Britain as a Land of Diversity - Coursework Example

Britain is a land of diversity; followers of different religions live here. After the World War, there was a sharp increase in the number of immigrants who brought with them their culture. Though Britain accepted this diversity but this acceptance by the Government and the populace was only cosmetic, deep down the picture was quite ugly. Multiculturalism and integration which was once considered the heart of the British society has now become a big question. Britain is one of the powerful countries of the world which has voiced its concern over the violation of human rights anywhere in the world. But how successful has this champion of human rights been in exercising tolerance and acceptance of ethnic minorities in its own yard? If one is to look up the newspapers and magazines of the past ten years one would find that racism and violence against ethnic minorities especially the blacks and the Muslims is rampant in the modern British society. The general public and politicians have a negative image of the ethnic minorities and the media only fuels these negative feelings with half baked and provocative reporting. The minorities had never been absorbed in the British society (Cushner 1998). According to a survey, an overwhelming majority (90%) of white people in Britain nurture a prejudice against the minority ethnic groups (Cushner 1998). Minorities and the Police As stated by Heitmeyer & Hagan (Eds.) (2003) a crucial factor which must be taken into account is the way police handles the incidents of racial violence and the relationship between police and other minorities. Often the police has been accused of the following i) failure to provide protection to minority ii) failure to prevent racist offences iii) refusal to accept racial dimensions or motivation of violence iv) non-serious attitude towards racial harassment and attacks v) unwillingness to investigate such cases, vi) treating victims as aggressors vii) biased attitude towards ethnic communities. In short the department has been accused of racial policing (Heitmeyer & Hagan (Eds.) 2003). The best example of discriminatory policing practices is the case of Stephen Lawrence. Stephen Lawrence, an eighteen year old “black” A- level student and his friend were waiting for their bus at Eltham in South-East London when they were attacked by a gang of five or six white youth (Laming 2004). Lawrence received fatal wounds while his friend managed to escape. How the police handled this case is another sad story but the behavior of the public can also be termed racist. Stephen’s friend tried to stop cars to get help for his friend but nobody stopped. A white couple coming out of a nearby church saw the two boys running and thought that they wanted to rob them. It never occurred to anyone that the two black teenagers could be in trouble (Laming 2004). Further elaborating on the event Laming added that Stephen was entitled to the same care and attention by the police that any white British would have been under those circumstances but the attitude of the police was insensitive and unsympathetic. Instead of giving first aid to Stephen Lawrence the police preferred to wait for the ambulance. The police officers also treated the traumatized friend of Stephen as a suspect rather than a victim. The police did not take any proper action to pursue the attackers and treated the parents and the prime witness (Stephen Lawrence’s friend) with hostility. The investigating officers wasted a lot of time and so valuable evidence was lost causing failure of the police in apprehending the attackers. The McPherson Inquiry which was conducted on the insistence of Lawrence’s parents admitted that the investigation was marred by professional incompetence and institutional racism as well as lack of direction from seniors (Webster 2008). Attack on Mosques Media and the governments play a large role in fuelling antagonism against Muslims. Quoting Gabriele Marranci, Hill (2011, p. 373) states that the West interprets mosques as “lion’s den in which bearded fanatic throat cutters are meeting to organize the next plot against the Western Civilization”. Ever since the attacks on the Twin Towers and the London bombings in July 2007, there has been an increase in the number of attacks on the mosques. There have been many cases of arson and graffiti on the walls of mosques and on cemeteries. Every window of the Mazahirul Uloom mosque on the Mile End Road in East London was shattered by attackers who used crowbars and hammers. The opposition against building of new mosques especially large structures is increasing every day especially in the U.K and France (Hill 2011). Even in Switzerland where the Muslim minority is well blended in the society and where there are hardly any incidents of violence by the Muslims, minarets; an integral part of the mosques have been banned (Hill 2011). Attacks on Women Wearing Hijab Hijab as headscarves are popularly known as the identity of