Transcript for: respect and the young generation
Interviewee: Mamuna Karim
Subject: Memories of Pakistan
Well, when we first came there was a very strong community spirit where everybody looked after each other and ladies always knew that they were going to be respected by their own youths, if they ever saw their own young lads around they would always behave very respectably and that is something that has changed now you don’t get that same feeling, you’re probably feeling more intimidated by some of the young lads that hang around then you would by some of the other cultures and that’s something a friend of mine once said who works in Bradford and she used to walk home having worked at seven in the evening and she used to say to us that she was fine walking past the Asian youths now she feels quite intimidated by them and gets her son to pick her up because she doesn’t want to walk past them. I think that’s something that has changed for the negative, I don’t know I think they wanted to integrate but to the extreme where they’ve picked up all the worst habits they possibly could and so have forgotten some of the values that had come over with them you know the family spirit and the community spirit. There’s probably two reasons some of them may want to rebel from the strictness and they want to do their own thing and they want to mix in, there’s those that are getting very defensive they seem to have got this, on their high horse that we want to be treated equally whereas they are, and they are sort of fighting for a right which they’ve already got, they seem to think that they are missing out on something and then you’ve also got those where the boys and the men were always allowed to do what they want before but were obviously brought up with the respect and the manner whereas now, they’re just left to run riot and are allowed to go out, whereas the girls are still sort of held back a little bit, and the boys have just taken the advantage and just to you know behaving badly. So it probably is a progression from the generations, the actual influence form when they first came over has been lost now.