Britain heading towards US-style race divisions

LONDON: Britain could be facing a future of serious ethnic divisions, where different races live in “fully fledged ghettos”, the head of the country’s race relations watchdog has warned. In a speech to be delivered next week and obtained by The Sunday Times newspaper, Trevor Phillips, chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE), said Britain could be “sleepwalking” into segregation. He warned that a parallel would be the serious ethnic divisions in parts of the United States shown up by the impact if Hurricane Katrina. “The fact is we are a society which, almost without noticing it, is becoming more divided by race and religion,” Phillips says in his speech, to be delivered in Manchester, northwest England on Thursday. “Our ordinary schools... are becoming more exclusive and our universities are starting to become colour-coded with virtual ‘whites keep out’ signs in some urban institutions.” He continued: “If you look closely at the campuses of some of our most distinguished universities you can pick out the invisible ‘no blacks may enter’ message.” Phillips is to propose measures to address the problem, which could include forcing predominantly white schools to take larger numbers of ethnic minority pupils to aid integration. afp

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