thanks for your reply. i have worked for many years in India, Nigeria and other developing countries. If I had a white child in their country and send it to school there and then to claim it was an Indian or Nigerian child they would just laugh at me.
English people are people descended from the people who have lived in England for hundreds of years in the same way Inuit people are those descended from Inuits and not people who have moved in a few decades ago. Your kids may be legally British citizens but they are not of English ethnicity and will never be.
English people were a majority in England for centuries: now they are less than 90% and minorities in London and Birmingham. The trends are clear: if we continue as we have been doing then English people will be a minority this century.
Do you think if English people had replaced Indians in India the way they did Aborigines in Australia that India would still be India? Do you think the replaced Indians would be happy with being replaced by English even if the new "Indians" all spoke Hindu? That is not human nature. A small number of immigrants can easily be integrated and fit in. Once they get to 20% or 60% or 80% this is not what happens.
Thanks for continuing the conversation. A few thoughts:
First, you're making assumptions about my partner's ethnicity and therefore my children's. But even setting that aside...
What exactly is "English ethnicity"? England is the product of waves of migration - Celts, Romans, Angles, Saxons, Vikings, Normans. Which wave counts as "real" English? The aristocracy is largely Norman-French in origin. Are they not English?
Your India/Nigeria comparison - actually, if you had a white child born and raised in India, speaking Hindi/local languages, immersed in the culture, many Indians WOULD consider them Indian in important ways. I certainly would. Same with Nigeria. Identity isn't just about blood. But more comparable are countries like USA, Canada, Australia - a white kid born in Sydney is Australian, a Black kid born in Toronto is Canadian. Why would England be different from these Western nations?
Also, just to clarify - Hindu is a religion, Hindi is a language. India has hundreds of languages and ethnicities. An Indian child might speak Tamil, Bengali, or English as their first language. "Indian" itself is a national identity containing massive diversity.
The Aboriginal comparison is particularly odd - English people aren't indigenous people being colonized. They are the dominant culture with all the political, economic and social power. London might be diverse but Parliament, boardrooms, and institutions remain overwhelmingly white British.
But here's my real question: what exactly are you proposing? Stop immigration? Send people back? Where would British-born children go? At what point does someone earn the right to belong - 100 years? 500? Never if they're the wrong colour?
I understand anxiety about change, but England has always absorbed newcomers and evolved. That's what made it successful. The alternative - some kind of ethnic purity test for Englishness - where does that lead?
Sorry, I didn't mean to make assumptions but to give an example. You said you were the only brown child in a class of white kids. Brown typically includes sub-continentals, some Latin Americans, MENA etc but the former are most common in the UK.
I am happy for my kid to be the only white kid in a class in Kenya or India. I don't want them to be the only white kid in a class in their own country. In many English schools, white kits are now the minority.
Your experience is different from mine as regards attitudes in other countries. I have worked for 40 years in African and Asian countries and it would be extremely unusual for people in them to see a white or Chinese kid born in their country to be of the same ethnicity as their own kid. Even when you have groups living among them for decades or hundreds of years e.g. Indians in Kenya or Chinese in the Philippines, locals do not see them as the same. Black Kenyans agree Indians are technically Kenyan citizens but they see them as very distinct from themselves who they regard as the true or real Kenyans. As did their neighbours in Uganda.
There are few if any unmixed ethnicities. The longer the mixing happened. the more uniform the result of the mixing and the shorter the lengths of DNA from the different founding groups. English DNA is 40-60% Celtic (pre-Roman) and 30-40% North Sea (Anglo-Saxon arriving 5th-7th century). These groups are much more closely related than English and Nigerians or Asians.The Romans and Normans left only a trace. So the English have been a continuous, little changed, relatively isolated ethnicity for over a millennium with a distinct language, culture, governance etc for all of that time.
Now, in a couple of decades, England has gone from >99% established English ethnicity to around 70%. (73% in 2021). Without immigration native English population would continue to decline as fertility rate is less than that of recent immigrants. With even scaled back immigration it would decline more rapidly.
So fundamentally, is this a problem? Do the English have any right to continue as an ethnicity and to be a majority in their own country? Or is it just fine if in 100 years, native English are 20%, Pakistani heritage are 30%, Nigerian heritage 30% and Indian heritage 20%. Again the numbers are an example, but it is undeniable that unless a) immigration is stopped or reversed; b) fertility of different groups change dramatically, then this is the future.
And will the heritage groups all have exactly the same culture? And will that be one similar to the current English culture? Again that is very unlikely. Garret Jones and many others have shown that culture is sticky and persists even for generations. The most successful culture mixing took place in 19th century USA and that required a) very similar groups (religion, appearance, ethnicity) and b) a government strongly opposed to multi-culturalism imposing American civic values.
Many English people find the prospect of becoming a minority in their own country a problem. Many Nigerians, Kenyans, Indians, Mexicans would also find it a problem if it was happening in their country.
