Earlier this week I was surprised to learn that the word “immigrant” has become a racial slur. Being unreasonably proud to be an immigrant, to have my roots embedded elsewhere, I was quite taken aback by this new development. I made the discovery purely by accident while reading an article about an altercation that occurred after a football game last Saturday. Some players from the premiership team Manchester United were warming down after a game against Chelsea, when they were involved in a scuffle with the grounds staff. One of the players, Patrice Evra, is a black Frenchman, and was apparently called a “F£$%ing immigrant”.
I suppose the expletive and the tone of the remark, made the spirit in which it was intended obvious, as Evra can been seen, in photos taken at the time, hands forward, tongue sticking out, going for the offending grounds men.
I have previously written about racism in sport and I will not go over old ground. I will simply make a few comments about the reaction to this event, then move on to more pressing matters.
Needless to say, two camps have sprung up, each fighting it’s cause convincingly; there are those that believe the whole thing should be ignored and those that believe it should be dealt with in the most severe manner possible, punishing both the man in question and Chelsea football club, who, together with Manchester United, had wanted to cover the whole thing up. Manchester United grew a conscious over the weekend and decided not to go ahead with the planned joint statement denying anything untoward occurred. Instead, they went and complained to the FA, earning the ire of their premiership rivals in the process. And not surprisingly this is not the first time that a member of the Chelsea staff has been implicated in a situation like this; in 2006 a steward was accused of hurling a racial slur in the direction of Samuel Eto’o, that unfortunate recipient of many a racially motivated insult, during a champions league fixture.
I don’t need to tell you where I stand; it is imperative that the spirit with which the phrase, allegedly directed at Evra, was meant is stamped out of football. The FA must take a stand, after all this is still going on when people are busy chanting the words and wearing t-shirts declaring, “Kick it out”, which is the official UEFA slogan for the campaign to end racism in football. But hey, we have had this discussion.
The interesting thing about this whole foray is that Evra, the insultee, has sort to distance himself from any allegations of racism, probably because he went home, calmed down and realised that being called an immigrant is not, in the great scheme of things, such a bad thing. What I want to know is, when did the ignorant take the word and make it their own?
An immigrant is defined in the Oxford online dictionary as “a person who comes to live permanently in a foreign country.” The great scholars of Oxford University don’t seem to have realised that there is a more sinister definition of the word, a definition created by the government and media in this country. For the three years I have lived in this country there have been headlines vilifying immigrants, turning us into the bogeymen of the UK.
Immigration to the UK is as old as there have been people inhabiting these Isles, though in those days it was not as peaceful as it is now, with Vikings, Normans, Romans and other people invading and occupying the lands that are now known as Britain. Apart from becoming more peaceful it has, in recent years come full circle. Whereas historically settlers had been predominately from Commonwealth countries, they are now mostly from Europe.
The old settlers were easy to spot, the majority being either Black or Asian. They were also easy to insult, as there were several slights available for people of differing colours. The new wave of settlers blend in more easily and have required the creation of new slurs or the resurrection of more historic ones, being as white as (most of) the people who would like to make them feel unwelcome.
The arguments against immigration are the same old ones that have been used against new comers since the first man left his home to visit the people across the river. There has been great debate as to the nature and amount, if any, of immigration that should be allowed. The government has begun to pander to this talk often shifting the goal posts for immigrants by changing the rules. This however, doesn’t really affect the people who have caused this new uproar, as they tend to come from nations that have recently joined the EU and who thus do not require entry permits into the country.
There have been calls that economically the UK cannot absorb the number of immigrants currently coming to its shores. There are, apparently, no jobs for British people let alone the new comers. There is also the claim that the newcomers, being desperate, are taking jobs at lower pay than the natives, driving down wages.
This is, off course, just another xenophobic argument. The United Kingdom has an aging population and a relatively low birth rate. If no immigrants were allowed into the country the size of the working age population supporting the older generations would dwindle meaning that there would be greater pressure on a smaller proportion of the population to support the economy. Many of the immigrants that come to the UK are highly skilled, reflecting the changing needs of the economy.
