction by working in the newly created National Health Service and nationalised public utilities, such as London transport.
The 1950s and 60s saw a very low rate of unemployment as a result of the postwar ‘boom’. These factors probably mitigated the resentment and racism, but it certainly existed – and, sadly, still does, especially in the older generation.
1957: many women came from India to work as nurses in the newly created NHS | Photo Popperfoto/Getty Images
The term ‘darkies’, common then but now rightly banished (although apparently in current use in the world of black-on-black shadism), was crude and insensitive, but not necessarily hostile.
In the wake of postwar mass immigration and the racism it provoked, organised racist groups emerged, but have never had mass support. They peaked in the 1970s after Enoch Powell’s notorious speech.
After the initial culture shock of postwar mass immigration, relations between immigrant and host communities gradually became friendlier and more relaxed, but resentment and racism persisted, resulting in occasional outbursts, like the 1958Notting Hill riots, and, in 1962, tighter immigration controls.
However, a rising tide of antiracism led to anti-discrimination laws in 1965 and 1968.
Then, in 1968, came Enoch Powell’s infamous ‘rivers of blood’ speech, in which Powell, then Conservative shadow (opposition party) defence minister, criticised colonial and Commonwealth immigration and anti-discrimination law – and forecast race war.
An over-educated racist, Powell forecast coloured immigrant communities clashing with indigenous white communities. He quote the Roman poet Virgil, who, in about 30 BCE, foresaw the River Tiber foaming with blood.
(Powell’s queasy mixture of classical referencing and political psychosis brings to mind a more recent politician: Boris Johnson.)
Powell was sacked from the shadow cabinet. His career was effectively over, and he sank into richly deserved political obscurity. But he’d touched a nerve. London dock workers went on strike to support him. (The dockers had form – in the 1930s, many of them marched with Oswald Mosley‘s fascist, anti-Jewish Blackshirts.)
‘Don’t knock Enoch’ – striking dockers march on Parliament | Photo: Getty
Powell touched a nerve, not just with the militant dockers, but with many ordinary people. It was the first time an elected representative had publicly voiced people’s resentment of imposed mass immigration.
Hostility to postwar immigration, as expressed by Powell and his supporters, contributed to the 1971 Immigration Act, which limited the right to reside in the UK to those with a prior link (such as a parent or grandparent born here).
Powell’s speech is still remembered, 50 years later. People looking for an excuse for racism still say, ‘Powell was right’.
However, in what he actually said, Powell was wrong. His stirring verse failed to mask the banal stink of racism. Powell couldn’t imagine black and white getting on together. His forecast – that irreconcilable ‘racial’ differences would cause mass blood-letting civil disturbance – was false prophecy.
There have been occasional ‘race riots’ – arising from injustice – but there’s been no foaming of blood. Instead, most citizens have accepted a pragmatic mixture of multiculturalism and integration.
We hippies imagined all the people living life in peace in a great big melting pot. (We overlooked Lennon’s hypocrisy and Melting Pot’sdodgy lyrics.) Happily, thanks largely to antiracist campaigning and legislation, that’s more or less how it’s been.
Despite the disturbing spike in racism following the UK’s 2016 EU referendum (see below), younger people generally seem far less racist and colourist than previous generations. However, racial prejudice persists.
Despite a lessening of racial tension, Britons with African Caribbean and South Asian ethnicity (now comprising about 14 percent of the UK population) continue to face prejudice and discrimination, institutional and otherwise.
For instance, a 2017 UK government ‘racial disparity audit’ found the rate of white people in work was higher than that of ethnic minorities – with a larger gap in the North (13.6 percent) than the South (9 percent) – and those from non-white backgrounds were under-represented at senior levels in public sector jobs. The survey findings were displayed in a government website, Ethnicity Facts and Figures.
Also, figures released in 2018 by the UK home office showed black people were more likely than white people to have force used against them by police, especially with firearms, Tasers and AEPs (attenuating energy projectiles – soft-nosed impact projectiles fired from a single shot launcher, often called ‘rubber bullets’).
The figures showed black people experienced 12% of the 313,000 use-of-force incidents in 2017-18, despite constituting only 3.3% of the population according to the 2011 census. White people, constituting 86% of the population, experienced a more proportionate 73% of use-of-force incidents.
Black people were subjected to an even higher proportion of incidents where police used firearms (26%) and Tasers or AEPs (20%). By contrast, white people were proportionately less likely to be subjected to the use of firearms (51%) and Tasers or AEPs (67%).
Black Britons also suffer discrimination in the criminal justice system and disproportionate mental health problems.
In 2017 the UK government commissioned the Lammy Review, an independent review by Labour MP David Lammy into the treatment of, and outcomes for, black, Asian and minority ethnic individuals in the criminal justice system (CJS).
The review found significant over-representation. Despite making up just 14% of the population, minority ethnic men and women made up 25% of prisoners, while over 40% of young people in custody were from minority ethnic backgrounds.
If the prison population reflected the make-up of England and Wales, there would be over 9,000 fewer people in prison – the equivalent of 12 average-sized prisons. There’s greater disproportionality in the number of black people in prisons in the UK than in the United States. These disproportionate numbers represent wasted lives and a source of anger and mistrust.
The independent review found that many of the causes of over-representation lay outside the CJS, as did the answers to it. People from a black background were more than twice as likely to live in poverty as those from a white background. Black children were more than twice as likely to grow up in a lone-parent family. Black and mixed-ethnicity boys were more likely than white boys to be permanently excluded from school and to be arrested as a teenager.
The review found these issues started long before a young man or woman entered the CJS and therefore couldn’t be addressed by the CJS alone.
However, the review found that ethnic minority individuals faced bias, including overt, covert and unconscious discrimination, in the CJS; and more could be done to reduce the proportion of ethnic minority individuals in the CJS and to ensure all defendants and offenders were treated equally, whatever their ethnicity.
The Lammy Review findings were reinforced by January 2020 research published by UK advisory body the Sentencing Council. The research report found black and minority ethnic offenders were far more likely to be sent to prison for drug offences than other defendants.
The odds of a black offender getting an immediate custodial sentence were 1.4 times the odds for a comparable white offender. For South Asian offenders and those in other ethnic groups, the odds were 1.5 times greater.
South Asian offenders got custodial sentences 4% longer than those for white offenders.
Lammy said these figures built on the findings of his review, which recommended prosecutions against some black and minority-ethnic suspects be deferred or dropped to help tackle bias in the system.
One particular aspect of ethnic minority over-representation in the CJS deserves special attention: the wrongful convictions of black ‘gang’ members under the legal doctrine of ‘joint enterprise’.
Many young black men have been wrongfully convicted in the UK under the common-law doctrine of joint enterprise. This long-established principle allows defendants to be found guilty of offences committed by another person if they ‘agreed’ to act together in a joint enterprise.
A 2014 government committee report found clear evidence of disproportionality in ‘joint enterprise convictions:
Almost 500 people were convicted of murder between 2005 and 2013 as secondary parties in joint-enterprise cases.
A large proportion of those convicted were young black or mixed-ethnicity men. Many offences were recorded as gang-related attacks.
37% of those serving very long sentences for joint enterprise offences were black (11 times the proportion of black people in the general population, and almost three times as many as in the prison population).
A charity, Joint Enterprise – Not Guilty by Association (JENGbA), told the committee 80% of the convicts they were helping were black. According to JENGbA, joint enterprise was targeting the most marginalised sections of society, and was having the effect of breaking communities apart.
The committee’s report suggested two main reasons for the disproportionate impact of joint enterprise on young black men:
Black and minority ethnicity men might be over-represented in the kinds of communities where young men typically hung around in groups labelled by outsiders as gangs.
An association might exist unconsciously in the minds of the police, prosecutors and juries between being a young ethnic-minority male and being in a gang, and therefore being involved in forms of urban violence.
This personal and institutional prejudice could be subtle. For instance, the word ‘gang’ was often used, rather than ‘group’, in public discourse about crime to signal ethnicity rather than to describe the links within a group of suspects.
The 2017 Lammy Review (see above) found there was a settled narrative about young ethnic minority people associating in gangs, but far too little attention paid to the older criminals who provided them with weapons and used them to sell drugs; and the criminal justice system must avoid equating gang membership with young people simply associating in groups.
The London Criminal Courts Solicitors’ Association in its submission to the Lammy Review said in the absence of educational or employment progression, or ambition, it may have become a default position for ethnic minority youngsters to fall in with a ‘gang’ offering certainty of identity and rewards, albeit high-risk and short-term.
The review, noting that children as young as twelve were being recruited by gang leaders to sell drugs, urged the prosecution service to review its role in protecting vulnerable individuals who were coerced into gang activities by powerful adults.
People from UK ethnic minorities, especially young black men, have disproportionately died in custody. Major factors were said to be racism and the use of excessive force.
‘Deaths of people from BAME communities, in particular young black men, resonate with the black community’s experience of systemic racism, and reflect wider concerns about discriminatory over-policing, stop and search, and criminalisation.’
The government response to the report promised some reforms but contained no reference to the ethnicity of those who died in police custody.
In 2018, UN human rights experts expressed serious concerns about racism ‘rooted in the fabric of UK society’. Their report highlighted the disproportionate number of people of African descent and from other ethnic minorities dying due to the excessive use of force by state security agencies. The report said:
‘The deaths reinforce the experiences of structural racism, over-policing and criminalisation of people of African descent and other minorities in the UK.’
My bolding
Data disclosed by the Metropolitan Police in August 2017 showed people of African descent and those belonging to ethnic minority groups, in particular young African and African Caribbean men were twice as likely to die as white people after the use of force by police officers and the subsequent lack or insufficiency of access to appropriate healthcare.
According to the UN experts, these deaths occurred in many circumstances, following the use of force involving:
Firearms
Tear gas agents
Long-handled batons
Electroshock weapons (Tasers)
Physical restraint resulting in the inhibition of the respiratory system and asphyxia
Restraint equipment
Denial of appropriate healthcare
The UK governmentreportedly responded to the concerns of the UN experts by recognising that further improvements were needed to develop solutions on healthcare in police custody, inquests and legal aid, and support to families.
Black people in the UK also suffer disproportionately from mental health problems as a result of institutional and personal racism.
Black British and Asian British communities have strong cultural taboos about mental health problems. Such taboos stop individuals accessing NHS services. This is most prevalent in the black community.
Paradoxically, however, UK men of African Caribbean ethnic origin were 17 times more likely than white men to be diagnosed with serious mental health conditions such as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, and four times more likely to be sectioned under the Mental Health Act.
The disturbing statistics also showed black people were six times more likely than white people to be inpatients in mental health units; and, because of cultural pressures in the black community, they reported mental health issues significantly later than white people. Such delays deepened any problems, and led to more black people being sectioned.
Concern has been expressed about the level of state violence inflicted on black people detained in psychiatric settings, and the routine use of Taser firearms in hospital settings.
Mental illness is no more common in Africa or the Caribbean than in the UK – but an American Psychological Association paper showed racism can make people mentally ill. Immigrants were generally more likely to develop mental illness than the host community – but the risk was doubled for black migrants to white-majority countries, and the risk was increased again in their children.
Racism is always prejudice plus power. Racism experienced by people of African Caribbean ancestry living in the white-majority UK has carried – in addition to the toxic baggage of empire experienced by all generations of postwar colonial and Commonwealth immigrants – the painful legacy of slavery. Black people in the white US had similarly disproportionate mental health problems.
Mental health services stand accused of institutional racism in their treatment of black patients. The racist notion of black male mental health patients as ‘big, black and dangerous’[4] is said to prevail in institutional service settings.
A 2018 independent review of the Mental Health Act, 1983, commissioned in 2017 by then UK premier Theresa May, concluded sweeping reforms were needed to restore rights to mental health patients and end the ‘burning injustice’ of people from ethnic minorities being disproportionately sectioned. However, this aspect was barely mentioned in the official responses to the review’s final report.
The review process included a Mental Health Act Review African and Caribbean group, due to make recommendations on ensuring people of African and Caribbean descent with mental health challenges got the treatment and support they needed when and where they needed it; and had their dignity, liberty and autonomy respected as far as possible.
The group, which reported directly to review chair Simon Wessely, proposed to:
Look at the implementation and practice of the Mental Health Act as experienced by people of African and Caribbean descent or heritage
Identify and evaluate relevant evidence and data to support recommendation development
Identify and appraise aspects of relevant legislation, and issues that impact people of African and Caribbean descent
Identify effective practice and propose solutions to identified issues, which would work in the best interests of people of African and Caribbean descent
The review’s final report said black people were four times more likely to be detained under the ‘outdated’ Mental Health Act than white people. Such detention enabled patients to be kept on a secure ward and treated against their will.
The review said the Mental Health Act was still necessary so people who were a risk to themselves or others could be held. However, it said patients were too often denied a say in treatment – which could include electroconvulsive therapy.
It also said there was a need to challenge bias (said to be largely unconscious) against ethnic minority patients which led to the excessive use of restraint and community treatment orders.
Black patients were subjected to these orders at nearly ten times the rate of whitepatients. Those subject to such orders were required to keep to strict conditions – medication regimes, assessment schedules and living arrangements – or risk being returned to hospital.
In an initial response to the review, the government promised to legislate for two of the review’s 150 recommendations. This would allow those detained under the Act to:
Nominate a person of their choice to be involved in decisions about their care
Express their preferences for care and treatment, and have these listed in statutory ‘advance choice’ documents
These proposed improvements didn’t address the review’s ‘burning injustice’ of people from ethnic minorities being disproportionately sectioned – albeit they might help to reduce the subsequent mistreatment of black patients.
In any case, the review’s ‘burning injustice’ clarion call apparently fell on deaf ears. The initial government response said the review was meant to improve the Mental Health Act, following (among other issues) ‘racial disparities’ in detention under the Act. In all the published responses – by the government, premier May and two other stakeholders – that was the only mention of the systemic racism highlighted by the report.
It was the policy of the UK Tory government to deny systemic racism following a whitewashing 2021 review set up after Black Lives Matter protests. The review[18] found there was ‘no evidence’ of ‘institutional racism’.
But in January 2023 a UN working group[19] of experts on people of African descent accused the UK of failing to address systemic racism against black people. An interim statement highlighted concerns:
‘We have serious concerns about impunity and the failure to address racial disparities in the criminal justice system, deaths in police custody, ‘joint enterprise’ convictions and the dehumanising nature of stop and search.’
‘We strongly reject most of these findings. The report wrongly views people of African descent as a single homogeneous group and presents a superficial analysis of complex issues that fails to look at all possible causes of disparities, not just race. We are proud that the UK is an open, tolerant and welcoming country but this hard-earned global reputation is not properly reflected in this report.’
