{"id":1625,"date":"2020-07-08T06:55:25","date_gmt":"2020-07-08T06:55:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.forwardpartnership.org.uk\/?p=1625"},"modified":"2020-07-08T06:56:33","modified_gmt":"2020-07-08T06:56:33","slug":"is-the-british-countryside-still-a-white-space","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.forwardpartnership.org.uk\/?p=1625","title":{"rendered":"Is the British countryside (still) a ‘white space’?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

For many years now, especially since we moved to the countryside, we have been fans of Countryfile<\/a>. <\/strong>Everything stops on Sunday evenings. I am even found giving the programme my full attention, without getting side-tracked with gadgets. The programme has become even more attractive since its presenting team have become more diverse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was pleased the programme invited Dwayne Fields to report on the\ncurrent situation on race. The message of the programme was:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

that minorities \u201ccan feel unwelcome in the countryside\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cthink they don\u2019t belong in the countryside\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

being black in a rural area is an isolating experience<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

One interviewee referred to \u201cPeople saying they liked the good old days\nwhen you could be racist, and you didn\u2019t have to be PC.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The programme has attracted criticism for drawing attention to racism in\nthe countryside. Dan Wootton<\/a> questioning\nthe use of \u2018white<\/em> (his emphasis) environment\u2019. He brought on Calvin\nRobertson who was \u201cbaffled\u201d with the programme. He questioned the label \u2018BAME\u2019:\n\u201cwe are all British\u201d. He spoke of the \u201cPC brigade\u201d and \u201cwoke people\u201d saying\nracism was everywhere. \u201cRacism isn\u2019t everywhere\u201d.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Spectator<\/a> said:\nCountryfile is wrong about racism and the countryside.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Spiked <\/a>also\ncriticised the BBC for its response to the Black Lives Matter movement:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The BBC has made a special effort to put race front and centre in\nresponse to the Black Lives Matter movement. It has promised to\nspend \u00a3100million on \u2018diverse\u2019 programming. It has\ncommissioned op-eds by activists to promote BLM talking points. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It said so widespread was the BBC\u2019s BLM activism that \u201cit has started to\ncrop up in the unlikeliest of places. Now even BBC One\u2019s Countryfile<\/em> is\ntaking on \u2018systemic\u2019 racism. I wonder why they used the word \u2018even<\/em>\u2019 in\nthis respect and why is Countryfile an unlikeliest place for addressing racism\nin the countryside.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most of the criticism was decontextualized and ahistorical. It took\nlittle account of the wider and historical context of the issue of race in\nrelation to our rural areas. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A bit of background <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

First a little about me. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I had a happy childhood, in Kashmir. It was a simple world, no roads, no\nelectricity, no running water. We walked everywhere. Our days began and ended\nwith the rising and setting of the sun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We made up games and created our own amusement. We \u2018sailed\u2019 boats. We\nplayed with stones and pebbles. We \u2018raced cars\u2019. We played marbles, gulli\ndanda, sat khutar\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We went on walks with our friends. We appreciated the space around us;\nit changed with the seasons. We helped with jobs such as looking after the\nanimals and gathering kindling for the fires on which our meals were cooked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We sat and listened to our elders\u2019 conversation (we spoke when we were\nspoken to). We followed our elders do their jobs such as ploughing the field.\nWe helped when we could.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All this changed when I was about 12. My parents sent me to England, to\nlive with an older sister. So, the green and pleasant countryside went out and,\nin its place, the urban environment arrived. Inner city Birmingham, to be\nprecise. Houses and other buildings; factories; people everywhere. Living next\ndoor to the gas works was a million miles from where I had spent my early\nyears.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Life carried on. Slowly, I began to discover that not far from my urban\nenvironment was another world. Just like my birthplace; green and pleasant\nthough very different. It was what has been described as \u2018white space<\/a>\u2019.\nI stuck out because of my colour. People stared at me; not directly but stared,\nnevertheless. It was that \u2018second look\u2019 which made it clear that people had\nregistered my difference.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I stuck with it. Over the 50 years of being here, I have made the\nBritish countryside my own. Wales, Scotland, and many places in England; I\nbecome alive whenever I am out and about. It takes me back to Kashmir. One year\nan Asian friend and I hitchhiked to Cornwall and back (that\u2019s what you did in\nyour teens in the 1970s). So, now I was not in the company of white people\n(which makes visible minorities safer in the eyes of the wider world) but\nanother Asian.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Every now and then I have wondered whether we would ever be able to\nactually live in a rural area. In such situations ethnic minorities are never\nfar from wondering whether one would be accepted; would one\u2019s children be safe\nat school; whether one would be able to make friends with one\u2019s neighbours. Or\nif one suffered abuse would there be an organisation to turn to or race-aware\nlocal people who would come to one\u2019s aid. Or small yet significant matters\nwhether one would need to anglicise one\u2019s name or be frequently asked the\n\u2018where are you really from?\u2019 question.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Keep them in Birmingham      <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then one\u2019s personal questions are given weight by official reports. It\nis made clear that there are plenty of spaces in the rural parts of our nation\nwhere people are of the \u2018Keep them in\nBirmingham<\/a>\u2019 mindset. This was a report from the then Commission for\nRacial Equality was published quite recently (in 1992). It stated the following\nexamples of racism:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