the Muslim women. It is mandatory for women to cover their heads when they step out of their houses. Before the tragic incidents of 9/11 and 7/7, the people in the West exercised tolerance about hijab but the level of tolerance has fallen considerably after the two tragic incidents. Quoting Fauzia Ahmed, Shirazi (2010) writes about the post 7/7 scenario. She particularly mentions that women wearing hijab or niqab are the worst sufferers for crimes committed by a handful of insane fanatics. These women were subjected to slandering and criticism from the media, the general public on the streets and also from politicians. There were incidents where women were verbally abused or spat on and were forced to get off the public transport. There were ugly incidents of physical violence as well as their hijabs being pulled off (Shirazi 2010). A similar treatment was meted out against the American Muslim women who covered their heads. After the Twin Tower incident women wearing hijab had to face a lot of hostility and violence from the Americans. The West sees hijab and niqab not as a normal dress code of a certain community but something which represents extremism. Even before the unfortunate 7/7 incident, hijab had become a bee in the bonnet for many European countries while in the USA, people showed general tolerance towards hijab before the 9/11 tragedy. Europe has always thought of hijab as a sign of oppression where as in actual it is a sign of modesty and chastity. The Western countries look at hijab as a threat to democracy. In France, girls in high schools were banned from wearing hijab (Banakar 2010). Jack Straw; the then Secretary of Foreign Affairs declared that headscarves would never be banned in the UK; he stated “I would like to say that we will never ban any hijabs in school. We must learn to celebrate the fact that we have state funded religious schools” (Banakar 2010, p.132,). However Jack Straw contradicted himself when he asked the Muslim women in his political constituency of Blackburn to unveil them when they visited him. In his opinion such dress forms were a “statement of separation and differences” and the women in veils made it harder to bridge the gap between different communities (Banakar 2010). Many Western politicians have shown a bias against hijab and consider it a threat; Jacques Chirac of France in his speech in Tunisia 2003 called wearing of the hijab an aggression (Banakar 2010). Harriet Harman who was a cabinet minister in 2006 termed hijab as a symbol of women’s subordination and a hindrance to women’s participation in the society on equal terms. In Banakar’s opinion, the items of clothing like the hijab or niqab (veil) are not under attack it is the social and cultural groups who wear these items of clothing that have become the victims of hostility by the governments and people in the West. Banakar (2010) considers it an indirect form of racism which after the unfortunate incidents has repackaged, reconfigured and made legal under the pretext of fighting terrorism. The West no more sees hijab as a symbol of suppression it now represents defiance and power and is emerging as a threatening force. The West wants to control women by unveiling them. Attacks on women wearing the hijab are a bid to discourage them from covering their heads. The British government wants to unveil women as in its own words it (the government) believes in equality. However, deeper analysis showed that equality has nothing to do with unveiling; the bureaucracy wants to destroy identity, faith, culture and ethnicity of the individuals or the groups. Bauman’s Theory of Modernity and the British Society The behavior of the white populace of Britain can best be explained by the “Bauman’s Postmodern Theory”. Zygmunt Bauman was a Polish immigrant and an exceptional sociologist who deeply influenced and thus shaped the “British sociology and social theory” in the latter half of the 20th century (Outhwaite 2010). In his prize winning book ‘Modernity and the Holocaust’ Bauman blamed modernity for the mass scale killings. According to Bauman, modernity provided conditions which among other things gave the idea that societies can be molded to fit the vision of a perfect society (Blackshaw 2008). To drive his point home, Bauman gave the example of gardening and surgery; just as both processes get rid of the unwanted parts modernity provides grounds to suppress the less powerful people who did not fit into the vision of the perfect society (Blackshaw 2008). Bauman studied the holocaust and the factors leading to it in detail. The Holocaust Encyclopedia defines “Holocaust as the systematic, bureaucratic, state sponsored persecution and murder of approximately six million Jews by the Nazi regime”. Holocaust was an attempt by the Germans to establish their supremacy over the Jews. In his book Modernity and the Holocaust Zygmunt Bauman (1989) has analyzed the mass extermination of the Jews. Although many thinkers termed Holocaust as a reversion to