I never see colour.............

 

Leicester has had large immigrant communities for the past ½ century and is set to become the first city to have a majority ethnic minority population.  I spent much of my childhood and adult life living in the City of Leicester and a considerable number of years working in that city too.  Consequently many of my neighbours, friends, work colleagues and acquaintances have been of ethnic minority origin and I still see a number of them regularly. 

When my sprogs were all young and single they brought ethnic minority neighbourhood friends and fellow students home, often to stay for weekends, weeks or in one case 3 months.  One of my daughters later married someone of differing race and hence two of my grandchildren are mixed race. At one point one of my kids was courting a Trinidadian Asian, one a Barbadan, and another turned up with a mixed race Chinese/English beau.  It got so that when one turned up with a white lad in tow we all looked on with astonishment. 

On this basis I think I have a fair amount of up-close-and-fairly-personal experience of relating to people from other cultural heritage.

 

My experience has been that altho of course they were all treated as well, with courtesy and friendliness, as we would treat anyone, they were not always treated as if they necessarily shared the same culture and cultural understandings as we.  If one of my kids had brought home someone who came from Newcastle I would have asked them about their home but I would not have thought of cooking anything especially Newcastlian for them for example whereas for people of other cultures I would always try to ensure that their first meal with us would be something they were comfortable eating.  I would not have assumed that they shared many of our cultural awarenesses, that they knew that Methodists were not identical to Quakers, that they actually knew what Quakers are, that an evening spent laughing about old Coronation St characters or playing that 'film, book or play, 7 syllables' guessing game etc would not have left them feeling isolated among UK Trivia cognosenti.   

 

Now, someone whose blog I read has stated that he never sees colour or difference he simply sees 'people'.  In my opinion it would be better to frankly recognise and accept that people from  other cultures are different to we Brits, that there is nothing wrong and a lot very right about acknowledging those differences, and that we should pay those cultural differences the respect they are due.  Equal and equally deserving of respect (with a few exceptions) but in some important ways very different to the cultural norms of indigenous Brits.  It seems to me that treating people who are clearly different to me in many ways as if they were exactly the same as me is not only disrespectful but boneheaded.

 

What do you think?