In Aston, a predominantly
ethnic minority area of Birmingham, Pardeep
Modhvadia was quite frank last week about how
insulated his life can be from mainstream white
British culture.
“We are very much involved with our mosque
and events in the Asian community,” said the
34-year-old IT consultant whose wife, Nazia, is
33. “Many of these events involve Asians
exclusively and it can be easy to get wrapped up
in Asian culture and not embrace other
communities around you.”
Modhvadia admitted
that he and his wife “mainly only see Asian
people”, partly because of religious and family
ties.
“I don’t think we are as segregated as some
people say, though,” he added. “It has always
been this way. However, since the London
bombings you can get an unfriendly reaction from
white people who do not know you.”
There are plenty of those — because white
people, even those living in the same area, are
equally unlikely to know many fellow citizens
from across the cultural divide. Among them is
James Parker, a 24-year-old mechanic, who lives
in the same area of Birmingham with his
girlfriend Chloe, 22. He, too, was
straightforward about the ethnically restricted
ambit of his life.
“Our friends are mostly white,” he said. “I
knew a lot of Asians in school and they mainly
talked only to each other and would sometimes
speak in Gujarati — it was like their own club.
So everyone kind of divided into their own
racial groups.”
He added that the community “had been more
segregated since the London bombings”.
Is this the true face of modern Britain? Is
it diverse but divided; integrated in theory,
separate in practice? Trevor Phillips, head of
the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE),
believes so.
In a bold and controversial speech this week,
he will warn that Britain is “sleep-walking” its
way to a society of segregation, ethnic enclaves
and potential conflict.
“We are becoming strangers to each other and
we are leaving communities to be marooned
outside the mainstream,” he will say.
Some districts, he will add, are on their way
to becoming “literal black holes into which
nobody goes without fear and from which nobody
escapes undamaged. We could have a different
future. But if we want that different future, we
have to face facts now”.
According to Phillips, the facts are deeply
uncomfortable and largely unspoken. Ethnic
communities, he says, are increasingly
concentrated in “ghettos”. Although there has
been some integration, notably in London and the
southeast, the popular image portrayed abroad of
Britain as one big happy melting pot is false.
Not only do ethnic minorities largely live in
separate areas, they are typically segregated at
school and socially — and it is getting worse.
“When we leave work, most of us leave
multi-ethnic Britain behind,” Phillips will say.
He will draw on CRE research which shows that
most Britons cannot name a “single good friend”
from a different race and that many young people
from ethnic minorities have no friends beyond
their own community. “We are divided physically,
economically, culturally and psychologically,”
he will say.
Most controversially, perhaps, Phillips
likens the widening gulf in Britain to the dark
underbelly of America revealed by Hurricane
Katrina in New Orleans, where rich whites
escaped the devastation while poor blacks were
left to sink.
