Ethnicity

Law

Laws and social policies play a big part in our lives as they teach us the right morals, principles and so on. There is of course, much legislation which I could mention; however, because my essay is mainly based on ethnicity within multiculturalism and education, this section will only outline those legislations which concern my two focused areas of my essay.

There is no doubt that racial discrimination is experienced by ethnic minority groups. There is evidence from a variety of sources as well as the ones above that, often in the past ethnic minorities have been receiving unfavorable treatments. In my view, even today they are treated unfairly because I still see many ethnic minority children stereotyped by teachers (i.e. Black boys are troublemakers) and of course, since the 9/11 attack religions are being attacked too which in return is creating a non-multicultural society. And where determination lies to hold up multiculturalism, people are being forced to change themselves (i.e. the hijab issue for Muslim women) in order to make them integrate within the British culture.

This then creates more problems because people are starting to lose their human rights and the freedom to live life the way they want to. So what is done to put these problems right? Legislations are made.

As I had mentioned before, many legislations have been made in the last 50 years or so. However, I find that the following legislations created have been the best so far in connection with multiculturalism and education.

British Nationality Act (1948) gave right to the Commonwealth citizens to enter UK in order to work, settle down and they can bring families. To me, this was a start to creating a multicultural society. Allowing people from other countries allows British people to see what other types of people exist in this world. It was a chance for the British to integrate with these new fresh faces and find out what life is like back in other countries. Have the British lost that opportunity? I don't think they have. There are still many people you see from different cultures and countries. Take Loughborough University for instance, so many international students, yet it is so rare to see a group of mixed British and internationals!

Race Relations Act (1976) established the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE). Although it did a good job by making discrimination illegal in places, it completely excluded the police. In fact, due to this exclusion, according to my lecture notes from one of my modules, there were many more stop and searches done on Blacks and Asians. The police started bribing each other to do certain “tasks” which are illegal, and altogether, this RRA created a big issue of what is commonly known as the “canteen culture”.

Another of my favorite, which is linked to my education and ethnicity topic discussed above, is the Swann Report titled "Education for all" (March 1985). It is concerned with inequality of educational achievement between different groups and brings in the notion of multicultural society. It was debated in the 1980's as not everyone supported the Swann Report. Nowadays, I can say that there are many 2nd and 3rd generations who don't have much knowledge and interest in going back to their roots, mainly because they were born in Britain. This brings us back to question whether the British people have lost the opportunity to integrate in to other cultures? And have those people from different cultures started to lose their own culture and identity by living in Western society?

It can be argued that people from other countries have not lost their culture or identity because if anything is spoken against them then they would stand up for their own minority group. An example can be the Pakistani welfare groups that exist in many localities, each joined to a different local political party - Labour, Liberal

Democrat or Conservative - and often displaying intense rivalries based on ethnic and political divisions in the country of origin.

From I can see, it seems to me that racism seems to be a major problem in Britain which is depriving children of ethnic minorities a decent education and denying ethnic minorities the right to freedom of religion and identity, hence all these legislations that have been created. However, critics of policies have suggested that they need little more than what we call a "coat of paint" solutions (Gilroy 1987) that fall short of addressing the true nature of racism in British society. The inquiry into the racially motivated murder of Stephen Lawrence (Macpherson 1999) and, for example, a report by the Runnymead Trust on the future of multi-ethnic Britain (Parekh 2000), have clearly commanded the attention of both the public and the government, and may just help to change certain “[…] critical dimensions of the relationship between “race” and British public culture […]” (Clarke 2001: 16).

In my opinion, I think policies addressing issues of racial inequality and ethnic disadvantages can only be understood in the context of Britain's Immigration and Asylum legislation. I think it is about time people take in to consideration the new legislation of the European Union who do not accept the word "race and ethnicity" and just sees everyone as human. I reckon it may just make issues a little less complicated.