Cosmopolitan/integrated society

On a bus travelling though North London as a local school turned out.  It was a cold snowy day and I had been sat in a corner of that bus for some time. The children were lively and excitable not at all deterred by the weather.  It was the last day of term before the Christmas break and I think the snow made it all the more exciting. Snowballs where flying and there was lots of laughter and smiles.

It was not long however before I noticed something that was for me quite disturbing.  First my attention had been drawn to three white girls. The reason my eye followed them for a while was due to the fact that one of them was wearing only a knee length skirt and a pair of ankle socks, her school top and a waist length jacket. I wondered how cold she must have been with the temperature at the time being -2.  They quickly passed out of my thoughts.  As I continued to people watch three girls got on the bus and stood right in front of me, only a glass patrician separated us and being on a bus there was nowhere else to look other than forward and straight at them. There were two black girls and one dual-heritage girl.  They were quite well mannered and chatty, quite loud and flamboyant; they made me smile as their behaviour reminded of watching younger family members. Opposite them in the other direction were three Muslim girls who were from the same school, much quieter in their conversation but smiling and laughing as they talked among themselves.

It was not until most of the school children had exited the bus and things again became much quieter that I began to reflect on what I had seen.  It was then that I realised that as I had watched hundreds of children leave their school in a diverse area of North East London I had seen no mixed groups of children.  Black children were with Black children, White children were with White children and Asian children were with Asian children.

Before long I was considering a recent new story.

“Oldham, Burnley and Bradford were scenes of vicious race riots in 2001. Simmering tensions overspilt in the former mill towns, causing millions of pounds’ worth of damage and injuring hundreds of police officers. Reports later blamed the “shocking” segregation of white and Asian communities, who were leading completely polarised lives just streets apart.

Now, nearly a decade on, a unique social experiment involving schools is taking aim at the deep-rooted racial divisions that still exist. Oldham has decided to merge and reopen some of its most starkly segregated secondary schools, or move them to different areas to ensure a mixed intake, while using the fresh start to raise academic standards. It wants the next generation to grow up accustomed to other cultures, rather than being educated in homogeneous enclaves.

Breeze Hill, where 94 per cent of children are Asian or black, and Counthill, where about 93 per cent of pupils are white, will merge and reopen as Waterhead Academy, in a mostly white area that borders the Asian areas of Clarksfield and Glodwick. If all parents choose their nearest school, it will become racially blended”. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/education/article7100438.ece

I remember the story being reported on the radio, they played the children from both school saying comments about each other that were in my opinion racist and ignorant and even worse filled with hate. Yes England is a diverse country, some parts being more diverse than others but diversity does not necessarily equal integrated. My father arrived here in the 60’s at a time when White British citizens were just becoming accustomed to sharing their streets, facilities and services with their new Black and then Asian neighbours. Racism in some places and people was horrific.  It was at this time that my parents met and got together. It was not an easy time for a black man and a white woman to be a couple but despite this there were also many people who chose to see beyond colour differences some of them became friends others fell in love. My parents met and lived in a town called Wolverhampton.  As I sat on the bus that day I felt quite proud of the town in which I grew up.

My little home town of Bilston in Wolverhampton has quite a history and for decades if not centaury’s was well known for its market. Until recent times people were willing to travel a fair few miles on a market day to see what treasures and bargains they could find. It is thought that Bilston Market has been around since medieval times and later became successful due to its location on the road to London. Bilston market would have sold items such as wool, flax and food, pretty much the same as it sells now, clothes, materials, and food. What many people do not know is that Bilston Market was one of the last places in the UK where a slave was actually sold (so one of our teachers at school told us).

However Wolverhampton for reasons I cannot quantify seems to have developed into not only a diverse but also quite an integrated community. At Some point between those years when my father arrived in the sixties and when I was born in the seventies the look of Wolverhampton changed significantly.  The town that I grew up in was one in which it was not rare to see communities mixing with one another. Yes there was some segregation. The black community had its culture centre and the Asian communities still grouped together and had its clear identity’s BUT and for me this was a big BUT. My parents always had friends who were White Black and Asian. The men in particular from all of the local communities mixed, talked and laughed together in their local pub.  I always had friends of every and any colour and visited their homes, ate their foods and danced their dances.

That day in north London brought about a smile in my heart as I remembered one of my closest groups of friends at school. Made up of two Asian girls, a white girl and myself, we were all from very different homes, with very different experiences but we shared our secrets and supported one another through some difficult times. Though we did not live particularly close to one another we would leave school together and part along the road to go our separate ways.

I feel privileged to have grown up in the town that I did and to have known the people that I knew. Yes I did experience some racism along the way but my secondary school experience was positive in almost every way. I shared my life with many different people and I think that helped to prevent the inset of cultural and religious ignorance.

Bilston is not the town it once was and my secondary school is a very different place. Racial tension seems to be on the increase.  The boom years are over for now and people perhaps are feeling a little less confident about their futures and a little less willing to be open to others.

Maybe there are a number of factors that influence how our communities interact with one another. I fear their may not be a simple answer for what appears to be the growing voluntary segregation of differing cultures within out communities. In the film Amazing Grace there is a scene in which William Wilberforce is exhorted to take up the fight against slavery again. His exhorter argued that England was now winning the war against France, that the people were less afraid, she pointed out that when the people stop being afraid they rediscover their compassion? I am not sure that it is compassion we need but maybe there is an emotion that we do need to rediscover as the cloud of fear passes over.