I see a lot of talk in the news at the moment about immigration, and I see a lot of talk in the Bible about it too. For some reason, a lot of Christians don't seem to like the Biblical model.
There is a pretty clear outline for dealing with immigration in Leviticus, and it goes something like this: 33 “When a stranger sojourns with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong. 34 You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.”
Sounds quite different to 'send them back', and 'build a wall', and 'let's lock their children in cages and terrify them'.
I am aware that I'm comparing Bible times to modern times, but however good your interpretation, they sound to be the exact opposite, at least to me anyway.
A lot has to do with power, believe it or not. The Bible is reminding its people how they were once immigrants, how they were not the original occupiers of a land. And that's an interesting time. When someone doesn't have power, they want to be treated fairly, they can see the faults in the system and they make promises that, should they ever get into power, then things will be different. Things will be fairer.
In just a short time, that all changes. The people of the Bible get into power and treat others just the way they were treated, even knowing how much it hurt them.
I find some of these racist arguments quite absurd. I'm not saying that it's humorous, indeed no, for the people who are suffering their suffering is quite serious, real, and painful. What I mean is that the people who hold these views are usually quite ignorant of history.
Being Welsh, I find the idea of the English Defence League (or whatever they are calling themselves these days) to be quite deficient in their understanding of history. The English, those of Saxon or Bretton origins, telling 'foreigners' that they aren't welcome in the Celtic homeland.
As I just mentioned, I am Welsh. In my native tongue it's Cymru. Welsh is an old Saxon word meaning 'foreigner'. Yes, when the Saxons invaded they called the natives 'foreigners'.
And then, of course, there's the Americas. It wasn't empty when Columbus, an Italian sailing from Spain, so quite a bit of Latin and Hispanic connections there, 'discovered' it.
The Trail of Tears and Manifest Destiny can attest to that.
And yet at the moment a lot of people with European ancestry are getting their knickers in a twist because some people with slightly redder skin than theirs are trying to make a better life for their families.
Of course the attitudes towards those of African descent cannot, and never should be, underplayed. Either forced to work the land as cheap labour (i.e. slave labour) or invited as with the Windrush generation, once given the least bit of equality find themselves no longer welcome, or 'uninvited'. It does seem as though we are placing power and wealth over people.
No one blog, especially this one, can even come close to solving the immigration issue, all I'm asking is, for you who read this, to stop for a while and consider the above verse from the Bible and just to check if how you speak, and how you vote, reflects any part of the above commandment.
The type of racism we see in the news is somewhat obvious, and I have no doubt that you good people reading this would have anything to do with that. What we don't always spot is the polite racism. Or the 'from from' question.
University is a great place, it's a wonderful mixing pot of people from all over the country, and often other countries too. It's not an uncommon question to ask someone: 'Where are you from?'.
I get asked it a lot, and when I hear different accents, I will ask that question myself. The issue comes when dealing with people of a different skin colour, because I have never heard this conversation with anyone who is white.
Where are you from?
London
But where are you from from?
London is one of the largest and most diverse cities in the world. Is it that hard to believe that someone born there might be black?
The danger with this question is that we automatically imply that person just doesn't belong in Britain. Remember what I said earlier about the meaning of the word Welsh? We're doing just the same thing.
There's a chap I speak with often at my local coffee shop. Us locals know him, he's hard to miss, he's the only black man living within a two mile radius. We stop and chat about music since he's a DJ on a regional radio hosting the soul music hour.
He's a little bit older than I am and he remembers well the Sus Laws, where black youths would routinely be stopped and searched. Things haven't changed that much only he is no longer a youth so he faces it slightly less frequently. And he was born right here in Wales. His family moved to London where he was repeatedly asked the question: Where are you from?
He was also repeatedly harassed by the police when his answer was Wales. He had never been to Jamaica, where his grandparents were born. He had never lived anywhere outside the UK, neither had his parents. And yet he was always made to feel like an outsider.
It's only something little, but the little things make a big difference in peoples lives.
Maybe we aren't able to change the big immigration issue, but it's easy to not ask the 'from from' question.
I hope this helps just a little, and if you've come across any such 'from from' questions, please do feel free to tell me about them.
God bless.
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