The jaunty nonsense of a sports programme greeted me last week as I climbed onto a London Heathrow shuttle bus after a thirteen hour flight from Shanghai. I was back to a rain-swept Britain and somehow could not taste my regained democratic freedoms or the supposed joy of being back in my native land. The reason why became only too evident as soon as I piled my bags into my car and headed for the M4 motorway. As a resident of the UK and France I often drive my French car in Britain. As a consequence I become the target for xenophobic road rage from at least one car driver in twenty .
Hatred of foreigners is alive and well and living in Britain. Not only a dislike for the French, but for eastern Europeans – with the chorus led by the UK Prime Minister in his recent warnings about Bulgarian and Romanian immigrants. But Xenophobia is not the exclusive impulse of the British. In a recent survey 62% of a recent sample interviewed in Bulgaria stated that they were against receiving more refugees from war torn Syria; a million Russians protested at the end of December in Moscow against the treatment of muslims by the government, Russia has, in turn, made representations to the Polish government concerning an estimated 600 hate crimes conducted against Russian speakers during 2011 and 2012.
Germany’s four million largely Turkish Gastarbeiter continue to live as second class citizens, having often to disguise their true names to gain job interviews and remove their names from doorbells to prevent arson attacks. Which brings me back to driving through the rain in my French car hounded by tailgaters. The French themselves seldom harass UK drivers, but as a nation they are prone to anti-semetism and the recent influx of Arabic-muslim migrants has led to a worsening of attitudes – with a 23% growth in reported racist acts in 2012 – and a 2010 poll which shocked me to the quick because it found that 28% of respondents stated that muslims were “delinquents”.
All this in sharp contrast to China with all its urban overcrowding and low living standards. As a foreigner in China I have always been greeted with a happy relaxed smile – in fact, on my last trip an old woman even rose from her seat on a bus to show her hospitality to a stranger. All of which leads me to one philosophical conclusion. It is not culture, nor laws, nor better living conditions and economic prospects that drive away prejudice – but a deep-rooted kindness and a curiosity about all that is new and different. A flexibility and willingness to take an open–minded approach to every fresh experience. Just the kind of qualities so much needed to by international employers.