So what to do? First, our attitude needs to change to more resemble that of most other countries in the world. Migrants are guests. Next, immigration should be restricted to high-skilled, earning well-above the UK average. According to the govt. OBR these are the only migrants who contribute more than they take out. Third, all migrants who have committed a criminal offense should lose the right to stay. Fourth, migrants should not receive tax-payer benefits in excess of their contributions. Fifth, as in Denmark and Sweden, migrants should be incentivised to return home.
The situation should be monitored and if the ethnic English remained a super-majority - 70-80% of the population - the situation is probably tolerable to the English and fair to everyone else. If ethnic English continue to decline, further action would be needed.
I have worked 40 years in African and Asian countries. In all of these, I could only work if I had a job a local person could not do. I had to pay for my own health care, insurance, pension etc. I had to apply for a resident's permit every year. If I committed a crime I would have lost right to stay. Their country, their rules. I loved my time in Africa and Asia, and met great people and have great friends from there. But I do not want my country to turn into Nigeria, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan. Import the third world, become the third world.
Thanks for the detailed response. Let me address a few key points:
You're absolutely right that countries should democratically decide their immigration levels. There's no universal right to migrate anywhere. That's a legitimate discussion every society needs to have.
But here's where it gets personal - I hold a British passport. When you say ethnic English are "true" English and others can never really belong, you're telling me and my descendants we'll always be guests in our own home. That's not about immigration policy - that's about whether citizens are equal. You can't have integration while simultaneously telling people they'll never truly belong no matter what they do.
I find it interesting that you cite India and Nigeria as examples of countries that wouldn't accept white children as truly Indian/Nigerian (using this to justify ethnic definitions of Englishness), but then end with "Import the third world, become the third world." So we should copy their ethnic nationalism but also fear becoming like them? That seems contradictory.
Look, I understand anxiety about rapid demographic change. That's human. But there's a difference between "we should control immigration numbers" (reasonable) and "only ethnic English are real English" (gets dangerous quickly).
You've worked across Africa and Asia, made friends, had great experiences. Imagine if everywhere you went, people told you "you'll never belong here, your children will never belong here, you're just a guest we tolerate." Would that make you more or less likely to contribute positively to those societies?
That's what we need to figure out - how to have honest conversations about immigration levels without telling citizens they're forever foreign.
You have captured exactly what they did think and I was happy to be friends and contribute to their countries. They mostly welcomed my presence but the idea of me or my children being Vietnamese or Bangladeshi would be as ridiculous as if I was to insist my dog was a cat. To them it was just obvious: they were Vietnamese in a way that me or my full white kids just could not be.
Now for half white- half Kenyan people etc it was different: they were seen as a mixture: with definitely more claim to the ethnicity and country and me. And by a quarter white, there is not so much distinction between them and the locals, in their view.
So if communities remain separate and marry within their own ethnicity as is very common in some communities in the UK, I think they and their non-intermixed children will never be English.
If they inter-marry and adopt English culture, yes within a generation they would be seen as English but not-quite and within a couple more generations real English.
One concern is if 2% or 10% foreigners arrive in England they can easily integrate. They won't be English but their descendants will be (if they intermarry). And their descendants will almost certainly have mainly English culture with some interesting stories of exotic ancestors.
But if the English are a minority in their own country, then England will not be England and the migrants are very unlikely to adopt the culture of the diminishing minority. I
We are seeing this happening in England with Bangladeshi mayors illegally getting visas for 40+ relatives and saying they have done nothing wrong. I worked in Bangladesh for many years and by the culture in Bangladesh it is laudable to do good things for your relatives and no one cares about obeying the law if you can get away with it. But that is not the English culture.
Likewise Mirapuri politicians are more concerned about recognising Palestine and getting airports built in Pakistan than the housing conditions of English OAPs. That is completely to be expected from their perspective but it is a very bad deal from the perspective of the rapidly diminishing English natives.
How do you see things ending well? If we continue on as we are, English will be a minority in twenty years. And, sorry if it comes across as rude - I appreciate the dialogue - but do you really think you are English in just the same way as someone whose ancestors have lived in England for 1,500 years or if I moved to Khulna I would really be as Bengali as someone whose ancestors lived there for likely 3-4,000 years? (I speak the language perfectly). Do you think they would call me a Bengali or my white kids Bengali? If you believe that, you have never lived in Africa or Asia. (Maybe the very elite, western-educated, cosmopolitan, rich, tiny minority in those countries might, because their minds have been colonised by the west, but no regular African or Asian would).
I think we're going in circles here. You keep saying "look, Vietnamese/Bangladeshis wouldn't accept me as truly Vietnamese/Bangladeshi" and then using that to justify why England should do the same. But then you also say you don't want England to become like Bangladesh with its corruption and nepotism.
So which is it? Should England copy these countries' ethnic nationalism or not? You can't have it both ways - saying "they do it so we should too" while also saying "we must not become like them."
