How a country changed
While looking for a topic I started thinking about how it even came to the Brexit campaign and how a country, in general known for its multiculturalism, decided to leave the EU.
I found an interesting article by Gilane Tawadros whose parents left Egypt after weighing their options: either stay in their own country surrounded by everything that was warmly familiar; or uproot their family so that their children could be free to speak their minds and determine their future. They chose the latter and left in 1970 towards an open-minded and tolerant Britain.
Gilane presents her thoughts after voting to remain in the EU. She quotes a young woman she met:
“This feels very emotional, I’m Polish and I feel like no one wants me to be here. But who would be willing to accept the minimum wage as we do? My sister lives in Germany and is training to be a lawyer. It’s different there.”
Gilane continued that she always thought that France and Germany were less tolerant than Britain. She lived in France for a while where you were either French or “other”. There was no middle ground such as in Britain where you could never completely belong but could live a hybrid form of belonging: black British, British-Egyptain, British-Asian etc.
This multiculturalism made Britain richer and more interesting I wonder when Britain stopped celebrating it and started seeing it as something dangerous.
It seems that it has come in small steps rather than substantial leaps. Gilane suggests that racism and prejudice are still issues for individuals. Moreover there is an increasing hostility towards British Muslims in all parts of British society and the heightened fear of migrants and refugees. This reached its climax during the campaign.
“I feel bereaved, as though I may have lost something very dear, and I’m terrified that what I have lost may be irrecoverable”
She expresses her unhappiness by mourning for St George, who was a soldier in the Roman army in Italy and is, in her opinion, the vision of Englishness she thinks is worth fighting for:
Embedded in Europe, connected to the world, not frozen and immutable. If we can’t be Europeans in a constitutional sense then now is the time to reclaim and redefine Englishness as an identity, culture and politics that is intrinsically diverse, worldly and constantly evolving.
Following the Brexit vote, I fear tolerant Britain is lost for ever
http://gu.com/p/4nmgz?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Copy_to_clipboard
