Plural Identities

I need you to pin me down

I've not been posting these past two weeks due to preparing for and then being in the US, first Research Triangle Park, Raleigh/Durham, North Carolina (my fourth visit) and then Deerfield, Illinois (both as glamorous as they sound). Yes, I did have my laptop (and free wireless, European hotels take note) but frankly what with jetlag, the time difference and training all day I was only just able to stay awake long enough to check e-mails most evenings, or else having an ice cold beer seemed more important than blogging.

One thing I finally pinpointed on the way out, thanks to an American Airlines stewardess, was a speech pattern which is prevalent in the US, but is likely to have a fingernails scraping on the blackboard effect in the UK.  The air stewardess announced that they were about to start selling duty free on board, and if anyone wanted pay by credit card then "we need you to show another form of ID".  I don't think I am speaking just for myself if I say that when I hear that someone "needs me to" do something, without a please or a conditional tense attached, I immediately want to do the opposite.  A British air stewardess would have said "please could you show another form of ID." 

I asked the various American participants in the training sessions why this speech pattern is so prevalent, and they came to the conclusion that it is because in the US, if you want someone to do something, you have to make sure they understand it is a requirement, otherwise they won't do it.

I tried Googling to see if anyone else has commented on this speech pattern and found that apparently in the film "You, Me and Dupree" there is a line "I need you to do a solid".  I shall remember this each time I hear this kind of request again, and I will no doubt be looking suitably British and constipated in response.

Our House

The Panorama documentary on Blackburn last Monday on BBC1 was, as John Lloyd said in the Financial Times yesterday "vastly skilful and unrelievedly bleak" in showing Blackburn as a town divided by fear and distrust between the white population and the 'Asian' population.  It gave voice to the worries of both populations and demonstrated how rarely they integrate, by, for example, showing the entirely different (apart from central shopping areas) runs that two local taxi firms, one all white drivers and one all Asian drivers, mapped in the course of a day.

For a bit of light relief I then watched BBC4's Music Hall Meltdown, but with my mindset still influenced by the Panorama programme, was immediately struck by how 'white' it was, and wondered whether anyone who wasn't born and bred, several generations British, would get the point of it.  First up was Madness, who are an 'English' band par excellence, and yet of course influenced by Jamaican ska.  They sang 'House of Fun', about a boy trying to buy condoms.  I had my beer goggles on by this stage as well, so started to think, maybe that is the root of this 'lack of integration' - Brits with their social dis-ease (as Kate Fox puts it) can only socialise and integrate with outsiders through giving riotous expression to the basest or most fundamental human drives, of sex, drugs/alcohol and rock and roll.  And of course for hardline Muslims, none of these routes is acceptable.  The extraordinary Channel 4 programme the next night, Seven Sins of England, made the point even more clearly.  I remember when I was canvassing ten years ago, talking with one angry white East Ender, lifelong Labour supporter threatening to vote BNP.  "They don't even come to the pub" he said.  "Well Muslims can't drink alcohol", I said. "Yeah but they could have an orange juice" he retorted.

Maybe there is some scope for integrative activities such as sport or music without the sex, booze and rock n roll. I'm not convinced though.  I am always recommending to the Europeans in Japanese companies that I do training for that they find more ways of socialising, with beer, with their Japanese colleagues if they really want to become trusted insiders in a Japanese company, because the Japanese are similar to the British in this need to have the excuse of a few beers before revealing their true selves and thoughts.

In case I am coming across as a total telly moron, I am also reading a lot at the moment, incuding Julian Baggini's Welcome to Everytown, and he makes the point that in fact even white Brits are not integrating with each other; "England is a patchwork of almost hermetically sealed sub-worlds, in which class as much as race is a crucial factor."  He then goes on to say how his friends joked that they would have to send food parcels to him when he moved to Rotherham, with balsamic vinegar and buffalo mozzarella in them.  I winced, as we had some friends round for dinner last Friday, and although we were all able to join in a minor version of 'more working class roots than thou', balsamic vinegar featured on the menu, albeit with halloumi cheese, not mozzarella.

