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CONTESTING THE CONTESTATION OF
MULTICULTURALISM
by Ronald Wanda
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Ronald a social commentator shares his ideas with you.
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The contestation of multiculturalism in Britain is not as new as “multiculturalists” would have us believe, in actual fact, it has always been around. Nonetheless, politicians in their attempt to please “middle England” (an imaginary social constituency) tend to amplify it by mistakenly concocting it (as if indistinguishable) with immigration and asylum-seeking. As for political and social observers (including right wing media houses), they tend to deny its relevance by simply diminishing it to a “conceptual” exercise. Calculatedly, they collectively seem to forget that Britain has always been a country involved in migration, although in recent centuries emigration has been far more important than immigration. Indeed a fresh report by University College London (UCL) titled “Migration Matters” revealed that in 2003 alone there were 191,000 Britons who emigrated from Britain whilst the number of those who returned from Abroad was only 106,000. The report which came out in May 2005 explicated that in spring of 2004, just before European Union (EU) enlargement there were 2.857m foreign nationals living in the UK, 4.9 percent of the total population. Forty three percent of them were European, of which 79 percent were from European Economic Area, within which citizens have the right to move freely between countries and take up work. Around quarter were Asian, 17 percent African and 10 percent were from the United States. Women were more than men (53 percent) the report said. Researchers John Salt and James Clarke who wrote the report moreover noted that: “UK has a modest size of foreign population when compared to countries such as Austria, German and Spain, but it is second to Germany in numbers of those emigrating”. According to the report, there were more people who left Britain than those who came in during the 19th and 20th centuries. Even at the present moment, the Home Office itself admits (though reluctantly) that net flow of immigrants and asylum seekers to the UK has been on a downward trend for years. So why then, as well one might wonder does the African community still incur the continuous victimisation under the pretentious label of multiculturalism.
For registered Africans dwelling in the UK (these days baselessly and pompously labelled [BBA] Black British Africans by Home Office’s statisticians) in sub-zero London, If asked, as well one might, why multiculturalism matters, and why Africans matter in particular, I think one would have to shallowly reply: were it not for them would the debate subsist today? I mean does Wanda fit in Wimbledon, Kinuthia in Kensington or how about Nagudi in North Yorkshire? On the face of it this may seem an odd ponder, but for me this ought to be the “real” contestation of multiculturalism. Unencrypted, multiculturalism means a mutual cultural respect for all communities in a given locality- this, however, has never been the case for the African community in Britain. This is because it is often supposed that the African community in Britain came here after the period following the Second World War. This is not true. There is indeed strong evidence that suggests that before the European colonial encounter in the 15th century, there was an African presence in Britain as far back as the 9th century, some historians have even traced black presence here much earlier than that.
One obscurity about the multicultural bandwagon is that it consciously fails to acknowledge this historical fact and subsequently denies Africa’s and Africans input in British society.
Globalization (the interconnectedness of the world; the flow of ideas, criminal activities, goods, images, weapons and a world wide flow of capitals and so forth) now being a poignant reality means that almost every cultural community exists in the midst of others
and is resultantly inescapably influenced by them. As such, in 2006 it is almost impossible to think of a culture except perhaps for the most primitive and isolated that is not influenced by others. Perceptively, I concur with the Labour peer Professor Bhikhu Parekh in his respected testimony The Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain (commissioned by the government) when he termed United Kingdom a “community of communities”. The disposition, however, is made stickier because cultural as well as the political and security establishments are culturally drunk with imperialism in still naively subscribing to the mythical notion that Britain is still a homogeneous society (if at all it ever was).
In this connection, it is just to pronounce cultural imperialism, deep rooted in British political and cultural veins, as one of the obstacles that is hindering equal cultural respect by suffocating recognition of Africa and Africans countless contributions to British society. As far as the African community is concerned, the UK government (regardless of its political ideological manifestation or disguise) as well as politicians, neo-fascist political organisations, the mass media, employers, institutions representing the labour movement and sections of the British working class have all acted upon and articulated racist beliefs, and by doing so they have identified africans and collectively the (BME) Black Minority Ethnic groups as an excluded lot and as such crucified them enduringly on the periphery of society.
Nowadays the registered African specie armed with his British citizenship (virtue of birth or naturalisation) find himself with legal rights and responsibilities to the state, yet he remains culturally an alien to society and the country regardless of his nationality status.
For most young Africans born or brought up in the diaspora (or to solicit the trendy Home Office lingo: black British Africans) the notion of culture has to a degree been problematic, because they find themselves caught up between two cultures- the static and unyielding parental culture (whereas when we were growing up, receiving the occasional smack for displaying anti-African behaviours was perfectly customary) and the dubious freedoms of Britishness (where almost everything is seen through legal lens. For instance, at school and the outside world what we at home understood for generations as our parents rights to discipline us was rearticulated to us as either child abuse or domestic violence.No other categorization was given) - leading to cultural conflict and not (as many would rather we say) an identity crisis. We have, however, been caught up in a double blind-damned for having not enough culture or for having too much. On the contrary, when visiting my ancestral homes in East Africa, as often I do, natives are often astonished by my cultural simplicity, especially given that I am inexorably subjected to hybridism – proudly embedding chunky parts of africaness as well as inevitable elements of britishness.
Paradoxically, it is almost impossible to tell apart the local youth culture from that of London, New York, Paris or Berlin. In the past few years, whilst on visits to several African countries this has always been the reality. Instead of burgeoning culturally through an African vein such as Nairobisation, Durbanisation, Kampalisation, Sowetisation or Dar-Saalamisation the local urban youth culture has at best hurriedly adopted aggressive unmistaken junky American popular culture and at worst seem to have accepted the false hypothesis of westernisation as modernisation by localising the imposition.
To be continued in the next issue.
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