This is the final installment from Michael McWilliams looking at ‘White Privilege’ and how one gets it. It’s not all been plain sailing as Biznews community member Prince Sarpong corrected some misconceptions he found. The most important element is that the debate has been healthy, and while there have been objections; they’ve turned to culture rather than race. It’s another interesting read, which brings the series to an end. – Stuart Lowman 

By Michael McWilliams*

During the previous parts of this series, we have looked at possible reasons why Africans in the UK are twice as likely as native Britons to attend university.

What has boosted their achievements way beyond equality and well into what would be termed Privilege at home in Africa?

So far, we have concentrated on looking at what these immigrants are doing differently at their new address, compared to what they would have been doing at home. Of course there are many changes of behavior that probably helped in enabling them to excel.

In this the last part of the series, perhaps it would be productive to look at the British environment to see whether there is some type of synergy that particularly suits new African immigrants compared to people from other countries.

Is there something in the air, despite rain?

We know that Great Britain is particularly welcoming to immigrants of all races. They have warmly welcomed Pakistanis in great numbers, Caribbean Blacks, and people of all the colours of the rainbow from previous colonies and protectorates. Lately there have also been great influxes from the newly free East Block countries.

From a native British point of view, this mass immigration has been quite beneficial, because it has imported people who take the jobs the British themselves are not keen on doing.

After Maggie Thatcher destroyed the Unions, (who in their heyday had destroyed British industry), Britain stopped being a nation of people who worked with their hands. Britain became, in a miracle of transformation, a Service Nation and the Financial Capital of the world.

Coal mines were shut, motor manufacturing withered, the world’s motorcycle manufacturer became Japanese, Sheffield cutlery became extinct and Manchester cloth died with it. The great airplane manufacturers closed their hangars or went to France to become a part of Airbus. BSA became British Very Small Arms while the armed forces bought their rifles and machine guns from Belgium.

The British people largely were able to keep floating at the top of the social mix, buoyed up by hard working immigrants who kept essential services running.

Was this eagerness to position immigrants in a meritocracy the catalyst that has fired up Africans to achieve and excel?

The unemployment rate in early 2016 is about 4% in Britain. This, during an economic downturn, is quite phenomenal and it shows how the recent great influx of immigrants to the little Isle can be absorbed into the labor market and how there is a place for everyone, if they are prepared to follow the undemanding British code of civil behavior.

This environment for African migrants is so completely alien to what happens at home.

Is this what true Affirmative Action looks like?

It certainly produces better results that the legislated sort that bedevils those countries that resort to it.

Privilege Secret Number 15: Don’t look to legislation for affirmative action.

The British take their cues from their leaders, but leaders are careful not to go against the unwritten rules of humility and honesty.

In Britain, leaders are seen to be servants of the people, in Africa, the reverse applies.

Britain is where leaders, instead of being slavishly obeyed and deferred to, are pulled down regularly. Britain is a place where even royalty was executed by the people if they didn’t shape up. A place where politicians are unceremoniously booted out of parliament and party for fiddling their meager parliamentary expenses.

Britain is a place where dishonesty in leadership is simply not entertained and even those leaders that are revered and loved, are asked to leave as soon as they outlive their usefulness.

Compare the careers of Winston Spencer Churchill and Robert Gabriel Mugabe.

Both brought victory to their people through war and good leadership. However one was unceremoniously turfed out of his job shortly after victory.

 

The other was cemented into position by a servile and uncritical public.

Thirty years after the wars that beggared both nations, one country became the financial capital of the world, the other sank so low as to have lost its own currency, an unprecedented failure in world history. The leader responsible for this devastation of the nation was further confirmed by voters, to indefinitely continue his depravations on his own country and people.

To the African eye, the people’s treatment of Churchill was disrespectful and unfair. To the British, it was sad but undoubtedly good for the country.

Is the implacable British quality of getting rid of the dead wood, part of the lesson African immigrants learn that enables them to throw off the customs of tribalism and undue respect for age and enables them to progress in a world without the ball and chain of predatory leadership?

Privilege Secret Number 16: Get rid of leaders as soon as they falter. You owe them nothing, they owe you everything.

Of course, in Britain, getting rid of a leader is not nearly as deadly as in Africa. Britain has pensions, the dole and all sorts of charities and other mechanisms that let people down softly.

In Africa, if you don’t die in office, the new regime will strip you of all your gains,  gotten by ill or fair means and possibly kill you too.

 

Privilege Secret Number 17: If you can get rid of a useless leader quickly, make it a soft landing. Otherwise, the landing can’t be hard enough.

Getting the Privileged to work for you.

