Essay On Rushdie's The New Empire Within Britain

Between racism and acceptance. Between old and new. Between the EU and the U.S. In all things Britain performs this balancing act. An act that often, more often not, than to edges into hypocrisy. They proclaim “Chicken Tikka Massala is now a true British national dish,” all the while alienating and pushing out the Indian population that created said dish. They are all too happy to wholly accept white immigrants,but push against non-white immigrants. Purely on the color of their skin. Continued reference to the “pink world” is no doubt a call to the skin color of Britain’s national identity. This phrase was used, not only in Alibhai-Brown, but also in Rushdie’s “The New Empire Within Britain”; “pink conquerors," “Great Pink Age.” This pink …show more content…
The word degrades those it clings to, yet those native Black (or Indian or Paki etc.) britons who deny the word “are announcing their acceptance of white perception which see third world immigrants as a blight upon this nice landscape.” The struggle comes in balancing perceptions in neither idolizing the west or persecuting the south and east. It is like you cannot be both. You are either British, completely rejecting all cultural heritage of the country your parents came from, or you or (insert immigrant country here…Indian, Pakistani, etc). People change their names for being “too disagreeably ethnic… refuse to describe [themselves] as Asian [etc.]” These non white immigrants (many not even immigrants…maybe their parents or grandparents were) are never truly seen as British. Their ‘home’ is always thought of to be whatever land their skin tone hails from. Powell sees immigrants as an “alien element,” having no right to be here, fit only for re-immigration. And even many immigrants themselves support these strict immigration laws. Why does living among people different from themselves make white britons “strangers in their own country?” To “become more English [is to become] even more