barbarism, Bauman explained Holocaust as the result of exactly those features of society that make it civilized. According to Bauman ‘the modern civilization’ turned out to be the necessary condition for the holocaust. Bauman accused the Nazi bureaucrats of planning and organizing the holocaust. Alvarez (2001) thinks that it is not only the holocaust, the bureaucracies and the genocide organizations played a big role in planning and conducting the mass murder of population. Racist stereotyping is very much a part and parcel of the British society. In their vision of a perfect society, every black is a suspect even if he/she is a victim, every woman wearing a hijab belongs to a clan of terrorists and every mosque is a meeting place for the fanatics where terrorist attacks are planned and thus it is necessary to get rid of these factors. They fail to understand that a whole community is not responsible for the dastardly acts of a handful of people. Besides being racist the British society is also biased as it turns its back on the atrocities committed by its own people; the inability of the police to arrest the white killers of the black Stephen Lawrence speaks highly of the double standards of the British society. Although everyone is aware that not all the members of ethnic minorities are evil and should be blamed for the hateful crime of few fellow members, people usually watch silently when the ethnic minorities are punished for no crime of their own or because of a mere speculation that one of them could be involved. Bauman (1989) calls this social distancing. To Bauman (1989) social distance leads to separation as he stated “it is this separation which made it possible for thousands to kill, and for millions to watch the murder without protesting. It was the technological and bureaucratic achievement of modern rational society which made such a separation possible” (Bauman 1989, p. 11). According to Mason (2005), Bauman rejected the possibility of universal ethics. Mason (2005) says that there are principles and ideals that are transcultural and those that are universal. By denying basic human rights and taking no steps to discourage racism, the bureaucracy wants to destroy identity, faith, culture and ethnicity of the minorities. In Mason’s opinion it is wrong to reject those principles which are specific to other cultures. Conclusion Britain has always been a haven for immigrants and a substantial number of its population comprises of ethnic minorities. Prejudice and racism had existed before and still exists today but the minorities were never as vocal about racism as they are now. The minorities are very much as British as the natives but still there is marked discrimination against the blacks and recently the nation is struck by Islamophobia because of the mosques are attacked and so are women wearing hijab. If analyzed in the light of Bauman’s theory of postmodernity one finds that the hatred and the crimes against minorities are because they are different. Often these differences are viewed as unacceptable by the people who then try to eliminate them in order to have a perfect society; a society which is dictated by them. References Alvarez, A 2001, Governments, citizens, and genocide: a comparative and interdisciplinary approach, USA: Indiana University Press. Banakar, R 2010, Rights in Context: Law and Justice in Late Modern Society, England and USA: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd. Bauman, Z 1989, Modernity and the Holocaust, UK and USA: Policy Press. Blackshaw, T 2008, Zygmunt Bauman, in Stones, R (Ed), Key Sociological Thinkers, ed 2, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Cushner, K 1998, International Perspectives on Intercultural Education, USA: Routledge. Heitmeyer, W & Hagan, J (Eds.) 2003, International Handbook of Violence Research, Volume 2, USA: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Hill, A 2011, The City, the Psyche, and the visibility of the Religious Places, in Bridge, G & Watson, S (Eds.), The New Blackwell Companion to the City, UK: John Wiley & Sons Holocaust Encyclopedia 2011, introduction to the Holocaust, viewed 27 November, 2011, http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005143 Laming, D 2004, Human Judgment: The Eye of the Beholder, USA: Cengage Learning EMEA Mason, M 2005, A Justification, After the Postmodern Turn, of Universal Ethical Principles and Educational Ideas, Educational Philosophy and Theory, 37 (6), pp. 799-815. Outhwaite, W 2010, Bauman’s Europe; Europe’s Bauman, in Davis, M & Tester, K, Bauman’s Challenge: Sociological issues for the 21st Century, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Shirazi, F 2010, Muslim Women in War and Crisis: Representation and Reality, Austin, USA: University of Texas Press. Webster, C 2008, England and Wales, in Winterdyk, J & Antonopoulos, G (Eds.), Racist Victimization: International Reflections and Perspectives, England and USA: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd Read More