Conservative Party's chronicles

Originally Posted by Chris

Yes, indeed, because Birmingham’s massively integrated like that.

Well, thank you at least for demonstrating another page of the Left/metro-liberal playbook - claiming “we don’t know” stuff we actually very easily do know (c.f. “How do you know I’m a man?” Posited by obviously male trans-rights heckler at a conference women’s event yesterday). It’s just another facet of the same narrative, designed to ensure you can’t even talk about a subject.

You only have to spend an hour or so walking through these places - and I have, incidentally, spent some time living and walking in the fringes of Brum and Smethwick some years ago - to see who’s embracing Britishness and who’s forming enclaves.

It is not racist to draw attention to observable facts. It is utter foolishness to continue to insist certain topics can’t be discussed, are inherently evil or are unknowable.* The longer the metropolitan commentariat class continues to peddle these absurdities, the angrier people who can see it’s untrue will get. And *that’s* when you have an actual problem, because people - voters - turn to extremists when they think the mainstream parties aren’t listening.

*Lots of young women in Rochdale and elsewhere stand as witnesses to what happens when important issues are shut down just in case they’re seen as racist. Seems like we’ve learned nothing.

You cannot tell how integrated someone is by the colour of their skin. It was the lack of white people he was commenting on, suggesting that it was a failure of integration. He didn't provide any other example. Integration is about language, culture and participation in society. The colour of your skin is not a proxy for these discussions.

This is a gaslighting technique, where he defends that statement by pretending it was the following sentence about concerns about integration that people are objecting to. He is smarter than that; he knew what he was doing. It's not the first time he has used white people in connection with his claimed concerns about integration. When talking of a decline of British people in certain areas, he makes sure to specify 'White British'. He also knows, as we all do, that this is taking place when some - not all - right-wing commentators are pushing the idea that you cannot be deemed English and black. If it was a one-off, you could claim he phrased it badly, but it isn't.

As for the metropolitan commentariat class, I think the objections to what he said would extend far beyond them, which is why he has to pretend he was saying something else. He'll keep dallying with this language 'white british' instead of British, making comments on skin colour, then get faux-offended when challenged it saying he is simply talking about integration until such a time he feels confident enough to say what he means. If we are at the point where ethnicity is now a valid concern, then we're already at the extremes. It's not what I want the mainstream parties pandering to.

[Sephiroth]

You have to start with a UK made up with its white ethnicity right up to WW2. Immigrants such as they were from the now previous colonies, integrated fairly well, without losing their traditions.

After WW2, the UK imported a lot of Caribbean workers to fill the labour shortage cause by the war. That has worked out fairly well, albeit human nature tends to a certain degree of ghetto-isation - sort of herd comfort.

In the 1970s, Kenya & Uganda decided that they didn't like Indians. So they were chucked out and the UK , to its credit, took them in. I recall from the time that India didn't want to know.

Recently, the UK did the right thing in taking in Hong Kong citizens who wished to escape Chinese oppression.

So far, all the racial groups described above have blended into the UK economy to an extent that we are all comfortable with.

But then it all went wrong, particularly starting with the Blair era and Middle East & Afghanistan turmoil. Over those 30 years, people of that particular culture have flooded into the UK with very little compatibility with UK culture. Please see 7/7 and subsequent terrorist murders for details, along with Rotherham and similar northern towns with strong ghetto elements. There are no-go areas in London where whites, particularly women. walk at their peril.

@Damien might care to bear history and culture in mind before castigating Chris and others' similar words.

But you're again talking about culture. My objection to what Jenrick said was that he, not for the first time, brought race into it. As you've pointed out, there are people whose families have been here for generations and are English.

He could walk into communities that you have described, not see a white face, but be looking at a tremendously successful integration story.

[Sephiroth]

Originally Posted by Damien

But you're again talking about culture. My objection to what Jenrick said was that he, not for the first time, brought race into it. As you've pointed out, there are people whose families have been here for generations and are English.

He could walk into communities that you have described, not see a white face, but be looking at a tremendously successful integration story.

I understand what you are saying but remember, Jenrick specifically said it's not about skin colour. The term "white" should not be taken in a narrow context.

The thing that's probably bothering you and like minded people, is that "British/English" is not detectable by colour and thus the term "white" tends to racism.

But if the term "white" is used in my context, then there's nothing wrong with it.

Originally Posted by Damien

You cannot tell how integrated someone is by the colour of their skin.

No, but you can make reasonably confident predictions about the level of integration across a district if houses that were once entirely occupied by white families, are now entirely occupied by black or brown ones. The nuance you are refusing to see is that he is commenting at the level of community, not pointing the finger at individuals. As you point out, he’s not dumb, he obviously knows there are limits to what you can infer about an individual based on their presentation, whether that be race or any number of cultural markers.

