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【英文原文】
摘要：人們常說美國是個大熔爐，能熔化移民到美國的各個種族和民族。據本文作者介紹，英國簡直也是一個種族和民族的熔爐，現在的新生兒，每五個中至少有一個是黑人和白人的混血兒（俗稱chocolate baby“巧克力寶寶”）。種族主義并未銷聲匿跡，而是隨著經濟形勢的好壞時起時落。作者預計50年后英國少數民族的特性大部分將會喪失。作為一個“對自己的文化根源深感自豪的民族社區”，英國華人能保持自己的民族身份嗎？
I find it easiest to look forwards by looking back, to the "Great Labour Migration" of 1948-55, seen at the time as a matter of black guests coming to a white host. It's a quasi-imperial perception that has shifted since the 1970s, but the social problems and deficiencies it engendered dog us still.
It's highly questionable whether Britain is an open society even now. Against the upward trend in the 1980s of ethnic minorities breaking into the professions and the media must be set objective evidence of a very racist society. Since the Stephen Lawrence affair the government has at least been talking about the existence of racism, but it's always the case that racism diminishes in times of prosperity. When the economic going gets tough, people want someone to take their feelings out on.
The social landscape seems to me at a surreal crossroads. Britain fosters images of itself as homogeneous -to be white is no longer the central defining feature-but there remain various kinds of "Britishness". So I can envisage the future in two very different ways.
The first is broadly the way Britain is at the moment: a mosaic of communities -Bangladeshi, Afro-Caribbean, Chinese or Jewish holding fast to a strong social identity, but lumbered also with a whole raft of benefits and disadvantages, most of them defined in economic terms. It's possible that will still be the pattern in 50 years time, but not very likely.
