Do we arbitrarily choose to be offended ?

[Loz]

The free speech person in me agrees that she should never have been arrested.

The schadenfreude person in me laughed like a drain to see someone so unpleasant being hoist by their own petard.

[Otta]

Loz Wrote:

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> The free speech person in me agrees that she

> should never have been arrested.

>

> The schadenfreude person in me laughed like a

> drain to see someone so unpleasant being hoist by

> their own petard.

^^^ This

[miga]

LondonMix Wrote:

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> Its quite obvious why white people are the least

> likely to mix. It is because they have the least

> people to mix with. Even if everyone wanted marry

> outside of their race,statistically, it would be

> impossible for white people to mix more than 13%

> (the size of the minority population in the UK).

I had considered that. Of course it makes sense that the minority mixes into the majority, and in x00 years time it will probably be a historical curio much like tracing your roots back to Vikings, or Saxons or Celts would be now.

However - I think the caveats that I was referring to were around the variation within the different groups. Even your article interestingly points out that there is hardly any mixing in e.g. the Bangladeshi and Pakistani groups (fewer than 1 in 10) and that nearly half of Black Caribbean men are in mixed relationships.

I guess my overall point is, with regards to marriage or otherwise, yes this is a very tolerant society, but people cluster (some groups more, some groups less) and the process of mixing affects different strata of society at different speeds.

> Being of different ages we probably just have very

> different experiences of London- mixed race people

> are found at the significantly higher

> concentrations amongst children than the

> population as a whole which suggests the younger

> generations are much more racially mixed than the

> general population. Like I said, of the 30 or so

> people I know in London well enough to know who

> their social circle generally includes, I can't

> think of a single person that doesn't have

> multiple friends that they socialise with outside

> of their race (I'm in my early 30s). Equally in

> my (relatively young and international office),

> the incidence of interracial relationships is very

> high. This again could be skewed because I work

> in finance which is very expat heavy and perhaps

> expats tend to be more internationally minded and

> racially open- who knows.

It sounds like we work in a very similar kind of office, and aren't too far apart in age. I always found it interesting, actually, how the "mixed" in my office means a lot of Euros, Americans, Antipodeans...the rest (the majority) with only a smattering of anything other than white middle-class British. This lack of "domestic minorities" becomes especially pronounced in the roles that pay more. It's a bit more complex of course, with French Quants, Russian engineers and other curios of background/job, but that is probably more to do with the different education systems. My office (and others similar to it that I'm aware of) is definitely not representative of the wider demographics of London, other than the fact that in its own very shallow way it's "mixed". I don't know - does your office have 30% BME workers? I could just have a really skewed experience. Because my impression, and I could be wrong, is that it seems like a much longer way to travel into the City for a kid of Pakistani background from an estate in East London somewhere, than it did for me from the other side of the World.

> However, just walking around London, at a minimum

> I think about 20% of young children are mixed

> race, which proportionally would make sense given

> that most of the UK's minority population is

> concentrated in London rather than spread evenly

> across Britain. None of that suggests to me a

> city where most young people isolate themselves

> racially, though perhaps for those 40 plus, the

> reality is very different.

I don't think it's a (very) conscious process. Perhaps it is just to do with age, and when decisions are made on where to buy the "forever" home, where kids go to school etc. perhaps people revert to type.

As far as the train example goes, just as your "20% of kids I see are mixed race" is personal experience, so is mine that most of the white people get off at Denmark Hill and Peckham Rye. Please be my guest, I'd happily pay your fare from Blackfriars to Sevenoaks to observe the phenomenon :-) 52% BME kids is actually not particularly high in London, and you're right, for various reasons, not particularly indicative of who actually lives around that school.

I suppose we live in the same city and by the sounds of it have not too dissimilar existences, and yet we come to different conclusions about how fluid/mixed where we live really is. As the narrator would say in In The Night Garden, isn't that a pip.

[LondonMix]

Miga-- given the intake of Heber is only 500m around the school 52% white 48% non-white is indicative who lives near the school. I'm not sure how you can assert otherwise. Like I said its probably skewed somewhat but as of 2011, the non-white population of East Dulwich ward was circa 30% and has probably shifted upwards as it has for the country as a whole between now and then.

