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What irks me personally about it is the reporting that it was done by a “British citizen of Somali origin”. He was probably born in the UK, went through school

What irks me personally about it is the reporting that it was done by a “British citizen of Somali origin”. He was probably born in the UK, went through schools there, maybe his parents did too. But let’s just make it clear, he’s not British in the same way that someone white is. Or, you know, Pakistani, but from an upper-middle-class family of doctors. No one reports that Wayne Rooney is British, of English origin.

axiosgunnar 5y ago
Your quote is quite likely the most important part of the whole story, as it helps with fact-based policy decisions on immigration. Disagreeing with this is akin to putting your head in the sand and wishing for a reality that simply is not there.
- rich_sasha 5y ago
  But he wasn’t foreign, is my whole point. He was born in Britain. Or if not, passed the whole naturalisation process. Apparently he’s indistinguishable from other British people. Oh except for the “Somali heritage”. I feel like the focus on “Somali” is meant to deflect any responsibility on domestic matters. This guy apparently was born, bred, schooled in the UK. Maybe he was radicalised by hardcore Somali-heritage islamists (if that’s a thing), but then it’s a failure of UK domestic policy for creating an environment, or cause, for them to organise, and UK domestic security for preventing this. I’m not saying this is easy, rather that this is where the onus lies. But when we say “ah he’s Somali”, suddenly it’s someone else’s fault. When a white British guy, with a name like Gary or Shaun stabs a teacher, say, you get stories from people who went to school with Gary or Shaun. He was an alright guy but a bit extreme when angry, maybe. Or no one would see it coming, he was a quiet guy. Why did no one see it coming? Ah well you can’t prevent everything. But this guy is Somali, it’s their fault. I mean, ok he’s British but you know what I mean. Different British.
  - jahewson 5y ago
    You can’t simultaneously assert that the fact that he’s not foreign is the most important component while advocating for excluding this information from the news. Was he British? <censored>. Was he foreign? <censored>. What in his upbringing could have had ties to extremism? <censored>. Hmm. Great newspaper.
  - chuckee 5y ago
    > But he wasn’t foreign, is my whole point. He was born in Britain. Or if not, passed the whole naturalisation process. Apparently he’s indistinguishable from other British people. Naturalisation process as it currently stands. I believe the GP was alluding to the fact that that process could be changed. Though I agree the public should base their sentiment on, for example, per-capita homicide rates of various groups, and not anecdata. But graphs don't seem to move people the way stories do, and we are stuck with the public we have. > When a white British guy, with a name like Gary or Shaun stabs a teacher, say, you get stories from people who went to school with Gary or Shaun. He was an alright guy but a bit extreme when angry, maybe. Or no one would see it coming, he was a quiet guy. Why did no one see it coming? Ah well you can’t prevent everything. After Stephen Lawrence, a Black man, was murdered in the UK by whites, he was commemorated by, among other things, making 22 April "Stephen Lawrence Day": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Stephen_Lawrence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Stephen_Lawrence
threatofrain 5y ago
As people have observed of popular media, it's a 2-way street. Writers write this way because they think readers want to know, and yet this kind of information nugget is in public consciousness in part because people write this way. If people stop rewarding this kind of writing, their wellbeing is not threatened in any way. If companies fail to observe the competitive edge which their competitors are utilizing...
- phendrenad2 5y ago
  Well they could word it in a more sympathetic way.
matthewmorgan 5y ago
That's what 'irks' you? Not the murder of an MP?
- moffkalast 5y ago
  It's not the first and likely not the last, regardless of what draconian measures they implement. It's a high profile job and the danger comes with it. If you're the one writing laws for everyone to follow, it's highly likely that many people will want you dead. It's a "fun" fact that US presidents have a nearly 20% death rate for example.
  - hawk_ 5y ago
    > It's a "fun" fact that US presidents have a nearly 20% death rate for example. that's lower than the 100% death rate of general population.
    - mdp2021 5y ago
      You forgot the pars construens. "Occupational mortality rate"?
  - mdp2021 5y ago
    Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley and Kennedy, and Reagan came close (I cannot remember other close calls) out of 45: that is 10% at "best" ('best' here as improper as that 'funny'). Natural causes do not count for the context.
    - moffkalast 5y ago
      Yeah I think with natural causes it's 18.something percent.
- rich_sasha 5y ago
  It’s an unspeakable tragedy. But this is HN and I thought we were meant to skip the obvious and focus on insightful debate. With any terror event, tragic as it might be, the aftermath tends to be way more impactful than the actual event. The death of 5,000 people in WTC started at least one UN-sanctioned war and cost the lives of many times more than the airplane strikes. So yes, I’m choosing to focus on the aftermath. But Sir David, rest in peace.
jahewson 5y ago
His father is Somali and works for the Somali government, so you can drop the accusatory speculation. It’s likely he’s British-born though and the usual word in the UK would be “heritage” not “origin”, which as you say implies that someone was born elsewhere. When talking about a hate crime the ethnicity of the perpetrator is hardly irrelevant. And for any terrorism-related incident the first question is going to be whether or not the perpetrators were domestic or foreign (especially if they just murdered a member of the government) - as this shapes the response massively. If this person was raised abroad and brought radicalism with them that’s totally different from someone raised in the UK who has been radicalised online (or possibly even in the community).
onei 5y ago
To me, Somali origin but British citizen implies they were born in Somalia and then immigrated to the UK and later gained citizenship. Regardless, the term is designed to point out that the person is foreign and that's something that the public should inexplicably be concerned about.
ajsnigrutin 5y ago
Considering most of the terorism attacks are done by a few groups of people, people want to know who did it and why. A better question is, how can someone, immersed in calm and relaxed british enviroment and culture (if we ignore their footbal hooligans of course) get so radicalized by looking at stuff online, to go and actually murder someone. Political correctness aside, it's mostly either local nationalists (which are native, noone "let them in", and there's nowhere to deport them), or first or second generation immigrant islamists (which someone actually let inside the country relatively recently). If it's an immigrant, people of course want to know where they came from... and very few of them come from eg. japan. I know this fuels steretypes, but ignoring statistics is also bad.
- rich_sasha 5y ago
  I’m all up for statistics, but this is isn’t statistics, this is anecdata at best. Also, make your pick. What was this guy? British? Radical Islamist? Somali? I think these are reasonable labels. But “British but you know, kinda foreign” is unfair. It’s saying, well it’s kind of our fault, we can’t blame any foreigners, but oh look he’s really Somali, so it’s fine. Stiff upper lip prevails, unblemished.
  - ajsnigrutin 5y ago
    Well, if statistics show that relatively more second generation somali immigrants do bad stuff than second generation japanese immigrants, that would be an interesting data point. I live in the balkans... back in the time, there was a lot of crime commited by people from here all over rich european countries, and everyone knew that... the germans/french/swiss/... and we, the balkaners did. So yeah, considering the amount of somali immigrants and the number of native brits there, and the MP getting killed by a somali, what is it, that makes somalis more likely to do an act of terrorism? Is it something that they 'learned' from their families? Friends? Church/mosque? Why are immigrants overrepresented in crimes like that? Same for us balkaners... why do more Željkos rob banks than Hans's in germany? This is a thing that should be looked over, and not just ignored, because things like these are not a one-time thing, but have been happening all over europe (and i'm talking about both terrorist attacks by islamists, and mostly money&drugs-related crimes by people from balkans).

