Jonathan Freedland (Guardian Utd): The identity vacuum

[Jack Rabbit]

From the Guardian Unlimited (UK)
Dated Wednesday August 3

The identity vacuum
Britain should follow the US approach to citizenship, which emphasises not only diversity but the ties that bind
By Jonathan Freedland

This has been the summer of fear, the season in which our worst nightmares have come true. Take those devoted to bringing racial harmony to this country. Every argument they spent years beating back has suddenly gained new life.

It was long a racist trope that Muslims, even those born here, could not be trusted, that they represented a potentially lethal fifth column. On July 7 that viewpoint was handed lurid "proof": four British-born Muslims ready to kill as many British civilians as they could.

The racists had long argued that immigrants were a menace. As if to vindicate every scaremongering anti-refugee headline of the last 10 years, along came the suspected cell behind the July 21 strikes. It included at least two men who, as children, had fled Africa and found safe haven in Britain. British tabloids had once had to make up "Asylum seekers ate my donkey"; now they write "The asylum seekers who want us dead" - and this time it seems to be true.

This setback for the cause of racial harmony is not abstract. Just listen to the phone-ins, as people admit they are scanning carriages and buses looking for dark, Muslim faces. Suspicion and racial tension that many Britons hoped they had banished 25 years ago are back.

Read more.

[Briar]

1. Interesting to read this alongside

Ted Rall's article in this thread:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x144426

and the reports yesterday that while the rest of the world's view of America has grown steadily darker and more critical, Americans themselves continue to believe in their country:

"That the world takes a dim view of the US people will surprise most Americans themselves: the study's American respondents consistently placed the US at the top of all six categories polled."

http://news.ft.com/cms/s/77868922-0228-11da-9481-00000e2511c8.html

Nope - I will take empathic diversity over a constructed, flag-waving conformity.