Manchester University duo publish fresh evidence
RACE relations in Britain are under threat from a series of ill-informed myths according to a new book by two of the country’s leading experts on the topic.
Using previously unpublished evidence, Professor Ludi Simpson and Dr Nissa Finney from The University of Manchester claim repeated falsehoods about immigration, integration and segregation are misguiding policy and promoting racial disharmony.
The duo’s claims are the basis of a new book ‘Sleepwalking to segregation? Challenging myths about race and migration’ which will be published on Thursday.
After years of investigation, the Manchester pair said they found no evidence “whatsoever” for the existence of race ghettos in the UK.
The opposite, they say, is true with increasing ethnic mixing.
Claims by head of equalities watchdog Trevor Phillips that Britain is “sleepwalking” into racial and religious segregation are also dismissed in the book.
By linking social problems to segregated areas, they say, politicians have stigmatised the areas and their residents.
The authors also provide evidence that areas with large populations of Muslims do not act as a ‘breeding ground’ for terrorism.
“By propagating myths using bogus and alarmist interpretations of population change, individuals such as Trevor Phillips, Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, Bishop of Rochester and Sir Andrew Green, Chair of Migration Watch are inadvertently promoting racial segregation,” said Professor Simpson.
“Misunderstanding breeds mistrust and division between ethnic and religious groups. This book is about dispelling those myths. The truth is that Britain’s so-called ghettos are diverse areas both ethnically and socially where no one ethnic group dominates.”
Dr Finney added: “The only concentrations which resemble anything like ghettos are of white people. The average white person lives in an area which has more than 94% white people in it.
“British Pakistanis, for example, live in areas which on average have 26% Pakistani residents. In almost every city with a sizeable immigrant settlement area, children of immigrants have on balance moved away from those areas not to them or between them. So it is wrong to argue there is retreat. Rather, we are witnessing dispersal.”