The racism provoked – but not excused – by postwar mass immigration persists, if mainly as an unseen undercurrent. It has serious consequences, especially for young black men.
These consequences are acknowledged by society and government but are inadequately addressed.
Above the ongoing undercurrent of postwar racism, there’s a new wave of conflict between immigrant and host communities. This racism-provoking conflict is between some UK Muslims and, er, the UK.
Islam isn’t a ‘race’, of course. But most western Muslims have ethnic origins in South Asia or North Africa. This section addresses in detail how some imported Muslim behaviour has provoked racist hostility.
Many South Asian immigrants to the UK in the 1950s and 60s were Muslims (mostly from Pakistan, which then included East Pakistan, now Bangladesh).
As in the world Muslim population, some 90 percent of UK Muslims are Sunni. Since the 1980s, many UK Muslims have been influenced by an extreme version of Sunnism.
Oil-rich Saudi Arabia has spent billions over the last four decades on an international programme to replace mainstream Sunnism with Wahhabism/Salafism, a Sunni-based extreme fundamentalist ‘true’ version of Islam.
This programme has funded religious teachers, faith schools and mosques in the UK and elsewhere. Reviews and surveys (see below) indicate this ideology has been adopted by a large minority of UK Muslims.
There are now two main sources of racism-provoking conflict between some UK Muslims and the host community, both deriving from Saudi-exported Salafism:
Deliberate self-segregation
A supportive or ambivalent attitude towards Islamist terrorism
When Muslims are criticised with regard to these issues, representatives often avoid answering the criticism by describing it as Islamophobia.
The main source of racism-provoking conflict between some UK Muslims and the host community is that over the last 40 years many UK Muslims have become increasingly self-segregated.
Most colonial and Commonwealth immigrants and their descendants integrated naturally, whilst keeping their languages, traditions and religions – by just living here. However, many Muslims, having originally done that, began in the 1980s and 90s to segregate themselves in accordance with the widely adopted Saudi-exported Salafi version of Islam.
Expressions of the self-segregation practised by some UK Muslims include:
The wearing of Arabic clothing
Separatist education
Acceptance or encouragement of female genital mutilation (FGM)
Changes in clothing are an obvious sign of the segregation fostered by Saudi-exported separatist Islam.
In the 1970s, UK Muslim women (mostly of Pakistani or Bangladeshi origin) generally wore either a salwar kameez (a traditional outfit originating in the Punjab region, now popular throughout South Asia) or western clothes, sometimes with a loose headscarf. Muslim men wore mainly western clothes.
Now, many UK Muslim women wear Arabic clothing, including an abaya, a full-length shapeless robe, usually black, with a hijab, a tight nun-like headscarf. Some wear a niqab, an eye-slit veil, or a burqa, a one-piece garment covering the head, face and body, often having a mesh screen to see through. Some also wear black gloves, all year round.
None of these are specifically prescribed by the Quran, which said women should dress more modestly than was the custom at the time by covering their breasts with their headscarves and by not dressing in a way that flaunted their bodies. In a separate verse the Quran says women should ‘draw’ their cloaks or shawls when they go out. (Depending on the interpretation, this might have meant over their heads, or it might have meant also over their faces.)
Face veils aren’t Islamic clothing – their use predates Islam.
Despite the frequent use in general discourse of the Arabic word ‘hijab‘ to describe the tight headscarves worn by some Muslim women (and the use of ‘Hijabi’ to describe the wearer) there’s no Quranic derivation. The word is only used in the Quran in another sense, meaning a partition or curtain. The Arabic words abaya, niqab and burqa are also not in the Quran.
Most UK Muslim men continue to wear western clothes. Some now wear a traditional longer men’s version of a shalwar kameez; and some now wear an Arabicthawb (or thobe), a long robe, usually white, especially on Fridays for the mosque visit.
The eye-slit niqab and the one-piece burqa, banned in some European countries, provoke controversy, criticism and, unfortunately, racism. When worn in Europe, they create an impression of deliberate separation, nicely symbolising the current tendency for some Muslims living in the west to segregate themselves.
Presumably, Islam’s origin in the Arabian Peninsula is said to be the reason some UK Muslims – many of Pakistani origin – now wear Arabic clothing. But the practice was instigated in the 1980s by Saudi Arabian propagators of separatist Islam.
There’s no religious reason for wearing Arabic clothing. Its cultural effect is to emphasise self-segregation and to provoke Islamophobic racism.
Separatist Islamic teachers exported to the UK or trained here as part of the Saudi Salafi/Wahhabi programme have been criticised for their illiberal views, especially on homosexuality and women’s equality.
For instance, in 2016 a UK Islamic faith school lost its appeal against education watchdog Ofsted, which placed the school in special measures because it had library books that said a wife can’t refuse sex and a husband can beat his wife if it’s not done ‘harshly’. The judge said the books contained views inimical to fundamental British values.
Ofsted’s 2017 annual report, in a section headed ‘Shared values’, strongly criticised private faith schools that deliberately resist ‘British values’.
The Ofsted report said:
A core function of education is to teach the values and culture that bind society
There’s no conflict between such teaching and religious pluralism
Teaching fundamental British values encourages respect and tolerance for others’ views
The report identified schools that sought to isolate young people from the mainstream, that failed to prepare them for life in Britain. Such schools disseminated beliefs that clashed with British values or equalities law.
In some of the faith schools found to be inadequate, the premises were unsafe, dank and squalid. Basic checks, such as whether staff were suitable to work with children, weren’t in place. Ofsted inspectors found instances of:
Sectarian and sexist texts that encouraged domestic violence and the subjugation of women (for instance a book titled Women Who Deserve to Go to Hell)
Refusal to acknowledge lesbian, gay and bisexual people
Children being taught mainly religious texts with a restricted curriculum leaving them with little or no ability to read and write in English, no qualifications, no skills to get work, and no preparation for life in modern Britain
In some cases, children were being educated illegally in unregistered faith schools with no safeguards to make sure they were safe and receiving a decent education. Such schools exploited loopholes in definitions of education, and were deliberately not registered to avoid regulation.
The report said legislation was inadequate to tackle unregistered schools. There was no record of children who’d never been in school, and there was no requirement to register a child being home-educated. Parents could decline a home visit by the local authority.
The report section concluded this matters because the ‘British values’ of democracy, tolerance, individual liberty, mutual respect and the rule of law are the principles that keep society free from the radical and extreme views that can lead to violence.
The 2017 Ofsted report’s criticism of unregulated faith schools was clearly aimed at some Muslim schools, but, weirdly, the report didn’t specify which faith the problem faith schools belonged to (apart from naming Al-Hijrah School, a Birmingham Muslim school, as an example of bad practice).
This could only have been because of an exaggeration of the worthy, politically correct, liberal multiculturalism that – quite rightly – pervades public sector institutions. Multiculturalism is currently under attack, and the misguided multiculturalists who prevent criticism of separatist Islam help no one.
A 2016 independent review into opportunity and integration found segregation at worrying levels (see below). It blamed cultural misogyny and patriarchy but also blamed public bodies that ignore or condone divisive religious practices for fear of being called racist or Islamophobic.
In spite of the problem faith schools not being openly identified in the Ofsted report, it’s clear that many of the schools criticised were Muslim schools whose aim was to promote separatist Islam, to segregate pupils from mainstream society, and to resist ‘British values’.
(My post, Patriotism – for scoundrels addresses the UK policy of trying to encourage integration by teaching ‘British values’ in schools. I suggest such values aren’t exclusively British – they’re European Enlightenment values.)
A year later, the 2018 Ofsted report expressed continued concern about unregistered faith schools.
In the 2018 report overview, ‘HMCI [Her Majesty’s chief inspector] commentary’, under the heading ‘Regulation and inspection powers’, Ofsted head Amanda Spielman said her power to intervene in such settings on behalf of young people remained too limited.
Spielman said the continuing problems associated with such schools included:
A lack of consistent oversight or quality assurance
Education and pastoral support often not of the level children should expect
Young people who’d left such settings unable to read English and without basic maths
Some settings operated by those with fundamentalist religious beliefs, leading to a risk of radicalisation
Faith settings such as yeshivas and madrasas providing religious instruction for five and sometimes six days a week, from early in the morning to late into the evening
However, the 2018 Ofsted report said that too often, when inspectors identified a setting putting children at risk, current legislation was too weak to allow Ofsted to close it down or prosecute the people running it. A lack of proper definition of ‘full-time’ education allowed providers to continue running potentially dangerous institutions.
Regarding independent registered faith schools, the 2018 Ofsted report said inspection outcomes remained substantially weaker for faith schools than for non-faith schools. Only just over half of faith schools were judged good or outstanding, compared with three quarters of non-faith schools. Nearly a quarter of all faith schools were judged inadequate at their most recent standard inspection.
Jewish schools came out marginally worst. Only Forty-six percent of Jewish schools were judged good or outstanding at their most recent inspection, compared with fifty-two percent of Muslim schools and sixty-three percent of Christian schools.
Ofsted apparently accepts that registered faith schools have a place in British society – as long as they teach the values and culture that bind society. (Such teaching is, in any case – regardless of Ofsted’s enthusiasm for it – a legal requirement for independent schools in England.)
However, a 2018opinion poll found a large majority of a representative sample of the British public was opposed to religious influence in education.
The poll didn’t distinguish between different religions, and therefore didn’t identify Muslim schools as the main problem with faith schools. Neither – explicitly – did either of the two annual Ofsted reports referred to here. Perhaps both Ofsted and the commissioner of the poll wished to avoid accusations of Islamophobia. (See above.) Nevertheless, Muslim schools clearly are where the main problem lies, in both public perception and official reporting.
The problem with some Muslim schools, whether registered or not and regardless of their comparative inspection outcomes, is that they preach separatism and take religious influence to extremes. In so doing, such schools contribute significantly to the racism-provoking self-segregation practised by some UK Muslims.
Female genital mutilation (FGM) or cutting (also euphemistically known as female circumcision) has traditional pre-Islamic roots and threatens millions of African girls regardless of their religious affiliations.
But in the context of the Salafi self-segregation practised by a large minority of UK Muslims, it’s significant that FGM is promoted by Salafism as a religious obligation.
Predating Islam in its African origin, FGM was later adopted by some strands of Islam, mainly in North Africa and West Asia, and has recently been imported to the UK by Saudi clerics, Somalian refugees and by other, non-Muslim, African migrants.
Islam in Somalia was traditionally Sufi, but many Somali Muslims now follow Saudi-exported Salafism. Although no FGM procedures are required in the Quran, Salafism promotes FGM, and it’s widely considered to be a religious requirement by Somali Muslims.
Some 9,000 cases were logged by the NHS in 2016-17, mostly in pregnant women of African ethnic origin, and mostly carried out outside the UK. It’s thought these recorded cases might be the tip of an iceberg, with over 50,000 girls at risk of FGM in the UK.
FGM has been illegal in the UK since 1985 but, so far, there’s only been one conviction – of the Ugandan mother of a three-year-old girl.
Police found evidence of witchcraft, including spells aimed at silencing professionals involved in the case. The convicted woman wasn’t a Muslim, but the evidence of witchcraft shows the level of superstition involved in this pointless tradition, and belies the pseudo-medical justification for FGM given on Muslim Salafi advice websites (see below).
Somali parents are known to take their daughters home for FGM. Others club together to import cutters. This practice has led to FGM tourism, as people come to the UK from Europe to get their daughters cut.
FGM, in origin a cultural custom, is now inextricably associated with conservative Islam. FGM has been condemned as un-Islamic by the Muslim Council of Britain. However, all four major schools of Sunni Islamic jurisprudence pronounce on FGM and allow it. Such jurisprudence is considered fallible and changeable, but at the time of writing:
In the Hanafi school of law, FGM is ‘permissible’.
In Maliki, it’s ‘a preferred act’.
In Shaf’i, it’s ‘an obligation’.
In Hanbali, it’s ‘an honourable thing’.
FGM is promoted by Salafi Islam, and may therefore be gaining support amongst UK conservative Muslims of Pakistani ethnic origin, especially in self-segregated areas in the north of England.
Prominent Salafi teacherMuhammad Saalih Al-Munajjid, on his popular Islam QA website, says in an article headed ‘Medical benefits of female circumcision’:
‘Circumcision is prescribed for both males and females… circumcision of women is mustahabb (recommended, but not essential; fulfilment of which is rewarded). There are reports in the Sunnah which indicate that circumcision for women is prescribed in Islam. Female circumcision has not been prescribed for no reason, rather there is wisdom behind it and it brings many benefits.’
Munajjid goes on to quote two doctors (neither of whom seem to actually exist) who list in gruesome detail[5] many spurious reasons to commit the revolting crime of FGM.
This rubbish by the esteemed scholar and his mystery medics is published on a highly popular Islamic advice website. Similar advice is given on many other Islamic websites.
Given government concern about segregation and the lack of mainstream educational opportunity for many UK Muslim women and girls (see below), and given the spread of Wahhabi/Salafi teaching in the UK, there’s good reason to be concerned that tens of thousands of UK Muslim girls might be at risk of FGM.
There’s some anti-FGM campaigning from within UK Islam. The Muslim Council of Britainhas collaborated with the African women’s support and campaigning organisation Forward to raise awareness of the dangers of FGM and to warn practitioners they face up to 14 years in prison if they subject girls to the practice. The small Bristol FGM survivors’ group Daughters of Eve aims to protect young girls from FGM-practicing communities.
However, as with UK Muslims’ response to Islamist terrorism (see below), the widespread, high-profile campaign needed is missing. Denial, indifference and ambivalence have muted the response.
There are several UK charities opposing FGM, but there’s no national campaign organised by UK Muslim women. Muslim women who disagree with FGM should come together and speak out loudly and clearly against this barbaric practice.
I asked the two main UK Muslim women’s organisations, the Bradford-based Muslim Women’s Council and the national Muslim Women’s Network, about this. Neither organisation has replied.
The continuing practice by some UK Muslims of mutilating their young daughters for religious reasons compounds the problem of Muslim self-segregation – and disgusts the host community.
Given FGM’s clear association with separatist Islam and the general conspicuous silence of UK Muslim women, this bizarre practice – brutal misogyny carried out by women – can only increase anti-Muslim racism.
In 2016 the UK government commissioned the Casey Review, an independent review by Dame Louise Casey into opportunity and integration. It found segregation at worrying levels.
