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Omar Khan @omaromalleykhan.bsky.social · 8m

I accept that experience. Overall even rural areas have increased in diversity, w/the least diverse local authorities (eg Isles of Scilly) seeing proportionally large rises even if they remain 97% White. More typical than Southall or Scilly are scores of towns wtih 15-20% ethnic minority population

Omar Khan @omaromalleykhan.bsky.social · 30m

Given this truth is obvious, and that everyone has experienced it, the questions are: why doesn't this statistic better inform public debate and policy, and why do some seek to deny it despite knowing about and personally experiencing increased social mixing since their childhood?

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Omar Khan @omaromalleykhan.bsky.social · 30m

Sometimes a statistic is counterintuitive. This is not one: every adult in Britain has experienced greater interaction with people of different ethnic backgrounds over their lifetime

As I say in this thread, this statistical fact is obvious in every aspect of our lives, & all of us know/feel it

Omar Khan @omaromalleykhan.bsky.social · 12h

I know statistics are poorly understood and are misused. But facts matter

Between the 1991, 2001, 2011 and 2021 Census *every* ethnic group in the UK has become *less* geographically segregated and *all* groups, majority and minorities, are more likely to interact with people not like them

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Reposted by Omar Khan

Sunder Katwala (sundersays) @sundersays.bsky.social · 12h

The UAE is an authoritarian autocracy, a petro-state with no income tax for citizens, to bribe them for the lack of democratic voice or free speech

It is 85% migrant, a segregated society with a ban on integration in principle and practice, few rights, equal opportunities, nor voice for incomers

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Omar Khan @omaromalleykhan.bsky.social · 10h

I also spelt adult with an f, which seems a more egregious typo

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Omar Khan @omaromalleykhan.bsky.social · 10h

It's hard to convince people with stats. Surely he must have experienced and seen more interaction across ethnic groups in 2025 compared to say, 2010, or compared to whenever he was in school?

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Reposted by Omar Khan

Tim Morton @timmorton2.bsky.social · 11h

I wrote about dad on the other place

$mmorton2.bsky.social Profile picture (((Tim Morton))) @TimMorton2 Jun 28, 2020 • 23 tweets • TimMorton2/status/1277264438060597257 Our dad was born OTD 28/6 in 1925 - traditionally we had to have strawberries and cream to celebrate. Back in the 1960s this would be early in the season so these would be our first and sometimes only strawberries. He was born in Wales near @kivetonwales eldest son of a #YorkshireMiner who was determined that none of his children would follow him into the pit, and they didn’t. Dad won Miners’ scholarships to @KingsPontefract and from there to @Kings_Cambridge a two year degree in wartime His closest brush with sport was to keep score for the school cricket team - he found God (or perhaps it was the other way round) at Uni and started off a theological career which took him to @SCM_Britain and a conference in India where he met our Aussie mum from @australianscm After the conference they wrote up the report, we think mum actually wrote it up, and headed to their respective homes and were married in Manchester about 18 months later. No email, WhatsApp, FaceTime in the early 50s, just letters and after the wedding they went back to India. My sisters & I were born between 1955 & 1958 while dad traveled India speaking at Universities & being ordained in the #ChurchOfSouthIndiaCSI. We left India in 1959 and headed to Geneva and the @Oikoumene via a short stay in Leeds. I can remember the steam train at @kingscrossN1C Dad worked on anti racism & against apartheid - with his great friend #DrPhilipPotter @Oikoumene I remember Philip visiting us in London, dad was at work about 5 minutes away but Philip talked with mum and left saying “I’ll see Harry at next week's conference in the Philippines”$

We left Switzerland in 1963 having added @BeestonJeremy to our family in 1960, after the bitterly cold winter. We had oilfired central heating & when the tanker had turned up in September and asked how much, dad said fill her up. The price was about 6months salary