Immigrants have been blamed for the dilution of English/British culture, but that would be assuming culture is a static thing, which clearly it is not. Tea, for years considered the traditional drink of the English, is not native to these fair isles. Nor is the potato, the required vegetable in the ubiquitous English dish, fish and chips.
As always immigrants have been blamed for the increase in crime though a study last year showed this was not the case and statistics show that the overall crime rate has been falling. And in the midst of all this apparently half of the central and eastern European immigrants have gone home.
So, why this hostility? Well, it is the usual thing, isn’t it? The fear of the unknown fed by irresponsible journalists and capitalised upon by equally rash political parties, has resulted in an innocent noun becoming a vicious insult.
I Now Pronounce You....
So I am now married. The wedding has finally passed and I can live my life as a semi normal person again. Everyone keeps asking me how I feel and I have no idea how I am supposed to answer the question. About my relationship, I feel just as I did before the madness of planning the wedding took over my life. I love him and he makes me happy, he loves me, as I want to be loved and we are adding value to each other’s life, creating happy memories, so it is all gravy.
I am not sure what is supposed to change but from the reaction of the people around me something should have changed. No one person can tell me what but judging from the fear a lot of people have of marriage it is a very big thing, something that can potentially ruin the rest of your life if the transformation is not right. People seem to be looking to see if I am disappointed.
To be honest I am simply relieved, towards the end of the wedding planning process I was fed up and irritated. I was about to run off to Zimbabwe (my husband, being British, would not be very welcome there) but being wise to my state of mind hubby hid my passport.
If I were to be blunt the wedding planning and organising was the worst part of getting married for me. For one thing I was 4,700km away from my wedding venue and planner and secondly my husband, having been ill advised by some single person, decided not to take part in the planning process. This left me to deal with enquiries and demands from his guests as well as mine (who were shockingly well behaved, I suspect because my mother had forewarned them), on top of planning everything practically by myself. This was simply not helpful, as he realised as the wedding day approached and his bride became ever more disinterested, crazy and angry.
But now it is over, and shockingly I even managed to have a good time on the day and now I can go back to my life and my relationship as it was before people began to expect me to be superwoman.
All I have left is people asking me what it feels like to be married (the same as it felt to be in a committed relationship, I just get to publicise the fact that I am off the market by wearing two rings on the second finger of my left hand now) and if I have any pictures. I also get people asking me what my new name is.
This question is of a lot more interest to me than the first because, though the last name I have is not the one with which my father had for the first five years of his life, nor, due to an anomaly, the one I had for the first few years of my own existence, I am very attached to it.
My father acquired his name when he was registered at school at the age of five. I am not sure my great aunt, who took him in that day, had any real concept of the meaning of a surname and simply told the school her husband’s name, being the name of the child’s guardian. This has resulted in my father having a different surname from his siblings.
For sometime various people used my father’s first name as my last name, before my parents had this corrected. Yet despite having started my life with a different last name I greatly identify with the one I have now and I am loath to give it up to take a last name that does not reflect anything about me (apart from the fact that I am married to someone who happens to have that name). Nor could my new name enable people to identify my tribe, country or even continent of origin. It does not belong to me; it is unable to tell people something of my history. It is in short my husband’s name.
Please don’t get me wrong I love my husband very much, I simply don’t see why I have to change my name to prove it. In fact I feel distinctly uncomfortable every time someone refers to me as Mrs because I feel as though I am giving up a very important piece of myself, of my identity.
It is a silly feeling as from what I can tell we did not really have last names in Zambia before we were required to register in the colonial registers. Historic information on African surnames is very hard to come by, but then last names are a recent (relatively) new concept even in Europe, where they were introduced in the late 13th centaury.
There is some indication that everywhere people were referred to by their place of birth, residence or by the identity of their father (or in the case of those whose fathers were unknown fathers, their mother). In some tribes in Zambia, there are still some people whose last names indicate what village they come from.