The corrupt Bangladeshi mayors you mention - corruption isn't genetic or ethnic, it's about systems and accountability. When you attribute bad behavior to someone's ethnicity rather than individual choices, you're doing exactly what creates parallel societies. Should I attribute every white British politician's corruption to their Englishness? The expenses scandal, Partygate, PPE contracts to mates - is that "English culture"?
You ask how things end well. Here's how: we hold everyone to the same standards regardless of origin. Corruption is corruption whether it's a Bangladeshi mayor or Boris Johnson. We enforce our laws equally. We don't tell kids born here they'll never belong - that's how you CREATE parallel societies.
The irony is you spent years in Bangladesh and Africa being welcomed but never belonging. You seem fine with that system when you were the outsider. Now you want to import that same system here. Why not aim higher? Why not build something better than "you'll never really belong but we tolerate you"?
That's not protecting Englishness - it's just importing the worst aspects of the nationalism you claim to oppose.
oh you sweet summer child. Corruption, yeah we have people in the UK taking backhanders or whatever but enough quantitative becomes qualitative.
There is no way the deviations from best behaviour we have in high trust, high human capital countries in the west can ever compare with the in-depth corruption, incompetence, fraud, and nepotism that characterises the third world. It is a false equivalence. There are good maps if you google showing who is corrupt to what extent. Boris is a mere amateur.
That is why hundreds of million of people from the third world want to come and live in England and almost no English person would accept to live the life of an ordinary non-elite in India or Nigeria.
We will never get a more honest England by importing people with a cultural and genetic disposition to nepotism and clanishism - all of Africa and south Asia and Latin America.
Incompatible people cannot live together in perfect harmony. Either they change and become compatible or they divorce.
Are there not issues of quantity as well as ability and willingness to integrate and be integrated? What about the schools where white English children are minority, the school classes where they are absent? Hundreds of millions of people would like to migrate to England and Denmark. Is the only consideration ability to pay tax? Then English are on-track to be a minority in their own country. India, Pakistan, Nigeria would not accept this. Why is it ok for them to have their own country but not England? Just asking.
On the numbers question - yes, quantity matters for practical reasons. Housing, services, infrastructure all need planning. But "white English children as minorities in some schools" isn't inherently a problem unless we make it one. My school was 99% white and I was the only brown kid - was that better? Kids adapt brilliantly when adults don't teach them to be afraid.
The "minority in their own country" point is worth examining though. England is about 81% white British. Even with current immigration rates, demographic change is slow and nowhere near making anyone a minority. But I understand the anxiety about change - it's human to worry when things feel different from what you grew up with.
As for "why can't England be for the English like Nigeria for Nigerians" - England (like Denmark) built wealth partly through colonialism and continues to benefit from global systems it helped create. That comes with complexities. Also, plenty of countries including India and Nigeria are incredibly diverse with hundreds of ethnic groups, languages, and internal migration challenges of their own.
But beyond all that - what makes someone English? Is it blood? Culture? Values? My kids were born here, speak with local accents, support England in the football. Are they less English than someone with "pure" ancestry who can't name the prime minister?
Integration is absolutely a two-way street and concerns about rapid change are valid. But sometimes I wonder if we're so focused on protecting something that we forget to ask what exactly we're protecting and whether it might evolve into something even better.
Such a complex subject. I grew up in a country where most of our four grandparents came from four different countries and none of us, NONE of us, thought anything of it, not because we or our society were perfect. In fact, there were immigrants and their descendants from just ONE particular European country, who never mixed when anyone else unless their lives depended on it. However, I believe that one of the reasons they all integrated fairly quickly, and above all, peacefully, was because they had one goal in common: find a home where they could live in peace, work and prosper. The other reason may sound very simplistic, if not foolish, but the reality is that TIME works its magic. The current generation of both nationals and immigrants will carry on finding integration challenging -let's hope that it won't get beyond challenging-, but come next generation and the next, and people will have learnt to live together. I risk sounding too much like Pollyanna, but I believe it IS a question of time. The problem is that we are here NOW and envisaging a calmer society does not yield any solution, of course. Will the USA change its immigration laws once Trump is out? Will DK, for example, change its immigration politics in due course? Probably not. I am not overlooking or disregarding this very big, complex and worrying issue. I am just hoping that good will will prevail here in the UK and everywhere on the planet.
You're not being Pollyanna at all - that generational perspective is so important! And you're right about shared goals mattering.
But I do wonder if time works its magic equally for everyone? You mention your grandparents from four different countries integrating well - I'm guessing they could blend in visually after a generation or two?
The thing is, Black Americans are still seen as other after 400 years. British kids of Chinese or Indian heritage whose families have been here for generations still get told to "go home." Time hasn't quite smoothed over visible difference the way it has for, say, Irish or Italian immigrants who faced discrimination but whose kids could eventually just... disappear into whiteness.