The review focused on the effect of segregation on Muslim women and children. It said many Muslim women are denied their basic rights as British residents, have poor English language skills, and experience economic inactivity, coercive control, violence, and criminal acts of abuse, often enacted in the name of cultural or religious values.
The review said children are often excluded from mainstream education, are segregated from wider British communities, and lack sufficient checks on their wellbeing and integration.
The review blamed cultural misogyny and patriarchy. It also blamed public bodies which currently ignore or condone divisive religious practices for fear of being called racist or Islamophobic.
I am not denying that there is a problem in Muslim communities, but I would not put it down to self-segregation. We have to look at the broader picture, at education qualifications, at economics, at social mobility, at barriers in the jobs market.
[My bolding]
The secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain said any initiative which facilitates better integration of all Britons should be welcomed, but the review was a missed opportunity. He said:
We need to improve integration, and it needs to involve the active participation of all Britons, not just Muslims.
[My bolding]
Sadly, such responses are typical of Muslims’ defensive reaction to criticism. The attempt to deflect criticism is misguided – there’s no need to ‘look at the broader picture’ or to have the ‘participation of all Britons’.
Yes, changes can be made to encourage integration. But what’s mainly needed, especially for the sake of segregated Muslim women and children, is for Muslims who segregate themselves to stop doing it.
The 2016 review called for more English language classes for isolated groups. A 2017 report by a UK parliamentary group on social integration said immigrants should have to either learn English before coming to the UK or attend classes when they arrive.
The parliamentary group said integration should begin on arrival in the UK, and speaking English is a prerequisite for meaningful engagement with British people. (This would apply not only to Muslims but also to recent east European immigrants. See below.)
In 2018, UK government communities minister Sajid Javid (subsequently promoted to home secretary following the Windrush scandal) said in a Guardian interview that 770,000 people living in England spoke little or no English. Javid promised to expand the teaching of English for immigrants. He said up to 70% of those unable to speak the language were women, most of whom were from Pakistani or Bangladeshi communities.
Javid, a high-profile Muslim politician, said he’d been subjected to regular racist attacks on social media – echoing a similar comment by London mayor Sadiq Khan. He described the ‘Punish a Muslim‘ letter sent to people in several cities and to four Labour MPs as sick and a crime.
Javid, whose parents were Pakistani immigrants, spoke movingly about his mother’s struggle to learn English. He said as a schoolchild he was called the ‘P-word’ and was physically attacked for being a different colour. He said although British society was now much more diverse and united than when he was a child, there were now too many communities that were very segregated.
Government statistics based on data from the 2011 census, published on the website Ethnicity facts and figures, said:
726.000 could speak English but not well, and 138,000 spoke no English (making a total of 864,000)
Three in five (60%) of those who couldn’t speak English well were women
Of those with a Pakistani or Bangladeshi ethnic background, women were five times more likely than men to speak no English
However, Javid’s figures were close enough. Referring to evidence including the recent independent review into opportunity and integration (see above), Javid announced a £50m government plan to boost integration in Britain. He said the government intended to tackle segregation by:
Acting against cultural practices not compatible with the British way of life such as polygamy
Tackling disproportionately low take-up rates of free childcare by South Asian women
Using the roll-out of universal credit to target ethnic minorities and help them to integrate better
The Conservative’s universal credit scheme was an ongoing universal disaster, but Javid’s other ideas had possibilities. Alternatively, the £50m could have helped moderate Muslims to end self-segregation themselves.
According to a 2016 poll, 53% of UK Muslims wanted to integrate more, an aspiration which could perhaps have been boosted into a Muslim campaign against the Saudi-imported fundamentalism that fosters segregation and provokes anti-Muslim racism.
Saudi-exported separatist Islam has resulted in many UK Muslims deliberately segregating themselves. Islam is said to be not only a religion but a way of life. Saudi separatist Islam teaches that European Muslims should protect their way of life from the influence of the ‘decadent’ host community.
The consequent self-segregation – as manifested in Arabic clothing, illiberal schools, female genital mutilation, and coercive control of women – provokes anti-Islamic racism.
A 2018 survey of attitudes to immigration, the National Conversation on Immigration by anti-fascist group Hope not Hate – in which almost 20,000 people took part – found a large minority of people in the UK think immigrants don’t integrate properly. The survey also found anti-Muslim prejudice was widespread. Participants believed British culture was under threat because people were forced, usually by schools and councils, to pander to ‘political correctness’ and the sensitivities of Muslims.
UK national newspaper The Guardian reported that another Hope not Hate 2018 poll – of 10,000 people – found 35 percent thought Islam was generally a threat to the British way of life, compared with 30 percent who thought it was compatible.
The finding highlighted by the Guardian is in Hope not Hate’s report, State of Hate 2019, under Section 2 – Hate crimes / Attitudes towards Muslims in Britain / Extremism. The report is useful, but framing that finding as an extremist hate crime isn’t.
A 2016 poll showed most UK Muslims want to integrate more. To address the findings of widespread anti-Muslim feeling, that silent majority will have to speak up and oppose Salafi extremism. It’s not enough to cry ‘Islamophobia’.
How should white westerners respond to the provocation of segregation? Not with Islamophobic racism. There’s no excuse for it, and two wrongs don’t make a right. We should make structural changes which encourage integration and enhance opportunity – especially for women and children.
Haredi Jews living in the UK also segregate themselves. But Jewish communities, longer established, have developed a low profile. Inevitably, given the persistence of anti-Judaism, they attract racism. But they don’t provoke it.
Followers of Salafist segregation, on the other hand, have a much higher and more provocative profile, partly because of the antipathy to western values fostered by Salafism – and partly because of the consequent ambivalent or even supportive attitude towards Islamist terrorism shown by opinion polls.
In addition to segregation, the other main source of racism-provoking conflict is some UK Muslims’ supportive or ambivalent attitude towards the sectarian and anti-western Islamist terrorism which has killed and seriously injured thousands of people in Europe and elsewhere.
Most UK Muslims say they oppose Islamist terrorism and it’s un-Islamic. But polls reveal ambivalent or even supportive attitudes towards Islamist attacks and movements.
The terrorism is carried out by a very small minority of Muslims. The Bipartisan Policy Center, a US thinktank, estimated in 2014 that there were about 100,000 active Islamist terrorists, worldwide. That’s 0.006 percent of the world’s estimated1.6 billion Muslims.
The 2011 census showed 2.7 million Muslims living in the UK. UK security service MI5estimated in 2016 that 3,000 people in Britain may have posed a terrorist threat, and more than 850 had travelled to territory in Syria and Iraq controlled by Islamist terror group ISIS, some of whom may have wanted to return to the UK as ISIS suffered military reverses on the ground.
3,000 is a small percentage of 2.7 million (0.1), and 850 is a much smaller percentage (0.03), but that’s still a lot of people – and that doesn’t come from nowhere. It comes from shockingly anti-west views fostered by Saudi extremists and, as revealed by opinion polls, held by a large minority of UK Muslims.
A revealing NOP social research survey of British Muslim attitudes was published in 2006.
A “SlideShare” version can be seen by installing the LinkedIn SlideShare app, and downloading the survey
.The survey found 30 percent of UK Muslims wanted to live under Sharia law, and 28 percent wanted Britain to be an Islamic state. (ISIS declared itself as the ‘Islamic State’ in Syria in 2006, but the 2006 social research question was referring to the general idea of an Islamic state.)
Most shockingly, 22 percent of those surveyed thought the 2005 7/7 London bombings (in which 52 people were killed and over 700 injured) were justified because of British support for the war on terror (see below).
Following the emergence of terror group ISIS in Syria, a 2015 survey found 15 percent of British Muslims had some sympathy with those who’d gone to join ISIS in Syria.
(The spin given to the results by the newspaper that commissioned the 2015 survey was controversial, and the survey was criticised for polling people with Muslim names living in mainly Muslim areas, thereby, supposedly, targeting less well-educated Muslims in ‘ghetto’ areas. However, the methodology seems to have been generally sound.)
The minority anti-west views shown by these polls were probably fostered by Saudi extremists. The US state departmentestimates that over the past four decades Saudi Arabia has invested more than $10bn (£6bn) worldwide in replacing mainstream Sunni Islam with its extremist Wahhabism.
Some of that money has funded Islamist terrorism. EU intelligence experts estimate 15 to 20 percent of the $10bn has been diverted to al-Qaida and other violent jihadists. A leaked US cable said:
‘Saudi Arabia remains a critical financial support base for al-Qa’ida, the Taliban…and other terrorist groups.’
A New York Timesarticle explains not all Islamist terrorism is inspired by Saudi Wahhabi/Salafism. Salafism has historically been apolitical, and most Salafis are not violent.
However, the anti-west views held by a large minority of UK Muslims appear to stem from the imported puritanical Salafist belief that the Muslim world must be held separate from the west. In common with all Islamist terrorists, Salafism believes there’s an irreconcilable clash of civilisations.
The war on terror, AKA the ‘global war on terrorism‘, launched by (idiotic) US president George W Bush following the 20019/11 attacks by the Afghanistan-based al-Qaeda, has been widely seen by Muslims as a war against Muslims.
At a conservative estimate, some 1.5 million people, mostly Muslims, were killed during the war on terror, including an estimated 90,000 terrorists. Some five million people remain displaced.
UK prime minister Tony Blair was widely criticised by UK citizens for giving military support for the Iraq and Afghan wars. The reasons given for the Iraq war were false. (See below.)
The war on terror, which started as an understandable retaliation for the horrific 9/11 attacks, turned into a strategically incompetent neo-colonialist shambles. However, that didn’t justify the mass murder of UK civilians – as one in five UK Muslims believed.
Muslim representatives insist terrorism is un-Islamic. Denial material included with the homilies circulating amongst devout Muslims goes further, claiming those involved are mentally unstable loners who aren’t practising Muslims, and therefore their acts of terror have no connection with Islam.
The example is given of the Nice truck attacker, a Tunisian petty criminal who used alcohol and drugs. He killed and injured over 500 people.
The Nice attacker may be described by deniers as a non-Muslim, but, lapsed or not, he apparently considered himself to be a Muslim. The only known motive for his attack is that, according to ISIS’s claim, he responded to their call for Muslims to target citizens of coalition nations fighting against the ‘Islamic State’.
In any case, most western Islamist terrorists don’t fit that denial-friendly profile. Many UK Islamist terrorists are said to have been educated and apparently living a normal Muslim lifestyle.
The bland assertion that Islamist terrorism is un-Islamic doesn’t really help, given that, according to the 2006 and 2015 surveys, 22 per cent of UK Muslims thought the 2005 7/7 terrorist attacks were justified and 15 per cent had sympathy with those who’d gone to fight with ISIS.
Also, there’ve been no major public Muslim protests about the terrorist groups claiming to be Islamic. There’ve been large Muslim demonstrationsagainst offensive cartoons, and there was strong Muslim participation in the huge demonstration against the Iraq war. But there’ve been no mainstream UK Muslim demonstrations against al-Qaeda or Isis. A small Shia demonstration against Isis had no support from the Sunni majority.
A headteacher friend told me that in her mainly-Muslim UK state primary school the day after the 2001 9/11 attacks, Muslim children were singing chants in favour of Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. After Bin Laden’s death in 2011, hundreds of UK Muslims saw fit to demonstrate their support for him.
The lack of Muslim opposition to terrorist groups claiming to be Islamic, and the disturbing evidence of Muslim support for terrorist groups, actions and leaders make Muslim claims that Islamist terrorism is un-Islamic highly unconvincing.
Such unbelievable denial, far from averting hostility, provokes anti-Muslim racism.
Many Muslims subscribe to elaborate ‘false-flag’ conspiracy theories which claim supposedly Islamist terror acts were actually carried out by government agencies in order to discredit Islam.
A 2016 opinion poll found, astonishingly, 31 per cent of UK Muslims thought the US government was behind the 9/11 attacks, and only 4 per cent thought al-Qaeda was responsible.
The poll was commissioned by controversial centre-right thinktank Policy Exchange (which has been criticised for ‘demonising’ Muslims) but was carried out by a reputable polling organisation. Policy Exchange’s report had a forward by Muslim Labour MP and shadow minister Khalid Mahmood. He concluded:
‘The readiness to believe in conspiracy theories and the mentality of victimhood of which it speaks…is holding [Muslims] back and ensuring that…we are locked in a paranoid and at times fearful world view.’
Belief in such 9/11 conspiracy theories contributes to Muslim opposition to the ‘war on terror’. In his 2009book, Voodoo Histories: The Role of the Conspiracy Theory in Shaping Modern History, award-winning UK journalist David Aaronovitch pointed out that because a significant number of educated Pakistanis believe George W Bush brought the towers down on 9/11, they don’t believe the fundamental premise on which the Afghan war on terror was waged – and, therefore, countering al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan is made even more difficult.
However, the Iraq war was different, in that there was an actualconspiracy by US president Bush and UK premier Tony Blair to justify it.
The Bush administration falsely claimed agents of Saddam Hussein had met 9/11 al-Qaeda hijacker Mohammed Atta. To get ‘proof’, they tortured captured Islamists into ‘confessing’. Blair helped out by falsely claiming Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.
This shabby conspiracy and the consequent shambolic action and aftermath contributed – understandably – to Muslim opposition to the war on terror.
It’s understandable Muslims feel disrespected or demonised by the host community with regard to Islamist terrorism. It’s understandable Muslims resent having to justify themselves after every attack.
Islam as followed by most Muslims is, as they say, a religion of peace. The Quran says killing an innocent person is a sin, and war is only permitted in self-defence.
And yet…Islamist terrorism, however ‘un-Islamic’, clearly comes from within Islam – so bland denial, although understandable, actually makes things worse.
In 2016 the Muslim Council of Britain, an umbrella body for mosques, schools and associations, announced its own programme to prevent young Muslims being radicalised. However, by 2018, there was no sign of the programme. I asked the MCB what happened to it. I got no reply.
Muslims who are serious about addressing Islamist terrorism must publicly acknowledge that it comes from within their religion – and then take steps to weed out the Salafi influence that feeds it.
The typical Muslim response of denial provokes criticism from the host community – which then produces Muslim accusations of Islamophobia.
When Muslims in the UK (and elsewhere in the west) are criticised for not integrating, or for not accepting any responsibility for the terrorism coming from within their religion, Muslim representatives often react defensively, and describe the criticism as Islamophobia.
However, although the word Islamophobia is used to deflect criticism, it’s also a name for the very real, widespread and disgusting phenomenon of anti-Muslim prejudice. It’s a complicated and controversial word.
The suffix phobia, meaning fear or aversion, is often taken to mean irrational fear as in the word claustrophobia (fear of enclosed spaces). But as used in the words Islamophobia, homophobia and transphobia, it clearly means ordinary fear or aversion.