Despite all this I am still very attached to my own surname, it has been a part of me for as long as I can remember and goes so well with my first name . So what to do? Well, I unilaterally decided that I was going to double barrel my last name, as a compromise. Hence when I am called Mrs Mister, I correct the speaker, my name is now Missus-Mister. My husband doesn’t actually care what I call myself. He is happy as long as I am his wife and I love him, which will be the case regardless of what I call myself.
My next mission is to work on him to ensure that the children (that we don’t yet have) will also be called Missus-Mister…
I am not sure what is supposed to change but from the reaction of the people around me something should have changed. No one person can tell me what but judging from the fear a lot of people have of marriage it is a very big thing, something that can potentially ruin the rest of your life if the transformation is not right. People seem to be looking to see if I am disappointed.
To be honest I am simply relieved, towards the end of the wedding planning process I was fed up and irritated. I was about to run off to Zimbabwe (my husband, being British, would not be very welcome there) but being wise to my state of mind hubby hid my passport.
If I were to be blunt the wedding planning and organising was the worst part of getting married for me. For one thing I was 4,700km away from my wedding venue and planner and secondly my husband, having been ill advised by some single person, decided not to take part in the planning process. This left me to deal with enquiries and demands from his guests as well as mine (who were shockingly well behaved, I suspect because my mother had forewarned them), on top of planning everything practically by myself. This was simply not helpful, as he realised as the wedding day approached and his bride became ever more disinterested, crazy and angry.
But now it is over, and shockingly I even managed to have a good time on the day and now I can go back to my life and my relationship as it was before people began to expect me to be superwoman.
All I have left is people asking me what it feels like to be married (the same as it felt to be in a committed relationship, I just get to publicise the fact that I am off the market by wearing two rings on the second finger of my left hand now) and if I have any pictures. I also get people asking me what my new name is.
This question is of a lot more interest to me than the first because, though the last name I have is not the one with which my father had for the first five years of his life, nor, due to an anomaly, the one I had for the first few years of my own existence, I am very attached to it.
My father acquired his name when he was registered at school at the age of five. I am not sure my great aunt, who took him in that day, had any real concept of the meaning of a surname and simply told the school her husband’s name, being the name of the child’s guardian. This has resulted in my father having a different surname from his siblings.
For sometime various people used my father’s first name as my last name, before my parents had this corrected. Yet despite having started my life with a different last name I greatly identify with the one I have now and I am loath to give it up to take a last name that does not reflect anything about me (apart from the fact that I am married to someone who happens to have that name). Nor could my new name enable people to identify my tribe, country or even continent of origin. It does not belong to me; it is unable to tell people something of my history. It is in short my husband’s name.
Please don’t get me wrong I love my husband very much, I simply don’t see why I have to change my name to prove it. In fact I feel distinctly uncomfortable every time someone refers to me as Mrs because I feel as though I am giving up a very important piece of myself, of my identity.
It is a silly feeling as from what I can tell we did not really have last names in Zambia before we were required to register in the colonial registers. Historic information on African surnames is very hard to come by, but then last names are a recent (relatively) new concept even in Europe, where they were introduced in the late 13th centaury.
There is some indication that everywhere people were referred to by their place of birth, residence or by the identity of their father (or in the case of those whose fathers were unknown fathers, their mother). In some tribes in Zambia, there are still some people whose last names indicate what village they come from.
Despite all this I am still very attached to my own surname, it has been a part of me for as long as I can remember and goes so well with my first name . So what to do? Well, I unilaterally decided that I was going to double barrel my last name, as a compromise. Hence when I am called Mrs Mister, I correct the speaker, my name is now Missus-Mister. My husband doesn’t actually care what I call myself. He is happy as long as I am his wife and I love him, which will be the case regardless of what I call myself.
My next mission is to work on him to ensure that the children (that we don’t yet have) will also be called Missus-Mister…
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)