Racial Stereotyping and Diversity in Britain

Last week, Pinky Lilani, OBE, spoke at our Club on the topic of Racism. Introducing her, R’Ann Rashmi Jolly said that Pinky had starred in a TV series on Indian food, was founder chairperson of Asian Women’s Achievement awards and chairperson of the Women of the Future awards, with Cherie Blair as the chief patron. Good Housekeeping magazine listed her as one of the twenty most influential Asian and black women in the United Kingdom. The Confederation of British Industry and Price Waterhouse Lifetime Achievement Award was presented to Pinky last summer and this was followed by an OBE being conferred on her just a few days ago.

Introducing the topic, Ms Lilani said, “Diversity is an area with which I am very familiar. Last year, I have worked at the Department of Trade and Industry as an advisor to the government on diversity. Diversity makes sense for the bottomline and corporates are very keen on diversity because they need diversity for their workforce. The government is very keen to see more diverse people.

“And even Buckingham Palace is taking it seriously. Last week I had the great honour to be invited to a lunch that the Queen hosted for two hundred women who made a contribution to business in Britain... and they made sure that they had some Asians. I got a call to give some names, because they wanted to see black Asian and white.

“You may wonder what diversity is. To gain much representation, they want more women, more people of different ethnic minorities, of different faiths, of different sexual orientations and people with disabilities. So the diversity is very wide.

“Racism is obviously one of the elements and therefore we look at it very very closely. Everyone of you is very aware of racism after the Shilpa Shetty episode more than anything else, and we had these screaming headlines dripping in racism... things that were really not true.

“I am going to share with you some of my personal experiences in Britain as an ethnic minority. I went there 29 years ago after I met my husband in Bombay and got married after a whirlwind romance. He thought he had got a good wife and a good cook for himself, whereas actually I had never been in the kitchen. When we reached England, it was around the time when a lot of people had come in from Uganda. So the first question that people asked one as an Asian woman was, ‘Does your husband have a corner shop?’ ‘No’, I replied, wondering why they asked me that.

“And five years ago when Laksmi Mittal appeared on the scene, the question that they asked me was, ‘Do you know Lakshmi Mittal?’ Well, last week, I did twelve radio interviews for BBC, and 11 of these people asked me, ‘Do you know Shilpa Shetty?’ It is amazing how people judge you so quickly. And that is what racism is all about; it is about stereotyping, I think. Being an ethnic minority, a woman and a muslim woman particularly after 9/11, has got me into places that otherwise I wouldn’t have gotten into.

“My own experience has been enormously positive. Let me give you some facts which are quite startling. We have sixty million people in Britain today, of which 8% are ethnic minorities. My own feeling is that the governor of Britain has been very liberal. They have let in so many immigrants that there are parts of Britain that do not feel like Britain at all. A lot of these immigrants have not really integrated, and I think that they need to take that into account.

“I think, David Cameron, who is perhaps going to be the next leader of the country, has pinpointed this phenomenon of divisive multiculturalism; there are too many people who are not fitting in, and not making any effort to integrate. What is really important is that 50% of people in Britain today think that Britain is racist. Research shows that people from black and ethnic minorities are more likely to be expelled from school, to be jailed, to live into substandard housing and to be victims of crime. Black children are 5 times less likely to be branded as gifted and talented. Black people are six times likelier than the white people, to be stopped and searched by the police. Also, if a person of colour is a defendant and is imprisoned, then he or she is likely to get a much longer sentence.

“Although only 8% of ethnic minorities live in Britain, the population of ethnic minorities in prison is 80%. Those are very important things to know. As a part of the research that we do, I met a muslim woman last week who wears a hijaab, and she went for ten interviews: eight of them in a hijaab, and two of them without. She got both the jobs where she took the interview without wearing the hijaab. So I think there is an underlying stereotyping of people.

“Previously, in the fifties, racism in Britain was very overt. There was ingrained bigotry. There were signs on people’s doors saying, “No Irishmen and Niggers may apply”. Nobody would ever do that today, because we have some very strong legislation in Britain.

“But also what is interesting is that multiculturalism is also important. You can go to Britain and find people from all over the world. When I travel through, I find certain areas, where Bangladeshis have settled down in large numbers, and the atmosphere is totally different. You talk to the women and find that 90% of them didn’t speak any English, they only spoke in Bengali. I asked some of them as to why they weren’t learning any English, and the ladies said that there was no need for them to learn English. ‘My butcher is a Bengali and so is my doctor... and if I have to talk to somebody in English, my daughter comes with me,’ was the sort of reply they gave. I think that is really going to be the cause of a problem.

“Charles Moore, who is the editor of the Daily Telegraph, said that England is basically Englishspeaking, white and Christian. And if people start thinking that it is going to become Urdu-speaking, Muslim and brown, then it would cause some worry.

