There was a report on radio 4 this morning
in which a woman from the Congo told the story of how soldiers came into her
village, and while she watched they bayoneted her two eldest children (aged 6
and 8) beheaded her brother in front of her because he would not rape her and
then they made her hang her own baby. It was the most horrific thing I had ever heard.
Apparently this trouble is tribal, and this
tribal war has been going on for a long time, centuries in fact. They fought
each other prior to any western influence, but now they do it better because
they are better equipped.
It made me think about how people talk
about the dream of the multicultural society.
Up here well north of Manchester we
really do not get a lot of cross culture or variable race.
I see so called realistic shows like Eastenders
in which the black family live next door to the white family and the Asian girl
is down the road and they all meet up and are friendly and they socialise
together and they grow up together but that is just not the reality of my life.
I can’t even begin to relate to it.
There is a very large Jewish community up
here, but nearly all of them live in one area of Gateshead.
We don’t make them,
but they choose to buy houses next to each other and to congregate in their
daily lives with people who have the same religion and outlook on life.
As an outsider I often look at the reality
of multiculturalism and I find that this self imposed segregation is often the norm, even in
areas where families are assigned homes they tend to merge together into groups
of the same race or religion to socialise.
There is nothing wrong with it but it
really does not help to create the mixed society that we are supposedly looking
for. My memory is drawn to an angry young man shouting at a politician “What
are you even doing here? This is a Muslim area and you shouldn’t be here” The
politician’s reply being that this is England and he can go wherever he wishes.
The problem is, I bet that without his
security he really can’t. The UK is not
becoming multicultural it is becoming tribal
I remember by chance browsing the internet
one day and coming across an event that was happening in
Birmingham for ‘Black
single mothers’
WHAT!!!
How on earth does that help us do anything
except to create more ghettos of race or religion? If people only mix with
people who are the same where is the diversity?
I actually don’t know if we are equipped to
handle true multiculturalism at this time. We hear intelligent men like
Al-Fayed shouting about how the royal family can order people to be killed. We
really know that this isn’t true, but from his historic upbringing in Egypt &
the Middle East there was a time when in his early life this was true. He has
carried this belief here with him and he believes it can be true because in his
personal history royalty can do this.
I had a very clear view of how this
transports a few years ago. We were working in Londonwith a
business associate who had settled over here from Nigeria.While out in a pub one evening he was
introduced to another Nigerian who was working in London. His first question was “What tribe are you?”,
he received and answer and was pleased because his own tribe was superior. I
asked afterward why it mattered and I was told “I needed to know if I was superior
to him, between us we need to know who is in charge” I told him that over here
it really didn’t matter but I was very firmly told that indeed it really did.
This may be London but which tribe you are is important.
President Moi of Kenya has
characterised tribalism as a cancer, but I wonder if he realises that it really
spreads far beyond Africa and it isn’t just Africans.
We seem to find reasons to hate things
about each other, it can be as petty as football teams or as serious as God’s
and seems to include everything in between.
It is easier to find things to dislike
about people when you don’t mix with them and if your natural existence is not
to mix then how do we fix this?
I don’t know what the answer is and I don’t
have the cultural experience to even suggest one. Maybe rather than going
straight for the big stuff we should start by teaching people to respect others
opinions about the smaller things like Football. Perhaps from that we can learn
how to fix the larger things.
Perhaps we will drift into tribes forever
because we are animals and we feel the need to socialise with others who agree
with us, or perhaps we are not as civilised as we think and that there isn’t
any way to stop it.
And in that case maybe we shouldn’t.
And if we do take that tribal route , at
least that would mean that we wont have to socialise with the Welsh.
There is always a positive.