No, 30% of my office population is not an ethnic minority- closer the 15%. However, the interracial marriages are largely between the white men in the office and their partners who don't work there. There are of course minorities married to whites and two white women I can think of married / dating black and Indian men. Its really all over the place. Overall though, about 1/3rd of people in my office are in interracial relationships. I mention that its mostly men, because my office is mostly men as is typical for investment funds in general.

While 20% is my experience of London's mixed race kids, it correlates with the wider statistics presented. London has 3 times the minority population of the UK as a whole. It has 3 times the mixed race population (percentage wise) as the UK as a whole as well. Given that 6% of children under 4 nationwide are mixed race, its not unreasonable to assume that the concentrations in London would be 18% (similar to how the London vs UK stats play out for race in general).

I think we are probably just better off agreeing to disagree about how common mixed race friendships and relationships are in London. We clearly live wildly different experiences and have very different types of friends and friend groups and see very different racial profiles even in SE22.

[Earl Aelfheah]

To answer the subject of the post. There are clearly things which genuinely offend us, often quite rightly - but there has definitely been an increase in knee-jerk 'outrage', encouraged by angry mob social media.

[miga]

LondonMix Wrote:

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> Miga-- given the intake of Heber is only 500m

> around the school 52% white 48% non-white is

> indicative who lives near the school. I'm not sure

> how you can assert otherwise. Like I said its

> probably skewed somewhat but as of 2011, the

> non-white population of East Dulwich ward was

> circa 30% and has probably shifted upwards as it

> has for the country as a whole between now and

> then.

The problems with projecting who lives around that school from that particular stat are manifold. Catchment areas reduce year on year - when the Y6 cohort started 7 years ago, was the catchment much wider? That seems to be the pattern across London. Some parents around that school might send their kids to a faith school or to a private school. Siblings get priority - this can be a 1/3 to 1/2 kids in a year, so the catchment area of the school from 2-3 years ago is just as relevant. There's also micro-locality; it's well observed that within the same wider locality (like a council/electoral ward) there can be dense social housing estates with often a quite different socio-economic make-up to the neighbouring "period" streets. Finally - with "layering" of different people coming into a neighbourhood in different eras, the younger people who have little kids might not be representative of the demographics of the neighbourhood as a whole. That's why I assert that it's not a good measure.

Whatever, I don't think we're really talking about the same thing, and so I'm happy to leave it.

[Saffron]

> We clearly live wildly different experiences and

> have very different types of friends and friend

> groups and see very different racial profiles even

> in SE22.

That observation in itself nicely illustrates how difficult it is to assess integration relative to diversity and bias, in the context of offense, racism or other prejudice. People can have very different experiences, even in highly diverse environments, because there are significant pockets of non-integration. Somewhat counterintuitively, diversity itself does not ensure integration. With regards to what we do/don't find consciously offensive, even in a diverse environment, a person can be highly biased and prone to taking arbitrary offensive therein (and/or causing arbitrary offense) as a kind of cultural buffer gone out of logical control.

[LondonMix]

I totally acknowledge that the figures were likely skewed by private school. However, the catchment around Heber has been very small consistently for a long time. I was simply making a point to show that Miga's train analysis was nonsense at least as it concerns ED. Even the official 2011 census has the minority population of ED at 30% (vs 40% for London as a whole). That figure can't be dismissed so easily.

Similarly, the figures for interracial children can't be dismissed. Whether there are pockets of people who don't mix with people outside their own race and others who do, the statistics show that increasingly the most intimate of relationships now cross racial grounds and this is a trend year on year that is accelerating.

This was an aside and not part of the broader conversation on offence for me (I don't find anything offensive either way about it).

ETA- I only suggested we should agree to disagree as there haven't been any specific studies done about interracial friendships, which was the original point of contention. We can talk around why Miga thinks its less common that I do but neither of us can definitively determine who is statistically right so I didn't think there was anything more to say about it. I agree with Miga that some groups (blacks in particular) mix more than others etc. At the end of the day, I simply find London less segregated than Miga does.