The problem with the phobia in Islamophobia meaning fear is that anti-Muslim hostility – the government’s new preferred term* – isn’t necessarily only fearful. Other likely elements include racism, nationalism and stupid, angry ignorance.
As far as there is a fear element, it can be conscious or unconscious. Unconscious racism and culturism involve fear of the unknown, of the different. But Islamophobia can be conscious fear of the religion of Islam and Muslimnesss in general.
Conscious fear of a different culture may be irrational, but it’s not a clinical phobia like claustrophobia. The irrational component of such conscious fear or aversion is probably rooted in an anti-stranger instinct, evolved to prevent communicable disease.
So Islamophobia is a complicated word. Muslim spokespeople use it to deflect criticism, and they tend to exaggerate the degree of Islamophobia, portraying all UK Muslims as mainly persecuted victims† – which, clearly, they’re not. But that doesn’t excuse the cruel ‘othering’ inflicted by raw anti-Muslim Islamophobia, call it what you will.
The Salafi self-segregation practised by a large minority of UK Muslims, provokes Islamophobia – but that’s also no excuse. We white westerners should recognise Islamophobia’s instinctive origin and its postcolonial twist, reject its bullying cruelty, and live above it. * Update, August 2026
The UK government has stopped using the word ‘Islamophobia’, preferring the phrase ‘anti-Muslim hostility’. This change has inevitably provoked criticism.
† For real persecution of a Muslim minority – and a modern example of bollocks racist ideology – consider the near-genocidal persecution of the Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar (previously known as Burma). The Myanmar junta, fronted at the time by formerly saintly Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, was responsible for this crime. See my post, Halo Goodbye, Suu – the Rohingya crisis.
There’s also a suggestion critics of Islam are racist. As most UK Muslims are of Pakistani or Bangladeshi origin, it’s possible liberal critics of Islam in the UK are being – perhaps unintentionally – racist or colourist.
It’s certain many less-liberal indigenous UK citizens harbour feelings of racist Islamophobia – feelings enhanced by the provocations of Saudi-exported separatist Islam.
As a white critic of separatist Islam who’s already admitted to having racist feelings (albeit unwanted), perhaps I should examine my own attitude towards UK Muslims more closely at this point.
I feel distaste and intolerance towards the aspects of UK Islam I’ve been criticising here. (See also my liberal critique of Islam in the UK, Fear of Islamophobia.)
I’m sorry to say these aspects provoke racist feelings in me about Muslims. But acknowledging those feelings doesn’t mean indulging them. I try to live above them.
Actually, my wife is a Muslim. Her family is of Pakistani origin, via east Africa. Fortunately for our marriage, although she’s a believer she’s not very religious – and neither are many of her extended family. My wife and I argue about how to load the dishwasher, but not about Islam. She wears western clothes day-to-day, and Pakistani clothes with a loose headscarf at formal family or cultural events.
(I love my wife dearly. She wouldn’t like to be written about here, but she never reads my blog, so that’s OK.)
I know a relationship between a white man and a woman of colour can be considered suspect by those aware of inter-ethnic power dynamics. I mention my Pakistani-Kenyan Muslim wife and her family not to show how tolerant and liberal I am but to show I realise from personal experience that to criticise separatist Islam is to generalise about a minority of Muslims.
Careless generalisation can be destructive, but accurate generalisation is an essential part of effective criticism. The separatist Muslim minority, being assertive and highly visible, provokes a degree of indiscriminate anti-Muslim racism in the host community; but generalised, informed criticism of that minority is not Islamophobia – it’s tough love.
There are, of course, openly racist anti-Islamic groups throughout Europe trying to stoke fear of ‘Islamisation’. There are reasons to be concerned about some UK Muslims’ anti-west views as shown in the 2006 survey (above) – but there’s clearly no conspiracy by western Muslims to subvert liberal democracy and institute a sharia Islamic state.
And organised anti-Islamic groups have little support in the UK. At a 2016 high-profile election to replace a member of parliament during the post-EU-referendum spike in racism, the two far-right candidates both got less than five per cent of the vote (meaning they lost their £500 deposits).
After the horrors of 9/11, the 7/7 London bombings, the coordinated Paris and Brussels attacks, the vehicle attacks throughout Europe, the 2017Manchester bombingand the threats made by ISIS, it’s natural to fear further Islamist atrocity.
Research suggests humans have evolved a tendency to stigmatise those seen as threatening their social group. (See Evolutionary psychology, below.) No doubt the host community’s rational fear and instinctive response contribute, along with the issues of segregation and terrorism denial, to simmering anti-Muslim racism.
Perhaps calling it ‘Islamophobia’ doesn’t help.
But… there is such a thing as culturism, where an apparently different culture, for instance that of Islam, elicits fear, albeit largely unconsciously.
Far-right racist extremists claim Muslim immigration to western Europe is a Trojan horse, with a hidden agenda to replace liberal democracy with an Islamic state.
The far-right idea of an organised plot by UK Muslims to destroy democracy is a paranoid delusion, but an opinion pollhas shown a large minority of UK Muslims support the idea of a UK Islamic state. The moderate majority of UK Muslims keeps quiet, allowing the extremist minority to take centre-stage.
Assuming liberal democracy will continue, what future hope is there for the reconciliation of separatist Muslims with moderate Muslims, and of all Muslims with largely secular western host communities?
Must the Wahhabi-inspired, racism-provoking self-segregation and ambivalent or supportive attitude towards Islamist terrorism fester on, or can this conflict between some UK Muslims and the host community be resolved?
Some Muslim critics of separatist Islam call for reform. Considering Christian Reformation began 1,500 years after the start of Christianity, perhaps, 1,400 years after the start of Islam, Muslim reformation is due.
However, reform is a double-edged sword. One edge is extremism. Salafism itself, the extremist puritanical source of the racism-provoking behaviour of some UK Muslims, is a reform movement; and the Christian Reformation quickly became mired in extremism.
Top Christianity reformer Martin Luther started well by opposing the corrupt Roman Catholic church and by translating the bible from Latin into German. But he then became a zealous anti-Jewish extremist whose views later contributed to the Nazi Holocaust.
Despite its founder’s racist extremism the Reformation was mainly good for society in general. It ended the political power of the church and paved the way for the age of reason (AKA the Enlightenment), leading to our modern secular liberal democracy.
The Reformation was also, arguably, good for believers, insisting the Bible was the only source of Christian authority, and the church should be a community of the faithful rather than a priest-led hierarchy.
However, in the course of achieving these worthy outcomes, the Reformation caused a massive amount of collateral damage. For instance, Protestant Puritans murdered up to 50,000 women after torturing them into confessing to ‘witchcraft’.
If Islam is to reform itself, perhaps it could learn from Christianity’s mistakes.
In the meantime, as a grateful beneficiary of the 18th-century European Enlightenment, I offer this unsolicited but respectful suggestion to all western Muslims: lighten up!
Keep the religion and lifestyle, if you want, but don’t make it any more separate than it needs to be. Enjoy the western post-Enlightenment freedom and hard-won liberal democracy.
(Democracy is the worst form of government, they say, except for all the others – including theocracy.)
In 2016 the UK government commissioned an independent review, the Casey Review, into integration and opportunity in isolated and deprived communities.
The review found that Pakistani and Bangladeshi ethnic populations and Muslim faith populations live disproportionately in the most deprived areas in England. It confirmed that Muslim segregation was at worrying levels.
The review blamed not only cultural misogyny and patriarchy but also the public bodies which ignore or condone divisive religious practices for fear of being called racist or Islamophobic.
Liberals are likewise reluctant to criticise Muslim behaviour and opinion for fear of sounding like the most prominent UK critic of Islam, the despicable Nigel Farage. But we cowardly liberals should grow a pair.
The consequence of ignoring the self-segregation practised by a large minority of UK Muslims is far worse than any culture war attacks on those who speak up. Left uncriticised, Salafi self-segregation will sow more discord and will provoke more Islamophobic racism.
UK polls show most Muslims want to integrate more. That majority needs to get a grip and kick out the Saudi-exported Salafism.
Another semi-racist cause for resentment in the UK was the unrestricted immigration from relatively poor east European countries, allowed under the European Union’s freedom of movement rule, which resulted in over three million EU citizens moving to the UK.
This provoked resentment amongst the indigenous white working class. They resented the sudden appearance in their towns and cities of large numbers of strangers with foreign languages and shops.
A Polish shop in Bath, UK | Photo: Andrew Parsons/i-Images/ZUMA
There were rational concerns about the undercutting of wages, and about pressure on housing, education and healthcare – but, although there was no colourism in this case, there was clearly an element of white-on-white racism.
During the run-up to the 2016 UK referendum on whether to remain in or leave the European Union, such concerns were either ignored by the metrocentric mainstream media, or were described – and dismissed – as provincial racism. The dismissed views of the white working class are now known to have played a big part in the Leave result – a result that confounded the expectations of nearly all commentators and pollsters. (However, see my prophetic post, Brexit and the east European elephant.)
(After the Brexit vote, there was a nasty increase in reported ‘hate’ crimes against people thought by the haters to be immigrants or from an immigrant community. The referendum and the result apparently unleashed previously repressed anti-immigrant racism.)
The 2018survey of attitudes to immigration, the National Conversation on Immigration – in which almost 20,000 people took part – found most people wanted EU migration to be better managed.
140,000 EU nationals successfully applied for UK residence in 2016, twice the number in 2015. It was predicted at least 500,000 more east Europeans would come to the UK over the following two years before we were due to leave the EU.
When we left in 2020, free movement from the EU to the UK ended. EU nationals living here at that time were allowed to stay. In 2021, there were approximately four million EU-born residents in the UK.
Large numbers of people have recently unofficially entered Europe from Africa and west Asia (AKA the Middle East). Some are refugees; some are economic migrants
Those coming from Africa pay large amounts of money, often borrowed, to traffickers (known euphemistically as ‘migration brokers’) to get to Libya. They then pay even more and risk their lives to try to cross the Mediterranean to Italy in overcrowded rickety boats, hoping to get – mainly – to Germany or Sweden.
By the end of November 2016, a record 170,000 people had arrived in Italy from North Africa since the start of the year. Similar numbers of people had been arriving for several years.
Many have died trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea. The 2016 death toll was expected to exceed 10,000.
The vast majority of refugees and migrants were Muslims. Those who made it and were allowed to stay, or managed to stay illegally, were welcomed with compassion and sympathy by some, but faced hostility and racism from others who feared job losses and terrorism.
Recent Islamist terror attacks in Paris, Brussels, Nice and Berlin were carried out by Muslims, and they exploited migrant routes and EU open borders.
A 2016 survey showed most Europeans believed the influx of refugees across the continent would mean fewer jobs and more terrorism.
This fear has resulted in the increasing popularity of far-right, racist, populist, nationalist groups and parties in mainland Europe.
To address this, Europe will have to pick its way through the possible responses: stronger border controls, better legal pathways, and development intervention in origin countries.
The solution to economic migration, of course, is to make poverty history. The IMF and the World Bank should create social credit (but not the Big Brother Chinese version!) instead of debt and austerity.
(Imagine: no need for greed or hunger; a brotherhood of man. Imagine all the people sharing all the world.)
Over 82 million people have been displaced from their homes, and six million people are living in camps. Six. Million.
The war in Syria, which prompted a recent refugee exodus, was made intractable by Putin’s Russia and western dithering. The Arab Spring attempt to sow democracy in place of dictatorship has gone backwards to a winter of discontent.
The parasitic ISIS, al-Qaeda and Taliban (and their Muslim warlord imitators) murder, rape, torture, enslave and displace civilians in the name of God. Billions of aid dollars, which could have brought law and order, have disappeared offshore.
The United Nations was well meant and can help refugees, but it can’t enforce peace. A world federation with teeth could replace the oligarchs and warlords, and bring peace – and prosperity.
(For fictional inspiration, consider Star Trek’s United Earth government, which ended poverty, disease and war within fifty years.)
(You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. I hope someday you’ll join us, and the world will live as one.)
As for the Islamist terrorism making European host populations wary of refugees and migrants, the solution for the threatened west is to speed up the development of new technology which could end oil dependency; and then to sanction Saudi Arabia and Qatar, and cut off the terror funding and sponsorship.
The matching solution for the anti-Islamist western Muslim majority is to end dependence on Saudi money, remove the Saudi influence from mosques and schools, and put an end to the twisted Salafi fundamentalism that’s poisoned their religion of peace.
(You may say I’m an Islamistophobe – and you’d be right.)
Some antiracists say identifying mass immigration as a cause of racism is the same as blaming the victims. It’s identified with Enoch Powell’s infamous speech, and seen as ‘playing a numbers game’. Alternatively, it’s simply stating the bleedin’ obvious.
If an instinctive wariness of strangers has been twisted by colonialism into racism, then mass immigration to the relatively affluent and secular west from relatively poor countries where people have different skin colour, languages, religions and traditions was bound to provoke racism in the host population.
Economic pressure – real or perceived – and fear of Islamist terrorism add to the host population’s resentment of mass immigration imposed by policy or circumstances, about which – apart from the EU referendum – they’ve never been consulted.
With good will, radical monetary reform to reduce inequality and acceptance of the need for two-way integration, western countries could embrace mass immigration. The good will would involve us acknowledging racism as based on a mainly redundant instinct, choosing to live above it – and organising to make racism history.
‘Race’ is a fake category cooked up with fake science. There are no different human races – just human populations with differences which – apart from single-gene disorders – are superficial.
However, racists don’t care whether or not there are different human races. They’re prejudiced against non-white ethnic groups, regardless of how such groups are classified or what they’re called.
There’s also white-on-white racism in the form of prejudice against Jewish, Romani, Irish and east European people:
Prejudice in Europe against Jewish and Romani people found extreme expression in the Holocaust.
Prejudice against Irish people was rife in the UK in the 1950s during the postwar building boom.
Prejudice in the UK against east European people during the immigration boom that followed the 2004 enlargement of the EU led disastrously to Brexit (the British exit from the EU).
Such white-on-white prejudice is probably due to a combination of culturism and perceived competition for scarce resources.
As for the toxic word ‘race’, it’s frequently used in a non-toxic form in non-racist media. Both black and white writers and speakers use the word ‘race’ to describe the different human populations. In that context, ‘race’ is supposedly a neutral social construct.
‘Race’, apart from the slippery social construct context, is fake, but racism – white-on-black or white-on-white – is all-too real, blighting millions of lives. To overcome racism, an understanding of its history – ancient and modern – is needed.
