But practicing crony capitalism based on race or ethnicity outside your community sure does…

you see projects for the black unemployed, not all the unemployed

= there are some projects which are aimed at the black rather than the generality of unemployed.

rather than

= there are no projects for the unemployed that are aimed at the generality (they are all exclusivist).

By the way, Nick Cohen makes a very specific claim about Birmingham in that column which I think is quite likely to be untrue.

Yet in Birmingham, you see projects for the black unemployed, not all the unemployed; for disadvantaged Asians or Indians or Muslims, not all the disadvantaged.

I cannot find any such projects and I’ve looked throughout the Birmingham city council website. Particularly, looking through the SRB6 “current projects” sections on Community, Health and Social Exclusion, Business, Economy and Infrastructure and Education, Employment and Training sections, I find precisely one such scheme; money has been granted for an Afro-Caribbean Resource Centre (there is already an Asian Resource Centre).

The claim that Birmingham has no general programmes aimed at the unemployed or at the disadvantaged is so manifestly false if taken literally (there is no SureStart in Birmingham? No Job Clubs?) that I’m not sure what metaphorical sense NIck means.

Dsquared: ’ Someone has managed to dig up an alleged grievance about government “community” money, but the actual email that was circulating was entirely about the position of Asians in the private sector.’
Well, in the presence of such expertise one speaks with humility. None the less, Gus John, who does know rather a lot about inner city education and racism, wrote in the Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/race/story/0,11374,1600704,00.html):
‘The answer lies in the strained relationship between the African and Asian communities in Handsworth-Lozells over the past three decades and the way Birmingham city council and government funding regimes have fuelled this hostility. …
‘the perception is that access to funding is anything but equitable. In the past two years there have been inter-ethnic conflicts over the allocation of £49m from the single regeneration budget (SRB) and the balance of representation of African and Asian people on the SRB board. African-Caribbean groups complained of losing out because they were required to find £3,000 to match each £1,000 they were given, something the Asian community found easier to do because of the way their communities and businesses were run. And Asians complained that there were too many Africans on the board.

‘What is more, the perception is that access to funding is anything but equitable. In the past two years there have been inter-ethnic conflicts over the allocation of £49m from the single regeneration budget (SRB) and the balance of representation of African and Asian people on the SRB board. African-Caribbean groups complained of losing out because they were required to find £3,000 to match each £1,000 they were given, something the Asian community found easier to do because of the way their communities and businesses were run. And Asians complained that there were too many Africans on the board.’

Gus John knows a lot about it and he is saying that competition for funding is part of the problem. And, unlike you, he is citing dates and figures, rather than referring to one single email. Furthermore, he goes on to argue that poverty and inequality are indeed part of the problem: he just isn’t simple-minded enough to suggest that they are the only causes of the problem.

Dsquared: ‘I am not at all convinced that this is an appropriate occasion for us to have the “faith schools are bad” sermon.’
Really? Personally I’m sick to death of the use of the word ‘inappropriate’ to mean ‘might offend any self-appointed community leader with ready media access’. You yourself admit that there’s a case to be made that faith schools didn’t create, but would worsen, pre-existing ethnic tensions: this is precisely what I said and precisely why it is an ‘appropriate’ time for Cohen to talk about faith schools.

In other words, the problem here is actually the inequality and the poverty, an issue which I believe is still a minor concern of the Left….

The fundamental problem here appears to be the extent to which it is worse to not own a shop than to own one, which is something that has (as measured by the inequality statistics) something that hasn’t got better and has arguably got worse over the last ten years….

What I (and presumably Bruschetta Boy) object to is the use of a news item to hack out the same old article. It’s “Why The Riots Mean We Must Support My Politics”.I think I’ll just let this stand without comment….

In other words, the problem here is actually the inequality and the poverty, an issue which I believe is still a minor concern of the Left. These were two groups that can be marked out by “race” (as long as you’re prepared to call all black Britons a “race” and all South Asian Britons another separate “race”), but they didn’t actually live separate lives at all; quite the reverse, they met each other whenever they went shopping for hair products. Someone has managed to dig up an alleged grievance about government “community” money, but the actual email that was circulating was entirely about the position of Asians in the private sector.

I am not at all convinced that this is an appropriate occasion for us to have the “faith schools are bad” sermon. It might very well be that faith schools are bad and will make this problem worse, but not having faith schools isn’t going to make it better. The fundamental problem here appears to be the extent to which it is worse to not own a shop than to own one, which is something that has (as measured by the inequality statistics) something that hasn’t got better and has arguably got worse over the last ten years.

What I (and presumably Bruschetta Boy) object to is the use of a news item to hack out the same old article. It’s “Why The Riots Mean We Must Support My Politics”.

Obviously it’s vanishingly unlikely that the hooligans tearing up the streets are particulary worried by that. But it’s relevant because if we a) set up ‘ethnic minority leaders’ as interlocutors for the police and government and then b) set various ‘ethnic minority leaders’ to compete against each other for cash, they’re unlikely to be co-operating to lessen ethnic tension.