If you wish to lead a privileged life, it’s a good idea to try to get privileged people to work for you.

The people who provide your services are, or should be, your servants. After all, you pay their salaries through the many taxes levied on you. Fuel Levy, VAT, Liquor and Tobacco taxes, Customs and Excises and of course PAYE.

That is why they are generally known in Britain, as Public Servants.

It follows that the better quality Public Servant you hire, the better will be the services they supply to you.

Public servants are a very small percentage of the population and it pays to invest wisely here. A few really good ones can serve the many millions well.

This is a trick that the newly free African and Caribbean countries missed.

Instead of hiring the best, they often hired the unemployable. This had the effect of putting a handful of poorly educated and trained people in charge of the welfare of the whole population and it insured that the quality of services degenerated very badly.

Now, to be fair, there sometimes was not much of a pool of educated and trained potential civil servants after the colonialists had left or been kicked out. But, even then, the small pool was usually ignored by populist leaders who gained power by un-fulfilable promises to an equally uneducated and untrained electorate.

This has had the result of whole populations becoming sidetracked, trying to substitute  services they are paying for, but not getting. Careers suffer and the country is beggared because the people actually have to run two services systems in many areas to be able to survive. As an example, a government police force, which over time becomes almost entirely corrupt because they are mismanaged and untrained, has to be supplemented by private security companies to do the real job of protecting the taxpayer.

Households and businesses provide their own electricity generators while also paying for their inept government’s feeble attempt at generation.

The list is endless, but the end effect is that all services become at least doubly expensive.

This huge handicap to progress is not something that our African immigrant in Britain has to worry about.

The Cascade of Virtue

In Britain, the best person for the job is voted in to power by a thoughtful and cynical public and in turn, this person hires the best possible people to serve below him. This creates a cascade of virtue from Downing Street to the rubbish collectors. Even when the top person is changed, the Cascade of Virtue still exists, shoring up the country in good times and bad.

An Avalanche of Incompetence

Those new African Republics that did have pools of expertise all squandered them. In the beginning, by offering generous retirement packages to get the competent ones out of government and later by Affirmative Action and Black Empowerment legislation. Instead of providing the promised economic boom to voters, this ensured that they would suffer the indignities of bad service provisions compliments of an avalanche of incompetence.

Privilege Secret Number 18: The people you hire or vote for, should be the best you can afford. Low-quality politicians and public servants are the most expensive in the long run.

Are we missing something?

As we have seen, the native British people have managed their immigration very well. It has not increased unemployment for the British or the immigrants and it has been hugely beneficial even for those immigrants who have not benefitted as much as the African influx.

The British people have managed to float on top of the stream of millions of new citizens and workers entering the country.

Are they still doing this, or are some immigrants, notably the African ones who are outpacing the native British in university educations, applying uncomfortable pressure?

That there has been a resurgence of Nationalist political parties suggests that the lower rungs of the British hierarchy are in fact feeling the threat.

Interestingly, the perceived danger comes more from the Muslim refugee influx than any threat from Africa, even though the Muslim immigrants do not pose an educational challenge at present.

This may be an indication that African immigrants have integrated with the British population seamlessly and have not had a territorial impact nearly as great as the Muslim population has on Britain.

African British undoubtedly mix into the British population better than the Muslim immigrants. A combination of speaking good English, not insisting on unique dietary and legal requirements and not forming ghettos helps Africans immensely, but perhaps the sporting compatibility is the most valuable mixing agent that Africans possess over the Muslims.

Privilege Secret Number 19: In a melting pot, it pays to blend in and not become an unmixed lump.

Laughter is the key.

Lastly, an oft-ignored quality that endears Africans, both Black and White, to the British is their general happy nature and sunny outlook on life.

Good humor, and not taking oneself too seriously, are traits that the British value. Africans are generally uncritical of their hosts and do not have a raft of rules and punishments brought with them from home.

Maybe the easygoing, uncompetitive nature of African immigrants in fact make them the most competitive of all in Britain’s Old Boys Club.

Privilege Secret Number 20: If you want to win, don’t rub it in. Make it easy for your opponent to lose. 

• Michael McWilliams, a member of the Biznews Community, has been married for 35 years and has three sons. Born in Johannesburg, schooled at Marist Brothers Inanda and St. Charles Pietermaritzburg he was a paratrooper in SADF and the captain of the SA Parachuting Team which won the Bronze Medal in the World Championships. Author of “The Battle for Cassinga” and the novel “Osama’s Angel”, his career has ranged from TV News cameraman to national marketing manager of Peugeot and running his own design consultancy. His hobbies are opera, hunting and classical music.