That European group that stayed separate by choice - they at least HAD a choice. When you're visibly different, integration often isn't about whether you want to mix but whether others let you. My parents were professionals, spoke perfect English, but still hit social walls that had nothing to do with their efforts or intentions.
You're absolutely right that good will and everyday decency do most of the integration work. But maybe we need to acknowledge that some of us face headwinds others don't? Time helps, but it seems to help some more than others.
Still curious which European group that was though - every country seems to have that story!
True. Colour still seems a divisive factor. Sadly. Terribly. “Ignorantly”. Thank you for taking the time to reply to me. As for the European immigrants refusing to integrate and mix even with other flow Europeans in my home country… why, the Germans, of course, and I am not talking about those who had to hide. 😞 I am talking about “ordinary” men and women who simply would not mix, except those who came from different backgrounds and were more open. You asked 😉
Germans! That's fascinating - not what I expected. There's something particularly odd about choosing not to integrate when you could easily blend in if you wanted to.
I've seen this with British expat communities abroad too - little parallel societies with English pubs and all, completely missing the irony when they complain about immigrants back home not integrating.
At Uni I mostly had local friends, even if there was a large group of students originating from the same area that I came from. It seemed to me more interesting at the time. This of course, required locals who were willing to interact with the foreign kid. But I agree its a mutli-way street that can be enrichening.
Yes! You've nailed it - you needed locals who were actually interested in befriending the foreign kid, not just tolerating them.
I think uni is one of those rare spaces where people are actually excited about meeting someone from somewhere different. Everyone's kind of reinventing themselves anyway, so the usual social barriers drop a bit.
It's funny how we struggle to recreate that openness in "real life" - like once people graduate, they suddenly forget how enriching those friendships were. Makes you wonder what we're all so afraid of.
Love the Gestalt switch from immigrants needing to integrate into one country's culture to the native-born population needing to integrate into a globalised one. Kudos!
I know you are being sarcastic, but I'll bite - it's not about natives needing to integrate into a "globalized" culture. It's about recognizing that integration has always been a two-way street.
When immigrants are expected to do 100% of the adapting while the host society changes nothing, that's not integration - it's assimilation. And it usually fails.
Successful integration means the local pub learns to stock Polish beer, the school adds Diwali to its calendar alongside Christmas, and yes, white British kids learn to navigate diversity because that's the world they're living in.
That's not "natives integrating into globalization" - it's societies evolving as they always have. Unless you think England should have stayed exactly as it was in 1066? 1500? 1945?
Change happens. The question is whether we handle it thoughtfully or just panic about it.
The perils of e-communication! I wasn't at all being sarcastic, I genuinely appreciated that point in particular, which I found to be a refreshingly original, and your post more generally. So apologies for the misunderstanding.
(And ironically, the ‘Great Replacement’ canard comment that followed mine shows how difficult the task remains. As a Jew and former immigrant I'm uniquely sensitive to that)
I literally don't care. I don't not want foreign culture seeping in. If immigration had been at all responsibly managed in the last 20 years, then we could have this conversation and I might be supportive.
But the reality is the the Left has intentionally destabilized the US, the UK, France, Germany, the low countries, all because they want to destroy any resistance to their program of control.
So no. Immigrants can fuck right off, everyone for a tiny percentage of truly extraordinary individuals who are willing to completely assimilate.
The time for compromise was 30 years ago. Now? Absolutely not.
Foreign culture' has been 'seeping in' since the Romans. Fish and chips came from Jewish immigrants. Tea from India. The Royal Family is German. But I can see you're not interested in actual discussion, so I'll leave it there.
The vast majority of British Muslims aren't "jihadis" any more than all Irish were IRA bombers in the 1980s. My Muslim colleagues, doctors, and neighbors are just living their lives like everyone else.
If we're talking about extremism, that's a security issue that affects all communities - we've seen far-right terror attacks too. But conflating an entire religion with extremism is exactly the kind of thinking that prevents actual integration.
The "slow cultural exchange" I mentioned included plenty of moral panics at the time - people said the same about Jewish refugees fleeing pogroms, Irish Catholics, etc. They were all going to destroy British culture. They didn't.
You're a fool. Go look at what is happening in Manchester and other cities. They are taking over, not assimilating. They are not your friends -- they are your conquerors.
You can get rid of them *now*, or you can be their new slave underclass. Your choice. Choose wisely.
It is refreshing to have any discussion of integration or segregation at all. Here in the US, such discussions are avoided by both the left and the right.
The question of race in the US does not easily map into other places where racial differences and conflicts exist — segregation is at the core of American racial history.
This is the most nuanced take I've read on the subject. You've successfully separated the manufactured crisis from the actual human experience. Thank you for sharing ❤️
I also have a personal question I wanted to ask, I left it inbox, when you have time please check it out.
thanks for your reply. i have worked for many years in India, Nigeria and other developing countries. If I had a white child in their country and send it to school there and then to claim it was an Indian or Nigerian child they would just laugh at me.
