Othering
Ghanaian migrants are being forced to return to their home country following protests against illegal immigration in their adopted one..
No, not here in the UK - although it can only be a matter of time* - but in South Africa. So what are we to make of such African-on-African xenophobia and what lessons, if any, can be drawn from it? Europeans might like to think of it as tribalism, remembering the horrors of the Rwandan Tutsi genocide whilst conveniently forgetting the role of the colonial powers (in this case Belgium) in promoting it. I suspect, though, that this tendency may be universal. For starters, it shows that resentment against migrants is not intrinsically race-based. Fear of strangers and the ostracism of outsiders seems to be a common human response, heightened by obvious signifiers of 'foreigness' such as skin colour, language, or dress codes and symbols specifying particular religious allegiance. It also appears to be exacerbated by numbers of migrants (perceived or actual) and wider economic pressures, often cynically exaggerated by rightwing politicians and ideologues with an agenda of resentment and hatred to peddle.
As a child my family moved from Kent to rural Yorkshire where we were viewed, in Dales dialect, as 'offcumdens' - literally comers from off (foreigners in other words) - and, worse, southerners. Luckily, this prejudice took the form only of gentle teasing, mostly based on our accent, which was seen as 'posh'. This suggests that regional origins within a country, plus class, are factors also to be taken into account. As George Bernard Shaw noted, "it is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman hate or despise him." How much more difficult, then, to 'pass' in society when one's physical appearance immediately signals 'foreigner' - before even opening one's mouth.
The recent horrific murder of Henry Nowak, a white boy, by Vikrum Digwa, a British-born Sikh - and the police's crassly negligent mishandling of it - has sparked a furious debate in the UK about 'two-tier' policing. The barely 'sub' subtext of this being that the police are encouraged to treat members of the public differently based on their ethnicity, with a strong implication that black and brown suspects are accorded preferentially lenient treatment. In other words, the police are officially mandated to cut them more slack than might be extended to a white person. This perception seems to be based on a clumsily worded document, the Police Race Action Plan of 2022, which was issued to forces in the wake of accusations of institutional racism, setting out how officers should respond to race in future.
Inevitably in these febrile times, rightwing politicians and commentators have spotted a wedge issue. They have clambered aboard this rolling bandwagon in order to use it as a platform to amplify their vile narrative of white disadvantage in the face of the latest supposedly 'woke' directive. Even the US Vice-President, JD Vance, has felt entitled to pile in - an uninvited and unwelcome intervention which British Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, and his deputy, David Lammy, have quite rightly called out. The debate now raging around this issue has, however, thrown up some salient questions about the nature of Englishness vis-a-vis Britishness which are perhaps worth exploring.
When the public celebration of Englishness, such as displays of St George's flags, so often, and so easily, tips over into a nasty jingoism and racism, it is perhaps unsurprising that the subject is contentious. Former Conservative home secretary, Suella Braverman, recently described herself as 'British Asian' but questioned whether she could be English. Braverman, born in England of Indian heritage, pondered how many generations it might take to become English, suggesting that it could be as many as five or six. Despite her typically reductive response, I think what she was querying was how long it might take to be perceived and accepted as English. Surely that would depend on whether one's racial origins were visibly apparent after one hundred and fifty years?
I suspect interracial marriage and Anglicisation of surnames might lead to foreign roots becoming undetectable over time but that begs the question, why should it matter anyway? And that's clearly the nub of the issue in a seafaring nation like the British Isles where roots and origins have been mixed and intermingled for so long after centuries of inward migration. From Celtic/Brythonic peoples, Romans, Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Frisians, Danes, Norman French, French Huguenot, Africans and African-Caribbeans, Chinese, Russian Ashkenazi Jews and South Asians, we've become a 'mongrel' race, and all the stronger for it. In such a 'blended' nation who's to say now who's 'pure' English? (appearances can be deceptive); or who, indeed, the 'English' even are, ethnically, ethnographically or culturally? Maybe it's more a state of mind? Is it even worth debating the issue at all? The only way these questions could possibly be answered beyond peradventure would be for every Briton to be DNA profiled at birth which, while undoubtedly an interesting scientific exercise, would set a potentially dangerous precedent. Nevertheless, I'd challenge anyone purporting to be of 'pure English stock' to undertake a DNA test to prove the assertion.
Go on, I dare you!
*Shocking events in Belfast have, sadly, just proved me prescient.