I think racism is often borne, as others have said out of a fear of the unknown and also never having engaged with anyone other than one's own tribe. My late father- in- law was a shocker in his opinions on race, I remember him saying something along the lines when he and his equally awful pals at their cliquey golf club were put out, amazed, shocked whatever when 2 Indian men turned up and, if that wasn't bad enough, he related, the next week there were four of them 
Moving forward some thirty years, irony of ironies, my husband's eldest granddaughter, who would be late father in law's great, granddaughter, is now married to an Indian guy who is simply a top bloke they both live and work in the US, and to my husband's absolute delight there is a baby on the way, he is just over the moon to know he's lived long enough to see his first great grandchild, they float over here often, and it matters not one iota to him that this child will be a mix of English/Indian/Australian. Although the mischief maker in me often mutters, "if only you're father were still here"
I like to think I see the person before the ethnicity/colour, one of my best friends, we met some 50 years ago is black, born in Jamaica She was really the first person I knew who wasn't white, I grew up in Surrey and at that time, although where I went to school was awash with Irish/Italians, (the latter were about as exotic as it got) I only remember one little boy who was mixed race. Friend and I, after being introduced and sharing an office, clicked almost immediately, there wasn't really any preamble to our friendship, as soon as we discovered we had the same sense of humour, humour is one of the most important components of most of my relationships, we were joined at the hip, her and I and the other member of our trio, was part time in the office when she wasn't at her other job ballet choreographer, she trained with Ballet Rambert but was too short to progress to the corps de ballet. We all had the same sense of ridiculousness and piss taking, although we did actually do some work, a lot of the time was spent snorting with laughter about something or other. We were mates both in and out of the office, ballet friend often managed to get us tickets to West End shows, and working for Chartered Accountants we also chummed up with some of the Chinese Article Clerks who knew the best restaurants in Chinatown. I think I always loved the cosmopolitan vibe that London offered. Those were great times being simultaneously imbued in the behind the scenes of the world of ballet, West Indian culture, Chinese cuisine. Later on I was to work for a Jewish firm and that was also an education, well all of it much removed from the mono cultured and insular world of my convent school back in Surrey. I look back on those days with great fondness and especially as I made a friend for life. Yes at times she has suffered racism, but took herself out of South London when her son was infant school having split from her husband and decamped into the depths of very white Hampshire, because she didn't want him drawn into gang life later. Because of her very outgoing personality she didn't have trouble assimilating. A half sister of hers who lives and works in the US found it very strange that her English sister has a coterie of white, very close friends, because in Texas never the twain shall meet and as a frequent visitor to the US she does admit that race relations are a problem there.
I think ,or I like to think, most people irrespective of their race will try to get on with the neighbours, unless they are complete bigots, well of course those exist. Openness can only be achieved if it's there on both sides. I think problems have occurred when enclaves of different ethnicities remain separate, don't learn the language, wish to change aspects of the parent culture, and criticise their host country, none of which is conducive to race relations, underpinned more recently by a spate of terrorist attacks on home soil. The indigenous, I use that word hesitatingly, because most of us aren't intrinsically Anglo Saxon, but nevertheless feel rooted in a British culture, In some areas over not so many years, there will be those who now feel they are living in some parallel foreign state where their own culture has been subsumed by other overwhelming influences which are alien to them. Unfortunately if great swathes of newcomers stay within parameters set by a far more draconian and rigid culture which doesn't really assuage with our own then inevitably there are going to be states within a state that aren't anchored by the ideals of the host country. The recent programme Simon Reeves made about Scandinavia illustrated an initiative by Denmark in particular to break up communities who lived like that and scatter them because their desire, particularly for women is that they absorb Danish values. Some will see that as draconian others will see it as a way forward. Immigration was different back a couple of generations ago, when my grandfather came to this country it wasn't really possible to stay connected to the parent country, only by letter and so the onus was to move on, now in some cultures people can move here but still live in a way that isn't that different from whence they came and that has widened the gap.
Palestine Action activists guilty of criminal damage
