Peoples of Britain circa 600 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Immigration is a hot issue in the United Kingdom right now. Some time ago I picked up a copy of the Daily ? (a paper that I don’t normally read) and the story on the front page was going on about immigrants and basically implying that we should pull up the drawbridge and prevent any further immigration into our already “overcrowded Island”.
Turning to page 20 (or thereabouts) was an article about how the world economic crisis had affected Dubai and how “poor” British “settlers” were suffering from the economic fallout.
Probably the two journalists did not meet to discuss how they should handle the situation. But why are migrants to the United Kingdom demonised and called immigrants (a word with all sort of connotations) whilst British migrants to other countries were treated sympathetically as settlers? [Read more...]
How many times have we heard somebody say, “I’m not a racist, but…”? Calling somebody a racist can be a term of abuse in itself. It is an insult. The trouble is, that there are obviously degrees of racism, but the term “racist” is an absolute term. If we call a dog, “a dog” then that creature is either a dog or not at – there is no in between. Calling another a racist implies that the person is 100% racist. But it may just mean we consider their racism is worse than our own. And so, I will not call anybody a racist, but I will explore some of the aspects of racism.