In London dad worked for the @MethodistGB at the MMS responsible for missionaries in East and Southern Africa - dad’s best mate, #ColinMorris was helping a peaceful independence in #Zambia with his great friend #KennethKaunda but UDI in Rhodesia led to dad being #banned & in #SA

Dad was President of @MethodistGB and though not teetotal - he liked a glass of sherry and occasionally wine with Sunday lunch - he went dry for his presidential year. He led mountain walks in Cumbria with many Methodists that year #SermonsOnTheMount

His next job @ChurchesEngland when it was the British Council of Churches meant a move to #SloaneSquare and the start of my time in London in the summer of 73. Mum and dad were regulars at @royalcourt popping home in the interval for coffee, they saw the #AtholFugard trilogy

1970s London was interesting - we heard bombs going off in the Kings Road & at Chelsea Barracks, the NF were on the rise & dad took to graﬃti changing NF into DAFT, he was also part of the brokering of the IRA ceasefire at Feakle

Feakle talks led to IRA ceasefire - Clare Echo
Talks held in Feakle attended by leading Protestant clergymen and high ranking IRA members led to a two week ceasefire in December 1974. On December 10th, 1974, in the dark of night and with great ri…
https://www.clareecho.ie/feakle-talks-led-to-ira-ceasefire/

Dad was much in demand as a preacher as he travelled the country. Only when he left the BCC did he have his own church in Barking. Here he came up against the Met over their racism having arrested a member of his church under #SusLaws. Dad moved in high circles & this was a shock
Then one Saturday in 1980 or 81 he had a massive stroke. He’d been in his study preparing a sermon, mum was marking schoolbooks in another room, she didn’t see him for five hours & went to tell him supper was ready. He’d been lying on the floor as he often did to ease a headache.

He was 55, he was saved by the #OurNHSPeople, but he lost his speech and any movement on his left side. He spent a long time in hospitals including a stroke unit @NHSHomerton in the hot summer of 1981. I remember visiting him in my bus conductor’s uniform and talking
about Botham
Ministers live in tied accommodation - if you can’t work the home is needed for someone who can, so Mum & Dad became #SpringboardHA tenants in Bow. Mum became dad’s #Carer & a receptionist at the HA. Dad spent time in @RoyalLondonHosp and attending #speechtherapy in Blackfriars
After a few years mum moved them to a bungalow in Derby, dad stayed in @StJoHospice while she headed north & then I drove him up the M1 and over the Trent. They lived together until 1988 when a few months after the birth of their 1st grandson he died. He was 63, the
same age I am.
Dad was an imposing personality who I never really got to know, even though I cared for him 1 day a week at the flat in Bow when I was unemployed for a few months - the loss of speech & the fight to find the right word which often came out wrong was very hard. A man
of words.
I knew some of his achievements as I lived through them but still found his funeral and memorial service eye opening - it was said he had the body of an Englishman, the mind of an Indian and the heart of an African. He was our dad.

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Omar Khan @omaromalleykhan.bsky.social · 10h

I should have remembered that result, which as you will well know was down to some less than savoury electioneering and positioning

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Omar Khan @omaromalleykhan.bsky.social · 11h

Argh - it's two of them then. I forgot about Leicester East. The other is Harrow East.

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Omar Khan @omaromalleykhan.bsky.social · 11h

My father, with my grandparents, in rural Ireland in the 1990s:

bsky.app/profile/omar...

Omar Khan @omaromalleykhan.bsky.social · Mar 18

My grandparents, born over 100 years ago in rural county Mayo, loved and cared for my Pakistani born father, and understood and represented the values of humanity and community that underpins Irishness

(Photo from the 1990s)

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Omar Khan @omaromalleykhan.bsky.social · 11h

Thank you for sharing

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Omar Khan @omaromalleykhan.bsky.social · 11h

You're welcome

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Omar Khan @omaromalleykhan.bsky.social · 11h

Yours is the experience of literally tens of millions of people. The stats make this clear, but it's something every individual and household just transparently knows to be true

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Omar Khan @omaromalleykhan.bsky.social · 11h

Someone should ask him: forget about your opinions, did you know and interact with more minorities and migrants as a child or 10, 20 years ago than you do today? Why do you think integration is weakening when your personal experience is so transparently the opposite, as it is for everyone?