English people are people descended from the people who have lived in England for hundreds of years in the same way Inuit people are those descended from Inuits and not people who have moved in a few decades ago. Your kids may be legally British citizens but they are not of English ethnicity and will never be.
English people were a majority in England for centuries: now they are less than 90% and minorities in London and Birmingham. The trends are clear: if we continue as we have been doing then English people will be a minority this century.
Do you think if English people had replaced Indians in India the way they did Aborigines in Australia that India would still be India? Do you think the replaced Indians would be happy with being replaced by English even if the new "Indians" all spoke Hindu? That is not human nature. A small number of immigrants can easily be integrated and fit in. Once they get to 20% or 60% or 80% this is not what happens.
Thanks for continuing the conversation. A few thoughts:
First, you're making assumptions about my partner's ethnicity and therefore my children's. But even setting that aside...
What exactly is "English ethnicity"? England is the product of waves of migration - Celts, Romans, Angles, Saxons, Vikings, Normans. Which wave counts as "real" English? The aristocracy is largely Norman-French in origin. Are they not English?
Your India/Nigeria comparison - actually, if you had a white child born and raised in India, speaking Hindi/local languages, immersed in the culture, many Indians WOULD consider them Indian in important ways. I certainly would. Same with Nigeria. Identity isn't just about blood. But more comparable are countries like USA, Canada, Australia - a white kid born in Sydney is Australian, a Black kid born in Toronto is Canadian. Why would England be different from these Western nations?
Also, just to clarify - Hindu is a religion, Hindi is a language. India has hundreds of languages and ethnicities. An Indian child might speak Tamil, Bengali, or English as their first language. "Indian" itself is a national identity containing massive diversity.
The Aboriginal comparison is particularly odd - English people aren't indigenous people being colonized. They are the dominant culture with all the political, economic and social power. London might be diverse but Parliament, boardrooms, and institutions remain overwhelmingly white British.
But here's my real question: what exactly are you proposing? Stop immigration? Send people back? Where would British-born children go? At what point does someone earn the right to belong - 100 years? 500? Never if they're the wrong colour?
I understand anxiety about change, but England has always absorbed newcomers and evolved. That's what made it successful. The alternative - some kind of ethnic purity test for Englishness - where does that lead?
Sorry, I didn't mean to make assumptions but to give an example. You said you were the only brown child in a class of white kids. Brown typically includes sub-continentals, some Latin Americans, MENA etc but the former are most common in the UK.
I am happy for my kid to be the only white kid in a class in Kenya or India. I don't want them to be the only white kid in a class in their own country. In many English schools, white kits are now the minority.
Your experience is different from mine as regards attitudes in other countries. I have worked for 40 years in African and Asian countries and it would be extremely unusual for people in them to see a white or Chinese kid born in their country to be of the same ethnicity as their own kid. Even when you have groups living among them for decades or hundreds of years e.g. Indians in Kenya or Chinese in the Philippines, locals do not see them as the same. Black Kenyans agree Indians are technically Kenyan citizens but they see them as very distinct from themselves who they regard as the true or real Kenyans. As did their neighbours in Uganda.
There are few if any unmixed ethnicities. The longer the mixing happened. the more uniform the result of the mixing and the shorter the lengths of DNA from the different founding groups. English DNA is 40-60% Celtic (pre-Roman) and 30-40% North Sea (Anglo-Saxon arriving 5th-7th century). These groups are much more closely related than English and Nigerians or Asians.The Romans and Normans left only a trace. So the English have been a continuous, little changed, relatively isolated ethnicity for over a millennium with a distinct language, culture, governance etc for all of that time.
Now, in a couple of decades, England has gone from >99% established English ethnicity to around 70%. (73% in 2021). Without immigration native English population would continue to decline as fertility rate is less than that of recent immigrants. With even scaled back immigration it would decline more rapidly.
So fundamentally, is this a problem? Do the English have any right to continue as an ethnicity and to be a majority in their own country? Or is it just fine if in 100 years, native English are 20%, Pakistani heritage are 30%, Nigerian heritage 30% and Indian heritage 20%. Again the numbers are an example, but it is undeniable that unless a) immigration is stopped or reversed; b) fertility of different groups change dramatically, then this is the future.
And will the heritage groups all have exactly the same culture? And will that be one similar to the current English culture? Again that is very unlikely. Garret Jones and many others have shown that culture is sticky and persists even for generations. The most successful culture mixing took place in 19th century USA and that required a) very similar groups (religion, appearance, ethnicity) and b) a government strongly opposed to multi-culturalism imposing American civic values.
Many English people find the prospect of becoming a minority in their own country a problem. Many Nigerians, Kenyans, Indians, Mexicans would also find it a problem if it was happening in their country.
