London Burning

A must read today, by Maria Margaronis, in The Nation:

But it’s taken years to brew the toxic mix of hopelessness, frustration and disenfranchisement, envy, anger and boredom, greed and selfishness, humiliation and recklessness that’s erupted in Britain this week--years in which the gap between rich and poor grew wider, racism was allowed to fester, consumerism and celebrity culture replaced community. While we in the middle classes got on with our oh-so-busy lives, averting our eyes from the poverty just a few blocks away, sending our kids to schools where there are other “motivated parents,” talking politics, we allowed the rifts in our own neighbourhoods to deepen until they became almost unbridgeable.

This morning, down the road, people stared at the broken shops, shaking their heads in disbelief. “It’s mad,” they said. “Just mad.” Small groups of women set out with brooms and dustpans to sweep up the broken glass. There is a kind of solidarity taking shape, a wish to protect what we have, now that it’s under threat. People are talking to each other, asking if everything's all right. The challenge, when all this dies down, will be to stay awake, to keep on doing that, until solidarity spreads.

A country that must seriously take a look at how their entrenched, institutions of power and control subtly ensure that “the other” is told on a consistent basis that they can never achieve the highest ranks. A country – by all means not terribly religious nature – that in maintaining an official “state religion” inextricably ties religion and the state together in such a manner as to elevate the importance of membership in one faith above all others.

A country that tracks students to make decisions at such a young age about what to study, that any elementary school-aged immigrant arriving in London will already find him or herself unable to play the catch-up necessary to complete in the academic realm.

And of course, the monarchy. While it can be argued that the monarchy has no real power, until the new royals adopt a baby of Pakistani heritage and announce he will be the future King of England, the institution only serves as yet another reminder of what is, and is not accessible to all members of society.