thorne anderson / corbis for time AMSTERDAM This group of teenage friends — from Jewish, Surinamese, Indonesian and Moroccan backgrounds — is typical of the ethnic mix found on the outskirts of big Dutch cities

	INTEGRATION

Posted Sunday, November 13, 2005; 9.20GMT
The eruption came when a minor clash between white and Asian gangs exploded into three days of violence in July 2001. Young Asian men turned their rage on the police and ravaged the symbols of "white culture," like a BMW showroom and a club for white working-class men. Many of the older generation were shocked their sons were involved. But young men with Bradford rather than Punjabi accents were no longer operating by their fathers' rules. "They feel a distance from their own parents," says Martin Baines, a West Yorkshire police inspector who has worked on police–community relations for 25 years. "They've created a culture and identity all their own."

The riots coincided with the publication of a report on ways to ease cross-cultural tensions. The report painted a grim portrait of a place where white flight had left behind an underclass of poor ethnic minorities and concluded that the nation was in danger of becoming a collection of separate communities leading parallel lives with their own places of worship, employment, schools, community organizations, languages and social networks.

Bradford exemplified the perils of Britain's 20-year approach to integrating its immigrants. Responding to the open racism that greeted the first postwar wave from the old empire, Britain grudgingly decided to let the different identities of its minorities flourish. Yet for more than a decade — and especially after the July attacks on London's transport system by alleged homegrown suicide bombers — the government has grown increasingly uneasy with passive multiculturalism. Trevor Phillips, the black chair of the Commission for Racial Equality, recently fueled the debate when he charged Britain with "sleepwalking into segregation," with its emphasis on recognizing and respecting diverse cultures.

But Britain rejects U.S.-style affirmative action in favor of something less drastic: having the government take a more active interest in ensuring all its diverse citizens share enough values and common experiences to keep the country together. That can entail small things like encouraging a more profound sense of British citizenship through tests of national knowledge. And it can involve wholesale changes in how the police, for example, interact with minority communities. In Bradford, Baines works for a department that now has 4.1% minority police officers, regularly consults with an ethnic-liaison committee, broadcasts a radio program to the Asian audience, and works with locals to head off trouble before it can build into rioting. The difference in community policing, he says, is that "We're on the ground, we can't run and hide."

Yet the steps are incremental. Bradford today is still a poor, uneasy mix of integration and discrimination. Iftikhar Hussain, manager of a restaurant wrecked by white youths in revenge for the 2001 riots, has helped rebuild a business that attracts a booming white clientele. But he is convinced racism lies behind difficulties he's had with the local authorities. And he is angry that the schools his children attend are still almost completely Asian. He supplements their lessons with private tutors and the kids, aged 18, 16 and 14, want to go to university. "But I worry because they haven't been to school with any whites," says Hussain. "How are they going to handle things when they go to university with them or when they start a job?"

DUTCH NEGLECT
Iachim Hicham considers himself as Dutch as any blond. His family, originally from Morocco, arrived in the Netherlands 35 years ago, and he has lived all his life in the West Amsterdam neighborhood of De Baarsjes. "This is my home. I'm an Amsterdammer," he says. "But I'm not treated like one." In the six months he has been looking for work, he has seen his Dutch friends, even those with less education, easily find jobs. But he says his Moroccan coloring and accent are an impediment. "My friend Arthur switches jobs two or three times a year," says Hicham.

The streets of De Baarsjes, just past the outer ring of Amsterdam's city center, look tidy, but misery hides in the long brick terraces. They are home to increasing numbers of resentful males of immigrant origin, mainly Moroccan but also Turkish and Surinamese. De Baarsjes has one of the largest concentration of minorities, and among the highest crime, unemployment and truancy rates in the city.

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