In 5 pages this paper examines UK multiculturalism in a consideration of race relations development over the past half century. Twelve sources are cited in the bibliography.
Name of Research Paper File: JL5_JLmulticul.rtf
Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
There have been a number of changes in
the pasty fifty years regarding the ethnic composition of Britain and the way in which different cultural groups are regarded by the majority population. During the early part of the
twentieth century, there was a common if misguided perception amongst western cultures that certain racial and ethnic groups were inferior to others and that a certain amount of discrimination and
segregation between groups could be considered as normal and acceptable. Colonial administration by the British in African and Indian countries had for centuries promoted the superiority of whites, and this
was something which the majority of the white British public had grown to accept; as Wolton (2001) points out, it was not until the Second World War that racist references
were edited out of radio broadcasts and other moves initiated to reduce the level of publicly expressed discriminatory material.
Even though there had been a small number of non-white Britons within the population since the sixteenth century, the
first notable influx of black immigrants came in the late 1940s and early 1950s, the government having decided to fill gaps in the labour pool by encouraging migration from the
Caribbean islands which were under British rule. Despite the small number of immigrants involved, this provoked a negative reaction from both politicians and the public, who were of the mistaken
opinion that the immigrants would take white jobs and housing and alter the ethnic balance of the country in a significant way.