Black archbishop attacks multiculturalism
-22/11/05
Britain’s first black archbishop h
Black archbishop attacks multiculturalism
-22/11/05
Britain’s first black archbishop has launched a forceful critique of multiculturalism which, he argues, has denied English people the right to celebrate their history and national identity.
John Sentamu, who will be enthroned as Archbishop of York next week, told the Times: “Multiculturalism has seemed to imply, wrongly for me, let other cultures be allowed to express themselves but do not let the majority culture at all tell us its glories, its struggles, its joys, its pains.”
Dr Sentamu, who sat as a judge in Uganda before being ordained in Cambridge in the late 1970s, also urged the English to stop being shy about celebrating St George’s Day.
“I speak as a foreigner really,” he said. “The English are somehow embarrassed about some of the good things they have done. They have done some terrible things but not all the empire was a bad idea. Because the empire has gone there is almost the sense in which there is not a big idea that drives this nation.”
The bishop, who has himself received racist hate mail warned that England would only experience further political extremism if it failed to reconnect with its roots.
“I think we have not engaged with English culture as it has developed,” he said. “When you ask a lot of people in this country, ‘What is English culture?’ they are very vague. It is a culture that whether we like it or not has given us parliamentary democracy. It is the mother of it. It is the mother of arguing that if you want a change of government, you vote them in or you vote them out.”
Dr Sentamu is the latest high-profile figure to wade into the social debate that began last year when Trevor Phillips, the chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality, said multiculturalism promoted “separateness” between communities instead of encouraging integration.
He has also recently challenged the church to face up to its own racism
Black archbishop attacks multiculturalism
-22/11/05
Britain’s first black archbishop has launched a forceful critique of multiculturalism which, he argues, has denied English people the right to celebrate their history and national identity.
John Sentamu, who will be enthroned as Archbishop of York next week, told the Times: “Multiculturalism has seemed to imply, wrongly for me, let other cultures be allowed to express themselves but do not let the majority culture at all tell us its glories, its struggles, its joys, its pains.”
Dr Sentamu, who sat as a judge in Uganda before being ordained in Cambridge in the late 1970s, also urged the English to stop being shy about celebrating St George’s Day.
“I speak as a foreigner really,” he said. “The English are somehow embarrassed about some of the good things they have done. They have done some terrible things but not all the empire was a bad idea. Because the empire has gone there is almost the sense in which there is not a big idea that drives this nation.”
The bishop, who has himself received racist hate mail warned that England would only experience further political extremism if it failed to reconnect with its roots.
“I think we have not engaged with English culture as it has developed,” he said. “When you ask a lot of people in this country, ‘What is English culture?’ they are very vague. It is a culture that whether we like it or not has given us parliamentary democracy. It is the mother of it. It is the mother of arguing that if you want a change of government, you vote them in or you vote them out.”
Dr Sentamu is the latest high-profile figure to wade into the social debate that began last year when Trevor Phillips, the chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality, said multiculturalism promoted “separateness” between communities instead of encouraging integration.
He has also recently challenged the church to face up to its own racism