“In England, we have this stereotyping of people. You hear people saying things like, Jews secretly own half the world. And you know what they say about the archetypal Jewish mama... there was this young boy who came home from school and told his mama, ‘I have got a part in the school play’. She asked as to what the part was, and he replied, ‘a Jewish husband’. She scowled and said, ‘Go back and tell them you want a talking part!’.

“This is the way in which racism manifests itself. It is based on people who make assumptions based on the very little that they know, and use that to stereotype everybody. There is a girl called Jaswinder Sanghera, she has written a book called Shame, which you will see soon in bookshops. And she has actually made it into the public arena. She is a Punjabi girl who ran away because she didn’t want to get married. She was brought up in Britain. And in every second page of her book she says, “My mother came to England and everyday we’d come back from school, she would tell us, change into your kurtas and don’t talk to English people, because their morals are loose. There are all types of societies that we have stereotyped that we brought forward and we have to be careful about that.

“When Jade Goody went against Shilpa Shetty, it wasn’t about race, it was about an ignorant uneducated person who knew very little but had made lots of money. But what amused me most was that Shilpa in an interview said, ‘That it is because of what happened that people are talking about race. Now my job is done’, and I thought that she didn’t go there with any idea that she was going to hold up the flag for Asians, but she turned it around by being there; I think we are all likely to be very racist without realising that.

“In England we are doing a lot of things to help. We have something called the Black History month, where they celebrate the achievements of black people.

“The Minister for Women asked me if I would send her 20 Asian women’s names that they could invite to the House of Commons. So I sent out these invitations, but we had only two Asian women who came to this wonderful cocktail on the terrace of the House of Commons, and they said, ‘We are not black’. And I said, “In England, if you are not white, then it doesn’t matter what you are... and if we start making these kinds of differences, there is going to be trouble!

“You know the corporates are taking racial diversity very seriously. Companies like Merrill Lynch are sending their workmen in schools on the East end of London to help underprivileged children learn about finance and accountancy.

“Last year when we had Women of the Future Awards, we had 750 people. Merrill Lynch took a table and brought ten girls from the East end of London. Can you think how aspirational it is for them to come to this very glamourous event graced by Cherie Blair, Princess Aga Khan and others? Those are very affirmative actions. Prince Charles, as you all know is working very closely with ethnic minorities with the Princess Trust which advises young people starting business with a very low income.

“I think there is a real effort being made to make people feel a part of Britain. It is a great thing to become a British citizen, because it’s a great country to live in,” Pinky Lilani concluded.

Q&A:

Rtn Mudit Jain: Is the Norman Tebitt test racist or not?

Pinky Lilani: Many years ago, Norman Tebitt said that the way to test whether somebody was really British was, if the British team was playing a cricket match with the Indian or Pakistani team, whom would they cheer for? I think it does apply, and now I think more and more people are thinking of themselves as British Indians and British Pakistanis. And so I think their loyalties will be divided and I can well see why he brought that up. Last week, however, they did some work and found that more ethnic minorities were calling themselves British rather than English. English people are now calling themselves as Welsh, Scottish and Irish. By contrast, they found that ethnic minorities were more apt to say they were British.

PDG Manibhai Doshi: Regarding the racism that still exists, because people from all over the world are in Britain, what is the way out?

Pinky Lilani: The most important thing I think is to integrate much more. What has happened is that there are a lot of people and there is ghettoisation and I think it is quite worrying. Immigrant communities are living in their own ghettos, and when they move into an area, a lot of white people move out. I believe there are certain areas where white people live, and estate agents won’t show to a member of a Pakistani community looking for a house... and vice-versa.

I think we have to integrate. We have to take part and really contribute to the mainstream. And what is most shocking is that a survey done about six weeks ago revealed that 95% of English people said that all their friends were from the same circle and the ethnic minorities said the same. They described a phenomenon called sunset segregation, where people of different communities work together very happily all day, and come evening or come weekends, they go back into their own communities. I think that’s a major fear.

We found that across faiths, people really didn’t open their houses and their hearts to people of other faiths. So the solution is that we have to do things together, as there is no other way... or else it will lead to many more problems.

Rtn Dr Percy Chibber: Why is it necessary for us, be it Asian or African, to integrate and assimilate? Why can’t we be what we are and be a part of that society? If it means that I must lose my Asianness or Indianness, then I am not willing to integrate into a society that demands me to become the same. I’ll like to remain different.

Pinky Lilani: No, by integration, I didn’t mean that we become like them. I feel very proud and have integrated in the British community and I have kept my Asian, Indian and Muslim culture. That’s what makes it much more interesting and that’s what multiculturism is all about — that you can exist side by side. I think integration is about integrating into the British value structure, like the values of punctuality and honesty. It is not about losing your culture. I do not think that would be any fun at all. I would hate that. And I think our Indian food is the best way of making friends.

Rtn Burjor Poonawala: My question is why is there great bias against Indian doctors. Aren’t they good enough?

Pinky Lilani: I think its not about being good enough. I think there are certain strict norms that they need people to conform to. They want more and more people from outside who can do the job. Its just about the need of the country and its rules. It’s not about not wanting them.