At my United Reformed Church on Sunday the preacher was a young woman from South Africa. The two readers were from the U.S. and from Scotland. The English woman who led the prayers is married to a man of Pakistani origin. Two Australians served coffee, a German lady sat in front of me and a Swiss man across the aisle.
We are a global society, not just a global economy. We are the world. Yes, the Lib Dems are pro-Europe and internationalist, and we should fly these colours high as these policies represent how our country actually is.
I am an immigrant. I have never been treated negatively, perhaps due to my skin colour? I think a lot of anti-immigrant rhetoric is not to do with jobs or the economy but is racism in disguise.
When I moved here from the States with a temporary residency visa back in 1994, and then stood in the long queue around the Home Office in 1995 to convert it to a permanent residency visa, I had no idea I would become naturalised and then be living here twenty years later. Life happens.
And life happens to many of us. Most families have an immigrant member somewhere or another. Many families have someone who has emigrated to Europe, Australia, the U.S., etc. The world is a different one today from when the European Community was first envisaged, or from when the League of Nations sought to develop relationships between countries. We talk about interdependence within family relationship – I think global interdependence is already happening at the societal level but is just not talked about enough.
Third Culture Individuals (3CK or also Third Culture Kids) is now a recognised category which applies to many millions of people around the world – people who are of one culture but have spent formative years in other cultures, becoming international in outlook. These people have had parents in business, in the military, as diplomats, aid workers or academics, and have lived abroad for periods of time. I lived in Japan from the age of 8 – 11 and came back to the U.S. a different person.
If we throw the rise of Third Culture Individuals into the mix of fluid borders, international marriage and the like, we have a society of many races already blended in such ways that we cannot begin to separate it into “us” and “them”. It has to be “we” for we are the world, a diverse, multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, vibrant world, a world which is glorious to live in if we would only embrace the excitement of getting to know people not like us.
* Kirsten Johnson was the PPC for Oxford East in the 2017 General Election. She is a pianist and composer at www.kirstenjohnsonpiano.com.
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Yes. If, I may I will take the opportunity to link to the JCWI’s excellent “I am an Immigrant” crowdfunding campaign.
http://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/i-am-an-immigrant-poster-campaign/?
Actually it has been that way for a long time-the British Empire remember. I grew up with Anglo-Indians and across the street lived an Indian women who had married a British soldier. As I became a vegetarian at an early age I always knew vegetarian food was available at an Indian restaurant.
I have no idea whether a greater proportion of Lib Dems have someone from a background other than from these islands, but I have known for a long time that I should target people from other backgrounds when canvassing. My daughter in law is from China, by the way (she is now a British citizen). There do seem to be chasms of thinking all over the world because of the attitude differences between people from the backgrounds described and those who seem to reject this development as frightening / unacceptable change etc. Having worked in the developing world, there are in many places feelings of resistance to development pactices seen as “western”, alien, foreign etc. When you look at extreme versions of this (such as ISIS, etc – but not limited to the Muslim world by any means – our Liberal Democracy needs to understand the nature of the conflicts going on, and incorporate thinking into policy areas.
I grew up in africa, am married to an eastern european, and claim more poles, finns, south-africans and yanks among my circle of friends than i do british-welsh or british other.
That does not mean I do not subscribe to an ‘us’, nor too does it mean i have any time for multi-culturalism in its normative sense (the descriptive obviously being quite different).
I, personally, and very content with the world as I see it.
Yes, Tim13. Very insightful. I agree completely.
Like the spirit of this …
I suppose I am evidence of this presence in the party … Welsh father, Lithuanian mother, a ‘Pad Brat’ (child of a serving soldier) until I was 12 years old or so, relatives in the USA and France and Lithuania, lived in Malaya for a few years as a child, I seem to have a lot of boxes to tick on the 3CK list. ‘Uses and Thems’ can get rather confusing…
Good luck in your explorations of life, Kirsten.
It has to be faced that what people fear most is a culture that is being tolerated too easily despite it being repressive and discriminatory. A culture where women are half the value of men and do not inherit the equivalent of men and who are segregated and discriminated against. Why are we told that if we do not accept this we are racist? If this was happening in another country with the British being the minority what would be the reaction here?
@ Tim 13,
As someone who has had the great fortune to work abroad in a voluntary capacity after a chance meeting with committed people from a different culture to my own, I can understand why this resistance to ‘western’ development practices is commonplace. I have seen for myself, a real arrogance from western agencies who try to impose a particularly western idea on people on how their problems can be solved.
People have it within them to solve their own problems and my experience of outside agencies is that they sometimes fail to listen to the people themselves, who given the opportunity to speak up, and without any educational attainment, recognise the answers to their problems and just need help in putting the solutions into practice.
Another problem, as I see it, is that helping people can become a career opportunity. My own opinion, based on the local people who taught me how to be really helpful, is that one should aim for limited involvement, help the people who ask for help and then get out and leave them to manage their own lives.
A really lovely post from Kirsten. Although English, I can no longer think of myself in such narrow terms because of the warm acceptance I found from tribal peoples. They taught me so much and I will be eternally grateful.
Excellent article, Kirsten.
You have the spirit of Liberalism in this.
We are many, they are few.
I am glad my comments resonated with so many of you. Thank you for the feedback and encouragement. I’ll do my best to champion an inclusive, integrated, accepting society where all are treated equally regardless of skin colour or ethnic origin.