axiosgunnar 5y ago

Your quote is quite likely the most important part of the whole story, as it helps with fact-based policy decisions on immigration. Disagreeing with this is akin to putting your head in the sand and wishing for a reality that simply is not there.

rich_sasha 5y ago
But he wasn’t foreign, is my whole point. He was born in Britain. Or if not, passed the whole naturalisation process. Apparently he’s indistinguishable from other British people. Oh except for the “Somali heritage”. I feel like the focus on “Somali” is meant to deflect any responsibility on domestic matters. This guy apparently was born, bred, schooled in the UK. Maybe he was radicalised by hardcore Somali-heritage islamists (if that’s a thing), but then it’s a failure of UK domestic policy for creating an environment, or cause, for them to organise, and UK domestic security for preventing this. I’m not saying this is easy, rather that this is where the onus lies. But when we say “ah he’s Somali”, suddenly it’s someone else’s fault. When a white British guy, with a name like Gary or Shaun stabs a teacher, say, you get stories from people who went to school with Gary or Shaun. He was an alright guy but a bit extreme when angry, maybe. Or no one would see it coming, he was a quiet guy. Why did no one see it coming? Ah well you can’t prevent everything. But this guy is Somali, it’s their fault. I mean, ok he’s British but you know what I mean. Different British.
- jahewson 5y ago
  You can’t simultaneously assert that the fact that he’s not foreign is the most important component while advocating for excluding this information from the news. Was he British? <censored>. Was he foreign? <censored>. What in his upbringing could have had ties to extremism? <censored>. Hmm. Great newspaper.
- chuckee 5y ago
  > But he wasn’t foreign, is my whole point. He was born in Britain. Or if not, passed the whole naturalisation process. Apparently he’s indistinguishable from other British people. Naturalisation process as it currently stands. I believe the GP was alluding to the fact that that process could be changed. Though I agree the public should base their sentiment on, for example, per-capita homicide rates of various groups, and not anecdata. But graphs don't seem to move people the way stories do, and we are stuck with the public we have. > When a white British guy, with a name like Gary or Shaun stabs a teacher, say, you get stories from people who went to school with Gary or Shaun. He was an alright guy but a bit extreme when angry, maybe. Or no one would see it coming, he was a quiet guy. Why did no one see it coming? Ah well you can’t prevent everything. After Stephen Lawrence, a Black man, was murdered in the UK by whites, he was commemorated by, among other things, making 22 April "Stephen Lawrence Day": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Stephen_Lawrence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Stephen_Lawrence

threatofrain 5y ago

As people have observed of popular media, it's a 2-way street. Writers write this way because they think readers want to know, and yet this kind of information nugget is in public consciousness in part because people write this way. If people stop rewarding this kind of writing, their wellbeing is not threatened in any way. If companies fail to observe the competitive edge which their competitors are utilizing...