It’s probable that an ancient, mainly redundant but still active instinctive bias against strangers that evolved to protect against danger and communicable disease has been revived and twisted by colonialism into racism – or, more accurately, colour prejudice.
Differences in facial appearance and skin colour presumably enhance ‘strangerness’. That currently manifests as white-on-black prejudice. Racism is prejudice plus institutional power.
Modern racism began with colonialism, when Europeans encountered different-looking Asian and African people in the context of colonial subjugation.
The self-justifying colonialist assumption of white superiority was boosted by the influential writings of Enlightenment philosophers such as David Hume and Immanuel Kant.
For instance Kant – the preacher of moral egalitarianism – said:
Humanity is at its greatest perfection in the white race. The yellow Indians have a somewhat lesser talent. The Negroes are much lower.
(From an anthropology lecture published in the collection Physical Geography)
Kant apparently later recanted, kind of, but the colonialist assumption of white supremacy he promoted persisted – and persists still as postcolonial racism.
In the postcolonial world, institutional power is still held by the white west – and so is the associated prejudice against people of colour.
Colonisation resulted in 200 years of racist ‘race theory’. It was used to justify slavery and the Holocaust.
The horrifically brutal 400-year Atlantic slave trade transported more than 15 million African people to work as slaves in the Americas.
The slave trade caused a vast loss of life for African captives before, during and after the transportation. The exact number remains unknown, but many millions were murdered.
The profits from slavery created vast wealth for the white UK and US ‘owners’ of enslaved people. None of the proceeds of that vile crime were confiscated and no reparation has been paid.
On the contrary, after the abolition of slavery, 46.000 UK ‘owners’ were compensated by the UK government. On average, they got about £400,000 each by today’s values.
African enslaved people and their descendants now living in the Americas and the UK got nothing – except the after-effect of slavery: devastating personal and institutional racism.
‘Race theory’ was also used to justify the equally horrifying German Nazi Holocaust, a permanent scar on the face of mankind. It arose from twisted nationalism and pseudoscientific anti-Jewish racism.
Six million Jewish people were murdered because they were Jewish.
(Ironically, six million Palestinians have been displaced as refugees since the 1948 establishment of the state of Israel. There are seven million Jews in Israel.)
Unlike with slavery, significant reparation has been paid. Germany has paid over €90bn in compensation to the victims and survivors of the Holocaust and their heirs.
We now know the pseudoscientific ‘race theory’ used to justify the terrible inhumanity of the slave trade and the Holocaust was complete bollocks.
But the damage was done and the legacy lingers on as racism – and as new ‘race theory’ (like the old one but, deprived of ‘science’, nastier and more devious).
Postwar mass immigration has fostered racism in the UK. Some antiracists, wedded to the defence of immigration, are unwilling to admit that – but it’s patently true.
Mass immigration, postwar from colonies and the Commonwealth, and more recently from Eastern Europe, effectively imposed without consultation, has distressed the host population – and that distress has manifested as racism.
All immigrants whose skin is brown or black, or who speak a different language, or who dress differently have suffered direct racism. Such casual cruelty is a consequence of the careless social engineering of mass immigration.
State-sanctioned mass migration to the UK was driven by economic and demographic policy in the UK and by deep-rooted inequity and insecurity in the countries of origin. Policy-makers treated people as fodder.
Racism is firstly the responsibility of the racist, but the policy-makers who carelessly ordained mass immigration share responsibility for the consequential racism.
South Asian Muslims form a large part of the UK postwar immigrant population. Some imported Muslim behaviour has provoked racist hostility.
For the first 30 years or so, UK Muslims integrated naturally, as did other immigrant communities. But since the 1980s, Saudi-exported separatist Salafism has set many UK Muslims against the core Enlightenment values that underpin western liberal democracy.
The Salafist influence on UK Muslims manifests in Arabic clothing, illiberal education, oppression of women, advocacy of FGM (female genital mutilation) and a sympathetic or ambivalent attitude towards Islamist terrorism – all of which provokes a critical response in the general host population and gives ammunition to openly racist groups.
In response to criticism of Muslim separatism, Muslim representatives cry ‘Islamophobia’ – and racist Islamophobia increases.
Hundreds of thousands of desperate economic migrants and asylum-seekers from Africa and Asia are trying to get to Europe for a better life. Europeans, feeling the pressure and fearing Islamist terrorism, get more racist.
We antiracist liberals feel obliged to defend immigration as a Good Thing. From our media and moral high ground we argue that immigration is good for the cultural and economic wellbeing of the host nation; and that criticism of immigration is racist.
However, the large scale of recent immigrations makes less liberal (and less articulate) members of European host populations feel genuinely insecure – and racism feeds on insecurity.
Racism-provoking migration to Europe will continue as long as the world is a place where people feel they need to leave home to find a better life.
Antiracist groups and legislation have commendably raised consciousness and made racism unacceptable, but still it persists. We antiracist white liberals wring our hands helplessly. But we can help – by admitting to our own racism, and by acknowledging that racism may have evolutionary roots.
Racism deniers regularly appear on comments forums portraying antiracism as ‘reverse racism’, that is, anti-white racism. That’s despicable and deliberate dishonesty. Here in the white West, opposing racism isn’t anti-white – it benefits all.
Some still try to rationalise their prejudice with pseudoscientific racism and its even-more-evil younger brother, genism, but it’s bullshit. There’s no reason for racism – so why does it thrive?
Historical colonialism is the conventional culprit – and it plays a big part – but the widespread persistence of irrational racism and colourism, even amongst people of colour, suggests perhaps nature, rather than nurture, is the supervillain.
If we have racist or colour-prejudiced feelings, we instinctively try to justify or explain them. Human minds have evolved to analyse patterns. Most well-educated liberals find no justification, so they deny those feelings. Some over-compensate by claiming to be ‘colour-blind’.
Institutional colour-blindness is advocated by the civil rights movement, but claiming to be personally colour-blind is yet another insult – if a more subtle one – to people of colour. It’s a manifestation of the crippling white guilt which prevents honesty and progress.
Less well-educated conservativescan find justification for racism – in populist nationalism or pseudo-science. So they indulge their racist feelings. Thus racism can spread as an idea or belief. Definitions of racism usually describe it – wrongly – as a belief. It’s not a genuine belief – it’s a twisted version of a mainly redundant instinct, dressed up – and spread around – as a fake belief.
If we acknowledge that racism is instinctive, we can resist that toxic idea and live above it.
We’re social animals, dependent on our group. Evolutionary psychology suggests racism is built on the scaffolding of an anti-stranger instinct which probably evolved to protect our group from danger and communicable disease.
Colour prejudice is harder to explain. It’s unlikely our ancestors would have encountered different populations. Exposure to different populations is a relatively recent occurrence in human history. It’s therefore unlikely we could have evolved to be colour prejudiced.
Prejudice against darker skin, presumably learned, has been confirmed by cognitive neuroscience studies (see below). No doubt, colonialism and postcolonialism are largely to blame for that. Perhaps the darker skin of the human populations encountered by colonialists emphasised and revived the underlying anti-stranger instinct.
The cognitive neuroscience studies may be relevant to shadism, the black-on-black prejudice against darker skin manifested in the multi-billion-dollar skin-lightening industry.
But shadism is hard to explain. An expert pointed out that my argument for universal colour prejudice is weakened by the lack of social dominance power relationships in black-on-black shadism. Perhaps, sadly, there’s an element of internalised racism in shadism.
Shadism and all other forms of indulgence in the revived anti-stranger instinct are a form of bullying – a collective sociopathy.
Racism and colour prejudice don’t make sense. So where does the strength of feeling come from? Does it come from culturism?
Perhaps racism is boosted by culturism, where the ‘strangerness’ of people of African or Asian ethnicity living in the west indicates a different culture – and that difference elicits subconscious fear and prejudice.
The word ‘Islamophobia’ is criticised because much criticism or prejudice aimed at Islam doesn’t involve fear. But the word perfectly describes unconscious culturist prejudice towards Muslims.
This boosts racism, which, as always, is power plus prejudice. So subconscious culturism works in one direction: the power is with ignorant white westerners and the prejudice is against black and brown immigrants – because their different appearance implies a different culture.
At a conscious level (albeit a conscious level of stupidity), racist groups claim to defend western values against the different culture of immigrant minorities. Fortunately, most westerners don’t fall for such swivel-eyed drivel.
However, the arrogant colonialist assumption that such cultures were inferior to the ‘civilised’ west survives. Those who reject the coarse vitriol of racist groups such as the – now largely defunct – anti-Muslim English Defence League might nevertheless harbour postcolonial assumptions of superiority.
Culturism would also explain white-on-white racism. For instance, anti-Judaism must be based on a perception – perhaps largely unconscious – of that minority’s cultural difference.
This post claims racism is caused by a dormant anti-stranger instinct revived and twisted by European colonialism. But anti-Jewish racism predates colonialism.
If that same instinct is involved in anti-Judaism, it must have been revived by the encounter in European cities, towns and villages with a Jewish diaspora perceived as an outsider culture, which, rather than seeking to integrate with the host community, chose to segregate itself.
This post criticises the segregation currently practised by UK Salafi Muslims as provoking racism. The difference is that Salafism sets itself against European values, whereas diaspora Jews were simply preserving their distinct culture. But in both cases, the segregation enhances the culturism.
As with European colonialists encountering, for instance, black African people, the encounter by settled Europeans with a Jewish diaspora population perceived as significantly different must have revived the anti-stranger instinct.
So it’s more accurate to say the instinct is revived by an encounter between two groups, where the most powerful group sees the other group as significantly different, wrongly assumes it to be a separate race, and arrogantly assumes it to be inferior.
Due to the power imbalance – plus greed, stupidity and cruelty – the revived anti-stranger instinct results in racism, massacres,slavery and oppression – and for Jews, pogroms, expulsions and, finally, the Holocaust.
So culturism plays an essential part in racism, boosted by instinct – the power of the id.
Well, sod the id. Let’s think for our (higher) selves.
In this post, I’ve tried to understand the origins of racism, the reasons for its current prevalence, and the consequences of indulging it. The purpose of that understanding is to help end racism.
Colour me racist – blame my genes. I admit I have racist feelings, but they’re unsought and unwanted. Feeling that impulse and knowing what it is, I choose not to indulge it.
If we acknowledge racism’s instinctive origin, we can put it in the bin with the other monsters from the id. Then we can live above it in a great big melting pot.
The bin of the past is strong – but the pot of the future has the superpower of consciousness.
White people should acknowledge the terrible damage wrought by European colonialists and fascists – but shouldn’t be paralysed by guilt. If white-majority people have feelings of colour or culture prejudice, they don’t have to blame themselves. They can blame their genes – and colonialism.
We white people are guilty – to a greater or lesser degree – of personal and institutional racism. But admitting that and accepting that racism is a twisted instinct would free well-meaning white people from paralysingwhite guilt.
Such awareness would let white people choose to reject that mainly redundant instinct – and to respond assertively (but tactfully) to other people’s racist speech or behaviour.
(There’s an excellent guide to dealing with difficult behaviour in a calm and respectful way by Deborah Easton of Kent State University, US.)
Along with legislation and collective action, such individual white allyship can help to end the racism – conscious and unconscious – which infects institutions and blights the lives of all non-white people and other minorities living in the racist west.
We’re puppets of our selfish genes, to a degree – and one or more of them might be trying to make us racist. If so, our best hope is to consciously counter our racist instinct with reason and conscience – fortunately provided by other, more useful, genes – and so give our puppet show a happy ending.
Then, dear Reader, if reparation for slavery is paid, we can all live happily ever after. (Apart from climate crisis, war and poverty.)
Happy puppets – apart from Statler, Beaker and Sam | Photo: The Muppets
Why am I, a white English man (hi!), writing this? Am I a closet racist, annoyed by having large numbers of brown-skinned people living here, and having to call them ‘Asian’? No. And yes.
Does ‘Asian’ annoy me? Yes. Call me a pedant – I suppose I am – but that’s why I started writing this post. It’s clearly wrong to identify your regional origin as ‘Asian’, but everyone says it as though it’s perfectly reasonable.
It’s apparently short for ‘South Asian’, but the abreviation to ‘Asian’ makes it annoyingly meaningless.
Some abbreviations are meaningful in context. For instance, the self-description ‘mixed’, used as an abbreviation for mixed race or mixed ethnicity, keeps the meaning. The abbreviation ‘mixed’ meaningfully describes that person’s ethnic identity.
But even when the context makes ‘Asian’ obviously an abreviation of South Asian, it remains annoyingly meaningless. The abbreviation ‘Asian’doesn’t meaningfully describe that person’s regional or ethnic identity.
There’s no problem with naming the UK’s black Caribbean ethnic group. There’s been some debate about wording and hyphenation, but ethnic identity has always been clear from the name.
But there has been a problem with clearly naming and identifying the UK’s other main ethnic minority. The solution has been to use the politically correct but inaccurate name, ‘Asian’.
The phrase ‘political correctness’ may be a casualty of the culture wars but it survives, and – properly applied – protects minorities. So PC is OK by me – but the meaningless inaccuracy isn’t.
It’s been overlooked because ethnicity’s a sensitive issue. But what the heck – I’m going to look at it. Sensitively.
Am I a closet racist? No. I’m an antiracist and pro-immigration liberal. I support multiculturalism and diversity. My wife’s a Muslim with family roots in what’s now Pakistan.
However, I think we’re all unconsciously racist because of a redundant but revived evolved behaviour: an anti-stranger prejudice evolved to protect against communicable disease.
The ancient anti-stranger instinct was revived and twisted by white-supremacist colonialists, who – encouraged by ‘Enlightenment’ philosophers such as Immanuel Kant – viewed the darker-skinned people they subjugated as inferior.
Differences in facial appearance and skin colour presumably enhance ‘strangerness’. That manifests as white-on-black prejudice (because racism is prejudice plus institutional power).
In the postcolonial world, institutional power is still held by the white West – and so is the associated prejudice against people of colour.
So I have racist feelings, based on an anti-stranger instinct twisted by colonial culture into colour prejudice – but I don’t want those feelings and there’s no justification for them.
Having acknowledged and understood those racist feelings, I choose not to indulge them but to live above them – and to oppose racism in others as best I can.
Maybe I’ve protested too much. But I hate racism and the terrible racist crimes of my European forebears.
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As for having large numbers of South Asian (and African) people living in Britain, it’s fine by me – they’ve livened things up no end. But not everyone thinks so.
Postwar mass immigration provoked widespread racism, unconscious in origin but consciously ‘justified’.
