Dear Sir/Madam,

 

Trevor Phillips' article in last Monday’s Guardian (More than skin deep, 18 August 2003) completely overlooks one essential difference between America and Europe, including Britain: the fact that America is a country of immigrants, where Blacks, Whites and Asians, who make up well over 95% of the population, are all non-indigenous.

 

In Europe and most other parts of the world the situation is reversed: here, the vast majority of the population is indigenous (the mixing that has occurred over the centuries being mainly of racially and culturally closely related peoples), while the racially and/or culturally distinctive immigrants of recent years are still a relatively small minority.

 

American history, from its inception, is the history of a multiracial society. Not so, British and European history, which – at least to 99% - is the history of racially and culturally closely related, fair-skinned peoples.

 

I can understand that this may present a problem to people like Mr Phillips, but by trying to transfer it onto the indigenous population (facilitated at the moment by their intimidation through the recent experience of Nazi insanity), and calling them “racist” when they object, is priming a bomb which one day, if not diffused, will explode in all our faces.

 

Exchange of emails with Trevor Phillips