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Omar Khan @omaromalleykhan.bsky.social · 11h

I suppose he's keen on, say, 100 million non citizen labourers moving to Britain, if he's seeking to replicate their economic and social models? (which admittedly share much with Western imperial states of the past in denying political, economic or social rights to a majority of different ethnicity)

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Omar Khan @omaromalleykhan.bsky.social · 12h

The *far right* now has nonwhite members and supporters I mean integration is obviously, transparently greater in 2025 than it was in 2015, 2005 or 1995, and everyone knows this is true, based on their personal experience, even if they're innumerate or seeking to stoke division

Omar Khan @omaromalleykhan.bsky.social · 12h

I know statistics are poorly understood and are misused. But facts matter

Between the 1991, 2001, 2011 and 2021 Census *every* ethnic group in the UK has become *less* geographically segregated and *all* groups, majority and minorities, are more likely to interact with people not like them

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Omar Khan @omaromalleykhan.bsky.social · 12h

I mean, any political parties' leadership and membership - Labour or Reform, Conservative or Green - is just so obviously more diverse than it was even a decade much less two decades ago surely that's a clear sign of integration, that is replicated in neighbourhoods, families, workplaces everywhere

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Omar Khan @omaromalleykhan.bsky.social · 12h

This statistical fact is also obvious across so many domains: politicians, sport, economics, media, neighbours, partners, children

Does any adult in Britain (20, 40, 60 or 80) really think, has genuinely experienced, *less* interactions across ethnicity than they did as a child or younger afult?

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Omar Khan @omaromalleykhan.bsky.social · 12h

Here's the relevant chart from the above report. It's rare to see such a clear, consistent slope in any social trend. That segregation is decreasing is perhaps the best evidence, least controversial social fact of modern Britain

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Omar Khan @omaromalleykhan.bsky.social · 12h

Evidence in this report, by the leading academics on the topic

bsky.app/profile/omar...

Omar Khan @omaromalleykhan.bsky.social · 22h

If you're interested in understanding segregation and integration better, here is a good paper by the UK's leading academics on the topic

rgs-ibg.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

The Geographical Journal | RGS Research Journal | Wiley Online Library

This paper analyses the changing geographies of ethnic diversity and segregation in England and Wales using Census data covering the last 30 years (1991–2021). Residential segregation of all ethnic g...

rgs-ibg.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

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Omar Khan @omaromalleykhan.bsky.social · 12h

I know statistics are poorly understood and are misused. But facts matter

Between the 1991, 2001, 2011 and 2021 Census *every* ethnic group in the UK has become *less* geographically segregated and *all* groups, majority and minorities, are more likely to interact with people not like them

29 470 1.4K

Omar Khan @omaromalleykhan.bsky.social · 18h

The meaning of 'law' isn't just being eroded in the US, but in academic social science, apparently!

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Omar Khan @omaromalleykhan.bsky.social · 19h

On the issue of housing costs, see our @trustforlondon.bsky.social chart, showing that after housing costs (blue dots), child poverty in these areas rises to 40% or more

trustforlondon.org.uk/data/child-p...

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Omar Khan @omaromalleykhan.bsky.social · 19h

I haven't looked at all of these in detail, but these local authorities must all have large Labour majorities - Haringey has 45 Labour councillors (out of 57) - and Labour MPs of course (including the Deputy PM)

Im not sure I understand the logic here, whether on genuine need or electorally?

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Omar Khan @omaromalleykhan.bsky.social · 21h

Of the 100 most diverse constituencies in the UK, the Conservatives hold just 1

Most Conservative-held seats have below-average ethnic minority populations, tho they did win some above average seats in the past (less so very diverse seats, which now number 50-75 compared to 20 or less 25 yrs ago)

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