Melting pot or mosaic?

Growing up in Canada I was taught that the country was a melting pot where people of various cultures immigrated and blended in. Certainly on my street and in my school that was the case and I had friends of many different backgrounds. We played together, studied together, visited each others' homes.

Looking around today I see a different picture: cities have distinct neighbourhoods of different cultures. Diversity is encouraged and supported. I can't take issue with that, but I think the way I experienced it in the sixties was more positive.

Comments?

Re: Melting pot or mosaic?

We didnt have any foreigners! sorry cant think of another word and I suppose we were looked on as being the foreigners when we lived in Manchester as the head of the house was Irish. It didnt effect me as I was a child but you saw the notices NO Irish displayed.I came across different people when I got married in 1955 and went to live in London, my husband was in the Metropolitan Police stationed at Battersea.I think then it was a Mosaic, but now it seems to be a ghetto, and that makes it more frightening, for me anyway.

Re: Melting pot or mosaic?

Birds of a feather flock together goes the old saying, it's the most natural of instincts and it's just as true with people; in general they like to be with their own kind, whether it be ex pats in Spain or Pakistanis in Birmingham, there will always be enclaves separated by race and ethnicity, politicians will never understand that..

Re: Melting pot or mosaic?

Here where we live we are a very mixed community, British, Swedish, Norwegian, German, Dutch, Irish, Scottish, Welsh, Icelandic, a couple of Indian families, Spanish, Danish,Chinese and a few other nationalities. Everyone seems to muddle along, language can be a problem at times but one way or another everyone seems to cope.

However there is a small town not too far from here where at least half the people living there are Moroccan, Algerian etc. Many arabic shops and cafes and even the local Spanish people are moving out. They seem to have more than their fair share of robberies, muggings, stabbings and murders there and many police raids for illegal immigrants.

Politically incorrect or not the fact remains that many of these arabic people do not want to integrate and have no intentions of doing so. Perhaps it's an "area" thing, I don't know, but there are other towns with large muslim populations and they seem to get along very well with everyone, even participating in the processions, which I admit amazed us, but I think it's all to the good.

Re: Melting pot or mosaic?

As a child in Infant School, there was a lovely little boy whom everybody called Cocoa. Disrespectful today, because his parents were of mixed race which in itself was extremely rare in the 50s. He wasn't treated badly, in fact, quite the opposite as he was popular, but I think it was back then that bigotry reared its ugly head.

I remember a day when a man came through our shop into the living area and he was wearing a turban, selling table-cloths and such like. He was Indian and, as a 6 year old, I was playing on the floor when he appeared. I screamed for mummy and my mum came out very agitated and told him to get out. The poor bloke was only trying to make a living, and my mum ended up buying the most beautiful embroided table cloth from him which had gold fringing and other lovely colours. He meant no harm.

Things are so different these days though.

Re: Melting pot or mosaic?

I'm a foreigner. Born in the UK, but a foreigner nonetheless and worse than that a Nazi.

Well I'm not, nor was I but since my dad had been in the Luftwaffe as a kid going to school in 1950 life was seldom boring.

But my old man didn't just stay in GB for what was going, he stayed in GB because he wanted to be a part of GB and also be a part of rebuilding what had been destroyed.

And the desire to be a part of a country that immigrants went to was a vital part of immigration held true until things changed when immigrants started to come not for what they could contribute and become a part of but instead for what they could get while avoiding integration at all costs. One particular group are absolutely prohibited from integrating but to go further is to enter dangerous ground.

Multiculturalism has been the greatest failed – and unasked for – social experiment of all time.

For one thing the whole idea of a multicultural society is hogwash. A multi-ethnic society, that's great, it means that strengths that people of differing ethnicity all working towards a common monoculture with shared values and ambitions add to the strength of a nation.

Such has been the case for many years in the US and Canada to name but two - at least until the last few years when a group who will not and must not integrate came on the scene.

Today I fear for GB and for the Northern European countries where their culture of tolerance, equality, shared values have all lulled the people of those countries into the belief that everybody is of the same mind set. Sadly such is far from being true.

I've heard the argument that GB has always been “multicultural” and the supporting argument that invasions driven by sword or economy has seen the creation of a nation of people with all sorts of background but what is missed in this argument is the common factor that bound all the previous immigrations, religion. Now we face immigration that does not share the same dictates and values that all previous waves of immigrants did.

Goodness only knows what the outcome will be but won't be peaceful coexistence based on equality, it never has been, and where two “cultures” clash the inevitable outcome is a punch-up and the stronger soon dominates the weaker.

Oh boy did Fukuyama get it wrong when he predicted the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the USSR as being the “End of History” in his 1992 book.

Nurse! STOP THAT! The doctor asked you to remove my spectacles!

Re: Melting pot or mosaic?

Spectacles indeed