I know the real Handsworth – it’s a much better place than Robert Jenrik’s poisonous vision of Britain Nazia Parvin
HHe wakes up and Ssworth / but Handsworth never sleeps … with its deep root roots everywhere / we all know this place / can demand it as a special space for us … we are one person and pride … this is a place for everyone. “
The late poet Benjamin Zivia Johir son from HandsworthLike many of us who grew up there, they are his complexities and loved her life. Zivania died in 2023, but he would have said a lot about the recent comments of the Minister of Justice in the shadow, Robert Jenrik, about the city’s diverse Birmingham wing.
Jenrik complained that he “did not see another white face” on his visit there, saying that the region was “the closest thing to the poor neighborhoods in this country.” After highlighting the absence of white people, Genrik claimed that it is not a matter of “the color of your skin or your faith”, but he wants to “live people alongside each other.”
I woke up to Jenrik’s distorted comments as an Asian British daughter to immigrant fathers, I immediately felt as if I was fodder in these recent feed from our cultural war. I swept “another” without stopping thinking about what these words mean for millions of blacks, Asians and British minorities such as the British people like me.
My relationship with Handsworth is complex. I was born and lived there so that the late teenagers, my mother and close family members are still living in the area. My parents worked in the same cotton factory owned by the Googa family near our house, and sometimes I sneak on a visit; I love Whirr from machines and watch my father running from the large iron presses while my mother was sitting in sewing the uniform with all other mechanics.
Watching every person at work would instill in the strong work ethics that I still have to this day. There were cake games in our sewer with the neighbors in the heritage of Bangladeshi, the Indians and the Pakistani, as well as those who were eggs. Several weekend and afternoon holidays spent on Soho Road, at the time a prosperous artery, boiling the kitchens with Samosa and Indian regulations, and the brides will buy their embroidered wedding in the nearby streets. It was certain, as Zivania wrote in his poem bearing the name of this road, a place for everyone.
Handsworth is now now and it was then a melting bowl of different races, including white British. Of the 12,000 people living in Handsworth, 91.3 % set as Bame and According to the Birmingham city councilHandsworth is 25 % Pakistani, 23 % Indian, 10 % Bangladesh, 16 % of Africa black or black Caribian, 10 % mixed or another ethnic group and 9 % eggs. In total, the health of the residents of Handsworth is worse than the average for England, which is among the most deprived wings in the city, as employment rates were much lower than the average Birmingham. I previously wrote about the complex relationship between some of the most deprived areas in Birmingham, integration and immigration, including during our chain of votes, votes and a referendum of Britain’s exit from the European Union.
Handsworth, as one of those areas with great deprivation, is not a place without its problems. In recent years, there was Permanent reports From prostitution, anti -society behavior, alcohol and drug abuse. Many different societies live side by side, but even during my childhood, there were some factions that were not mixed, although there is nothing at a level that justifies Jenrik’s claim to a separate societal life, parallel.
Then there are boxes. Ben’s workers in Birmingham have been publishing since January and indefinitely went out in March in a dispute over jobs and doses. Black bags in the streets and homosexual wheels have led to the flow of mice in some parts of the city. However, Jenrik described this as a “waste” problem, comparing the region with “slums”, and it seems that it indicates that the issue was linked in one way or another not integration.
Just a few weeks ago, I spoke to family members frustrated in the postal lottery. Those who lived in the Handsworth Wood region are a little more rocks they collected their boxes, but those across the border in Handsworth were left with the garbage that accumulates outside their homes, including my mother-who is one of the most likely people you meet.
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Genrik ignored the dangerous years of neglect and austerity behind the issues of the region. But in fact, this was not related to widoreth at all: it was a satirical attempt to repair repair, to cancel the division and use the color of people to make his point of view. The danger does not lie in places like Handsworth, but in the words of Jenrick.
Jenrik said he was in Handsworth, he saw a country he did not want to live in. In August, my mother underwent a heavy heart surgery, and while I sat next to her hospital bed, a visitor walked at the doors; Some family, but other friends of their local community. At that decisive time, her community gathered around her, and as a child, I remember that this happens over and over again. This is the type of country in which I want to live.