January 30, 2013
'I feel like a stranger where I live'
Jane Kelly in The Telegraph:
"When you go swimming, it’s much healthier to keep your whole body completely covered, you know.” The Muslim lady behind the counter in my local pharmacy has recently started giving me advice like this. It’s kindly meant and I’m always glad to hear her views because she is one of the few people in west London where I live who talks to me.
The streets around Acton, which has been my home since 1996, have taken on a new identity. Most of the shops are now owned by Muslims and even the fish and chip shop and Indian takeaway are Halal. It seems that almost overnight it’s changed from Acton Vale into Acton Veil.
Of the 8.17 million people in London, one million are Muslim, with the majority of them young families. That is not, in reality, a great number. But because so many Muslims increasingly insist on emphasising their separateness, it feels as if they have taken over; my female neighbours flap past in full niqab, some so heavily veiled that I can’t see their eyes. I’ve made an effort to communicate by smiling deliberately at the ones I thought I was seeing out and about regularly, but this didn’t lead to conversation because they never look me in the face.
I recently went to the plainly named “Curtain Shop” and asked if they would put some up for me. Inside were a lot of elderly Muslim men. I was told that they don’t do that kind of work, and was back on the pavement within a few moments. I felt sure I had suffered discrimination and was bewildered as I had been there previously when the Muslim owners had been very friendly. Things have changed. I am living in a place where I am a stranger.
More here.
Posted by S. Abbas Raza at 09:51 AM | Permalink
Comments
The author concludes that the change in her area has made her a "reluctant racist." I disagree. When she clearly isn't wanted, and it's becoming impossible to make friends, greet people on the street, or be served in a store, she's not at fault. Ethnic groups aren't always forced into ghettoes; they create them for themselves. I felt the same way she did the last time I lived in Miami, Florida. Some store clerks didn't even speak English, and the ones that did often had such a heavy Spanish accent that I couldn't understand them.
And then there are the Israeli orthodox Jews who harass women and anyone else who doesn't conform to their standards. Maybe they're not creating another type of ghetto, but they're reproducing some of the same conditions that made earlier Israelis flee Europe.
Posted by: Catana | Jan 30, 2013 12:13:40 PM
It's funny she is blaming mass immigration for this. There are plenty of places in the world with lots of immigrants that are wonderful to live in. In lived in Queens, NY and I really enjoyed it there. People were from so many different cultures that they had to learn to get along. I was a minority, but I didn't mind, in fact I loved it because I loved being able to get tamales, momos, samosas and all kinds of other international delights just steps from my apartment. There were Christians of all kinds, secularists, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, and Buddhists all in a small area. When I left and moved to a non-diverse neighborhood called Lincoln Park in Chicago, I was bored and soon moved to West Town where I am much happier and engaged with the local culture.
The problem with where she lives is that the immigrant community is not diverse. Bad urban planning worsens the problem. There are so many people who want to live in places like the UK, maybe authorities should think about diversifying their sourcing. Imagine a Europe with good Mexican food. I think it would be a better place.
Posted by: Melissa | Jan 30, 2013 1:50:02 PM
She works for the Salisbury Review, which is, as brief perusal will demonstrate, a haunt of 'respectable' crypto-fascism on the British Right... http://www.salisburyreview.co.uk/The_Salisbury_Review_Front_Page.html
Posted by: Dave | Jan 31, 2013 5:43:29 AM
'She works for the Salisbury Review, which is, as brief perusal will demonstrate, a haunt of 'respectable' crypto-fascism on the British Right...'
So Dave, where do you live, on top of a mountain in the prairies?
Posted by: laturb | Jan 31, 2013 11:03:21 AM
"Bigotry is the sacred disease."
-- Heraclitus
Posted by: waqnis | Jan 31, 2013 11:59:26 AM
I grew up about 10 miles from where she's talking about, now I live about 60 miles away, what's it to you, jerkwad? She's still a tweed-clad fascist.
Posted by: Dave | Feb 1, 2013 3:51:47 AM
Like Dave, I know the area Ms Kelly is talking about. What's more, there are a number of things which she probably knows but isn't telling us which would substantially alter our view of the threat she claims to perceive or the alienation she claims to experience.
1) The Muslim lady in the pharmacy saw the same documentary I did in which famous Non- Muslim people were shown buying all over 'burqa' style bathing dresses. This has to do with hazards associated with sun blockers or tanning creams or whatever they are called.
In other words, what originally comes across as some random Muslim lady trying to bully poor old Jane into wearing a burqa and trading in her SUV for a camel and two goats, turns out to be nothing of the sort. This is a lady who works in a pharmacy trying to be helpful. The Hindu lady at my pharmacy often tries to get me to buy some skin lightening lotion but that's only because of my disconcerting resemblance to a karrupu Vijayakantha (it's a Tamil thing- you wouldn't understand.)
2) Neighborhood Curtain shops don't do fittings at home anymore- it's not economically viable.
You want that sort of service, there are boutique shops in Knightsbridge who will indulge you- for a price. We have a very good local curtain shop, run by the same Jewish family for the last couple of generations- they do made to measure but they don't put up the curtains.
Shopkeepers are under unbearable pressure. Rents and rates have not fallen to reflect falling revenues because of the recession, never mind the impact of on-line shopping. How do Muslims turn into the bad guys just because their businesses are often under-capitalized and operating on the lowest margins?
'Young men talking into their mobile phones, rather than looking in you in the eye'- wow, my son does that, I guess he's Muslim. That would explain so much. All young people are now Muslim. I went to buy a new pair of swimming trunks the other day. The young black lady serving me tried to get me buy some huge Victorian type bathing shorts. I insisted on my speedo thong. She didn't say so, but she was definitely Muslim and wanted me to cover up my body. Reminds me of my last girlfriend- she insisted I wear a paper bag on my head. Pretended to be Greek but clearly a Muslim. Come to think of it she spent all her time on her mobile and refused to look me in the eye- the blood shot one. Very sinister goings on are a foot. Did you know Osama's family operate a mobile network? And this global warming business- which is why White people need to use more sun-block- it's caused by petroleum isn't it? And guess who owns all the petrol? That's right, it's the Russians. All Muslims I tell you- but them Ruskies are sneaky, what with pretending to be like European and all and then turns out they can't speak English properly.
This country is going to the dogs. At least it would go to the dogs if those damn Koreans didn't keep eating them.
Posted by: windwheel | Feb 2, 2013 1:53:53 PM
Windwheel, I appreciate your mini-essay! What I wonder about the writer is why she doesn't perceive it as perfectly natural that, staying put in a neighborhood over many years, the larger changes in its demographics would eventually leave her an out-group member rather than an in-group member. My former San Francisco neighborhood was once full of artists and poets, is now full of investment bankers and surgeons. In my formerly funky Cambridge neighborhood -- families, grad students, dogs, every other property a bit rundown -- one may buy a very small house, now, for a little over a million bucks. Oh, she sees color and burkhas, does she? And fewer services on offer than an aging white lady is due? Maybe she's not being personally elbowed, maybe it's only that big patterns are changing, as they must, if one stays put to observe them. If her stance, and the way she moves through changing times, is that of "Last White Lady, contra mundum," you bet she'll have difficulty making friends. Her new job is to fit in through 1.) dropping suspiciousness; 2.) realizing that kind-heartedness even among "Exotics" like herself is rewarded by trust and tolerance; and 3.) that the worm has turned, and she's the one with something to prove now. It happens -- it's life on earth.
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Feb 3, 2013 11:58:59 AM
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