Westminster Bridge

• 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.

How multiculturalism actually exists

• 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.

The picture today

• 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.