Forgive the abridged theft from Monty Python… Lazy titling while on a mobile phone to blame.
I’ve just read an interesting and affirmative piece in the New Yorker, entitled Citizen Khan, which prompted this response from me.
“As a non-American I took much from this story; it reminded me of what has always been the great promise of US social & political ambition (and unfortunately also of how often that ambition can be frustrated). I was also alarmed at how similar US & Australian histories have been in terms of racist exclusions… think of the White Australian policies of the late 19th & 20th centuries. I do think the journalist might be mistaken when she claims that… “At the start of the Second World War, the United States was the only developed nation other than Germany to explicitly restrict citizenship on the basis of race…” Australia still restricted citizenship & this continued, one could argue, into the early 1970s.”
Inkstained fingers 