phendrenad2 5y ago
Well they could word it in a more sympathetic way.

matthewmorgan 5y ago

That's what 'irks' you? Not the murder of an MP?

moffkalast 5y ago
It's not the first and likely not the last, regardless of what draconian measures they implement. It's a high profile job and the danger comes with it. If you're the one writing laws for everyone to follow, it's highly likely that many people will want you dead. It's a "fun" fact that US presidents have a nearly 20% death rate for example.
- hawk_ 5y ago
  > It's a "fun" fact that US presidents have a nearly 20% death rate for example. that's lower than the 100% death rate of general population.
  - mdp2021 5y ago
    You forgot the pars construens. "Occupational mortality rate"?
- mdp2021 5y ago
  Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley and Kennedy, and Reagan came close (I cannot remember other close calls) out of 45: that is 10% at "best" ('best' here as improper as that 'funny'). Natural causes do not count for the context.
  - moffkalast 5y ago
    Yeah I think with natural causes it's 18.something percent.
rich_sasha 5y ago
It’s an unspeakable tragedy. But this is HN and I thought we were meant to skip the obvious and focus on insightful debate. With any terror event, tragic as it might be, the aftermath tends to be way more impactful than the actual event. The death of 5,000 people in WTC started at least one UN-sanctioned war and cost the lives of many times more than the airplane strikes. So yes, I’m choosing to focus on the aftermath. But Sir David, rest in peace.

jahewson 5y ago

His father is Somali and works for the Somali government, so you can drop the accusatory speculation. It’s likely he’s British-born though and the usual word in the UK would be “heritage” not “origin”, which as you say implies that someone was born elsewhere. When talking about a hate crime the ethnicity of the perpetrator is hardly irrelevant. And for any terrorism-related incident the first question is going to be whether or not the perpetrators were domestic or foreign (especially if they just murdered a member of the government) - as this shapes the response massively. If this person was raised abroad and brought radicalism with them that’s totally different from someone raised in the UK who has been radicalised online (or possibly even in the community).

onei 5y ago

To me, Somali origin but British citizen implies they were born in Somalia and then immigrated to the UK and later gained citizenship. Regardless, the term is designed to point out that the person is foreign and that's something that the public should inexplicably be concerned about.

ajsnigrutin 5y ago

Considering most of the terorism attacks are done by a few groups of people, people want to know who did it and why. A better question is, how can someone, immersed in calm and relaxed british enviroment and culture (if we ignore their footbal hooligans of course) get so radicalized by looking at stuff online, to go and actually murder someone. Political correctness aside, it's mostly either local nationalists (which are native, noone "let them in", and there's nowhere to deport them), or first or second generation immigrant islamists (which someone actually let inside the country relatively recently). If it's an immigrant, people of course want to know where they came from... and very few of them come from eg. japan. I know this fuels steretypes, but ignoring statistics is also bad.

rich_sasha 5y ago
I’m all up for statistics, but this is isn’t statistics, this is anecdata at best. Also, make your pick. What was this guy? British? Radical Islamist? Somali? I think these are reasonable labels. But “British but you know, kinda foreign” is unfair. It’s saying, well it’s kind of our fault, we can’t blame any foreigners, but oh look he’s really Somali, so it’s fine. Stiff upper lip prevails, unblemished.
- ajsnigrutin 5y ago
  Well, if statistics show that relatively more second generation somali immigrants do bad stuff than second generation japanese immigrants, that would be an interesting data point. I live in the balkans... back in the time, there was a lot of crime commited by people from here all over rich european countries, and everyone knew that... the germans/french/swiss/... and we, the balkaners did. So yeah, considering the amount of somali immigrants and the number of native brits there, and the MP getting killed by a somali, what is it, that makes somalis more likely to do an act of terrorism? Is it something that they 'learned' from their families? Friends? Church/mosque? Why are immigrants overrepresented in crimes like that? Same for us balkaners... why do more Željkos rob banks than Hans's in germany? This is a thing that should be looked over, and not just ignored, because things like these are not a one-time thing, but have been happening all over europe (and i'm talking about both terrorist attacks by islamists, and mostly money&drugs-related crimes by people from balkans).