by Red Okktober » Mon Jun 18, 2018 12:21 pm
There's no hard and fast rule, but I believe it should take several generations of 'bedding in' before we stop referring to a person's roots. I tend to call the offspring of immigrants, first, second, third generation immigrants etc rather than 'British' straight off the bat.
A good compromise, and it is creeping more into media reports now, is something like 'British citizen of Moroccan (or wherever) descent' -it paints a far more accurate picture. I'm not sure exactly when the 'of Moroccan descent' label should be dropped, but it should hang around for a good while. Otherwise reporting becomes too PC and sanitised, and is misleading. For example, after terror attacks on mainland Europe you'd get the BBC saying the perps were something like 'two Frenchman and a Belgian' - it's only when you see their pics that the full story is known.
There was a savage rape in Sweden a few years ago, where a young girl was left for dead. The Swedish media is as bad as the BBC, and the rape was reported as being carried out by 'two Swedes, a Norwegian, and a Finn'. It was in fact four Somali immigrants who had recently been given citizenship of those respective countries. They weren't even born in Scandinavia.
If we're being told to 'celebrate diversity' like with this Windrush nonsense, and recognise people's roots because something good allegedly happened, then it must cut both ways, and we must recognise people's roots when they get up to bad shit as well.
There's no hard and fast rule, but I believe it should take several generations of 'bedding in' before we stop referring to a person's roots. I tend to call the offspring of immigrants, first, second, third generation immigrants etc rather than 'British' straight off the bat.
A good compromise, and it is creeping more into media reports now, is something like 'British citizen of Moroccan (or wherever) descent' -it paints a far more accurate picture. I'm not sure exactly when the 'of Moroccan descent' label should be dropped, but it should hang around for a good while. Otherwise reporting becomes too PC and sanitised, and is misleading. For example, after terror attacks on mainland Europe you'd get the BBC saying the perps were something like 'two Frenchman and a Belgian' - it's only when you see their pics that the full story is known.
There was a savage rape in Sweden a few years ago, where a young girl was left for dead. The Swedish media is as bad as the BBC, and the rape was reported as being carried out by 'two Swedes, a Norwegian, and a Finn'. It was in fact four Somali immigrants who had recently been given citizenship of those respective countries. They weren't even born in Scandinavia.
If we're being told to 'celebrate diversity' like with this Windrush nonsense, and recognise people's roots because something good allegedly happened, then it must cut both ways, and we must recognise people's roots when they get up to bad shit as well.