So what to do? First, our attitude needs to change to more resemble that of most other countries in the world. Migrants are guests. Next, immigration should be restricted to high-skilled, earning well-above the UK average. According to the govt. OBR these are the only migrants who contribute more than they take out. Third, all migrants who have committed a criminal offense should lose the right to stay. Fourth, migrants should not receive tax-payer benefits in excess of their contributions. Fifth, as in Denmark and Sweden, migrants should be incentivised to return home.
The situation should be monitored and if the ethnic English remained a super-majority - 70-80% of the population - the situation is probably tolerable to the English and fair to everyone else. If ethnic English continue to decline, further action would be needed.
I have worked 40 years in African and Asian countries. In all of these, I could only work if I had a job a local person could not do. I had to pay for my own health care, insurance, pension etc. I had to apply for a resident's permit every year. If I committed a crime I would have lost right to stay. Their country, their rules. I loved my time in Africa and Asia, and met great people and have great friends from there. But I do not want my country to turn into Nigeria, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan. Import the third world, become the third world.
Thank you for the interesting exchange of ideas.
Thanks for the detailed response. Let me address a few key points:
You're absolutely right that countries should democratically decide their immigration levels. There's no universal right to migrate anywhere. That's a legitimate discussion every society needs to have.
But here's where it gets personal - I hold a British passport. When you say ethnic English are "true" English and others can never really belong, you're telling me and my descendants we'll always be guests in our own home. That's not about immigration policy - that's about whether citizens are equal. You can't have integration while simultaneously telling people they'll never truly belong no matter what they do.
I find it interesting that you cite India and Nigeria as examples of countries that wouldn't accept white children as truly Indian/Nigerian (using this to justify ethnic definitions of Englishness), but then end with "Import the third world, become the third world." So we should copy their ethnic nationalism but also fear becoming like them? That seems contradictory.
Look, I understand anxiety about rapid demographic change. That's human. But there's a difference between "we should control immigration numbers" (reasonable) and "only ethnic English are real English" (gets dangerous quickly).
You've worked across Africa and Asia, made friends, had great experiences. Imagine if everywhere you went, people told you "you'll never belong here, your children will never belong here, you're just a guest we tolerate." Would that make you more or less likely to contribute positively to those societies?
That's what we need to figure out - how to have honest conversations about immigration levels without telling citizens they're forever foreign.
thank you again.
You have captured exactly what they did think and I was happy to be friends and contribute to their countries. They mostly welcomed my presence but the idea of me or my children being Vietnamese or Bangladeshi would be as ridiculous as if I was to insist my dog was a cat. To them it was just obvious: they were Vietnamese in a way that me or my full white kids just could not be.
Now for half white- half Kenyan people etc it was different: they were seen as a mixture: with definitely more claim to the ethnicity and country and me. And by a quarter white, there is not so much distinction between them and the locals, in their view.
So if communities remain separate and marry within their own ethnicity as is very common in some communities in the UK, I think they and their non-intermixed children will never be English.
If they inter-marry and adopt English culture, yes within a generation they would be seen as English but not-quite and within a couple more generations real English.
One concern is if 2% or 10% foreigners arrive in England they can easily integrate. They won't be English but their descendants will be (if they intermarry). And their descendants will almost certainly have mainly English culture with some interesting stories of exotic ancestors.
But if the English are a minority in their own country, then England will not be England and the migrants are very unlikely to adopt the culture of the diminishing minority. I
We are seeing this happening in England with Bangladeshi mayors illegally getting visas for 40+ relatives and saying they have done nothing wrong. I worked in Bangladesh for many years and by the culture in Bangladesh it is laudable to do good things for your relatives and no one cares about obeying the law if you can get away with it. But that is not the English culture.
Likewise Mirapuri politicians are more concerned about recognising Palestine and getting airports built in Pakistan than the housing conditions of English OAPs. That is completely to be expected from their perspective but it is a very bad deal from the perspective of the rapidly diminishing English natives.
How do you see things ending well? If we continue on as we are, English will be a minority in twenty years. And, sorry if it comes across as rude - I appreciate the dialogue - but do you really think you are English in just the same way as someone whose ancestors have lived in England for 1,500 years or if I moved to Khulna I would really be as Bengali as someone whose ancestors lived there for likely 3-4,000 years? (I speak the language perfectly). Do you think they would call me a Bengali or my white kids Bengali? If you believe that, you have never lived in Africa or Asia. (Maybe the very elite, western-educated, cosmopolitan, rich, tiny minority in those countries might, because their minds have been colonised by the west, but no regular African or Asian would).
I think we're going in circles here. You keep saying "look, Vietnamese/Bangladeshis wouldn't accept me as truly Vietnamese/Bangladeshi" and then using that to justify why England should do the same. But then you also say you don't want England to become like Bangladesh with its corruption and nepotism.
So which is it? Should England copy these countries' ethnic nationalism or not? You can't have it both ways - saying "they do it so we should too" while also saying "we must not become like them."
