Dear Sir/Madam,

 

In yesterday's Guardian, Gary Younge expresses the following view: "The notion that fixed national identities are being contaminated by fluid foreign bodies is as fundamentalist and obnoxious as anything you hear out of Riyadh or Utah" (Convert or be damned). That makes me, and I suspect quite a large majority of the native (as opposed to immigrant) British population, in Mr Younge's eyes at least, an obnoxious fundamentalist, and no doubt a "racist" to boot.

 

It seems to me, especially in view of another article of his I responded to more than a year ago ("The wrong way round", 8 September 03), that Mr Younge has a very stilted (i.e. black immigrant-biased) view of the world (particularly Britain) and of his place in it.

 

Britain, like the rest of Europe and many other parts of the world, is NOT a country of immigrants, but has a very large indigenous, mixed but nevertheless closely related (fair-skinnned) European, population, who have been native to this part of the world since they first colonised it thousands of years ago. Over the course of the past 2-3000 years they created Western Civilisation, with a bit of help from Asia and the Near East, but next to nothing at all from sub-Saharan Africa, where Mr Younge, I believe, originates from. British and European history are, I am afraid, whether we like it or not (and some people obviously don't), hideously white. Although, the way things are going, I fear that in years to come the guardians of political correctness will be airbrushing racial diversity into that too, making the "Black Knight" really black, perhaps and giving one of the first astronauts to land on the Moon at least some Negroid features (justified by the "racism" that sent only European Americans there).

 

Everyone is allowed to be proud, and even outspoken, about their particular racial or ethnic origins and identity, except, it seems, ethnic Europeans. When we do it, we are being "racist". Why are we so full of self-hate? I suppose Hitler and the Nazis have a lot to do with it, with their insane and criminal misuse of the concept of race, but centuries of Christian indoctrination about original sin and our innate wickedness ("Every day I need God's forgiveness", says the Bishop of Liverpool, The Rt Rev James Jones), now incorporated into liberal/left-wing doctrine (racism taking the place of original sin), is also much to blame.

 

The thing about "racism", however (not how it is defined in the dictionary, but how it is now generally understood as any sense of racial identity among Europeans; but not, of course, among other races) is that it IS innate: all human beings are biologically programmed to favour people genetically most like themselves and their immediate family (which makes good evolutionary sense). Nobody would dream of denying the existence (and value) of family affection and loyalties, yet when Europeans extend these affections and loyalties (in appropriately diluted form) to their extended and super-extended family, before they know it they are being accused of racism.

 

Most black people identify with other black people (thus their need for black role models, "black history", "black culture", "black music" etc.), and most Europeans (white people) are no different, except that when we do it we see it as a sin and accuse ourselves of being racist (i.e. wicked). Thus, we suppress it and pretend that race doesn't matter. But it does. It matters a lot, and we have to learn to live with it and manage it properly, rather than suppressing it. If we carry on suppressing it, sooner or later it will break out in an ugly and tragic form.

 

We need to recognise that Europe is NOT America, where the vast majority of people (including all white Americans) are immigrants. That is a fundamental and very important difference. The only Americans with a just claim to "be-long" in America more than others are native Americans - because they have lived there for a long, long time. In Europe, and many other parts of the world, it is still a very large and dominant native population that has a similarly justified claim to be-long there more than others. That can (and will, if we continue to pursue Gary Younge's vision) produce a very dangerous situation with potentially (probably inevitably) tragic consequences.

 

I know that most left-wing liberals (and all Guardian readers and writers) have the best intentions, but you are behaving as many well-meaning Christian parents once did, forcing morality into their children and making them suppress their natural (especially sexual) inclinations. Tragically, what you achieve is likely to be the very opposite of what you desire.

 

Gary Younge's attitude posses the question as to whether it is me who has a problem with my own "innate racism", or whether it is he who has a problem being a black person in a white man's world. I'm biased, of course, and inclined to think that it is he who has the problem. Because it IS a "white man's world", certainly in Europe. If people from other races and cultures want to come and live here, firstly they should only be allowed to do so in moderate numbers, and secondly they should treat Europeans, their culture and history (which is multicultural enough, thank you very much, and more-or-less monoracial) with the same respect they would wish Europeans to show in their country of origin.

 

I would like this letter to provoke a debate on the subject of race and immigration, but I suspect that you are all still far too suppressed and scared  - just as the Victorians were about sex. Or you belong to that rare breed of individuals who are completely "aracial", and like asexual people are unable to understand the passions, joys and dangers that race (sex) can elicit.

 

Granted, it IS a difficult, and frightening, subject, and talking about it honestly can lead to excesses (it certainly did with sex, but that was/is greatly aggravated by its selling power in an amoral economy dominated by money-making); but not taking about it (or only within the constraints of political correctness, i.e. bending over backwards so as not to offend anyone) is far more dangerous.

 

Most of us, I'm sure, have "racist" feelings of one sort or another, just as most of us have sexual feelings. If we want to avoid racial and sexual violence we have to stop suppressing them and instead talk about them and manage them in a socially acceptable, but also realistic manner.

 

The letter I wrote in September 03 in response to Gary Younge's other article (Race and immigration - from the perspective of a "Native Briton").