The scourge of dinner party racists

Why else are the real corners of power in multicultural Britain so empty of ethnic citizens? Why else could Yasmin Alibhai-Brown be told by a civilised, commissioning editor on a quality publication that it was a stroke of genius on her part to have added Brown to her surname? Without that normalising handle, he implied, she would never have become successful.

''You could argue that he was being utterly, ruthlessly realistic by telling it as it is,'' she muses, still amazed by the encounter which happened a year or so ago. ''I'm sure that man didn't consider himself the slightest bit racist, or xenophobic, but he was certainly making a whole lot of unattractive assumptions.''

Alibhai-Brown has, in fact, been living in Britain for almost 30 years, having arrived here in the Ugandan Asian exodus, fleeing the tyrannical rise of Idi Amin in 1972. Since then, and initially in defiance of great hardship, she has gained a reputation as one of the most informed and radical commentators on racial and immigration matters, winning respect from those who work doggedly to establish lasting trust and harmony between communities, but equally attracting the ire of others, black and white, who regard her influence, and often unflinching critical appraisals, as almost heretically intrusive.

So, no tip-toeing do-gooder, but someone who holds up a mirror to show us the more disobliging image of ourselves. Author, broadcaster, and journalist, Alibhai-Brown is also a member of the Home Office Race Forum, and today she will discuss her latest book, Mixed Feelings, with Sheena McDonald and Simon Fanshawe during two sessions at the Edinburgh Book Festival.

The subject, of course, couldn't be more uncomfortably pressing. Oldham, Burnley, Bradford, Sighthill - these places have now entered the lexicon of troublespots and, whatever their firm purpose of amendment, for the future they will remain there, as Toxteth and Brixton have, blamed over decades for racist mayhem. But the wider message, Alibhai-Brown argues, must concern us all, for it represents our national failure to meet the challenge demanded by a new multiracial Britain. ''I now think it isn't just racism which is the problem, but all the things all of us haven't done because of an institutional indifference to creating a new hopeful place. As always, power lies with the white middle class so they have the greater obligation to make things work.''

Weeks before Sighthill erupted in anger and feuding, Alibhai-Brown had repeatedly cautioned that multiracial tensions were on the boil in many areas which were rotting, oppressive, mistrustful, and lacking in any optimism, or civic pride. In her Independent column of July 17 she wrote: ''We must never underestimate the power of racism and xenophobia to influence resentful whites left behind in this bright, new, zappy digital age.''

The most promising initial solution, she believes, is for the various authorities to put in place a proper infrastructure so that indigenous and immigrant residents can work together to establish a locality. ''You say to both sides: ''This is your space. You have to share it and find ways of developing it and yourselves together.'' So, from the start, society works towards creating a sense of belonging, in which everyone can benefit.''

Saturday's proposed joint march in Glasgow between the two aggrieved Sighthill communities could be, in Alibhai-Brown's opinion, a brilliant step forward. ''Showing solidarity is the only way for disadvantaged groups to change things for the better. Without bridge-building people simply blame each other.''

Alibhai-Brown cites Leeds as an example of a city which has managed the present influx of immigrants exceptionally well. ''When it was announced that the Kosovans were coming, the local authority there decided to make their arrival a positive project. They said to the public: ''Look, these people are emotionally and physically destroyed. They really need us, and we're in the lucky position to be able to show how hospitable we are.'' The authorities actually played up that aspect and it worked remarkably because civic pride was involved.

''Okay, there are still race problems in Leeds, but, interestingly, they seem to be drug-related turf wars between gangs of Asians and West Indians. Yet, believe me, if enough government money were poured in, more cities would say: 'Yes, please, we'd like asylum-seekers. Thank you very much'.''

However Alibhai-Brown's immediate worry is that, in order to defuse the threat of further hostilities, the Home Office now begins to deport more people, more quickly. ''If the effect of the Sighthill murder is that the authorities become increasingly draconian that would be absolutely awful.'' But, since the violence, there is evidence of a substantial rise in the number of refugees now wanting to return home, rather than endure victimisation in the supposed safe haven of Britain. ''So the racists have achieved their goal, haven't they?''

Alibhai-Brown's own early experience of Britain was not one of generosity. She remembers being virtually thrown out of a taxi by a driver shouting: ''We don't want rubbish like you coming to this country.'' And she describes her three years in the English department at Oxford University, studying for her masters, as the worst of her life. And, yet, in Uganda she had known true impoverishment. ''Ugandan Asians weren't supposed to be poor but my father was a bohemian. He wasn't interested in money. He would go out to buy cigars and disappear for three years, leaving my mother to keep debtors at bay.''

From the beginning Oxford, she says, made her feel unworthy and invisible. ''One member of the interview panel asked what writers I admired and I replied V S Naipaul, to which he responded: 'Well, if you like that sort of thing, this isn't the place for you'.'' Here was that special brand of British racism closeted in snobbery, and she was determined to fight it by gaining her degree. In those days, Alibhai-Brown was married to a fellow Asian, and from that marriage she has a 23-year-old son. Her second husband, Colin Brown, is chairman of the consumer panel of the Financial Services Authority, and the couple, who live in West London, have an eight-year-old daughter.

Her centre-left credentials are impressive. She is a research fellow at the Institute of Public Policy Research and the Foreign Policy Centre, and apart from her outspoken membership of the Home Office Race Forum, her fearless exposure of forced marriages and the maltreatment of young Asian women in Britain has led politicians to take up the issue.

Alibhai-Brown contends that, like some of the white thugs involved, rioting Asian youths are now nihilistic and unmoved by the pain they cause others, including their parents. ''Their upbringing has been distorted by families who want them to belong to some mythical land in a magical time where all good and Allah prevail.'' But, she argues, forcing such fantasies on their sons is resulting in an anarchic mentality. ''These kids have never been allowed to belong, by the white neighbourhoods, or by white institutions. But neither have they been allowed to belong by their own families, who don't want them to claim this country as their own.''

Much of the hate mail she receives is routinely abusive, claiming Alibhai-Brown is no longer a Muslim because she is married to a white man, but there are times when it is so vicious that she goes to bed having placed buckets of water by the front door in case incendiary devices are thrown through the letter box. And, in equal number, threats and insults come from white racists, whose brute bigotry can so easily be invoked to destroy any gains made in the last 30 years.

But what about the whites who feel so disenchanted? Do we simply dismiss them as white trash? Margaret Thatcher, she argues, neutralised extremist nationalists, which is why Alibhai-Brown hopes Iain Duncan Smith will be the next Tory leader. The alternative, she insists, would mean far-right voters would have no respectable option and, in sheer frustration, they would be drawn towards the ''increasingly urbane'' leadership of the British National Party.

Alibhai-Brown doesn't believe racism is irredeemably rooted in our psyche, but the horror of the past 100 years is that individuals can be brought so readily to perceive their neighbours as non-persons, targets to be demonised and run out of town or, at worst, annihilated without an anguished thought. Maybe we can't make people better than they are,

but at the very first racist whisper, Alibhai-Brown urges decent folk

to heed the danger. Institutional indifference can no longer be allowed to flourish in the dark.

Mixed Feelings by Yasmin

Alibhai-Brown. The Women's Press. (pounds) 11.99.