Summary
WHEN I was at school in North Ayrshire over 40 years ago it was common to hear of our then minority ethnic groups being referred to in the same way as I've heard members of our Bangladeshi, Pakistani and Muslim communities described since the suicide bombings in London last month.
In recent years I have not heard - or even overheard late at night in the pub - any Roman Catholic or Scot of Irish, Italian or Polish descent being described in the dismissive and derogatory ways that were unremarkable 40 years ago. I take heart in the fact that primary-school kids I know today describe their classmates to one another and to their parents with reference to the colour of their clothes rather than the colour of their skin or hair (gingers sadly excepted). I hope that Scots of Bangladeshi, Pakistani, Palestinian and Kurdish descent may thole and forgive our antediluvian attitudes while the present generation of Scots adults (including the Scots Irish, Italian and Poles) catches up with the present generation of children.See the full content of this document
Extract
A Custom That Will Delay Integration for a Long Time
There is, however, one recently adopted custom common to the poorer sections of the Scots Pakistani and Scots Bangladeshi communities that may delay integration for a few generations to come and that dates from the introduction of cheap longhaul flights which have made possible the regular importation of brides and grooms barely fluent, let alone literate in English, from grandparental villages back in Bangladesh and Pak...
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