Saturday, May 28, 2005

ART AND CULTURE TO BECOME EVEN MORE BORING IN RACIST BRITAIN:

Along with sports, culture has long offered ethnic minorities a path into the white-dominated societies of the West. Indeed, whether in theater, movies or popular music, leading artists of, say, African, Asian, Hispanic or Arab extraction have often become social trailblazers, demonstrating to their peers and to national audiences alike that integration is possible. But this is also a process that can take years, even decades.

Now the Arts Council England, the government-financed body that subsidizes the performing arts in England, has decided to speed things up by introducing affirmative action to culture. Specifically, it wants the 1,100 cultural organizations that receive its help to employ minorities, to present black, Asian and other ethnic art, and to reach out to minorities unaccustomed to attending cultural events. Further, it has given the initiative teeth by linking its continuing financial support to adoption and execution of what it calls racial equality action plans. "We will closely monitor the development of your action plan and your progress in meeting your race equality objectives," the council noted in a 110-page instruction manual, "and future funding may include considerations on your ability to meet race equality targets." In other words, go multiethnic or risk bankruptcy.

More than a few cultural administrators have been taken by surprise. Until now, while the council's beneficiaries have included ethnic minorities engaged in artistic activities, most of its annual budget of £412 million, or $753 million, has gone to mainstream theater, dance, opera and classical music (major museums are supported directly by the government). Never before has the council tried to dictate quite so specifically how this money should be spent.

So does this action represent political correctness gone wild, as some critics have protested, or it is merely a coherent way of using taxpayers' money to benefit society as a whole? Certainly, no other European country has tried to link culture and race so openly. But the council's new policy also reflects the distinctive way that Britain has handled the immigrants who have settled here since World War II, first blacks from the Caribbean, then Asians from the Indian Subcontinent and most recently Eastern Europeans, Arabs and Africans from countries with no historical ties to Britain.

While France, Europe's other major former colonial power, has always tried to absorb immigrants through assimilation, Britain has adopted what is known as a communitarian approach, one that admits different cultural practices and languages and, like the United States, recognizes hyphenated nationals, such as Asian-Britons and Afro-Britons. And this wide embrace has extended to artistic expression of all kinds.

One result is that, as in the United States, minorities are relatively present in culture and show business here, notably on television and on stage, whether as actors, comedians or singers. The BBC, for instance, is anything but an all-white network today: It even has radio stations specifically targeting Asians. The Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theater also routinely give black actors key roles, even as English kings.

Yet, as evidenced by this month's general election, not all is well with race relations in Britain. As the central plank of its campaign platform, the opposition Conservative Party pledged to limit the number of immigrants, refugees and asylum-seekers entering Britain. And while the Tories were again defeated, their drum-beating - amplified by the widely read and oft-xenophobic Daily Mail - led Tony Blair's Labour Party to promise tighter controls on immigration.

In fact, concern about erosion of the national identity has led to growing nationalism here, some of it political, more of it expressed culturally through the popularity of polls to choose the "greatest" Briton or Britain's favorite book or painting. Yet 1 in 10 of Britain's inhabitants comes from an ethnic minority background. And, just as Caribbean, Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities are settled here, London has become Europe's most cosmopolitan city.

This poses an issue common to much of Western Europe: how to harmonize distaste for the social impact of, say, large-scale Muslim immigration with the reality that societies are changing irreversibly. The evidence suggests that, while antidiscrimination legislation can fight overt racism, culture can serve as a positive vehicle for ethnic integration. And for this reason, many European governments do in practice subsidize minority artists.

The difference is that, while France, Denmark, Spain, Italy and others help them first as artists and only secondly as minorities, the Arts Council England has chosen to address the racial question head on.

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AN ITALIAN WITH GUTS

Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci will face trial for insulting Islam in her latest work, a court in northern Italy ruled Tuesday, May 24. The court turned down a request by prosecutors to have the case, filed by the president of the Muslim Union of Italy, Adel Smith, thrown out, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP). The magistrates now have until Thursday, May 26, to formally charge the controversial writer, infamous for her provocative style of writing. Smith said Fallaci's last book "La forza della ragione," which translates as The Force of Reason, contains "words that are without doubt offensive toward Islam."

The 74-year-old writer, who lives in New York, wrote that Europe is turning into "an Islamic province, an Islamic colony" and that "to believe that a good Islam and a bad Islam exist goes against all reason." The lawyer for the Muslim Union, Ugo Fanuzzi, said she would have to answer first to the charge of insulting a faith, but he did not exclude that she could face charges of inciting hatred of religions.

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AND A PASTOR WITH GUTS

North Carolina: Church sign sparks debate Rutherford Daily Courier "A sign in front of a Baptist church on one of the most traveled highways in the county stirred controversy over religious tolerance and first-amendment rights this weekend. A sign in front of Danieltown Baptist Church, located at 2361 U.S. 221 south reads 'The Koran needs to be flushed,' and the Rev. Creighton Lovelace, pastor of the church, is not apologizing for the display. 'I believe that it is a statement supporting the word of God and that it (the Bible) is above all and that any other religious book that does not teach Christ as savior and lord as the 66 books of the Bible teaches it, is wrong,' said Lovelace."

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