[????]

rahrahrah Wrote:

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> To answer the subject of the post. There are

> clearly things which genuinely offend us, often

> quite rightly - but there has definitely been an

> increase in knee-jerk 'outrage', encouraged by

> angry mob social media.

to quote from a post on THAT guardian link

"Putting aside the delicious irony of her being hoisted with her own petard, the basic problem is that she is clearly not a very bright person. And that?s one of the flaws with activism in general ? it attracts monothematic nitwits who have no sense of proportion, irony, humour or context.

Social media has given a platform to these clowns and their gibberish garners the most attention. Remember Yeats:

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity

[Saffron]

Regarding diversity and integration so far as it applies to the OP's broader topic, there may not be specific demographic studies on interracial friendships, but there is a wealth of sociological and psychological research on interracial friendships and cross-groups friendships.

There's quite an interesting meta-analysis from Davies et al 2011 (DOI: 10.1177/1088868311411103), who concluded that cross-groups friendship with behavioural engagement had the most affect on attitudes. It's a bit of a technical read, but quite interesting.

There's a less technical read here: http://socialintegrationcommission.org.uk/SIC_Report_WEB.pdf This piece specifically considers the case for London. Although it's a few years old, they observed that

Britain is becoming increasingly diverse by social grade, ethnicity and age.

BUT,

...structural and institutional segregation shows signs of increasing. Residential segregation between British white and other ethnic groups appears to be increasing, and the OECD rated our school system as the fourth most socially segregated for recent migrants.

Their research concluded,

1. Highly diverse areas are not necessarily integrated. For example, despite

socialising more with people of different ethnic groups, Londoners are proportionally

less integrated by social grade, ethnicity and age than the rest of Britain. We should be

active in promoting better integration across all of these measures.

2. Integration issues apply to everyone, not just to ethnic minorities. Apart

from those from mixed ethnic backgrounds, all ethnic groups have around 40 to 50

percent fewer social interactions than would occur if there was no social segregation.

3. Levels of integration are structured around institutions that we use and value.

Age group 18-34, where there are high levels of mobility or involvement in institutions

of further and higher education, is the most ethnically integrated age group. However,

levels of segregation rise from 35 per cent to 56 per cent for those aged 35 to 54 years.

4. Young people are segregated by ethnicity. Young people under 17 years old have

53 per cent fewer interactions with other ethnicities than would be expected if there

was no social segregation. This raises questions around what more could be done in

the education system to promote social integration.

Number 1 is not surprising, in light of implicit associations research on unconscious bias in urban environments. However, linking back to the discussion bit on social media, I though point 4 was interesting. I wonder how that age group correlates to social media usage?

[LondonMix]

That's interesting. So while Londoners have significantly more meaningful interactions with people of other races according the report, its proportionally less than would be expected if race wasn't a factor at all. I.e. the average white person in London doesn't have 40% of their friends as ethnic minorities but on average something more in the order of 20% if I've understood the report correctly? If so, I'd agree that even though the report is a bit old, that intuitively seems correct. It also corresponds with about 20% of romantic relationships (out of a maximum total possible of 40%) being mixed race as well in London.

quote:

Our research shows that those living in London have a greater total number of interactions with people who are ethnically different from them. Yet those interactions are proportionally less representative of the diversity of the area Londoners live

in compared to the interactions of those outside London. So, for whatever reason, potential interactions with those from different ethnic backgrounds are not being fully taken up.

[uncleglen]

Red devil perhaps I should have said 'white' kids instead of English...so what- please try and say something intelligent instead of picking damn fool holes

[red devil]

uncleglen Wrote:

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> Red devil perhaps I should have said 'white' kids

> instead of English...so what- please try and say

> something intelligent instead of picking damn fool

> holes

No perhaps about it. Don't worry, we're all intelligent enough to know exactly why you wrote that...

[uncleglen]

All the kids think they are British, only the white kids think they are 'English' fyi- how do I know? Because I f-ing asked them!

[red devil]

It works!...