It’s a liberal’s quandary: if you speak about this, you can be accused of victim-blaming. But I’ll speak – or write – about it anyway.
Mass migration to the UK began in 1948 after World War Two when a patrician government, without consulting the people, enabled and encouraged large-scale immigration from some countries in the colonies and the Commonwealth.
This was said to be needed to rebuild Britain’s shattered economy and to boost falling population numbers.
Poignantly, many immigrants say they expected a welcoming atmosphere. Instead, they faced hostility, personal racism and an unofficial colour-bar, meaning, for instance, exclusion from lodgings, pubs and churches.
In the face of that racism, a pithy ripost emerged: ‘We’re here because you were there’ – meaning postwar mass immigration was a postcolonial phenomenon.
If the British people had been consulted and had agreed mass immigration was needed, and if both natives and immigrants had been better prepared for two-way integration, there might have been a more welcoming atmosphere.
Currently, 13% of people in the UK are black, South Asian or mixed-ethnicity, and despite antiracist progress, the racism that began 70 years ago persists and still blights the lives of many black and South Asian people.
But for antiracist multiculturalist natives like me, the presence of postwar immigrants and their descendants has improved life in Britain immeasurably.
If only South Asian people would sort out their collective name…
In Shakespeare’s best known play, Romeo and Juliet, teenager Juliet is forbidden to see Romeo because of a family feud. He’s a Montague and she’s a Capulet. A frustrated Juliet exclaims:
What’s in a name? That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet.
Juliet’s right, of course, to say a rose’s human-given name doesn’t affect its nature-given smell. But she’s wrong to suggest naming’s unimportant.
Her passionate plea disregards the problem of nominative versus universal names, as expounded by William of Ockham (he of Occam’s razor).
In what we call reality, there’s no universal flower. Real flowers have different smells. The significance of nomination is that the name of the flower and of its variety – the name of the rose (!) – indicates its unique characteristics, including its particular sweet smell.
Likewise, Romeo’s Montague heritage couldn’t be so easily dismissed. The differences indicated by the lovers’ family names had tragic consequences (albeit compounded by the play’s melodramatic chain of events).
The name’s Asian – South Asian | Image: Reddit user DocPBJ007
Naming of flowers (or families) is one thing – but naming of human ethnic groups is another matter. Why do they have to be named? We’re all human. Is it racist?
There are no human races, just human populations with differences which, apart from single-gene disorders, are genetically superficial.
Dodgy lyrics aside, Blue Mink were right: what we need is a great big melting pot. That’s happening – people are now ‘mixed’.
British South Asian people call themselves ‘Asian’ when referring to their ethnic community, and when formally identifying their ethnicity.
They talk about ‘Asians’; and they voluntarily identify as Asian British or British Asian in ethnicity surveys used for the census and to monitor discrimination.
How did that start? It started because of two instances of clumsy colonialism: postwar mass immigration and the 1947 Partition of India.
Postwar mass immigration was made possible by the British Nationality Act 1948, which gave citizens of British colonies and the Commonwealth (a voluntary association of former colonies) the status of Citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies, and recognised their right to work and settle in the UK and to bring their families.
This allowed the UK government to sponsor large-scale immigration to help rebuild the British economy and replace falling population numbers after WW2.
This typically clumsy piece of social engineering had many unforeseen consequences, one of which – the subject of this post – is that UK citizens with origins in the former colony of India ended up calling themselves ‘Asian’.
From 1948 onwards, many people from British colonies and former colonies answered the call and came to the UK. Many people came from the former colony of India.
But following the partition of India in 1947 (another – more tragic – piece of clumsy social engineering by the British), there’s been a problem with how people from that part of the world are described here in the UK.
Many UK citizens are of Pakistani, Indian or (since 1972) Bangladeshi origin. Before partition, they could all have been described as ‘Indian’.
But after partition, Pakistanis were offended if called Indian, Indians if called Pakistani, and Bangladeshis if called Indian or Pakistani. And Sri Lankans if left out.
The solution has been to use the name ‘Asian’. Call yourself ‘Asian’ if you want. But it’s just wrong. And using it could invite ridicule:
The obvious problem with people of Pakistani, Indian or Bangladeshi origin calling themselves ‘Asian’ is, of course, the absurd geographical and linguistic inaccuracy.
So, OK, ‘Asian’ in this context is clearly a careless contraction of the more accurate and occasionally used ‘South Asian‘ – but the contraction is annoyingly meaningless.
It’s not an abbreviation, carrying the meaning of the full expression – it’s just meaningless and wrong!
Asia’s a huge continent, stretching from Turkey to the eastern edge of Russia. With this careless contraction, three countries occupying about one twentieth of Asia’s land mass have, in effect, hijacked the name of the whole continent.
The geographic region of South Asia includes Pakistan, India and Bangladesh, as well as Sri Lanka, Bhutan, Nepal, Afghanistan and the Maldives. (There are quibbles: some say Iran is included; some say Afghanistan isn’t, it’s in West or Central Asia.)
The six geographic Asian regions are North Asia, Central Asia, East Asia, Southeast Asia, West Asia (confusingly, part of the region misnamed by Eurocentric colonialists as the Middle East) and South Asia.
The six regions of Asia, including South (or Southern) Asia | Mapsofworld
‘South Asian’ has a tiresome extra word – but unlike ‘Asian’, it makes sense. It’s used in the UK mainly in the media* to mean Pakistani, Indian or Bangladeshi.
It’s not much used in everyday speech, except by a few politically correct pedants like me. It’s easier to say ‘Asian’, sure – but it’s meaninglessly inaccurate!
* UK newspaper the Guardian insists – wrongly – in spelling it ‘south Asian’ with a small ‘s’. See below.
The main polite alternative to ‘Asian’ or ‘South Asian’ is ‘from the Indian subcontinent‘. This occasionally used phrase is geographically accurate but somewhat politically incorrect.
The Indian subcontinent is a geological entity: the terrestrial part of the Indian Plate, which separated from supercontinent Gondwana about 100 million years ago, drifted North and collided with Asia 55 million years ago. (The collision created the Himalayas.)
Drifted together – before and after | iStock
‘Subcontinent’ is a geographical term meaning subdivision of a continent – in this case Asia. It’s Asian now, innit.
Humans are thought to have arrived in the Indian subcontinent about 50,000 years ago.
The Indian subcontinent now homes the nations of Pakistan, India and Bangladesh, as well as Sri Lanka, Bhutan, Nepal, and the Maldives. It’s South Asia minus Afghanistan.
‘From the Indian subcontinent’ is more accurate than ‘Asian’ or even ‘South Asian’, and it’s useful when it might be unclear to say ‘South Asian’ (for instance in the Q&A, above), but it sounds clumsy, and can smack of Orientalism and empire.
A politically correct version of the name, the South Asian subcontinent, sounds equally clumsy. The simplified – and enigmatic – ‘from the subcontinent’ is cooler. Man.
Britons with brown or black skin are often asked, ‘Where are you from?’. British South Asian people can hardly say, ‘I’m Asian. I’m from Asia’. Nor are they likely to say, ‘I’m from South Asia‘.
How should South Asian people respond to that loaded question? It’s a social minefield.
A white Briton asking that question of a brown or blackBriton who’s a stranger or casual acquaintance is a bad idea. ‘Where are you really from?’ is much worse.
Such questions are inconsiderately intrusive and, at best, microracist.
Although the questioner might not consciously realise it – the question, unpicked, is likely to mean:
Your skin colour and facial appearance suggests your ethnic origin isn’t north European, so in which country are your family origins? Actually, though, I don’t really care. My question is mainly rhetorical and microracist. I’m really just drawing attention to your otherness.
A 2022 high-profile incident involving a UK royal aide and a black British charity worker is a good example of this phenomenon.
Former royal aide Susan Hussey | Photo: Getty
The aide, ‘Lady’ Susan Hussey, widow of former BBC chairman ‘Baron’ Hussey, close friend of ‘King’ Charles, ‘Queen’ Camilla and the late ‘Queen’ Elizabeth, and godmother to monarchy heir ‘Prince’ William, resigned after the incident.
The incident supports Meghan Markle’s implied claim of racism in the royal household; and flags widespread casual racism amongst the ruling class.
If the question, as in that case, seems offensively rhetorical, the asker’s bluff can be called: ‘Why do you want to know?’
If the question seems genuine, and worthy of a helpful response, it might nevertheless be not so easy to answer.
For an answer to be accurate – and understood – both parties need good geopolitical and historical awareness. It can get complicated.
For instance, If a British person of South Asian appearance is known to be a Muslim, they might not be of Pakistani or Bangladeshi origin. Many UK Muslims have origins in the Indian state of Gujerat. (Almost one in five Indian people are Muslim.)
Many South Asian people came to the UK from East Africa, mainly from Kenya and Uganda. South Asian communities were established beforepartition in East Africa and the Caribbean, mainly in Kenya, Uganda and Trinidad. They were there because of another piece of clumsy and careless social engineering by the Brutish Empire:indentured servitude.
Between 1834 and 1917, many people were induced to move from India to other colonies as indentured labourers for the empire. Unsurprisingly, the conditions were harsh and the wages low. The workers were derogatively called ‘coolies’.
Indian indentured labourers, seeking to escape the poverty and famine frequent during colonial rule, came mainly from the Punjab and Bengal regions (both later severed during partition).
On completing their indenture, some stayed on in Africa or the Caribbean. They were joined by family members and formed thriving expatriate communities, albeit protected by the brutal stranglehold of empire.
After those colonies gained independence, many South Asian residents moved to the UK. Those in Uganda were famously expelled by Idi Amin. In Kenya, harsh changes to citizenship rules prompted mass voluntary emigration.
Those UK immigrants, whilst identifying by religion, often also identify by their diaspora community. For instance, people may identify as Kenyan Muslims.
My South Asian Muslim wife, when asked ‘Where are you from?’, sometimes says ‘Nairobi’. Her ethnicity is Punjabi but she was born in Kenya and spent her childhood there.
The person asked that question could give an informative reply, such as:
My family origins are Punjabi Muslim in what’s now Pakistan. In the late 1800s my grandfather went from the Punjab to work in what’s now Kenya. Our family lived there before coming to the UK in the late 1960s.
They could summarise it: ‘Pakistan’. But the question is more likely to provoke a passive-aggressive and deliberately obtuse reply, such as, ‘I’m from Leicester – where are you from?’ (or the deliberately annoying ‘from my mother’s womb’).
The question ‘Where are you from?’ might seem like casual curiosity framed as a friendly enquiry, but it’s microracism – at best.
To unpick it further, behind that innocent-seeming question – though, again, the questioner might not consciously realise it – lies a worse one: ‘Why are you here?’
The questioner might therefore reasonably be told to fuck off, or be given the pithy retort that emerged from antiracist immigrant activism:
If you’re asking why I’m here, we’re here because you were there’.
The hidden question, ‘Why are you here?’ at least offers the possibility of debate and reason; but behind that lurks the racist rhetorical question: ‘Why don’t you go back there?’
For postwar immigrants to the UK and their descendants, such racism is never far below the surface.
Note: My post Racism explained as a redundant instinct suggests racism is a redundant anti-stranger instinct revived and twisted by colonialism and postcolonialism – and, sadly, provoked by the postwar mass immigration carelessly engineered by a patrician government. We antiracists choose to reject and oppose that twisted impulse and to embrace our brilliant multicultural society.
Considerate white Brits, whether aware of all that or just wary of the social minefield, don’t ask that awkward question, ‘Where are you from?’
And if they need to refer to the ethnicity of someone apparently having origins in the Indian subcontinent, they’ll usually follow the (inaccurate) convention of referring to such people as ‘Asian’.
If I was a British person of colour asked by a white person, ‘Where are you from?’, and the question seemed intrusive, I’d want to challenge it, but it in a non-hostile way.
I’d initially bat it back by – politely – saying, ‘How do you mean?’ If they indicated they were asking about my ethnic origin rather than my place of residence, I’d ask – still politely, if possible – ‘Why do you want to know?’
The questioner might well find it difficult to explain themselves. Serves them right.
British people of colour people also ask the question, ‘Where are you from?’ of each other. The purpose is to find out the other’s origins: their country, religion, region, town, and caste or class.
That’s a different can of worms – and it doesn’t excuse white Brits asking that question. As always, context is crucial. The context is the white west and – as always – racism is prejudice plus power.
The convention of calling people from India, Pakistan or Bangladesh ‘Asian’ apparently began in the 1950s and became widespread in the UK after the launch of the BBC Asian Network radio station in 1989.
McCarthy’s thesis includes a photo of a 1960Radio Times of Kenya page showing an Asian National guide.
Photo: Liam McCarthy
British colony Kenya was home to a large South Asian community. The Kenyan Asian National radio service apparently ran from the 1950s to the late 1960s.
Most examples of ‘Asian’ in McCarthy’s thesis, dating from the 1960s to the late 1980s, are from BBC documents and radio programme names. However, a Leicester vox pop example from 1975 shows there was also some common usage during that time.
In 1989 the use of ‘Asian’ became more widespread after the BBC launched its Asian Network radio station to provide:
‘…speech and music output appealing to British Asians’
My bolding
Asian Network’s music was specified as being from Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.
By 1995, the Guardian newspaper was using both ‘Asian’ and ‘South Asian’ in this context. (However, the Guardianbizarrely insisted – and still does – on spelling the ‘South’ in ‘South Asian’ wrongly – with a small ‘s’. See below.)
In 2001, the UK census first used ‘Asian’ in this context, with the heading ‘Asian or Asian British’. The options were Indian, Pakistani or Bangladeshi (and, confusingly, ‘Any other Asian background’).
Since the late 1970s, UK police identity codes known (tautologically) as IC codes have been used to identify over radio the apparent ethnicity of suspects and victims. Currently, IC4 is ‘Asian’, meaning people apparently of Indian, Pakistani or Bangladeshi ethnicity.
So, although ‘Asian’ became more widespread after 1990, it’s apparently been in use since the 1950s, close to the causation point: the 1947 partition of India.
(If anyone knows how it arose in the first place – presumably in the early 1950s – please tell me.)
‘Asian’, meaning from India, Pakistan or Bangladesh, has been in widespread use since 1989 – but there’s been some resistance.
A 2002Asian Networkpoll found most UK South Asian people disliked being called ‘Asian’. A Guardianreport on the station and its poll said South Asian people would prefer to be described by their country of origin.
Description by country of origin would work on self-identification forms, but there’d be difficulties with how South Asian people are referred to by others. (How would people know, without asking that toxic question: ‘Where are you from?‘)
Also, the three main South Asian communities – Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi – aren’t the same. They campaign for the differences to be understood. But how should they be referred to collectively when necessary?
