David Cameron, the UK prime minister, is a racist. I do not use the term lightly because it’s a big deal calling someone a bigot, saying that they are irrational and vicious. ‘Racist’ is one of those terms that you can throw around on the spur of the moment because it says very bad things about the person at whom it is directed but without much regard to what it actually means, like calling someone a pig or a moron. No, I am using the word with its proper meaning.
The UK PM stood up yesterday and announced that that immigrants ought to learn English if they come to this country to live, that not learning English caused a “kind of discomfort and disjointedness” that has disrupted communities across Britain. (Full text here)
Let me tell you some stories about racism to illustrate objectively my point about Cameron.
I was in the front garden of my home — the home I have bought and paid for myself in Japan after years of working in the country — when a kid cycled up to me in my driveway and demanded to know (in Japanese, naturally) what I was doing. I overlooked the attitude and the tone of the question on the grounds that this was a kid. However, I realized that I couldn’t give the kid a straight answer because I couldn’t recall the Japanese words for either grass seed or plant. I know I once encountered them in a language class, but that was years before and I had not had a reason to use either of them in the real world since. Knowing that it tickles some people to hear English, and since the neighborhood mums were often bugging me to use English on their kids, I answered in English. “I’m planting grass seeds.” The child responded in Japanese, “If they come here to live, they should learn to speak the language,” and immediately cycled off.
The kid was too young to have formulated this opinion himself. He must have got it from his parents or other adults. So, I thought, that’s how my neighbours see me: the immigrant who should learn ‘the language’.
Never mind that I have spent 20 years working, paying taxes, paying into a national pension scheme I shall probably never claim on and teaching language skills to Japanese people so that the country can compete in the international market place. I am the immigrant who must learn the language.
Next. I was on the commuter train home when a stranger who turned out to be Australian spotted me and decided to engage a fellow English speaker in conversation. While we were chatting, a Japanese gentleman adjacent to us said, in Japanese, naturally, “If you come here you should speak Japanese.” I wondered whether to say anything to the Japanese guy but decided that his mental problem was not my problem and ignored him.
One more. I was in an English-pub-themed bar in Osaka one evening chatting, in English, naturally, to my Canadian pal Nagaijin, when the Japanese people at an adjacent table started objecting to us, in Japanese, naturally, that we were speaking English in their vicinity. That was it. We were speaking English in their vicinity. The bar was themed on an English pub, the music was British with English lyrics, they were apparently drinking Bass and Guinness, but they didn’t like it that we were speaking English within earshot. We moved away without arguing on the grounds that their mental problem was not ours, etc. I later found out that these same two people had accosted our Japanese companions of the evening to complain that Nagaijin and I had had the affront to have spoken our native language, etc. etc. Yes, they bothered our pals about it too.
If I were to catalogue all the incidences of racism I have experienced in twenty years in Japan we’d be here for a week or two. I have chosen the above three because they relate directly to language as did Mr. Cameron’s speech.
I wonder if anyone finds the actions of the Japanese individuals in my stories to be on any level rational or reasonable. Really, I am to this day dumfounded by these people and if I am missing anything, please let me know. A
David Cameron in his speech was exhibiting the same kind of mentality as the complaining people in the stories I have related.
I would like to ask Mr. Cameron and anyone who agrees with him some simple questions. The government has imposed various tests on people wanting to live in the UK, so please consider this a test of clear thinking.
- Who precisely is not learning English? I personally have not met these people.
- How has someone speaking another language in your country degraded your quality of life? Give concrete examples.
- How has someone not speaking English in your country inconvenienced you in any way? Give concrete examples.
- What exactly do you mean ‘learn English’? What level of ability accords to speaking English? Elementary? Pre-intermediate? Intermediate? Advanced? As fluent as a native speaker? Just enough to do the practical things or good enough to discuss particle physics with a boffin?
- Mr. Cameron, have you thought this through?
- What about inarticulate or illiterate British people? I have met such people. Will there be remedial education classes or will they simply be deported?
You see, picking on language is on a par with complaining about ‘smelly cooking’ and ‘different ways’, the talk of twisted and bitter bigots in the pub over their Bass or Guinness.
Cameron tells us that people not speaking English creates a disjointed society. Again, I have to ask what exactly that means? How has the issue of language damaged the fabric of society? Give concrete examples, please.
