{"id":70511,"date":"2018-04-24T08:00:30","date_gmt":"2018-04-24T12:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=70511"},"modified":"2018-04-24T07:04:13","modified_gmt":"2018-04-24T11:04:13","slug":"nyt-op-ed-alex-von-tunzelmann-the-recent-windrush-failure-shows-how-the-empire-still-haunts-britain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=70511","title":{"rendered":"(NYT Op-ed) Alex von Tunzelmann&#8211;The recent Windrush failure shows how the Empire still Haunts Britain"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"css-imjp5j e2kc3sl0\">Hostility to immigration in Britain was a significant force driving the vote to leave the European Union, yet prominent Brexiteers are often sensitive to the charge that any part of their movement is inward-looking, xenophobic or racist. Many of them have recently rushed to condemn the treatment of the Windrush generation. Even the Daily Mail, a newspaper that regularly publishes scare stories about immigrants,\u00a0<a class=\"css-1dccl0s eo5o5yb0\" title=\"\" href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/blogs-the-papers-43791940\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">splashed it<\/a>\u00a0on the front page as \u201cFiasco that shames Britain.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-imjp5j e2kc3sl0\">Yet this is not an accidental fiasco but the intended outcome of Britain\u2019s draconian and Byzantine immigration policy. Moreover, rather than being an upset, the treatment of the Windrush generation is all too consistent with Britain\u2019s historical attitude toward those former colonies and dominions that supposedly make up its \u201cfamily.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-imjp5j e2kc3sl0\">The Commonwealth comprises 53 nations, most of which were once British-ruled, and 2.4 billion people, 94 percent of whom live in Africa and Asia. It is supposedly based on a common language, institutions and values \u2014 though, given its size and diversity, the commonality of those values is debatable. Its head is the Queen. In 2002, Boris Johnson, now the foreign minister but then a journalist,\u00a0<a class=\"css-1dccl0s eo5o5yb0\" title=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/comment\/personal-view\/3571742\/If-Blairs-so-good-at-running-the-Congo-let-him-stay-there.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">wrote<\/a>: \u201cIt is said that the Queen has come to love the Commonwealth, partly because it supplies her with regular cheering crowds of flag-waving piccaninnies.\u201d The line is still often quoted for its offensive language; it is less commonly observed that Mr. Johnson was taking a swipe at the monarch for indulging the Commonwealth partly as a vanity project.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-imjp5j e2kc3sl0\">Is the Commonwealth more than that?<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2018\/04\/24\/opinion\/windrush-generation-scandal-commonwealth.html\">Read it all<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hostility to immigration in Britain was a significant force driving the vote to leave the European Union, yet prominent Brexiteers are often sensitive to the charge that any part of their movement is inward-looking, xenophobic or racist. Many of them<span class=\"ellipsis\">&hellip;<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=70511\">Read more &#8250;<\/a><\/div>\n<p><!-- end of .read-more --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":794,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[175,199,168,133,147,151],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-70511","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anthropology","category-england-uk","category-ethics-moral-theology","category-history","category-immigration","category-politics-in-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70511","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/794"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=70511"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70511\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":70512,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70511\/revisions\/70512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=70511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=70511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=70511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}