Remembering Dr King is not enough

Today is the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom when Dr Martin Luther King Jr delivered his “I have a dream” speech. 

It is one of the finest pieces of rhetoric in modern times. Not surprising since Dr King was a preacher who understood the power of words. He moved the 250,000 people who stood before him in front of the Lincoln Memorial and countless others across the US and the rest of the world. I know my parents and their contemporaries struggling for freedom in South Africa felt he was speaking to them when he envisaged a future in which his “ four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character”. 

It was a powerful speech and one that we should all read again today.  We can reflect that much has changed since that August day half a century ago. We have seen African American men and women achieve amazing things. They have become mayors and Supreme Court judges, generals and admirals, Congress men and women and Secretaries of State. We have seen the election not once but twice of Barack Obama as President of the United States. 

But before we get all dewy-eyed about it, let us also remember that there is still so much more to do.  Let us remember that the racial disparities within the US remain stark. The life chances of both Hispanic and African-Americans are worse than that of their white counterparts. This is perhaps seen most vividly when it comes to the criminal justice system.  For example although Hispanic and African-American make up under 30 per cent of the US population, they make up around 60 per cent of the US prison population. A staggering 1 in every 15 African American men and 1 in every 36 Hispanic men are incarcerated in comparison to 1 in every 106 white men. And if you are an African American man who didn’t finish high school you have a one in three chance of being incarcerated.  

One consequence of these dramatic ethnic disparities in the criminal justice system is that state laws which remove the right to vote from people with felony convictions (5.3 million Americans denied the vote so far and counting) has a greater impact on Hispanic and African-American men. As a result 13 per cent of all African American men have been disenfranchised, in 11 states this amounts to more than 10 per cent of their African American population.

I don’t think Dr King would have been proud today. I think he would be standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial demanding that we do more.

Mother tongues

"Polish now the second most common language in England and Wales" proclaimed the Sun yesterday. When I heard this I was a little perplexed. I mean I live in London, in a neighbourhood with a very diverse ethnic mix, including lots of Poles, but I haven't really noticed huge numbers of people speaking Polish. So I delved into the detail.

According to the latest census data released by the ONS, over 92 per cent of people in England and Wales speak English as their main language (English or Welsh in Wales) and fewer than 0.5 per cent of people (137,511) do not speak English at all. Polish is the main language spoken by 546,000 people. They together with the speakers of the other top five other main languages (Punjabi, Urdu, Bengali and Gujarati) number about 1.5 million people, almost all of whom speak English as well. For the record some 570,000 people in Wales and England speak Welsh (but to be fair to the Sun, it is unlikely to be their main language). 

So now we know. Far from being flooded by immigrants who are diluting British culture and robbing the nation of the English language itself. Even in London, one of the world's great melting pots, 80 per cent of people use English as their main language. That is the same as the national figure for the United States. 

Immigration is not to be feared but embraced. Immigrants enhance British culture, contribute to the economy. Immigrants don't steal jobs, they aren't welfare scroungers. A National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESCR) report last January found that the number of migrant workers coming to the UK over the previous decade had had little or no impact on joblessness, with "no association" between rising immigration and an increase in unemployment benefit claims.

I should declare an interest here. I am an immigrant, actually an asylum seeker, although when my family came we were called political refugees, in our case my parents were fleeing the apartheid regime. We probably wouldn't have qualified under current asylum rules, so it is just as well we arrived when we did. We were allowed to stay, stayed long enough to acquire British citizenship and we are still here. Britain is our home.  

I think we have made pretty good citizens as well. My dad got work straight away and worked hard every day  until he retired on a state pension. My sisters do proper jobs in the public sector adding value to people's lives for small reward. And I pay my taxes (to be clear my whole family pays their taxes but compared to my sisters that is the only contribution I feel can claim). Yes, we have benefited from this country's education and health systems but I believe we have made in our own ways our own contributions to the health and well being of Britain.  

Our story is typical of so many immigrants. We come, we settle, we assimilate, we make our mark. How dull Britain would be without all of the things which immigrants have brought? I could list all the wonderful thing immigrants have contributed to science, technology, the arts and medicine but I will be obvious and list some of the food we would be without: fish and chips, curry, spaghetti, sushi, hamburgers, yams, and sourdough bread which thanks to the Poles is now available in my corner shop every day of the week.