The real disjointing comes from people seeing difference and seeing problems of race or culture where none actually exist. The disjointing comes from bigotry and arbitrary differences of ‘us and them’. The disjointing comes from people who get on the street and parade their prejudice in marches against Islam. The real disjointing comes from people who through word and deed marginalise communities.
It’s not just words, either. These words are allied to real policies that affect real people. See this Guardian article about how the policies of this government are having an impact on business (their beloved free enterprise): UK tells foreign students: ‘Speak English or stay out’
My friend C is British. He has been living in Japan married to a Japanese lady, with whom he has a son, for nearly twenty years. The family has decided to relocate to the UK. Once in the UK, she will, I believe, have to pass a language test and a citizenship test. In the meantime, the bureaucracy of obtaining permission to live in that land has literally reduced her to tears. C is a British citizen. He and his wife are a real couple in all the senses of the term. The obstacles to settling in the UK with a foreign wife are an affront to humanity. As a British citizen, C should be allowed to marry whomever he wishes and that partner should be given automatic clearance to settle there with the family. If I were to relocate to the UK, my family would have to go through the same humiliating rigmarole. After more than 20 years of marriage, how is that justified? Oh, and the citizenship test: I tried it. I failed. Take away my UK passport. You try it. Every UK citizen I know who has tried it has failed. Try it here.
The issues of immigration and racism are joined at the waist. The rhetoric of the politicians, the outrage of the press, the policies enacted by the government, the complaints of ‘uncomfortable’ citizens all stem from the same root: the irrational and tiny-minded belief that there is a problem with any ethnicity, language and culture other than your own.
If you want to discuss disjointing in society, how about discussing the disparity in wealth? Poverty amid plenty? How about discussing public bailouts of private banks, bloated bonuses for failed captains of industry and the destruction of public services to pay for them? Those are things that really strike at the heart of the national community.
Cameron is a low racist and so is every individual who nodded in grave agreement with his poisonous speech yesterday. And more shame on Nick Clegg and the Lib Dems for aligning themselves with this bigotry.
Immigration? Don’t get me started.
Culture matters, and each one around the world has varying degrees of conformity and individual heterogeneity. The pendulum can swing too far in either direction: too much conformity and there is insufficient freedom, too little conformity and there is a balkanization that ultimately leads to sectarian violence and civil war.
When it comes to language, a culture must lean heavily towards homogeneity. A common language is essential for the avoidance of balkanization. I do not blame the Japanese at all for wishing that you would speak Japanese in their own country. And if I lived in Japan for 20 years, I would be ashamed if I were not speaking Japanese fluently and for the majority of the time by then. What’s the point of living there?
Immigration leads to sectarian violence and civil war? Well, Enoch Powell thought so, but it hasn’t happened. That’s more paranoia of the right. (We see this sort of thing in homogenised Japan from Tokyo governor Ishihara, for example.)
And as I implied in the post, when violence does occur, it is a result of the irrational hates of the right. Ethnic cleansing is the most extreme example. Are you suggesting that if people in the UK don’t all learn English, the British should drive them out at gun point?
You did not address my question about who it is that isn’t speaking English and how this might be a practical problem.
When it comes to language, a culture must lean heavily towards homogeneity? There is no imperative; it does so naturally. Raising language as an issue that must be addressed is creating an artificial problem, and as such springs either from misinformation or prejudice.
Has anyone in Britain been prevented from speaking English by someone who speaks another language. I don’t think so. The idea is absurd.
As for not speaking Japanese in Japan? I did not suggest I didn’t. I do when speaking to Japanese people (grass seeds and planting aside). The examples I gave were of times people objected me speaking my native language to other native speakers within earshot. If that is a genuine problem, you have yet to demonstrate it.
Learning the language of your host culture is a matter of common sense. Not learning it is a failure of the same. Governmental demands or individual demands are just racist.
I never said that immigration leads to violence and civil war (the word “immigration” does not appear in my comment, why would you discuss the issue in such a manner?).
Immigration can be the lifeblood of a country, but there has to be ruthless assimilation of immigrants. Also, it is incumbent on the immigrant to be absorbed by his chosen new culture. This is so because he presumably entered his new country with a belief that life was better there than from whence he came. If the immigrant merely seeks to recreate the culture he left, then he will degrade his new country, and this logic is axiomatic (the new country is better, which is why he moved here; if he wants his new country to resemble his old one, the new one will come to be like the lessor one and he should never have left).
This is why in the USA the immigrant must swear a citizenship oath in which he renounces allegiance to his former nation. Renounce is a strong word, and it is intentional.