ETA: Scroll the page up and down, even better

 

[miga]

Thanks Saffron for the links. I think that's more or less what I was grappling with, a diverse population isn't necessarily an integrated one.

[LondonMix]

Mia I don't think that's what the report actually says about London for what its worth. The quotes Saffron used were about the UK as a whole. Regarding London, the report states the city is not integrated proportionally to its diversity but that is not the same thing is it not being integrate at all.

[miga]

"1. Highly diverse areas are not necessarily integrated. For example, despite

socialising more with people of different ethnic groups, Londoners are proportionally

less integrated by social grade, ethnicity and age than the rest of Britain."

I'm not sure which part of what I wrote directly above you contradicts the first conclusion of the report. I'm not sure if you're trolling me at this point.

[Otta]

miga Wrote:

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> Londoners are proportionally

> less integrated by social grade, ethnicity and age

> than the rest of Britain."

To flip that on it's head, it could be argued that there are more people for Londoners NOT to mix with, so the appear unintegrated even if they do mix...

But I have to say there are areas of East London in particular where large Asian communities do largely stick together. They will mix with other cultures, but don't seem to go out of their way to do so.

[LondonMix]

I'm not trolling you Miga! I think when you said diversity doesn't necessarily lead to integration it suggested that diverse areas like London aren't integrated. Perhaps that's not what you meant. If you were just making that statement in general, of course no one could disagree with it (conflict around the world is often caused by different ethnic groups being unable to tolerate living side by side much less becoming friends etc).

Like I said before, I think London is rather racially integrated even if not perfectly proportionally so. In the report they say the proportional issue needs to be studied further. My guess, which somewhat ties into Otta's point, is that its not race per se but rather cultural difference (which can but don't always overlap with skin colour) that is the majority of the underlying issue there given the relative amount of racial integration already in the city. I'm repeating myself because I said that several days ago one of my very first posts on the matter so with that I won't respond to you further as you seem to find it upsetting.

[Blah Blah]

I think the problem sometimes LondonMix is that integration is misundertood for assimilation. Many migrant cultures integrate perfectly well but that's not enough for racists or xenophobic people. They want migrants to be like them in every respect including culture. That expectation is the real barrier to integration. It's an unreasonable expectation of course and would lead to a very boring world if it actually happened.

[LondonMix]

I think that cultural differences are harder for people to accept for sure. I know people who have friends of different races but none who are new immigrants, for instance, not because of overt prejudice but because they find much less common ground to establish friendships. This is like you say a different kind of integration problem. When I lived in Paris I found there was a lot of open hostility towards Muslims, much more so than I've encountered in any other city I've lived in. And this came from people who otherwise socialised with a variety of people from different social and ethnic backgrounds. Integration is complex and certain variables like race overlap with other variables complicating the analysis.

Personally, I agree with you that 100% assimilation for me would make diverse cities less interesting though of course some basic level of shared values between everyone in a society seems to help things go more smoothly.

[Louisa]

Assimilation and integration are primarily (but not exclusively) associated with the strength in numbers of the host culture/community within a certain district/neighbourhood IMO. The first generation of British born children of immigrants tend to edge towards assimilation because their influences would have come from a dominant host culture surrounding them from a young age. Second, third and fourth generation British children with an ethnic minority heritage are in a large number of districts/neighbourhoods now the dominant culture due to white flight amongst other factors. The changes are apparent on many levels in a city such as our own, especially the new accent associated with the younger generation of London. Cultural influences surround people every day, from TV to the people living within close proximity to them. But cultural differences aren't necessarily a barrier to integration. I'm pretty sure a white Londoner would be just as alien to another white Briton living in the remotest corner of Cornwall, as would someone who has only very recently moved to this country. If you live next door to someone you find things in common even if it takes a while. Once you talk to people, you realise we have far more in common than we do things that make us different.

Louisa.

[LondonMix]

I agree with a lot of that Louisa. I think there is a gulf between perceived difference and actual difference.

[Blah Blah]

I too agree Louisa. You only have to look at the differences between generations in any culture to see that. And perhaps that is really the issue. We as a species on the whole like things to stay the same, when in reality they are always changing, even within our own cultures, social and ethnic groups.