On the issue of immigration, at what point is the line crossed from healthy debate into filthy prejudice?
This article from the Daily Mail is a perfect example of that line being well and truly crossed:
The article begins as follows:
Just one in ten babies is born to a white British mother in some parts of the country, figures reveal.
The statistics – based on NHS monitoring of the ethnicity and nationality of patients – show a sharp contrast in the backgrounds of new mothers in urban and rural areas.
While white British mothers accounted for just 9.4 per cent of all births in one London health trust, the figure was 97.4 per cent of all births in Northern Devon Healthcare NHS Trust.
The birth statistics reflect how mothers described themselves, not the ethnicity of the fathers or the babies.
Across all of England’s 150 NHS Trusts there were 652,638 deliveries last year, around six out of ten of them to women who called themselves white British.
If the purpose of this article is to make a point about immigration, then why is the colour of these mothers’ skin any kind of issue? The debate on immigration should be about the number of people coming into our country and our ability to sustain them, regardless of the shade of their epidermis.
However, the debate is never as clearly or as purely conducted as that.
The tabloid press continually seeks to maintain and deepen the racial divisions in this country. It’s the same reason why you never see articles or editorials bemoaning the number of immigrants coming from the United States or Australia, of which a large number do. Complaints about the number of white Eastern European immigrants only crop up because it satisfies another Daily Mail narrative: namely, the United Kingdom’s membership of the European Union. The Mail frequently publishes negative stories about minorities along with positive articles about the “beleaguered and besieged” white population, implying that the white British are suffering as a result of the minorities.
The idea that we’re supposed to be shocked or horrified by these statistics from the NHS, which is clearly reinforced by the rhetoric used in its editorial (link below), is proof enough that the Mail seeks to encourage the debate on immigration to be centred around race.
Anton at Enemies of Reason has written a post about the differences between the Mail’s online version and the version printed in the paper which is accompanied by a particularly nasty editorial.
The Mail is the first paper to complain when concerns about immigration are denounced as mere racism. It is claimed that “you’re not allowed to talk about immigration”. Of course, this is piffle. You’re allowed to talk about whatever you want. The Mail’s claim that immigration is the “great unspoken issue” is patent nonsense.
When you talk about immigration with particular attention drawn to the colour of people’s skin, don’t expect to be taken seriously and certainly don’t complain when people call you racist.
It is only a matter of hours before this article is posted onto the BNP’s website as some sort of proof of the infinite wisdom of Mr Griffin and his cronies.
The article was already picked up when it was initially posted last night by a member of the Stormfront forum (along with a truly spectacular display of utter ignorance and revolting prejudice in the form of a “debate” about the production of mixed-race Barbie dolls).
The Mail’s article has predictably drawn a number of comments left by readers which clearly regard the statistics as being nothing but bad news:
Jon Ward’s comment is particularly disgraceful. Note his use of “We Britain’s” [sic], implying that people who are not white cannot be considered British. This is the very definition of racism and I defy anyone to prove otherwise.
With rhetoric like this, the Mail is doing everything in it’s power to scuttle the very issue it presumably takes seriously. If you do not want to be denounced as being racist when discussing immigration, stop bringing the issue back to race.
It’s quite simple.
My favourite comment was by the guy who said that if he lived in Britain he'd move to Oz because of the problem with immigrants killing off the indigenous culture.
He didn't seem to notice the irony of suggesting we move to a country where immigrants killed off the indigenous culture, but I think, if I had delved into his reasoning, it would have been ok because this time, the immigrants were white and the indigenous culture wasn't.
VERY good article, and I agree with every word. I have now favourited your page.
Thank you for refuelling my trust that there are still sane people out there.
H x
A dictionary definition of racism:
"a belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various human races determine cultural or individual achievement, usually involving the idea that one's own race is superior and has the right to rule others".
Here's another:
"hatred or intolerance of another race or other races."
If a member of one race doesn't actually believe they are racially superior to others, and doesn't actually hate members of other races, yet they would prefer to keep their country as monocultural as possible, does this make them racist?
Just wonderin' like….
"If a member of one race doesn't actually believe they are racially superior to others, and doesn't actually hate members of other races, yet they would prefer to keep their country as monocultural as possible, does this make them racist?"
Not monocultural, no. The charge of racism could only be deployed if this person wanted to keep their country monoracial.
When the rhetoric used by a member of that particular 'race' is implicit in its denigration of others and uses scaremongering hyperbole such as "I am an alien in my own country" and "We Britain's(sic)are going to be outnumbered" when the UK is still vastly, overwhelmingly, indubitably white British, yes. Yes it does.
The whole tone of the article and the comments, such as they are, is that to be British is to be white and nothing else will do. And to hell with the generations of people who have lived, worked and contributed to this country for hundreds of years but don't fulfill that criteria.
I read that article yesterday–pure racism.
The question has to be asked as to why the NHS are gathering such information.
What possible reason can they have?
The worm is turning at last….
Makes one choke on one's organic yoghurt
Pagar,
The information is gathered for public health reasons. For example, birthweight is very important as it is a major indicator of ill-health in the neo-natal period as well as correlating with maternal health in pregnancy. It is a genetic fact that on average asian babies are smaller than white babies and hence to analyse the data properly, ethnicity is a vital part of the data.
What intrigues me is that if you look at the NHS information centre website (where this kind of data is in the public domain) they don't publish a table of maternal ethnicity – why would they? So whoever researched this article had to put together the stats themselves from the tables. Not a difficult task – it took me about 5 minutes this morning when I was looking at this. However – to my mind that indicates to me that the agenda came a long way before the facts.
Dr AFZ
@alienfromzog That's very good to know. Thank you for that information. Do you think the NHS Behind the Headlines web-site will post something about this data?
I've just followed the link here from Angry Mob, which I've only recently discovered as well. It's nice to read some intelligent points once in a while about stories which just make me baffled and incoherent.
To add to AFZ's reply to Minority Report, until April this year I worked in admin for the NHS, and other examples of ethnicity being important would include things like sickle cell disease, which is genetically far, far more likely in people of sub-Saharan African descent.
With the frequent grouping of many ethnic communities together in cities, it can also be useful to pick up whether certain groups (ethnicities, sexualities, or age groups, or people who for any other reason might be living with lots of others of an at-risk demographic – university students, say) are especially susceptible to anything in particular, so that the appropriate publicity can be driven at them. It's a generalisation of course, but if the figures merely showed that, say 'alcoholism is a problem in the UK', and went no further, and if no-one in the appropriate government department had any sense, we might get posters warning of the dangers of alcoholism being put up in say old people's homes and Muslim cultural centres in the same numbers as one (rather more sensibly) sees around university campuses during freshers' weeks.
It should also be stressed that people can decline to answer the question.