Debating the 'success' of multiculturalism misses the point – it's simply part of life in Britain today

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I am a historian of multiculturalism, and grew up in Balsall Heath, an area of Birmingham with a decades-long history of rich cultural diversity.

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Tuesday, October 3, 2023

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I am a historian of multiculturalism, and grew up in Balsall Heath, an area of Birmingham with a decades-long history of rich cultural diversity.
My experience of multiculturalism is not as something that can fail or succeed, but as something that shaped my life and that of my peers in a meaningful way.
Comments like Braverman’s – and indeed, other politicians before her – ignore the reality of what multiculturalism means to people.
Others thought the language of multiculturalism was patronising and tokenistic, and did little to address the real issues faced by non-white groups.

What both sides of the debate miss is the extent to which multiculturalism is not only a policy or a political agenda, but a way of life.
This is most apparent in Britain’s major cities, where immigrants from the Caribbean, South Asia and elsewhere settled in the 1950s and 60s.
When I grew up in the same area in the 1990s, more than 75% of local residents were from ethnic minority backgrounds.

In 1942, it was estimated that fewer than 5% of the population had experienced any direct contact with someone from an ethnic minority background.
Birmingham had become one of two cities in which a majority of residents were from ethnic minority populations.
The kind of diversity that I experienced in the 1990s is now a central pillar of the fabric of modern Britain.