![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
It's International Blog Against Racism Week, apparently. See this post for more information.
I should state here that I'm white, middle-class, British - well, Yorkshire at any rate - and female. Racism, in all its guises, is an abomination. But what would I know about it?
Well, I grew up in an area of Huddersfield that was home to quite a few Poles, a Serb family, a Greek family, an Egyptian family for a little while, some white families, primarily working class but some middle-class, some black families mostly of West Indian origin, some Sikh families, some Indian families, and increasingly (and now overwhelmingly from my last visit back there) Muslims from several small areas of rural Pakistan. And probably others besides, but those are who I grew up with, went to school with, shopped with and generally saw in my everyday life.
I don't remember there being any racism in my schools, though I'm certain there must have been. My schools were around 48% white, 48% asian and 4% other, and seemed very well integrated. We learned about each other's religions, cultures, practises, from the very start. I recall the cliques which formed, and while they were initially divided by gender, they were never divided by race.
My mum used to work on Huddersfield's mobile libraries, and one stop was on the end of our street. I helped out on an evening. The most popular kids books were by Enid Blyton, especially with the little Muslim girls. Ironic, given that for years she was banned from schools for being racist.
On the down-side, I've been spat at by little Muslim boys whose mothers spoke no English. Because I'm female and white and don't defer to them as is only right and proper. And the same little boys, followed by those same mothers, threw stones at my dog, because dogs are unclean.
Then I left Huddersfield and went to York Uni. Wow, it's white! That's what startled me the most. I still live in York (it gets sunshine instead of permanent cloud cover, and it's not as crowded, and I don't have to walk up steep hills) and the Asian population is slowly increasing. I saw an elderly Sikh couple walking down the road not far from where I live, and I couldn't stop smiling because I've missed the diversity. The Chinese population is getting bigger too, which is great. I'm just hoping that some time soon someone will open up an Asian corner shop, or a Chinese mini-market. There are cooking ingredients which I can't get unless I go back to visit my parents. I even miss the library not having an Urdu section.
To me, diversity is welcome. I love learning about other cultures. I love the way those cultures are expressed in my own culture, how elements filter through to become mainstream.
My dad, on the other hand, wants the UK to return to the 1950s. Huddersfield has an awful lot of asylum seekers, now, and there's a lot more resentment than there ever was while I lived there. Because a lot of Huddersfield is very poor, white and asian alike, and it's crowded, and resources are hugely overstretched. And now these asylum seekers are coming in large numbers from Africa, from Albania, being allocated housing, not being allowed to work, becoming involved in crime - there's a lot of tension. Goodness knows where that's going. But Huddersfield has absorbed immigrants for a very long time now without serious problems. I just hope that they can absorb this too, and the latest immigrants can add to the fantastic tapestry rather than it all ripping apart, like Bradford, like Bolton.
I should state here that I'm white, middle-class, British - well, Yorkshire at any rate - and female. Racism, in all its guises, is an abomination. But what would I know about it?
Well, I grew up in an area of Huddersfield that was home to quite a few Poles, a Serb family, a Greek family, an Egyptian family for a little while, some white families, primarily working class but some middle-class, some black families mostly of West Indian origin, some Sikh families, some Indian families, and increasingly (and now overwhelmingly from my last visit back there) Muslims from several small areas of rural Pakistan. And probably others besides, but those are who I grew up with, went to school with, shopped with and generally saw in my everyday life.
I don't remember there being any racism in my schools, though I'm certain there must have been. My schools were around 48% white, 48% asian and 4% other, and seemed very well integrated. We learned about each other's religions, cultures, practises, from the very start. I recall the cliques which formed, and while they were initially divided by gender, they were never divided by race.
My mum used to work on Huddersfield's mobile libraries, and one stop was on the end of our street. I helped out on an evening. The most popular kids books were by Enid Blyton, especially with the little Muslim girls. Ironic, given that for years she was banned from schools for being racist.
On the down-side, I've been spat at by little Muslim boys whose mothers spoke no English. Because I'm female and white and don't defer to them as is only right and proper. And the same little boys, followed by those same mothers, threw stones at my dog, because dogs are unclean.
Then I left Huddersfield and went to York Uni. Wow, it's white! That's what startled me the most. I still live in York (it gets sunshine instead of permanent cloud cover, and it's not as crowded, and I don't have to walk up steep hills) and the Asian population is slowly increasing. I saw an elderly Sikh couple walking down the road not far from where I live, and I couldn't stop smiling because I've missed the diversity. The Chinese population is getting bigger too, which is great. I'm just hoping that some time soon someone will open up an Asian corner shop, or a Chinese mini-market. There are cooking ingredients which I can't get unless I go back to visit my parents. I even miss the library not having an Urdu section.
To me, diversity is welcome. I love learning about other cultures. I love the way those cultures are expressed in my own culture, how elements filter through to become mainstream.
My dad, on the other hand, wants the UK to return to the 1950s. Huddersfield has an awful lot of asylum seekers, now, and there's a lot more resentment than there ever was while I lived there. Because a lot of Huddersfield is very poor, white and asian alike, and it's crowded, and resources are hugely overstretched. And now these asylum seekers are coming in large numbers from Africa, from Albania, being allocated housing, not being allowed to work, becoming involved in crime - there's a lot of tension. Goodness knows where that's going. But Huddersfield has absorbed immigrants for a very long time now without serious problems. I just hope that they can absorb this too, and the latest immigrants can add to the fantastic tapestry rather than it all ripping apart, like Bradford, like Bolton.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-07-18 02:41 pm (UTC)From:Well, actually, there were only ever one or two libraries which refused to stock them. They were never banned. The books you read were most likely heavily re-written to remove the worse offences. They have been subjected to successive rewriting over the years. I had some of the pre-rewrite editions as a boy and even at the age of ten I could see they were a bit suspect.
no subject
Date: 2006-07-18 02:45 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2006-07-18 02:51 pm (UTC)From:I have a whole stack-load of pre-rewrite Enid Blytons at home. I never noticed anything dodgy about them, but then I haven't re-read them in probably going on for 20 years. Gosh, I feel old. My favourites were the Famous Five (there was one dodgy one where some friend of the professor's was pinching Anne's bum, btw) and the Secret Island.
no subject
Date: 2006-07-18 03:04 pm (UTC)From:There were some places that did not stock them -- there was a wave of feeling against them for the limited vocab she used and a later wave of feeling against them for the racism and sexism. This is not the same as a "ban" though - that idea was wholly come up with by the tabloids (who even claimed that they were banned throughout New Zealand - bizarrely).
I have a whole stack-load of pre-rewrite Enid Blytons at home.
When were they from? I used to think that my "Magic Faraway TRee" books were the originals (they were from the 1970s) but they were just, in fact, from a first wave or rewrites.
I never noticed anything dodgy about them
You don't think a story about three Gollywogs called Golly, Woggy and Nigger might be a little provocative today? Or perhaps a story about a black doll called Sambo who wants to be washed pink? (Yes, really!)