If
globalisation is inevitable, and the people of Britain want multiculturalism to
work, surely there is only one possible outcome, a peaceful future? This YouTube
clip http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=diKrlDeSoCg is a debate in which people from different backgrounds discuss how
successful multiculturalism is in Britain. It is an hour-long debate titled
‘One Country, One Culture? Should Britain get rid of Multiculturalism?’ This is
a very negative title, and surely it is too late to get rid of multiculturalism
anyway, diversity is increasing at an accelerating rate, so how would one go
about ethically eradicating multiculturalism from an entire nation?
People from
many different backgrounds have been settling in Britain since it was a very
young nation. A lot of people were (and still are) totally against immigration,
as they would argue that the immigrants are taking all the job opportunities
and that they are forcing their culture upon the already existent British
culture. However, others would say that this immigration is good, as the new
settlers provide extra hands for the many jobs that need to be done within our
society, and that the new cultures bring much needed variety to an aging nation;
a cultured country is an interesting country.
A phenomenon
that has appeared in Britain, is something known as Islamophobia. This is where
people are fearful of Muslims living in Britain, due to terrorist attacks (such
as 9/11) on the West by Islamic extremists. But these people fail to realise
that these terrorists are a very small minority of Muslims, and the majority of
these extremists do not live in Britain. Islamophobia ultimately causes
extremism to form on the opposite end of the spectrum, so we see the rise of
anti-Muslim extremists that are native to Britain. The most well-known of these
groups in Britain are the British National Party and the English Defence
League. http://englishdefenceleague.org/ The
English Defence League website claims that their group are ‘peacefully
protesting against militant Islam’, but the fact that you have to be white to
join their group immediately means that they are not peaceful, they are
discriminatory. The sooner we eradicate these exclusive movements the sooner
Britain will be a peaceful nation, and the sooner we accept multiculturalism as
a positive thing, the sooner we will eradicate all forms of extremism.
This is another really interesting post! The thing that most struck me was the discussions of the BNP.
ReplyDeleteHaven't the BNP increased in popularity recently? If so, why do you think this is? Is there anything people can do to stop it?
Even if they haven't increased in popularity what do you think attracts people to join these parties?
The BNP have definitely had increased popularity recently, it seems to mainly be support from white working class people in poorer areas. This could be blamed on the economic crisis that started in 2008, poorer people might blame immigrants for their own lack of career possibilities. Blame could also lie with the terrorist attacks in London in 2005, this would have given people a more negative outlook on Muslims in general. I think these people are being naive, they need to look for deeper reasons to their problems, they need to be proactive in finding job opportunities and realise that terrorists are a minority group. To stop this problem I think we need to educate people on just how extreme the BNP are, and let them know how a Britain governed by the BNP would be very dangerous for our country and the world. We should also educate people more about different cultures so they do not feel threatened by these different people when they see them in their everyday lives within society.
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