trainee was black, and the following day he was asked to leave, since\nhis colour \u2018might affect the trade\u2019.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

black woman who had just started work as a chambermaid was dismissed\nbecause members of a coach party staying there expressed virulent dislike at\nthe idea of having a black chambermaid attending to their rooms\u2019 and the\nmanagement did not want to risk alienating regular customers and losing\nvaluable trade. A tribunal in Truro awarded her \u00a31,500 in compensation.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another black woman who was sacked from her job in a hotel because of\nthe racial prejudice of a guest now works in a school where prejudiced parents\nare said to be reluctant to allow her to have anything to do with their\nchildren.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A hairdressing salon which takes hairdressing students on placement from\na college of further education refused to have black students, \u2018because our\nclients don\u2019t like it\u2019; the college was prepared to accept this on the grounds\nthat we must use this hairdresser for our placements\u2019.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

And in a seaside resort where there are many overseas students, there\nhave been several reports of bus drivers deliberately driving past a bus stop\nwhere black students were the only people waiting even though there were empty\nseats on the bus.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

That was then. Maybe things have changed. If they have then this needs\nto be communicated to the minorities who have decided to \u2018stay in Birmingham\u2019.\nThe \u2018stay away from the countryside\u2019 message might have been passed onto\nyounger people and may still be influencing people\u2019s decisions. And if they\nhaven\u2019t changed then\u2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then in 2004 the Head of the same CRE, Trevor Phillips<\/a>, said low\nnumbers of black and Asian people in the countryside was a form of \u2018passive\napartheid \u2018and that the countryside was seen as a \u2018no-go area for ethnic\nminorities\u2019. He pointed out that many in the ethnic minority communities felt\nthey did not belong outside towns and cities. \u201cBut I think what we are\nseeing is a gradual drift towards a difficult situation in which people from\nethnic minorities feel uncomfortable.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then, in that same year we had the publication of a book  \u2013 \u2018Rural\nRacism\u2019 (Neil Chakraborti and Jon Garland).  This pointed out that people\nof colour were now found in almost all parts of England, Scotland and Wales and\nthe numbers were increasing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is now a simple empirical fact that you can be \u2018visibly different\u2019\nand yet still from Worcestershire, the Highlands of Scotland, the Welsh valleys\nor wherever.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

They also pointed out that, were it not for racism, there would be even\nmore ethnic minorities moving to the countryside. It maybe stating the obvious\nbut people from these communities \u201cenjoy living in the countryside for the same\nreasons as their white counterparts \u2013 the love of rural terrain, the\navailability of country pursuits and the emotional tranquillity that comes from\nliving in a peaceful natural environment.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The book\u2019s authors believed that \u201cthere is a real need to think about\nhow best to respond to rural racism and how policy can meet the needs of\nindividuals and families with diverse backgrounds\u201d. They pointed out:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a range of covert and overt processes of racism through which minority\nethnic people are made to feel \u2018othered\u2019 in rural environments.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

