Kemi is right – not all cultures are ‘equal’
by Rakib Ehsan, spiked:
It’s not racist to call out child marriage and misogyny.
Kemi Badenoch’s perfectly legitimate view, that ‘not all cultures are equally valid’ when it comes to deciding who should be allowed to settle in the UK, has been greeted with outrage from the usual suspects.
The UK Tory leadership contender made the point in a piece outlining her approach to immigration for the Sunday Telegraph. She writes that Britain is not simply ‘a dormitory for people to come here and make money’, and that migrants’ cultural backgrounds matter, too. ‘We cannot be naïve and assume immigrants will automatically abandon ancestral ethnic hostilities at the border’, she adds.
She expanded on her op-ed during a discussion last weekend, on the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg. ‘Cultures that believe in child marriage, or that women don’t have equal rights’ are not in line with ‘Western principles’, she said.
None of this should be controversial. Badenoch is right to point out that most politicians only want to talk about the economic impact of immigration – whether positive or negative – on growth, productivity and wages. Too many ignore the cultural impact of immigration. And the truth is that certain migrants from certain backgrounds find it easier to integrate into British society and adopt its liberal democratic values than others.
Badenoch is also correct to warn of the danger of importing ethnic hostilities to the UK, and disrupting domestic community relations. We saw how this can play out in the Leicester riots of 2022. The street battles between youths from Indian and Pakistani backgrounds were sparked, in part, by recent immigration trends in the area. Rob Nixon, the chief constable of Leicestershire Police, said at the time that Leicester had struggled to integrate ‘new and emerging communities’ and pointed out the ‘lack of social or cultural respect’ between them.
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