Racism in Britain - Essay Example

Racism in Britain Every country creates its own spirit marked by ideologies, political and social perspectives, economic development and religious context. Racism, as a universal notion, means hostility toward other nations and races based on religious, racial and ethnic differences. For centuries, people have tried to eliminate racial and nations differences and inequalities creating democratic societies based on equal rights and equal treatment of all citizens and immigrants. Thesis statement Britain is one of the countries where racism is still an issue of the day resulted in sufferings and violation of human rights for millions of immigrants and asylum seekers. In Britain racism creates an image of white and non-white people. The British national self and race is constructed in relation to the other nations. Cultural differences are irreducible, and they revealed the ambivalence and hybrid nature of racism. Critics state that "The positing of ethnic origin raises the issue of the targets of racism being diverse and not restricted to groups defined in racial terms" (Anthias, Lloyd, 2002. p. 8). According to the nature of racism in Britain the great influx of immigrants had eroded homogeneous national identities, or rather the traditional, received instructive images and narratives of national homogeneity, and had thereby revealed the poor image of non-white race. Racism is akin to culture and religion rather than ideology in their depth and extent. The British nation is best seen as an imagined political community, at once sovereign and spatially finite-imagined. But once created, this imagined communion of the nation represents a powerful sociological reality as a community imagined to move in linear fashion through 'empty, homogeneous time. Critics and historians single out the following causes of racism in Britain. In Britain, racism can be explained as: "not just presence of physical differences between groups that creates races, but "the social recognition of such differences as socially significant or relevant" (Van the Berghe, 1967 cited Yassine, n.d.). The assumption that the root causes of these wars lay in antagonisms not only had its political and diplomatic uses therefore, but it also diverted attention from what really needed to be explained: how was it that these political elites were able to arouse people who had been living for generations in multi-ethnic, multilingual and multi-religious communities to such extremes of racism. Researchers suppose that "frustration-aggression" and "authoritarian personality" theories help to explain racism in Britain. A part of the explanation lies in the particular techniques and strategies which are deliberately employed by political leaders to turn these materials into a powerful resource for advancing nationalist claims. [They] "explain racism as a type of relief from "frustration", where a "scapegoat" may become the object of aggressive behaviour" (Yassine, n.d.). The failure, or refusal, of British public institutions to recognize the impact of political and economic change on the development of ethnic and national sentiment has made it easier for these British nation to ignore, or fail to give serious causal weight to, the role of racism in using ethnicity and religion to mobilize, polarize and radicalize larger target groups. Immigration is seen as another cause of racial ideas and prejudices existed in British society. "Immigrants from the 'New Commonwealth were not welcomed, or effectively woven into the fabric of a polyethnic, multicultural society" (Yassine, n.d.). For this reason, many British citizens do not respect other nations who come to their country looking for better life. In general, even if British society can be shown to have common values, they might be morally unacceptable. Inequality is a shared value in slave-owning, racist and caste-based societies, but historians would not wish to argue that it should therefore be cherished let alone enforced on their egalitarian minorities. Besides, the core values of any society might include respect for minority values, as they do in liberal and most other societies, and then they cannot be used as a non-negotiable moral standard. Another cause of racism in Britain is biological conceptions of race. It is a contention that the 'problem' consists to a large extent in the way in which it is put into words, or that the language in which these issues are talked about is far more than just a neutral vehicle of meanings and attitudes. The discourse on diversity is an instrument for the reproduction of social problems, forms of inequality and majority power. The rise of racism in Britain is nothing more than a response to political and cultural changes occurred in the world. "Even today many people seem to believe in a kind of linear evolution of civilizations has a limited span in time, suggesting that a more 'cyclic' view of history might be appropriate" (Yassine, n.d.). Today, racism in Britain is based upon control and development of parallel economic activities, internal to asset appropriation and the manipulation of relief aid. They enable movements to function beyond the bounds of conventional role. To a large extent the dominant groups within economies are sanction proof. The legacy of conflicting imperialisms, arbitrarily-drawn boundaries, differing political cultures, and the incompatible hopes and fears of major groups in society. The retention of an authoritarian system of government, along with a complex system of decentralized decision-making, created mounting; disagreements. "So long as the present political system endures, there is a great danger that British immigration and refugee policy will continue to be based on this unworthy principle alone" (Dummett, 2001, p. 4). Institutional racism becomes a common thing for millions of people in the UK. Broad and indeterminate though conception of racism is, it is narrower than a notion such as 'difference'. It is the state, controlled by the majority national community, which either functions to facilitate this political self-government through devolved power, or some other institutional expression of this aspiration, or serves to deny it. For instance, "the government plans to relieve the pressure on London and East Coast housing by moving asylum seekers (on a "no-choice" basis) to other parts of the country with a housing surplus" (Institutional Racism, n.d.). Since immigrants are likely to disagree about these, the appeal to these values does not take them very far. These facts depicts that present policies do not permit people great liberty to entertain whatever way of life they wish in their private lives. In Britain, the racial 'system' of beliefs and practices has to be understood as interrelated in complex, diverse and changing ways - some elements will be more central than others, some more easily modified or abandoned. Modern racism is found to operate under a 'doubled' and 'split' signifier with the received versions of the race taught by nationalists always being challenged and broken down into their component parts by alternative viewpoints of the actions and performances of members of the community. For instance, "Black and Asian immigrants and their descendants growing up in Britain are relatively segregated by region and concentrated in inner city neighbourhoods. They are also over-represented in manual occupations, as well as among the unemployed" (Yassine, n.d.). In Britain, political institutions do not explained in terms of the progressive needs and sense of self of a developing human subjectivity. As the human mind cannot be a subject for scientific causality, so political activity as the product of mind cannot be exhaustively explained in terms of causal laws. Critics suppose that the particular problem in the modern world for the reconciliation between the human subject and objective institutions is the reconciliation between the growing sense of personal freedom, independence and dignity which has been a marked feature of western culture, and a world of institutions within which that sense of individual worth can both be recognized and made compatible with a similar recognition of the worth of others (Paul, 1997). The most disturbing fact is that racism exists and flourishes in a democratic society supported by governmental bodies and public institutions of Britain. The special emotive power of the visual image is exploited to the full coverage of the cult of collective enemy of asylum seekers and immigrants living in the UK. References 1. Anthias, F., Lloyd, C. (2002). Rethinking Anti-Racisms: From Theory to Practice. Routledge. 2. Dummett, M. (2001). On Immigration and Refugees. Routledge. 3. Institutional Racism. (n.d.) Retrieved from: http://www.closecampsfield.org.uk/background/WhitePaper.html 4. Yassine, A.-Q. (n.d.). Causes of Racism in Britain. Retrieved from: http://www.immi.se/ir/ir2001/yassine.htm Bibliography 1. Anthias, F., Lloyd, C. (2002). Rethinking Anti-Racisms: From Theory to Practice. Routledge. 2. Dummett, M. (2001).On Immigration and Refugees. Routledge. 3. Institutional Racism. (n.d.) Retrieved from http://www.closecampsfield.org.uk/background/WhitePaper.html 4. Jackson, P. (1987). Race and Racism: Essays in Social Geography. Allen & Unwin. 5. Paul, K. (1997). Whitewashing Britain: Race and Citizenship in the Postwar Era. Cornell University Press, 6. Yassine, A.-Q. (n.d.). Causes of Racism in Britain. Retrieved from: http://www.immi.se/ir/ir2001/yassine.htm Read More