How to promote community cohesion: discriminate against whites

The Commission on Integration and Cohesion has today published its report (pdf) on how to bring everyone together in a wonderful multicultural paradise. Apparently, if we follow their instructions, by 2020 we will all be joining hands and singing Kumbaya, as we celebrate the wonderful transformation of Britain, into a country which is home to everyone, except the native British.

Among the Commission's recommendations that have attracted publicity are:

1. Immigrants should be given guidance on the British way of life.

Well, this seems like a quite good idea. Unfortunately such guidance will not address any real discrepancies between the behaviour of immigrants and the traditional British way of life, but will focus on such minor things as telling immigrants not to jump the queue at the post office, or spit in the street. While, it is, of course, desirable that those who do such things should be discouraged, I would far rather see immigrants taught that, for example, in Britain, criticising a dead paedophile is not grounds for beheading.

2. Political parties should ensure that they pick candidates who reflect the ethnic make-up of the local electorate.

We do sometimes hear calls for this. These are usually couched in terms of the candidates being "too white". It seems that the common perception among players of racial politics is that a white candidate can never represent a community which is less than 80% white, but that it is racist to suggest that a non-white candidate cannot represent an overwhelmingly white constituency. This would appear to be the view of the Commission on Integration and Cohesion as well. After all, when they talk about representatives reflecting the ethnic make-up of those they represent, I doubt they were talking about Adam Afriyie representing the approximately 92% white people of Windsor.

3. "Targeted recruitment" to increase the number of non-white council employees.

So, to increase community cohesion, councils should discriminate against white people. Actually, this seems pretty much par for the course for the race relations industry.

4. Establishing a "rapid rebuttal" unit to counter criticisms of immigration.

This again is quite typical of the response of the liberal elite to any criticism of its multicultural social experiment. Rather than pay attention to people's legitimate concerns, they simply try to trick people into believing that all is well. It's the game they've been playing for years and years without success, but that doesn't seem likely to stop them.

There are a few decent ideas in there, such as plans to put more pressure on immigrants to speak English. But as ever, the report seems more concerned with minor matters, or with propagandising on behalf of mass immigration than with really dealing with the concerns of the populace. We now have close to 600,000 immigrants coming into Britain each year. Perhaps cohesion would be better promoted by limiting this number, than by trying to inculcate in people's minds a false belief that immigration on this scale is a good thing. And perhaps more efforts should be made to understand why a native population which is seeing its culture constantly undermined and eroded, and itself constantly vilified, is not overly keen on experiencing more of the same. But I don't think we can expect to see any of that from the race relations industry, for whom there can never be too many immigrants, nor too strong an assault on the indigenous culture.