The corrupt Bangladeshi mayors you mention - corruption isn't genetic or ethnic, it's about systems and accountability. When you attribute bad behavior to someone's ethnicity rather than individual choices, you're doing exactly what creates parallel societies. Should I attribute every white British politician's corruption to their Englishness? The expenses scandal, Partygate, PPE contracts to mates - is that "English culture"?
You ask how things end well. Here's how: we hold everyone to the same standards regardless of origin. Corruption is corruption whether it's a Bangladeshi mayor or Boris Johnson. We enforce our laws equally. We don't tell kids born here they'll never belong - that's how you CREATE parallel societies.
The irony is you spent years in Bangladesh and Africa being welcomed but never belonging. You seem fine with that system when you were the outsider. Now you want to import that same system here. Why not aim higher? Why not build something better than "you'll never really belong but we tolerate you"?
That's not protecting Englishness - it's just importing the worst aspects of the nationalism you claim to oppose.
oh you sweet summer child. Corruption, yeah we have people in the UK taking backhanders or whatever but enough quantitative becomes qualitative.
There is no way the deviations from best behaviour we have in high trust, high human capital countries in the west can ever compare with the in-depth corruption, incompetence, fraud, and nepotism that characterises the third world. It is a false equivalence. There are good maps if you google showing who is corrupt to what extent. Boris is a mere amateur.
That is why hundreds of million of people from the third world want to come and live in England and almost no English person would accept to live the life of an ordinary non-elite in India or Nigeria.
We will never get a more honest England by importing people with a cultural and genetic disposition to nepotism and clanishism - all of Africa and south Asia and Latin America.
Incompatible people cannot live together in perfect harmony. Either they change and become compatible or they divorce.
Are there not issues of quantity as well as ability and willingness to integrate and be integrated? What about the schools where white English children are minority, the school classes where they are absent? Hundreds of millions of people would like to migrate to England and Denmark. Is the only consideration ability to pay tax? Then English are on-track to be a minority in their own country. India, Pakistan, Nigeria would not accept this. Why is it ok for them to have their own country but not England? Just asking.
On the numbers question - yes, quantity matters for practical reasons. Housing, services, infrastructure all need planning. But "white English children as minorities in some schools" isn't inherently a problem unless we make it one. My school was 99% white and I was the only brown kid - was that better? Kids adapt brilliantly when adults don't teach them to be afraid.
The "minority in their own country" point is worth examining though. England is about 81% white British. Even with current immigration rates, demographic change is slow and nowhere near making anyone a minority. But I understand the anxiety about change - it's human to worry when things feel different from what you grew up with.
As for "why can't England be for the English like Nigeria for Nigerians" - England (like Denmark) built wealth partly through colonialism and continues to benefit from global systems it helped create. That comes with complexities. Also, plenty of countries including India and Nigeria are incredibly diverse with hundreds of ethnic groups, languages, and internal migration challenges of their own.
But beyond all that - what makes someone English? Is it blood? Culture? Values? My kids were born here, speak with local accents, support England in the football. Are they less English than someone with "pure" ancestry who can't name the prime minister?
Integration is absolutely a two-way street and concerns about rapid change are valid. But sometimes I wonder if we're so focused on protecting something that we forget to ask what exactly we're protecting and whether it might evolve into something even better.
Such a complex subject. I grew up in a country where most of our four grandparents came from four different countries and none of us, NONE of us, thought anything of it, not because we or our society were perfect. In fact, there were immigrants and their descendants from just ONE particular European country, who never mixed when anyone else unless their lives depended on it. However, I believe that one of the reasons they all integrated fairly quickly, and above all, peacefully, was because they had one goal in common: find a home where they could live in peace, work and prosper. The other reason may sound very simplistic, if not foolish, but the reality is that TIME works its magic. The current generation of both nationals and immigrants will carry on finding integration challenging -let's hope that it won't get beyond challenging-, but come next generation and the next, and people will have learnt to live together. I risk sounding too much like Pollyanna, but I believe it IS a question of time. The problem is that we are here NOW and envisaging a calmer society does not yield any solution, of course. Will the USA change its immigration laws once Trump is out? Will DK, for example, change its immigration politics in due course? Probably not. I am not overlooking or disregarding this very big, complex and worrying issue. I am just hoping that good will will prevail here in the UK and everywhere on the planet.
You're not being Pollyanna at all - that generational perspective is so important! And you're right about shared goals mattering.
But I do wonder if time works its magic equally for everyone? You mention your grandparents from four different countries integrating well - I'm guessing they could blend in visually after a generation or two?
The thing is, Black Americans are still seen as other after 400 years. British kids of Chinese or Indian heritage whose families have been here for generations still get told to "go home." Time hasn't quite smoothed over visible difference the way it has for, say, Irish or Italian immigrants who faced discrimination but whose kids could eventually just... disappear into whiteness.
That European group that stayed separate by choice - they at least HAD a choice. When you're visibly different, integration often isn't about whether you want to mix but whether others let you. My parents were professionals, spoke perfect English, but still hit social walls that had nothing to do with their efforts or intentions.