Balkanization of society does lead to sectarian violence and civil war, and if you doubt this go and read a newspaper.
As for violence being exclusively generated by “the right”, well, I have to assume you are being intentionally silly. The violence of which I speak is not a matter of “right” or “left”, it is a matter of tribalism. The antidote to tribalism is assimilation and unity on language and culture.
As for who the non-English speakers are, in the USA there are 15 million spanish speakers who have no apparent interest in learning and speaking English or assimilating into the American culture. And they are not immigrants. They are illegal immigrants. Their non-assimilation is antithetical to the proven melting pot of the American culture, which has successfully assimilated many legal immigrant communities who embraced their new country instead of attempting to transform it from within by holding on to the cultures they left behind.
You say it is racist to object to a large immigrant group that seeks to transform its host nation into something else. Really? Is it racist to defend one’s borders from invasion? And if a 15-million man force got past the border and was trying to transform the American culture from within and turn it into something resembling Mexico, a failed, lawless narco-state in which average people live in constant fear and without a credible government: would it be racist to resist this? Or should we submit.
Finally, in 2010 approximately 700,000 Mexicans became naturalized citizens of the United States through legal means (i.e., through the front door, not the back door). We welcome them with open arms, and expect them to assimilate into the culture just as all previous immigrant groups have done. There can be no other way, and it is just and good and fair.
Great post! I enjoyed the read.
I actually laughed out loud at SASOC’s comment about welcoming Mexicans with open arms who “assimilate”. I think plenty of Americans are plenty welcoming to the thousands of illegal immigrants who comprise literally the backbone of their economy, and I don’t think any Americans give a shit if those immigrants speak english or not. ha! Please!
I have a few other things to add, too.
As a Canadian born to parents who were not born in the country, I’ve always found the immigration debate deeply steeped in racism.
When my father immigrated to Canada nearing the end of the second world war, he and many others (this goes for Britain and the US, too) were forced to renounce their previous citizenship and fully accept citizenship X. This policy was heavily based on fear and racism (no wonder, we’re talking post war years). ARound the same time, the word “immigration” showed up in the english dictionary in addition to the one everyone had been using before it, migration. Immigration implies modern states and boundaries, “us” vs. “them” where migration implied people.
In the 70s, this whole idea became really unpopular, and Britain, like Canada, developed an immigration reform that stressed assimilation far less. (Lots of lefty governments in there at that time, too). Canada’s immigration policy welcomed immigrants to move to Canada and become part of the “cultural mosaic,” a model in contrast to the US’s “melting pot.” New Canadians are encouraged to maintain their own cultural practices, etc, while adhering to Canadian laws. This model is not without its problems, but the problems that do exist are not a result of immigrants not learning english or anything like that. The whole language debate is just another extension of racism, fear of the other, and this new “yellow peril”.
And now the pendulum has found its way back to the position it found itself in during those post-war years. No wonder. Racism, patriotism, it’s all back. I actually think people are becoming more racist. I think it’s because again, of fear. (War on Terror, blah blah). OUr own newly elected conservative government, which struggled as a minority for over four years, campaigned on the very premise of fear. Crime rates, and violent crime too, is decreasing in Canada and the United States. And yet, the cons won by insisting that, lying rather, about crime rates on the rise, the need for larger prisons and “human trafficking.” Read: fear. It was truly shameful and embarrassing.
As a Canadian citizen who has lived abroad, works in the public education system, and who grew up in one of the largest multicultural cities in the world (Toronto), the whole idea of “invasion” from other cultures is preposterous, and wreaks of the Boomer mentality.
Scholars in immigration studies are projecting a future (a not too distant one, either) of massive urban centres. Toronto will be the next Sao Paolo, etc. It’s not hard to believe. These antiquated state lines will slowly begin to disappear as cities take on greater significance. There are over 44 languages spoken in the Greater Toronto Area alone. The city works pretty well despite all those crazy non-assimilating people who eat strange foods and speak weird-sounding languages.
I suggest that SASOC start learning Spanish. It will probably come in handy sooner than he thinks!
Well, I completely agree with Lara. Thank you for that. I am planning a further post (or several) on this subject and will be back with you anon.
For the record, I have revisited my authority on the etymology of migration vs. immigration and it’s not reliable. I still think immigration implies political boundary lines, though. I call on etymologists (or more savvy Googlers) for enlightenment!
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