University of Virginia Library

The Cost Of Whiteness

While many people in the United States
have already begun to ask anxious questions
over what another long hot summer
in the cities will bring, Britain's recent
racial problems have slipped by almost unnoticed.

The Labor government has adopted a
policy towards would-be colored immigrants
to Britain which has affected some half
million people in Kenya, Malaysia, Singapore,
South Yemen and the West Indies.

The legislation limits the right of free
entry to Britain of citizens of the United
Kingdom and the Colonies who are not
British by their own, their parents' or their
grandparents' birth or by registration. The
reason for the action is that some 100,000
people of Asian origin who—largely because
the British government had suggested that
they might wish to retain their British
loyalties—had declined to accept the Kenyan
citizenship nominally offered to them when
Kenya became independent in 1963. These
Kenyan Asians have spent most of their
lives as clerks, artisans or small business
people. Now President Kenyatta has decided
to Africanize his government. This is
the president's answer to critics who claim
that the ordinary citizen has not yet tasted
the fruits of independence since the Asians
occupy many of the middle class and civil
service jobs. This has caused a large number
of Asians to immigrate to Britain in
fright of losing their jobs in Kenya.

It is said that the admission of more of
these people is imposing a strain on Britain's
supply of housing and Britain's welfare
services. Britain has allowed only 1,500
job vouchers to be made available each
year, thus leaving the Kenya Asians without
a country. The anti-immigrant lobby in
Commons wants to avoid the arrival of large
number of almost destitute Asians who will
cluster around their established relatives and
connections, in the developing ghettos to
which racial discrimination in housing already
confines colored people.

To make matters even worse, India has
reserved the right to review the free entry
of other Commonwealth citizens. Officially
the country sympathizes with the Asians but
says that India owes them nothing. Mrs.
Gandhi feels that the Indian settlers in East
Africa are themselves to blame for their
present plight.

The worst result of the Immigration laws
is the discrediting of the British passport.
Certain British passports, duly and lawfully
issued, will not entitle their holders to enter
the United Kingdom unless the fortunate
holder happens to be British by descent.
The government says that such passports
will be perfectly good for passing any port
but a British one. If you are British and
brown it has been made clear that your
passport no longer conveys the same automatic
rights as other British passports, which
may devalue them in the eyes of other
people in the world. Perhaps that is the cost
of whiteness for the British.

C. L. W.