Part of me says this is an idiotic beat up by the Oxford mail – Oxford’s local rag known to pander to the chav contingent. The Oxford that I live in – both inside and outside the walled colleges, and beyond just the streets that tourists come to see – is a fairly diverse place. 10 minutes walk down the Cowley road from the sandstone scholar theme-park in the centre of town, you’ll pass two mosques, two p*rn shops and a pawn shop, and a well-loved Jamaican eating house run by the same first-generation quarrelling Caribbean couple since forever.

What folks here may not know is that Oxford has always been an industrial as well as an academic hub – hence the ‘town’ and ‘gown’. I can see from my office window the BMW (formerly British Leyland) plant that rolls out 700 Minis a day, but I’ve been told by cabbies the plant itself is physically a third the size it was 20 years ago. So while there’s substantial privilege and power here, there are real pockets of poverty, low skills and under-education too. Unfortunately what seems to go hand in hand with that in England is a certain percentage of votes for the BNP. I’ve had female east asian colleages shouted at in the street and feel threatened by local d.ckhead teenagers, who no doubt grow up to be just like the complainant loser in the David Lloyd gym. In that sense, despite it’s fairly unique place in the British consciousness, Oxford is not immune from the rest of the country’s daily travails and setbacks on the road to an ever more inclusive society.

It may also help to point out that the Oxfordshire region remains ambivalent about its famous university, and has been for nigh on 900 years. It appreciates the tax revenue from the colleges and the gracious faculty homes, along with the culture, but dislilkes many other things about the University. In days gone by this often exploded into violence; a good account is available here. That the article is still contested speaks volumes.

I’m half tempted to offer an ‘Oxford Report’ to y’all once I’ve spent some time there (starting this coming August).

That’d be really interesting, SL, hope you do!

Then of course there is the ongoing ‘town and gown’ divide, of which I suspect this may be a part. (The ‘town’ is rather high Tory; the ‘gown’ is often an odd mix of trendy left and libertarian).

Consider this hypothetical:

I am a racist. I hate muslims, and I believe they are all wife-beaters. I find an article that says a particular muslim beat his wife once. This confirms my prejudice, and so I write a blog article saying so.

Are you saying you would not refute this line of argument?

Which is again, a part of the point. What is the valence of the cultural attitudes to midgets? To fat people? To body builders? To old people?

You are taking an assumption (cultural attitudes towards islamic women are more negative than most) and ‘proving’ it with an isolated incident. You could probably come up with hundreds of similar ‘proofs’.

And then you end up with a broad social phenomenon.

I am not disproving your assumption. I just don’t believe you have made a satisfactory case.

the example you give does not convince me that Oxford swimming pools are a hotbed of Islamic hate.

Which is a misreading of what I’m saying.

Sure I believe that. I also believe there are cultural attitudes about kids with black make-up, men with eye-patches, and women who snore on the bus.

But what if I was to blog about a single incident where 1 person with an eyepatch got told by another customer that he wasn’t welcome in the squash courts (or something) after being a member for 6 months without incident.

‘Go read all about the incredible tale of a one-eyed man who was reduced to a symbol of teh Pirate oppression in an Oxford squash court’ I would write, to exemplify a broad social phenomenon of the wideranging prejudice against eye-patches, and men who wore them.

You would call me a loon.

Wherever you go, whoever you are, and whatever you do, someone is going to dislike you. Some of them might even say so. This differs from a broad social phenomenon, and the example you give does not convince me that Oxford swimming pools are a hotbed of Islamic hate.

http://larvatusprodeo.net/2007/04/23/moral-panic-monday/

If you don’t believe that there are certain ingrained cultural attitudes about women, Islam and Islamic women, I imagine there’s nothing I can say to convince you. But I find it incredible that you don’t believe that there is wideranging prejudice against Muslims.

This current ‘emo crisis’ is a good example. Would you say the events of the last week demonstrate a ‘broad social phenomenon’ of emo kids committing suicide?

That was the reason I commented. You can’t take one instance, and extrapolate it to a ‘broader social prejudice’.