Apparently, some people of Pakistani origin said they’d rather be called ‘Indian’ than ‘Asian’ – because that would at least convey a regional cultural identity.
(Some young people of Pakistani origin use‘Indian’ with deliberate irony to mean anyone or anything from either India or Pakistan. See below.)
However, in spite of such understandable reservations, UK South Asian people, presumably aware of the difficulties for all concerned (and perhaps subconsciously yearning for subcontinental unity), seem mainly willing to accept the collective ‘Asian’ identification.
Not long ago, Pakistan was India, and some British people – lazily or nostalgically – still think of ‘India’ as the name of the region. So the most likely way to cause offence (now the racist P-word has become as unacceptable as the N-word) is to inadvertently call someone who happens to be of Pakistani origin ‘Indian’ or vice versa.
However, young UK people of Pakistani origin often use ‘Indian‘ themselves – knowingly ironically – when referring to anyone or anything from either India or Pakistan, as in the catchily assonant (and internally alliterative) meme, ‘It’s Indian, innit‘ (optionally said with a culturally appropriated Jamaican rudeboy accent).
It’s probably best not to try this if you’re not young and South Asian – or West Indian (!) (It’s complicated, innit, postcolonial, geopolitical cross-cultural urban slang.)
Do UK South Asian people living in England ever identify as Asian English, or do they prefer ‘Asian British’?
In 2014 researchers found most South Asian people in Scotland preferred to be known as ‘Scottish Asian’ rather than ‘Asian British’. They also found minority groups are more likely to claim a Scottish identity in Scotland than an English identity in England.
I’ve never come across anyone identifying as Asian English – and Googling it gives no relevant results. Does a person living in England and identifying as Asian British, who’s family roots are in, say, Pakistan, understandably think of themselves as Pakistani rather than English?
There’s one good reason for British South Asian people to avoid Englishness: it’s been tainted by association with anti-immigrant groups.
Far-right, racist, nationalist groups have claimed to defend England against Islam and other immigrant cultures.
The previously little-used English flag, the red cross of St George (a not-very-English Roman soldier of Turkish-Greek origin serving in Palestine), has been hijacked by the racist Right.
The current widespread use of the English flag in support of the England football team – you don’t see it in photos of England’s 1966 world cup victory – might well cause concern in immigrant communities.
1966 – plenty of racism then, but no St George flags / PA
The UK ‘Union Jack’ flag as shown above was used in the logo of racist party the National Front. The NF, big in the 1970s, has all but disappeared. Current racists groups favour the red-cross English flag.
Perhaps British South Asian people do well to steer clear of the complicated issue of Englishness. It’s probably best left to the indigenous English.
Research shows British South Asian people are unlikely to claim English identity. One possible reason is that Englishness has been hijacked by flag-waving nationalist neo-Nazi groups.
Those groups have freely used the provocative Crusaderred cross of the ‘St George‘ English flag in their campaigning, and have claimed to ‘defend’ England against Islam and other immigrant cultures.
Nationalist racists began organising against Jews in the 1930s, and were later keen to exploit the tension which followed postwarmass immigration to the UK.
That immigration, ordained for economic and demographic reasons with no consultation and no concern for the social wellbeing of immigrant or host communities, inevitably disturbed the locals. There was widespread racism.
The far right tried to exploit that, with some limited success – the National Front was quite big in the 1970s – but it’s never had much support in the phlegmatic UK. Enoch Powell was wrong.
Powell’s notorious 1968 ‘rivers of blood’ speech warning of mass civil disturbance was false prophecy. Powell quoted a Roman poet foreseeing the River Tiber ‘foaming with blood’, but – despite occasional ‘race riots’ caused by racist injustice – there’s been no foaming of blood in the UK.
Thanks to common sense and goodwill, and to antiracist campaigning and legislation, most citizens of all ethnicities have accepted a pragmatic mixture of multiculturalism and integration.
There’s been talk recently, in the face of illiberal teaching in some segregated faith schools, of promoting British values – but the values prescribed aren’t exclusively ‘British’. They’re the European Enlightenment values that underpin modern liberal democracy.
The solution to segregation is not for immigrant communities to be made to somehow acquire ‘Britishness’ – it’s for those communities to stop self-segregating. Britishness is what happens when you live here without segregating yourself.
If there are ‘British values’, one of the best, ironically, is a stoical indifference to national pride and flag-waving patriotism. (See my post, Patriotism – for scoundrels.)
There was a disturbing spike in racism following the UK’s EU referendum in 2016 (in effect, the UK’s first public consultation on immigration) but younger people generally seem far less racist than previous generations.
Despite that lessening of inter-ethnic tension, black and South Asian Britons continue to face prejudice and discrimination, both personal and institutional.
The Black Lives Matter movement raised awareness of that conscious and unconscious racism, and has encouraged antiracists to speed up the UK’s slow progress towards ending racism.
Apart from the Saudi-exported Salafi self-segregation practised by some UK Muslims (which damages women and children and provokes racism), multicultural England doesn’t need defending against immigrant cultures – it’s made of them.
Racist nationalists who claim to defend England can shove their flags, and crawl back under their stone.
Nationalism: a rant
It’s natural to feel affection for your country, but nationalism, with its flag-waving banality and its dangerous, narrow-minded ideology is an unnatural abomination.
The danger of nationalism is shown by the murderous religious conflict in India associated with the rise of populist prime minister Narendra Modi, his Hindu nationalistBJP party and the Hindu nationalistRSS paramilitary group he belongs to.
(The RSS also operates internationally, promoting its Hindu-supremacist ideology, Hindutva, to the Indian Hindu diaspora. See my blogpost about the 2022 Leicester riots, The riots: Hindutva in Leicester.)
Globally, the nation state’s had its day. The big states are powerful but can’t stop global warming. The so-called United Nations is toothless – it helps victims but pussyfoots with perpetrators.
To right nationalism’s wrongs – environmental destruction, poverty, corruption, disease and war – what the world needs now is love, tough love: transnational federated World government. With teeth.
Left: Asian woman, UK. Right: Asian man, US | Getty Images
In the UK, ‘Asian’ is used to refer to anyone apparently of South Asian ethnicity. However, in the US, ‘Asian’ refers to people of East Asian ethnicity. This avoids offending Japanese people by calling them Chinese, and vice versa. As with Pakistan and India, there’s historical enmity between the two countries.
‘Asian’ in the US – as blatantly inaccurate as the UK version – is apparently a careless contraction of ‘East Asian’. The geographic region of East Asia includes China and Japan as well as South Korea, North Korea, Taiwan, and Mongolia.
In the UK, ‘Asian’ and ‘Asian British’ mean the same: South Asian. But in the US, ‘Asian American’ has a more formal and broader meaning than ‘Asian’ – it means having ethnic origins in one of three Asian regions: South Asia, Southeast Asia or East Asia.
(Southeast Asia is Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Brunei, the Philippines and East Timor.)
‘Asian American’ and ‘Asian British’ are both carelessly innacurate, perhaps reflecting imperialist arrogance.
‘Asian British’ excludes the five other geographic Asian regions. ‘Asian American’ is slightly less innacurate, only excluding three Asian regions.
The centre-left Guardian, the UK’s most-read quality daily newspaper, bizarely insists on writing ‘south Asian’ with a small ‘s’, as in this 2021 headline:
Gene common in south Asian people doubles risk of Covid death, study finds
However – shock, horror – the Guardian‘s got it wrong. It should, of course, be ‘South Asian’ with a capital ‘S’.
This isn’t one of the ‘typo’ errors the Guardian used to be famous for (giving it the nickname the ‘Grauniad‘). The paper has deliberately printed ‘south Asian’ with a small ‘s’ since it first started using the epithet a few decades ago. (See, for instance, this 1993 article.)
It’s not just an issue of grammar. The Guardian‘s idiosyncratic lower-case ‘s’ effectively demeans South Asian people. That’s clearly not the liberalGuardian’sintention – but it’s the inevitable effect of the paper’s grammatical anomaly.
I’m a long-time Guardianreader, but I only recently noticed the ‘south Asian’ spelling. I turned to the A-Z Guardianstyle guide, normally a shining beacon of omniscient clarity – but it was disappointingly flawed.
The Guardianstyle guide had no entries for ‘Asian’ or ‘South Asian’. This was a surprising omission by a liberal paper (rightly) championing multiculturalism. ‘South Asian’, meaning Indian, Pakistani or Bangladeshi, is a sensitive, circuitous, polite, and politically correct element of multiculturalism. Its use in the Guardian deserves a clear explanation.
The main problem, however, is the Guardian‘s bizarre insistence on spelling ‘south Asian’ with a small ‘s’.
I complained to the Guardian about their ‘south Asian spelling. In reply, they quoted this, from the style guideG section:
geography
distinct areas are capped up: Black Country, East Anglia, Lake District, Midlands, Peak District, Potteries, West Country, etc; but areas defined by compass points are lc: the north, the south-east, the south-west, etc.
This is nonsense as an explanation for their ‘south Asian’ spelling. Defined geopolitical areas such as South Asiaare‘distinct areas’. They’re not ‘areas defined by compass points’ – the compass point is part of their proper name.
The Guardian style guideS section has several entries beginning ‘south’. For ‘South America’, the compass-point element is capitalised, but for ‘south-west England, the south-east, south Wales, etc’, it isn’t.
Only two Asian regions are mentioned in the Guardian style guide. The guide’s E section gives ‘east Asia’ and ‘south-east Asia’.
The Guardian rule seems to be that capitals for compass-point elements are allowed in the names of Guardian-defined ‘distinct areas’ (eg East Anglia) or continents (eg South America) but are denied in the names of ‘areas defined by compass points’, (eg, the north).
That denial is apparently extended to major geopolitical regions with a compass-point element in their name (eg ‘south Asia’).
According to its own fuzzy logic, the Guardian should consistently spell the names of all Asian regions the same way. However, in the section heading shown below, ‘Central Asia’ is spelt correctly – with a capital ‘C’!
It’s probably pointless (geddit?) to explain why the Guardian‘s wrong to write ‘south Asian’ with a lower-case ‘s’, so here goes nothing.
All major broadcasters and publishers, including Gov.uk, the BBC, Wikipedia and National Geographic, write ‘South Asia’ with a capital ‘S’. They give proper-name status to all such major geopolitical regions.
Gov.uk’s style guide has no entries for ‘Asian’ or ‘South Asian’, but the website uses capital ‘S’ throughout for South Asia. Gov.ukarticle title:
Overcrowding in South Asian households: a qualitative report
‘Points of the compass…are capitalized…when they form part of a proper name…If [a region] is consistently capitalized in reliable sources…then the direction word in it is capitalized’
The Wikipedia entry for South Asia capitalises both words throughout.
A water crisis looms for 270 million people as South Asia’s glaciers shrink
Everyone else also apparently disagrees with the Guardian. I googled ‘south asian’, and in the first five pages of results, all instances except two – a total of 44 (disregarding those where ‘South Asian’ began a sentence) – were spelt with a capital ‘S’. The two exceptions were from the Guardian.
The Guardian prides itself on its independence, but this looks like a bad case of They Were All Out of Step But Jim (as in the humorous American World War I song).
The Guardian style guide is instructively unhelpful. Its C section, under ‘capitals’, lists sixteen ‘main principles’ for its policy of minimising the use of capitals – but there’s no principle listed for capitalising regions such as South Asia.
The guide’s G section, under ‘geography’ (see above), does at least address the issue. It allows capitals for ‘distinct areas’ (such as, apparently, East Anglia) but denies them for ‘areas defined by compass points’.
The Guardian apparently puts South Asia in the latter category. That’s nonsense. If East Anglia qualifies as a ‘distinct area’, then surely South Asia does – it’s a major geopolitical region comprising eight countries (see above); and ‘South Asian’ is used in the UK media to mean Pakistani, Indian or Bangladeshi.
Geographically and politically (in either sense), South Asia clearly deserves proper-name status – as do all Asian regions. Proper names should, of course, be capitalised.
The Guardian‘s current minimal-capitals versions, ‘south Asia’ and ‘south Asian’, lack definition. They’re not proper names – they’re effectively vague and vacuous. The reader might understandably wonder what part of Asia is being referred to.
If I were South Asian (in the UK sense of having Pakistani, Indian or Bangladeshi ethnicity), I might well feel – perhaps subliminally – somewhat downgraded and mildly insulted. (Is that what you want, Guardian? ‘Cause that’s what’ll happen.)
The Guardianstyle guide section on the use of capitals says:
We aim for coherence and consistency, but not at the expense of clarity
Clarity requires ‘South Asian’ to have a capital ‘S’ – and so does history. The Guardian, liberal flagship of the British media, should consider that the need to use a regional name as a collective proxy for British South Asian people arises from the British-organised partition of India.
If the Guardian were to fall in line with all other media and give proper-name status to South Asia, it’d be a small measure of historical restitution – and a large measure of common courtesy.
When I asked the Guardian about this, their response, in quoting their style guide entry on geography (see above), was – perhaps predictably – dismissively and obtusely defensive.
However, in response to my point that the Guardianstyle guide should have an explanation of the use of ‘South Asian’ to mean Indian, Pakistani or Bangladeshi, they said they might consider adding ‘a specific entry for south Asia’.
That was begrudging – and stubbornly ungrammatical – but it was a start.
However, it was also an end. They haven’t changed the spelling – and they haven’t added ‘a specific entry for south Asia’. Hi fucking ho.
We say ‘Asian’, meaning South Asian, because people of South Asian ethnicity might be ‘from’India, Pakistan or Bangladesh (formerly East Pakistan). It’s all because of partition.
Pakistan was created in 1947 by the devastating partition of India, Britain’s clumsy and careless division of two Indian provinces, the Punjab and Bengal, which inevitably led to the violent deaths and forced relocation of millions of people.
The perfidious British rulers were mainly to blame for the partition disaster – but who else was to blame? Was it Muslim leader Muhammad Jinnah?
It’s often assumed partition happened because Jinnah insisted on a Muslim nation. Jinnah’s Muslim Leaguedid vote for separation in 1940, but that’s not the whole story.
Jinnah, a secular leader, was determined to protect Muslims from political isolation. His preference was for a federated India, but that idea was blocked by Indian National Congress leader Jawaharlal ‘Pandit’ Nehru, leaving Jinnah no choice but separation.
That’s a shame – it could have been the USI, with the Punjab and Bengal as multicultural federal states. Instead, they were ripped apart by partition.
Saying ‘Asian’ or ‘South Asian’ is a small reminder of that big tragedy. When remembering it, however, don’t blame Muslim pragmatist and man of principle Jinnah.