subjectively defined \u2018low-level\u2019, or less tangible, types of racism that\ntend to be particularly common features of areas with low minority ethnic\npopulations.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

racism can often be marginalised by rural agencies in deference to other\nproblems that show up more readily in official crime figures<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

introducing elements of diversity, multiculturalism and anti-racism into\nthe classroom is a further challenge to those working in the field,\nparticularly in the rural context where schools may have very few minority\nethnic pupils and familiarity with \u2018other\u2019 cultures may be extremely low<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Crucially, the authors pointed to the complexity of the problem:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

rural racism is not a simple phenomenon: changing cultural norms,\nattitudes, geographical landscapes and political agendas will all impact upon\nthe way in which different forms of racism manifest themselves in different\nforms of rural space, and indeed upon the way in which such behaviour is\ninterpreted and challenged.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since then (2009), in an article titled \u2018is the countryside racist?\u2019<\/a> Sathnam\nSanghera pointed out that racial prejudice was certainly a factor that led to\nethnic minorities feeling uncomfortable in the country:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

all my Asian and black friends have stories of being stared at, country\npubs falling silent on entry, and strangers asking if they can \u201cfeel\u201d their\nhair.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

And thinking about my numerous trips to the country, there are all sorts\nof things I do consciously and unconsciously to avoid such reactions: I\u2019ll\nnever enter a pub with a Union Jack or St George\u2019s Cross flying outside, for\ninstance; will invariably stay in places I know to be popular with other\nLondoners; and will usually travel with someone white.<\/em> Sanghera\nmakes a distinction between ignorance and \u201cracism\u201d and asks us to remember\n\u201cthat people in the country aren\u2019t just hostile to ethnic minorities \u2013 they\u2019re\nhostile to all outsiders.\u201d He also reminds us that the lack of ethnic\nengagement may be a question of class rather than race; a large family can make\nthe visit prohibitively expensive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rural racism is very real<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The other rurally focussed programme is Farming Today on Radio 4. This\nhas had two recent items on race. On 13 June it discussed the problems of\nethnic minorities working in the farming industry. People spoke of suffering\novert and covert racism, such as racist jokes. When asked whether the victim\nhad reported any of it, he said \u201cto report it you\u2019d be reporting it all the\ntime\u201d. In any case he said there was no one to report such problems to. He\nasked the agriculture industry to not be complicit in the problem. \u201cIt should\ntake action to address the problem\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On 20 June, the programme asked: How welcome are black or Asian families\nin rural Britain? It reported on one family taking taxis because they were\nunsafe travelling while black. The family reported \u201cexperiencing racism all the\ntime \u2013 once a week racism, such as being called the N word\u201d. When asked whether\nthe situation had got better, the response was in the negative. \u201cIt\u2019s better\nbut not because there is less racism but because I am better dealing with it\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Professor Neil Chakraborti was interviewed. He was one of the authors of\nthe book \u2018Rural Racism\u2019,  referred to earlier. He said the demographics\nhad changed; there were now more minorities living in rural areas, but the\nenvironment was still not welcoming enough. Like Sanghera above, he spoke of\npeople\u2019s unfamiliarity with difference. He called on all different\ninstitutions- police, health education \u2013 to play their part.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are some good signs of change. Countryfile interviewed the writer\nJulian Glover who had authored a report<\/a>.\nHe said both the two main political parties had supported the report and had\nagreed to act.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For many years now, especially since we moved to the countryside, we have been fans of Countryfile. Everything stops on Sunday evenings. I am even found giving the programme my full attention, without getting side-tracked with gadgets. The programme has become even more attractive since its presenting team have become more diverse. I was pleased … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Is the British countryside (still) a ‘white space’?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1625","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.forwardpartnership.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1625","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.forwardpartnership.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.forwardpartnership.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.forwardpartnership.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.forwardpartnership.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1625"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.forwardpartnership.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1625\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1626,"href":"https:\/\/www.forwardpartnership.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1625\/revisions\/1626"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.forwardpartnership.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.forwardpartnership.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.forwardpartnership.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}