You have to read this Blink piece on Brum through the usual filter, discounting for :
"it's not racism - it's poverty"
"communities should unite against the REAL enemy"
Nonetheless as a roundup of recent events it seems factually OK. Some fine irony too.
The Asian population is also growing at a rapid rate, while the small African Caribbean population is actually declining in size.
As a city, Birmingham competing with Leicester to become Britain’s first ethnic majority city, a barrier that one or both conurbations is expected to achieve by 2010.
However African-Caribbean’s make up just 60,000 out of a total population of one million.
An under-reported factor is the population shift silently taking place, as the traditionally Caribbean neighbourhood of Handsworth, scene of a riot in 1985, is now predominately an Asian district.
Asian entrepreneurs have been busy buying up shops and houses, while the Caribbean community are migrating to Erdington, which is becoming known as “the new Handsworth.”
I like that 'traditionally'.
I watched the DVD of the Baggies 1968 cup win a while back - including the triumphal open-top coach journey to West Bromwich town hall. The film shows a completely vanished landscape of shops - and people.
Well, Of Course We Will, Emma…
5 hours ago
3 comments:
I wonder if that's the traditionally English Erdington?
I visited a hospital twice last week, I saw a lot of very old whites struggling around with walking sticks.
Of the children I saw, very few were white English. (infact I don't remember seeing any)
I've nothing against the 'non-whites' everyone I met infact was really nice.
But that doesn't stop me erm wondering what happened.. watching a film from just 15-20-30 years ago shows a totally different country.
At this rate of change we white English aren't going to be around for long.
I got a bit of a temporary job working in a sheltered housing project for people with mental illnesses around there. I'm from the 'country'. One day I had to take a couple to the health clinic round the corner. I've obviously led a sheltered life and it was a real emotional experience to see these two sad aboriginals marooned in this area which has almost no sign left of its past population, their ancestors. I desperately wanted to ask them about how they felt but couldn't. It was quite some sensation. Like, historical ...What I was seeing was 'invisible' to the population. 'Soon we will be gone,' said uncle Monty didn't he?
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