Immigration and Racism in Britain and USA

I don't know if whinner is an insult but, imo, it's no worse than obtuse..!

Zahid Mubarek was not much of a criminal. His few offences, committed after he fell into drug-taking, were mostly petty and he clearly regretted them.

Robert Stewart was a known psychopath. He had RIP tattooed on his forehead. He held extreme racist views and expressed violent intentions towards ethnic minorities.

A month before he murdered Zahid, he wrote: "If I do not get bail on the 7th, I'll take xtreme measures to get shipped out, kill me f****n' padmate if I have to, bleach me sheets and pillowcase white and make a Ku Klux Klan outfit and walk out me pad wiv a flaming crucifix."

A racist murder waiting to happen

(Filed: 30/06/2006)

The litany of failure preceeding the murder of Zahid Mubarek in the Feltham Young Offender Institution in 2000 disgraces the Prison Service. To put Mubarek, a convicted petty thief, in a cell with his eventual killer, Robert Stewart, was an act of idiocy. Stewart is a psychopath. He had written letters in which he talked of "niggers" and "Paki bastards". In an act of almost criminal dereliction, he had been allowed, a few days before he murdered Mubarek, to watch a violent film portraying neo-Nazis fighting Asians. Stewart gave numerous other indications both of his propensity for violence and his racialist bigotry while at Feltham. These were ignored by staff, 19 of whom - from the then governor down - were named in Mr Justice Keith's report on the killing as having been derelict in their duties. The judge makes 88 recommendations for improving custody: perhaps the most significant of these is that either more money must be invested in prisons, or the numbers in them must be cut.

The report also records disgusting behaviour by warders, whose culture of racism included the routine reference to ethnic minority prisoners as "monkeys" and "black bastards". It is a fundamental point of our legal and penal systems that all must be treated equally. In such a culture, Mubarek hardly stood a chance. Feltham was already defined as a failing institution, yet the governor sent to improve it, Niall Clifford, is condemned by Mr Justice Keith. So is his then deputy, John Byrd, who was supposed to be the prison's race relations officer. Perhaps this is why Feltham is now accused, like the Metropolitan Police at the time of the Stephen Lawrence inquiry, of "institutional murder" and why, in one of his more controversial recommendations, the judge suggests a new definition of "institutional religious intolerance".

These labels are dangerous. Racial and religious bigotries are manifestations of the spirit of individuals and their own motives. They must be confronted individually. Institutions, by contrast, embody a variety of people, many of whom would not subscribe to such an offensive prevailing culture. The labels might make good soundbites, but they will do nothing to address this cancerous problem of ill-motivated and incompetent people running our prisons. When petty criminals go to prison and die at the hands of evil cellmates, there are evidently problems that need to be addressed by recourse to firm management, not to the mantras of sociology. Prison plays a vital part in our justice system. Those who deserve the punishment must be incarcerated. But if they are, when in prison, forced to endure a fate not decreed by justice, then the whole basis of our system of imprisonment is undermined: and so, too, is our rule of law.

I think psychopathy can and should be seperated from racism, even though this particular psychopath rode that particular vehicle of extreme behaviour.

Non-psychopathic racism is more like real racism to me. You can't judge the standards of the average Christian by a psychopath who murders prostitutes because God told him to.

Francis wrote:

I don't know if whinner is an insult but, imo, it's no worse than obtuse..!

Aah.. so it was this one other thread, the only one we've ever clashed on before I bashed Portugal's football, where Chai, Reyn and I thought you were "acting obtuse", that stuck in your craw so.

Well, ok, if you think "whiner", "screg of humankind", "racist and crappy company", "cheater" and "inherently racist" are all merely an equivalent answer to "Oh c'mon Francis, dont act obtuse," thats eh, your prerogative.

Huh. I would have thought it damn near impossible to not like Nimh, let alone consider him a screg of humankind. Racist? No offense Francis, but you're way out there on this one.

But if you want, do a search and you'll find more of the reasons I dislike you. [..]

And it's also my right to think, deeply, that you are a screg of humankind...

The one thing these kids did have in common was that they all lived in London, and at times I had to stop myself telling them they didn't know how lucky they were.
Sure. London isn't perfect, and there are some boroughs both blacks and whites consider no-go zones (I cycled along the canal to Enfiled last weekend but wouldn't go ino a pub because I got bad vibes from all-white crowd sitting outside), but there is a reason why 45 per cent of ethnic minoroties in the UK choose to live here, and it's got nothing to do with the streets being paved with gold (LOndon may hold opportunity but it's also expensive, unwiedldy and lonely to any newcomer).
When I am asked to articulate the difference bewteen London and the rest of Britain, I always give the same answer: for a black person who has grown up elsewhere in the UK, coming to London is like finding Jesus.