I'm intrigued by Baggini's assertion that "all sorts of social groups don't mix very much, yet we don't chastise them for it. The trouble is not caused by not mixing, but refusing to do so in ways which seem to threaten other groups."  Baggini thinks that the extent to which Muslims dissent from the fundamentals of British democracy is overstated.  He may be right, but of course the probem is that we are dealing with perceptions.  Wearing a face covering veil may be simply an act of religious observance to the woman who chose to do it, but it is perceived as being an assertion about not wanting to communicate fully, and accusing men of being unable to control their primitive urges if a woman were to show any flesh.  Not joining in with drinking also is perceived as a criticism of those who do drink, and an unwillingness to even enter a place where people socialise and mix.

Baggini says mutual tolerance is the best we can hope for, rather than respect or acknowledgement.  He acknowledges we need shared values to glue society together, but these shared values are in his view pretty minimal and civic.  Above all, and I most definitely agree with him here, as it is a fundamental British value, "we have to promote a sense that everyone is being treated equally under the same rules".  This was certainly at the root of East End anger 15 years' ago and I would suspect to this day.  There was a perception that the Bengalis were being treated favourably when it came to housing.  Of course mostly this came about due to the fair application of rules that large families got priority.  So the Liberals took over the council on the promise of introducing a new rule, of priority for "sons and daughters" of East Enders.  So the problem is not just equal treatment, but how the rules are viewed in the first place.

Sunny Hundal at Pickled Politics also has a post on perceived threats to white culture, and in particular the class angle, pointing the finger at the middle classes for failing to support or understand white working class culture. He's a bit vague on what exactly supporting white working class culture might be, other than better funded sports facilities...

Elephants and debates

I missed this debate on Britishness (the perils of having given up reading the Guardian) but Martin Kettle has summed it up nicely.  Sunny Hundal went to the debate and also was invited to one on European identity and values, sponsored by Demos and the Institute for Jewish Policy Research and funded by the Ford Foundation (you can almost hear the rustle of tinfoil hats being donned by Europe's Stoppers & fellow travellers when they hear about that one).  The news releases about this from the two organisations show an inadvertent clue to one British value, modesty (sometimes false) - JPR describes Demos as "the UK's most influential thinktank" whereas Demos' version of the press release says "influential UK thinktank".  JPR reports on the debate here. 

As Sunny Hundal says, the elephant in the room is the reason these debates are happening now; because of worries about how to deal with home grown terrorists amongst a minority of young Muslim males.  Which means that, as Martin Kettle points out, other parts of the debate about British identity, such as class, tend to be ignored.

If you're in the mood for more debate on the subject, without the need to be physically present, an e-congress on Negotiating Identities is taking place in ten days, hosted by the Open University.

A last resort for dimwits

The Economist article on the April 30th Joseph Rowntree Foundation report into the link between ethnicity and poverty chose to focus on the decision whether to be employed or work for oneself, although it did not make any assertions about the link, if it exists, between self employment and poverty, only noting that in contrast to America, in Britain graduates consider self-employment as the last resort for dimwits, which I suppose may account for my perception that after my Oxford/INSEAD education, my parents think my self employed status is somewhat shaming.

Parental influence may be the key here.  It is well known that Chinese parents and Indian parents are keen on their children becoming doctors, accountants or lawyers, which may be why the percentage of self employed Chinese and Indian origin British has fallen over the past 15 years.  Zia Haider Rahman points to parental influence for Bangladeshi origin people too.  Having lived and been politically active in Bethnal Green for five years or so myself, I agree with his comment that the persistence of poverty is no surprise to those who have been involved in the civic life in such communities.  His point about the influence of Sylheti history and cultural background is key too.  He says:

"But what distresses me the most is not the material deprivation but the lack of aspirations that parents in this community have for their children. This lack of aspiration is not just a consequence of poverty, though poverty certainly doesn't help, but is actually embedded in the culture of many East End Bangladeshis."

White parents can be prone to this too though, particularly with regards to educational aspirations.  I remember a boy at my state grammar school who was certainly bright enough to stay on for A levels, as the teachers wanted him to, announcing that he couldn't because his father would not support him, and wanted him to help out and then take over the family ironmongers.