Posted on 11/15/2006 1:56:48 PM PST by protest1
In defence of the white working class
By Leo McKinstry Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 15/11/2006
Anti-racism has become the central theme of today's political culture, yet the obsessive concern for racial sensitivities rarely seems to be applied to the white working class. This is the one ethnic group that it is perfectly acceptable to insult and ignore.
Once regarded as the backbone of Britain, the people who saved our country in two world wars, the indigenous, less affluent, sector of the population is now treated with contempt by liberal elitists, who sneer at the supposed idleness, vulgarity, xenophobia and ignorance of so-called "chavs" or "white trash".
This kind of repellent snobbery and prejudice was captured in an extraordinary outburst from newspaper columnist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown. Condemning white working-class Britons as "either too lazy or too expensive to compete" in the new era of multi-racialism, she wrote that "tax-paying immigrants past and present keep indolent British scroungers on their couches drinking beer and watching TV". advertisement
Such comments are not only offensive, but also factually incorrect, since levels of unemployment and welfare dependency are actually much higher in certain immigrant communities. According to the Office of National Statistics, 35 per cent of Muslim households have no adult in employment, more than twice the national average, though no liberal columnist would dream of ever writing about "Muslim scroungers".
The growing ostracism of the white working class is highlighted in a report out today by the Tory party's Social Justice Policy Group, chaired by the former leader Iain Duncan Smith. In his report, Duncan Smith warns that white pupils from poor backgrounds are performing worse at schools than any other ethnic group. He fears that there is a danger of creating "an uneducated and unemployable underclass of forgotten children".
On top of the crisis in education, white workers are also confronted with economic difficulties, since they are disproportionately employed in the declining manufacturing industries, while in the services sector their wages are under pressure because of mass immigration. Yet, instead of having their plight recognised, they are condemned by the nanny-employing classes for their insular racism and reluctance to struggle on minimal pay.
If the experience of poor urban whites were happening to other groups, there would be an outcry, followed by official inquiries, commissions, reports, and positive action plans. But nothing of the sort will occur. The entire thrust of the state machine is to address the needs of ethnic minorities, not the hard-pressed indigenous population.
The public sector is now filled with initiatives geared towards blacks and Asians, whether they be special housing, positive action training schemes, or community grants. No less than 10 per cent of all Arts Council funding, for instance, is explicitly given to ethnic minority groups, while the BBC makes a fetish of minority recruitment, reflected in the famous comment of the former director general Greg Dyke that the corporation is "hideously white". That is the attitude that prevails in our civic institutions. The celebration of diversity is a one-way street, with every culture treated with reverence except the traditional British one.
In his book The Likes of Us: A History of the White Working Class, the author Michael Collins recalled coming across a municipal leaflet in a library in south London, listing every group that had settled in the borough, including the Germans, Dutch, Afro-Caribbeans, Somalians and Ethiopians. As he read this, Collins sensed an elderly white man looking over his shoulder. "They don't mention us English," said the old man, "You wouldn't think we existed, would you?"
When they are not being airbrushed from history, the white working classes are being openly loathed. The fashionable push for healthier school dinners has a nasty sub-text of bullying intolerance towards working-class eating habits; the same is true of the crackdown on smoking.
In this climate of condescension, double standards abound. So the human rights brigade works itself into a froth about the civil liberties of alleged Muslim terrorists, yet utters not a bat-squeak of condemnation of the Draconian measures used against suspected football hooligans, who, whatever their faults, have not been accused of plotting mass slaughter. But then hardline soccer fans, unlike Islamic radicals, tend to be white, so they are seen as fair game.
The same hypocrisy can be seen over crime. White working-class youths are treated as a disturbing threat to the fabric of our society, yet the propensity for young urban blacks to be involved in serious violent crime attracts nothing like the same concern.
The same is true of racially motivated murders, where ethnic minority victims generally receive much more coverage than whites. The idea of innocent blacks being preyed on by ill-educated white thugs fits the progressive anti-racist narrative, if not reality, with the Stephen Lawrence case the perfect example of this pattern.
In their sheer nastiness, the alleged killers of Lawrence could have stepped out of central casting for this morality tale about proletarian racists. The only problem was that no court would convict them, despite two trials.
The Lawrence saga not only caused convulsion across our public life, but also reinforced the fear of the "white ghetto", a term that would have been unthinkable 40 years ago. Where the white working class were once admired for their patriotism, respectability, and sense of community, now those values have been turned against them. Once the bulwark of our society, they are now left on its margins.
Trending the same way in the US, I fear.
this could easily be written about the middle class in the US
And that's by the Labour Party.
Regards, Ivan
Exactly.
Great Britain better get its act together, or its citizens will be trading their Shepherd's Pie for couscous.
"Toff" being English slang for an elitist milquetoast?
1.6 million out of 60 million!
Muslims are a minority in this country and are presently being diluted by an onrush of Eastern Europeans.
Are we happy now? Enough popular myths dispelled for the day? Good.
Ivan
of course it is trending that way here and I'm angry about it. People feel as if shite people are evil, WE ARE NOT.
I've said it over and over, there is one group of people who if they went on strike tomorrow, the results would truly be devastating. And I almost wish they would, except for the tragedy that would result.
White American males.
I read the article, and I do apologize. At least these immigrants won't be plotting to blow up your infrastructure (as well as America's, France's, Italy's, etc.).
I've been wishing this for years! Just for the fight against taxes. Now we have other reasons. It wouldn't happen though, sadly.
Yet, but it's 1.6 million too many and the whole political and social establishments are kissing their butts and giving them the country on a platter.
President Bush Attends Iftaar Dinner at the White House
Have a nice day.
Ivan
LOL!
Yep, our President is kissing the butts of those who may want to take over our country and blow us up real good.
Of course, a truly uneducated and illiterate underclass, white or otherwise, might at last constitute what the Marxists have always wanted, a true proletariat. That isn't an improvement either.
I couldn't agree more. President Bush is making an ass of himself. Our liberal elites are also pro-terrorist!
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