It was the lack of white people he was commenting on, suggesting that it was a failure of integration. He didn't provide any other example. Integration is about language, culture and participation in society. The colour of your skin is not a proxy for these discussions.

Again - when presented with an individual human being shorn of all context, of course you can’t. Put that individual in a network of streets that are entirely inhabited by people of the same race, none of whom had family in the UK prior to about 1950, and you absolutely can make sufficient inference to begin to identify a problem.

This is a gaslighting technique,

Dead right. Here it comes:

where he defends that statement by pretending it was the following sentence about concerns about integration that people are objecting to. He is smarter than that; he knew what he was doing. It's not the first time he has used white people in connection with his claimed concerns about integration. When talking of a decline of British people in certain areas, he makes sure to specify 'White British'. He also knows, as we all do, that this is taking place when some - not all - right-wing commentators are pushing the idea that you cannot be deemed English and black. If it was a one-off, you could claim he phrased it badly, but it isn't.

As for the metropolitan commentariat class, I think the objections to what he said would extend far beyond them, which is why he has to pretend he was saying something else. He'll keep dallying with this language 'white british' instead of British, making comments on skin colour, then get faux-offended when challenged it saying he is simply talking about integration until such a time he feels confident enough to say what he means. If we are at the point where ethnicity is now a valid concern, then we're already at the extremes. It's not what I want the mainstream parties pandering to.

… where he has said something he knows is liable to wilful misunderstanding, and has therefore explicitly drawn attention to the likely misunderstanding and provided added reassurance that this is not what he means, but you go on and insist that he means what you need him to mean anyway, because he’s dared raise a subject which is verboten amongst metropolitan lefties.

It seems to me you’ve been so careful to curate your acceptable beliefs and opinions that you’re quite unable to believe Jenrick might simply mean what he says. It’s a pity because those who choose to see issues in this way (or to be wilfully blind to them, as the case may be) have poured so much energy into controlling what may be said, they’ve rendered themselves unable to engage with the arguments when people inevitably get fed up and start saying them anyway.

There has been a sea-change in public discourse over the past few years - I refuse to believe you’re so deaf you can’t hear it. But until you’re ready to engage with it as opposed to labelling it ‘gaslighting’ (and by making that accusation you’re actually doing the very thing you’ve accused Jenrick of doing), you’re going to be powerless to stop it. At this point by the way I mean ‘you’ very much in the plural, i.e. all those whose instinct reply along the lines of ‘you can’t say that’ when forced to confront the protests of the lumpen proles.

Originally Posted by Chris

… where he has said something he knows is liable to wilful misunderstanding, and has therefore explicitly drawn attention to the likely misunderstanding and provided added reassurance that this is not what he means, but you go on and insist that he means what you need him to mean anyway, because he’s dared raise a subject which is verboten amongst metropolitan lefties.

Well, we have a difference of opinion on his motivations. You think he was making a point about groups integrating into wider society and the danger of them forming enclaves away from everyone. I think he was tapping into a rising ethnonationalism within the UK.

This wasn't the first time he reached for 'white' as a shorthand for talking about integration, and I don't think it will be the last.

It seems to me you’ve been so careful to curate your acceptable beliefs and opinions that you’re quite unable to believe Jenrick might simply mean what he says.

I curate my beliefs the same as everyone does. My politics have changed over time, but not as much as Jenerick, who's gone on quite the political journey over the last 10 years. Maybe it's genuine, or maybe he is the one curating his opinions based on what's politically expedient for him at the time.

There has been a sea-change in public discourse over the past few years - I refuse to believe you’re so deaf you can’t hear it. But until you’re ready to engage with it as opposed to labelling it ‘gaslighting’ (and by making that accusation you’re actually doing the very thing you’ve accused Jenrick of doing), you’re going to be powerless to stop it. At this point by the way I mean ‘you’ very much in the plural, i.e. all those whose instinct reply along the lines of ‘you can’t say that’ when forced to confront the protests of the lumpen proles.

I know there is a sea-change in discourse, it's just I disagree with a lot of it. I don't think it's wrong to want to stop illegal migration. I don't think it's racist to say that. What I do disagree with most at the moment is the talk of going after migrants who have Leave to Remain, and discussions on who counts as English. The latter was never on the table when I was growing up, and now it's relatively common in the right-wing 'commentariat. It's that argument I think Jenerick is trapping into.

A popular view into why this sea-change happened is that the left got too confident, got too wrapped up in its own bubble, lost connection with the wider public and pushed views totally alien to them. I think the online right is starting to make the same mistake, giddy on how much the cultural pendulum has swung back in their direction, and Jenerick is too encased in that world.

I am not really sure what else to say, other than to see where he goes next.