New data suggest a link between cultural background and dysfunctional families. We must not downplay the effects of culture on family life. We must not deny reality any longer.
While I realise perfectly well that any story emanating from the Daily Mail will (in most cases, correctly) be ignored by most folks – and seized upon as another example of Tory evil by the Left – when the Mail is simply quoting an official government source of information, it is at least worth checking that source. I’ve just done that (hat-tip here to @NeilDotObrien) and, unfortunately, the Mail story is correct in every detail I can ascertain.
In turn, the reason the post below might lose The Slog followers (and gain me new ones I don’t want) is because it seems hard not to reach some obvious conclusions from the article. I have, as it happens, gone beyond that Mail piece to further support what it’s driving at.
It’s a piece about the family in Britain, and the findings should blow away forever all the Vazs, Milibands, Harmans, Mays and other insightfully challenged idiots who persist in saying, “This is all media invention, and not a situation I recognise on the ground”. It won’t, of course: but it should. These are the key facts, as recorded by the ONS – which only released them following an FOI request:
*There are close to 2million single-parent families in the UK and we have the highest proportion of children brought up in one-parent families of any major European country.
*In seven areas of the country, single parents are now the majority household type.
*The single-majority areas are all inner city areas of London, Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham and Leeds.
* The highest concentration is in Lewisham, where 58% of households with children are headed by lone parents.
The contemporary pc-influenced term for data that go against what one might expect is ‘counter-intuitive’. Dare I suggest that, as readers skim down that list above, the data aren’t remotely counter-intuitive? Well sod it, I will anyway. Here are some more facts that are equally predictable:
*In the rural district of South Northamptonshire, just one in every 20 family units is headed by a single parent.
*The non-White population of the UK is concentrated in the large urban centres. (Another ONS source)
*Referring back to the five cities mentioned above, 45% of non-White people live in London, and the second largest proportions are in the West Midlands (with 13% of the non-White population), followed by the South East (8%), the North West (8%), and Yorkshire and the Humber (7%).
*61% of Black Caribbeans and 54% of Bangladeshis live in London.
*Lewisham has the highest concentration of black Caribbeans in the country
*57% of Pakistanis live in the West Midlands, the North West, or Yorkshire…almost equally.
Now, were these data relating to any subject other than ethnicity and gender, we would be presented here with an obvious hypothesis, and thus go on ask two further questions, viz:
1. What is the incidence of Caribbean/near-Asian representation among one-parent households in these areas, versus the UK as a whole?
2. How do those figures compare with other EU countries?
I doubt very much if that’s going to happen, because what I suspect it would show is that ethnicity – race, to give it the old-fashioned name – is a red herring, and that the real differentiator here is culture.
Certainly, the history of British social research in the past has been one of what the shrinks call ‘avoidance behaviour’ – that is to say, never asking about the trio of elephants on the sofa. For example, a study looking at 2004-8 data conducted by the Equality & Human Rights Commission was called ‘Ethnicity and Family’: and yet the one statistic entirely missing from this exhaustive document was family size and composition by ehtnicity. That’s a little like conducting a survey of banker irresponsibility without measuring the difference between the retail and investment divisions.
For me, this is yet another case of socio-political Establishments refusing to recognise a problem until it gets so out of control, violence and bitterness can be the only outcomes. And once again, it has nothing to do with Left and Right.
Whatever you think about last year’s riots, the overwhelming majority of those who took part felt alienated from, and ignored by, the neocon society we seem intent on creating. They had in turn been through an education system and familial background that led them to believe they had every right to (and nothing to lose by) trashing their own environment.
And when it comes to the multicultural society, you can’t say it’s what you want and then put on a sleeping eye-mask when some potentially destabilising consequences are revealed. The reality suggested by these data is that the most vulnerable in our society are more likely (cf their incidence in the host population as a whole) to be Afro-Caribbeans, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis. For some reason, they do not appear to be Chinese, Indian, Jewish, Arab, Irish, Polish, Italian, Caucasian middle class, homosexual, or Methodists. That reason, I repeat, is culture.
Sorry about this, but some autobiography is necessary here. I realise this irritates immigrants from Trollitania, but frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn. I was brought up among a large Jewish minority. My Dad was Catholic and my Mum Protestant. I nearly married a Chinese girl in my twenties. I lived in Brixton for seven years, and went through two riots. My first wife was Scottish, and my second is Welsh. I spend half the year in France, my grand-niece is American, and my younger daughter lives in Australia. I am anti-EU but very pro European diversity. I am not and never have been a member of any Right-wing Party. I am not a racist, or a bigot. But I am a radical in believing that denial of the empirical has, over the last eighty years, given us the Nazis, trade union Communist wreckers, an expansionist USSR, pc fascism, EU corruption, banker criminality, an overcrowded UK, Iranian nuclear capability, community meltdown, politicised police, money-driven politics, and Islamist intolerance. If you represent any Party peddling hatred and victimisation, piss off: you are not welcome here.
The Slog 