100% english, 50% racist?

Monday night, there was this program "100% English" on Channel 4. I don't know if other people who watched it felt the same uneasiness that I felt. Let me give you an idea what it was about. Basically, it was posing the question whether there are people who are 100% English through dealing with 8 case studies and a sophisticated DNA test to breakdown their ethnic background. I'm not against the idea of being proud of your ethniciy, but I just couldn't help feeling that there were very strong racist undertones. And this got me thinking, "so what's really the point of this show anyway?" Does it just prove that some people who might have thought they are purely English have been living a lie and shows them how wrong they were through taking this DNA test which, I might add, we have not been told how reliable it is or how reliable are its interpretations by the geneticist they used whom they didn't even mention his/her name? Or does the program have a hidden agenda? Well, I have to say that, against the background of the heated debates about multicultural Britain recently, this program was doing a little more than promoting xenophobia. The worst case was that old lady from Kent who haven't been to London since the sixties (and never had a spring roll which turned out to be ironic since some of her ethnic origin turned out to be Chinese). I tried to sympathize with her but she was openly saying that she hates the fact that all those 'other' people are filling her country. When she went to see the neighbourhood where her family's old shop was and saw that one building was replaced by a mosque and said "how terrible", I was gobsmacked. "Why do you have to drag religion into this?", I thought. Again the media very cleverly managed to impose the idea that it's Muslims who are the source of trouble. It's really sad. But as I said, after watching the program I tried to put myslef in the same position. What if Cairo became overcrowded with people from other countries, other cultures and other faiths, wouldn't it bother me? Well, to be honest, I think it would a little bit. So I guess the question now is: does 100% tolerance really exist?

Overall, I think this program has revealed that everyone has his own little prejudices, whether we acknowledge it or not. But the point will always be, how justified are those prejudices? I mean, you should have seen the faces of the people on this show when they were told about their ethnic breakdown which includes a class called "MiddleEastern". I bet when those people heard this, images of backward war-stricken poorly-dressed Arab terrorists with guns in their hands sprung to their minds. This is the sad state of the world we are living in.

p.s.
if you are by any chance tempted to take this DNA test, check this out.

Mai