Blame the real villain:Hindu nationalist and colonial colluder Nehru.
In which I write a robust, generalised, secular humanist critique of Islam in the UK without being Islamophobic
Nice art – shame about the self-segregationPhoto: Mohammad Reza Domiri Ganji
Warning: the following article contains strong opinions. Devout Muslims of simple faith may wish to move along; anyone else, please read on…
Am I Islamophobic, frightened of Islam? If I believed the many rabid anti-Islamic websites out there, saying that Muslim immigration is a Trojan horse, about to destroy democracy, I probably would be. But I dont; and I’m not.
Meanwhile, back in the real world, here in the UK, I’ll explain why I don’t much like Islam as it is at the moment; and how that doesn’t make me Islamophobic.
Fact: Oil-rich Saudi Arabia spends billions of dollars on the international promotion of Wahhabism/Salafism, widely recognised as one of fundamentalist Islam’s most extreme movements. Much of the money funds children’s education in British faith schools and mosques.
Fact: A headteacher friend told me that in her mainly-Muslim state primary school the day after 9/11, Muslim children were singing pro-Osama bin Laden chants.
Fact: There were demonstrations in London by Muslims against the war in Iraq and against offensive cartoons, but there have been no demonstrations against al-Qaeda or Isis. PR statements of condemnation and claims that Islam is a religion of peace are made, but Muslims have not accepted any responsibility for the brutal terrorism coming from within their religion. Many Muslims resort to elaborate conspiracy theories or blame foreign policy to justify denial.
Fact: A UK opinion poll has indicated significant support amongst Muslims for young Muslims who leave the UK to join fighters in Syria. Another poll showed that a significant number of UK Muslims believe the 2005 7/7 London bombings were justified because of the west’s war on terror.
Does writing those things in a blog make me Islamophobic?
Fact: Muslims are taught that they shouldn’t live in a non-Muslim country, but if they do, they shouldn’t befriend non-Muslims. (Actually, despite being a native non-believer – I’m agnostic – I find UK Muslims friendly. But the teaching is there.)
Fact: A religious message has been circulated calling for Muslims to foster or adopt refugee Muslim orphans to save them from the ‘alien environment’ of non-Muslim homes. (Many ‘alien’ non-Muslims had come forward, but very few righteous Muslims had done so.)
Is it Islamophobic to say those things?
Fact: According to supposedly reliable contemporaneous reports, the prophet Muhammad at the age of 54 began having penetrative sex with a nine-year old girl, who’d been his ‘wife’ since the age of six.
Islamophobia?
The accusation of Islamophobia is the knee-jerk defensive response by Muslim spokespeople to any criticism of Islam. This is like the accusation of antisemitism made in response to any criticism of Israel or Zionism. (See my blog on the weird word ‘antisemitism‘.)
Words matter. As a critic of Islam, am I Islamophobic? The suffix ‘phobia’ can mean ‘aversion’, but it’s usually taken to mean ‘irrational fear’ (as in ‘claustrophobia’, meaning fear of enclosed spaces). The widespread use of the word ‘Islamophobia’ deflects criticism. Critics must be either irrational or fearful or both, so they can be ignored. Say the magic word, and the criticism doesn’t need to be addressed.
Am I irrationally frightened of Islam? We all could be rationally frightened of Islam, after the horrors of 9/11 and 7/7. (I say ‘we all’, because some of the victims were Muslims.) But personally, in spite of that, I’ve got no fear of Islam – rational or irrational – or of Muslims in general. So no, I’m not Islamophobic.
‘Anti-Islamic‘ is better than ‘islamophobic’, but that’s not quite right either for a liberal critic of Islam. What if you don’t like Islam as it is, but you’re not actually against it? There should be a suffix or prefix for ‘dislike it as it is at the moment’ – but there isn’t.
There’s a long-term grumbling undercurrent in the British host community of semi-coherent resentment of the post-war immigration project. The sudden influx of large numbers of foreign people, many with foreign languages and religions, was a shock.
If the host community had been consulted and had agreed to mass immigration, there might gave been a more welcoming and trusting environment, which might have made integration more successful.
(My post, Patriotism – for scoundrels addresses the current policy of trying to promote integration by teaching ‘British values‘ in schools.)
When resentment and distrust are aimed at Muslims, as they sadly often are, ‘Islamophobia’ is as good a word as any to describe it. But it won’t do as a blanket response to any criticism.
Openly anti-Islamic racist groups in the UK and Europe try to stir up fear of Islam, but fortunately they have little support in the UK. However, any western criticism of Islam inevitably risks conflation with racism. Most UK Muslims are of Pakistani or Bangladeshi origin and are therefore, like all immigrant communities, victims of racism.
Victimhood can become a bad habit – hence, perhaps, the over-use of the provocatively misleading word ‘Islamophobia’ – but the victims aren’t to blame. As the Archbishop of Canterbury has said, racism is deeply embedded in British culture. Liberal critics of Islam should tread lightly.
(Racism is a different – albeit, related – subject, with its own deep-rooted complexity. See my post Racism explained as a redundant instinct, which includes a detailed account of the racism-provoking self-segregation practised by a large minority of UK Muslims.)
Is there such a person as a moderate Muslim? Google it, and you find many writers and thinkers, both Muslim and non-Muslim, saying ‘No’. The Muslim ‘No’ argument is that it’s not acceptable to be moderately dedicated to Islam; ‘moderate’ Muslims are on the slippery slope to apostasy and Hell.
Ordinary Muslims – decent, honest and friendly – are moderate, aren’t they? Thats what an anxious host community would like to think. But a powerful and communal ideological commitment combined with a sense of being beleaguered can nudge the most ordinary person into a bunker mentality.
(UK Muslims’ sense of being beleaguered, or even persecuted, is somewhat ridiculous when compared to real persecution. See my article about the previously saintly Aung San Suu Kyi and her Myanmar goverment’s brutal persecution of the Rohingya Muslims, Halo Goodbye, Suu – the Rohingya crisis.)
Moderate or not, Muslims say that Islam isn’t just a religion, it’s a way of life – one which must be preserved, and not be contaminated by integration with the decadent host community. This reluctance to integrate is the cause of most of the criticism, and of the consequent paranoid accusations of Islamophobia.
Symptoms of the host community’s supposed decadence include our acceptance of homosexuality and equality for women, and our lack of religious faith.
Young UK Muslims are often torn between the Islamic lifestyle – which secures their position in their extended family and the wider Muslim community – and the western lifestyle, which isn’t really that decadent, and which has attractions other than the merely material – mainly, the freedom to live how you want, within the protective barrier of reason and secular law.
This tension is expressed in a few cases by joining Isis (to escape temptation and see the world); or lapsing; and in most cases isn’t expressed at all, but simply bubbles under the surface. Perhaps surprisingly, many Muslim families have one or more lapsed or semi-lapsed members who are still very much part of the family.
In any case, the non-western lifestyle of most UK Muslims is not purely Islamic. Pakistani and Bangladeshi cultural traditions – north Indian, as they were for centuries before partition – are mixed with Islamic principle. For instance, most Islamic weddings ignore Quran-ordained simplicity in favour of expensive three-day celebrations with lavish gifts of gold jewellery and clothes.
Other un-Islamic traditions are less benign. Most UK ‘honour’ killing victims from 2009 to 2014 were of Pakistani origin. (1)
Muslims are entitled, of course, to preserve their way of life (within the law of the land), whether it’s strictly religious or not. There are other insular ethnic-religious groups in the UK that insist on keeping to a special lifestyle – for example, orthodox Jews. But Muslims are the only such group who’s religion is associated with worldwide sectarian and anti-west violence.
Muslims often say that the violence is un-Islamic. Even if that’s accepted (perhaps with some scepticism), there’s a worrying tendency for the culture of Islam in the west to self-segregate into an ideological supremacist fortress – nicely symbolised by the provocative wearing of eye-slit face veils.
Secular humanists look on with wariness and some distaste – but not Islamophobia.
(1)’Honour’ killing victims: Of the 22 out of 29 reported cases of ‘honour’ killings and attempted killings in 2010 where the ethnicity of the victim was known or alleged, 15 were of Pakistani origin (3 were Indian, 1 was Bangladeshi, 1 Palestinian/Syrian, 1 Kuwaiti and 1 white British) – The Henry Jackson Society database – reported cases of ‘honour’ killings and attempted killings in the UK between 31 December 2009 and 31 December 2014.
(The neoconservative HJS has form for being anti-Islamic, but these statistics appear to be sound.)
I put this to some Muslim scholars, liberals and reformers. So far, there have been two respondents, both reformers. They say that Islam needs to shed man-made sects (Sunnism, Sufism and Shiitism), disregard the extra texts (hadiths) and rely on the Quran, the interpretation of which is human and fallible. However, reform can have a bad side. The Wahabi/Salafi movement is a reformist movement, albeit an ultra-conservative Sunni one. Christian Reformation’sMartin Luther, a nasty piece of work, was calling for the burning of synagogues some 500 years ago. Thank goodness for the Enlightenment*.
One respondent said that the hadith about Muhammad having sex with his nine-year old ‘wife’, Aisha, is fabricated. However, there are apparently many supposedly reliable hadiths attesting to this ‘consummation of marriage’.
Some Muslims argue that Aisha was aged between 15 and 19 when the marriage was consumated, but most Muslims seem to accept that it happened when the girl was nine. Many Muslims apparently deal with criticism about it by saying that in a tropical climate, as in Arabia, girls reach puberty earlier, and that the nine-year-old must have been sexually mature.
I haven’t found any scientific evidence of earlier female puberty due to a hot climate. (I found some contradictory evidence: that girls mature later in hot climates.)
In any case, the idea of a 54-year-old man having sex with a nine-year-old girl, even if by by some freak of nature she’d reached puberty, seems profoundly wrong – at any point in history.
(There are also claims in anti-Islamic sites that Muhammad practised ‘thighing‘ on his child bride before she was nine. None of the ‘evidence’ links work. This appears to be a complete fabrication.)
A UK Guardian article by political editor Anushka Asthana reported the concerns of a leading expert on race and integration that British society is increasingly divided along ethnic lines, with segregation in schools, neighbourhoods and workplaces. In another article in the same edition, Labour MP Chuka Umunna warned of a ‘more ethnically segmented nation‘. Neither article explicitly mentioned Muslim communities, but both mentioned Oldham, a town in Greater Manchester which in 2001 was the scene of violent ethnically-motivated rioting between between local and Muslim communities.
So how come two commentators gave views on increasing segregation without mentioning the Muslim community?
The first Guardian article mentioned above gave the views of Professor Ted Cantle. I emailed Cantle, Chukka Umunna and Anushka Asthana, asking if they’d avoided mentioning Muslims. Umunna and Asthana haven’t replied (but see Update 2, below). Cantle replied, saying: ‘I would very much like details of the extent of segregation of Muslim and other faith communities. Unfortunately most of the analysis is in relation to ethnicity. I suspect that Muslim communities have become more isolated, as they feel somewhat beleaguered, and other communities have moved away from Muslim-associated areas.’ (My bolding.)
On this blog article, he said: ‘I am wary of over-generalisations about the Muslim community. I have learnt over the last 15 years just how diverse it is – theologically, culturally, politically, nationally, socially etc. I thought your blog failed to represent this diversity, even if some of the points may have been fair comment.’ Ouch.
On the first point, surely ‘Pakistani’ is effectively synonymous with ‘Muslim’, so if you know that people’s ethnicity is Pakistani, you know their faith is Muslim; and it’s common knowledge that Muslim communities tend to choose segregation, especially in the case of education, for religious reasons.
I put this to Prof Cantle. He said that (contrary to what I was suggesting) most Muslims are not Pakistani. He referred me to a residential-pattern analysis of the 2011 census figures, which does indeed show that in 2011 there were 2.7 million Muslims, but only 1.1 million people of Pakistani origin. That’s a surprisingly (surprising to me, anyway) low 40%. (A further 646,000 people were of Bangladeshi, Turkish or Somali origin, and there were about 100,000 converts, leaving about 900,000 Muslims of unknown ethnic origin. Apparently.)
Fair enough – the census has spoken. So why did I think that most UK Muslims were of Pakistani origin? I think it’s because whenever Muslims appear in the UK media, whether ordinary people, politicians, community leaders, writers, artists, actors, musicians or TV pundits, they’re nearly always of Pakistani origin. In other words, UK Muslim culture is represented by people of Pakistani origin. So arguably, when analysing UK trends, ‘Pakistani’ and ‘Muslim’ are effectively interchangeable.
Also, the census analysis addresses residential segregation; but what about educational segregation? That subject was discussed at length in the Guardian article – without any mention of faith groups. Can there really be no details available of the extent of educational segregation of Muslim and other faith groups? It’s well known that Muslims choose educational segregation for religious reasons, and that this has been a matter of high-profile public concern for some time (eg, the murky but inconclusive Trojan Horse affair). So it’s difficult to see how this can be overlooked in an in-depth expert review of the subject. (And what about the Wahabi/Salafi oil money funding UK faith schools?)
Other faiths have their own conservative schools, of course, most of which are funded by the state – whereas Muslim schools, on the whole, aren’t. The solution, though, is not to have more state-funded Muslim schools, but to end all state-funded faith schools, and enforce the teaching of the Enlightenment values of liberty, self-determination and personal responsibility that Western liberal democracy is built on. Western values, if you like. (Just don’t call them ‘British’ values. See more on the legislation requiring the teaching of British values in my blog article, ‘Patriotism – for scoundrels‘.)
In any case, Muslim self-segregation applies to other areas of life as well.
I’ve since found that, contrary to what Prof Cantle said, there is published research on faith-based segregation. But for whatever reason, Cantle, Umunna and The Guardian are not discussing this. I suspect that the reason is their fear of being thought to be Islamophobic or – even worse – politically incorrect.
Another integration expert, Professor Tariq Modood, has told me that only 7% of Muslims choose Muslim faith-schools as compared with 50% of Jews.
However, that may be a function of the very low number of state-sanctioned Muslim schools as compared with other faiths. Also, the perception of educational segregation comes not so much from the numbers as from the illiberal Wahabi/Salafi teaching that is sought to be imposed.
Guardian polical editor Anushka Asthana (see Postscript 2, above) has finally replied (after some prompting) to my question about the two Guardian articles that discussed segregation without mentioning Muslims. She didn’t refer to the Chukka Umunna article; but she said that in her article, Prof Cantle did mention faith schools. However, I think the Guardian should set things right by explicitly addressing Muslim self-segregation.