You're absolutely right that good will and everyday decency do most of the integration work. But maybe we need to acknowledge that some of us face headwinds others don't? Time helps, but it seems to help some more than others.
Still curious which European group that was though - every country seems to have that story!
True. Colour still seems a divisive factor. Sadly. Terribly. “Ignorantly”. Thank you for taking the time to reply to me. As for the European immigrants refusing to integrate and mix even with other flow Europeans in my home country… why, the Germans, of course, and I am not talking about those who had to hide. 😞 I am talking about “ordinary” men and women who simply would not mix, except those who came from different backgrounds and were more open. You asked 😉
Germans! That's fascinating - not what I expected. There's something particularly odd about choosing not to integrate when you could easily blend in if you wanted to.
I've seen this with British expat communities abroad too - little parallel societies with English pubs and all, completely missing the irony when they complain about immigrants back home not integrating.
Thanks for sharing!
At Uni I mostly had local friends, even if there was a large group of students originating from the same area that I came from. It seemed to me more interesting at the time. This of course, required locals who were willing to interact with the foreign kid. But I agree its a mutli-way street that can be enrichening.
Yes! You've nailed it - you needed locals who were actually interested in befriending the foreign kid, not just tolerating them.
I think uni is one of those rare spaces where people are actually excited about meeting someone from somewhere different. Everyone's kind of reinventing themselves anyway, so the usual social barriers drop a bit.
It's funny how we struggle to recreate that openness in "real life" - like once people graduate, they suddenly forget how enriching those friendships were. Makes you wonder what we're all so afraid of.
Love the Gestalt switch from immigrants needing to integrate into one country's culture to the native-born population needing to integrate into a globalised one. Kudos!
I know you are being sarcastic, but I'll bite - it's not about natives needing to integrate into a "globalized" culture. It's about recognizing that integration has always been a two-way street.
When immigrants are expected to do 100% of the adapting while the host society changes nothing, that's not integration - it's assimilation. And it usually fails.
Successful integration means the local pub learns to stock Polish beer, the school adds Diwali to its calendar alongside Christmas, and yes, white British kids learn to navigate diversity because that's the world they're living in.
That's not "natives integrating into globalization" - it's societies evolving as they always have. Unless you think England should have stayed exactly as it was in 1066? 1500? 1945?
Change happens. The question is whether we handle it thoughtfully or just panic about it.
The perils of e-communication! I wasn't at all being sarcastic, I genuinely appreciated that point in particular, which I found to be a refreshingly original, and your post more generally. So apologies for the misunderstanding.
(And ironically, the ‘Great Replacement’ canard comment that followed mine shows how difficult the task remains. As a Jew and former immigrant I'm uniquely sensitive to that)
My apologies for the misunderstanding! The perils of non face to face communication indeed. Thank you for reading and the kind comment!
I literally don't care. I don't not want foreign culture seeping in. If immigration had been at all responsibly managed in the last 20 years, then we could have this conversation and I might be supportive.
But the reality is the the Left has intentionally destabilized the US, the UK, France, Germany, the low countries, all because they want to destroy any resistance to their program of control.
So no. Immigrants can fuck right off, everyone for a tiny percentage of truly extraordinary individuals who are willing to completely assimilate.
The time for compromise was 30 years ago. Now? Absolutely not.
Foreign culture' has been 'seeping in' since the Romans. Fish and chips came from Jewish immigrants. Tea from India. The Royal Family is German. But I can see you're not interested in actual discussion, so I'll leave it there.
There is a profound difference between letting in Muslim jihadi culture and the slow culture exchange you're referring to.
The vast majority of British Muslims aren't "jihadis" any more than all Irish were IRA bombers in the 1980s. My Muslim colleagues, doctors, and neighbors are just living their lives like everyone else.
If we're talking about extremism, that's a security issue that affects all communities - we've seen far-right terror attacks too. But conflating an entire religion with extremism is exactly the kind of thinking that prevents actual integration.
The "slow cultural exchange" I mentioned included plenty of moral panics at the time - people said the same about Jewish refugees fleeing pogroms, Irish Catholics, etc. They were all going to destroy British culture. They didn't.
You're a fool. Go look at what is happening in Manchester and other cities. They are taking over, not assimilating. They are not your friends -- they are your conquerors.
You can get rid of them *now*, or you can be their new slave underclass. Your choice. Choose wisely.
It is refreshing to have any discussion of integration or segregation at all. Here in the US, such discussions are avoided by both the left and the right.
The question of race in the US does not easily map into other places where racial differences and conflicts exist — segregation is at the core of American racial history.
This is the most nuanced take I've read on the subject. You've successfully separated the manufactured crisis from the actual human experience. Thank you for sharing ❤️
I also have a personal question I wanted to ask, I left it inbox, when you have time please check it out.
Thank you for reading and your very kind comment!