Good post. The reluctance to address the issue did come from a fear of stereotyping and because of the incendiary nature of it all, but its got to the stage now where not addressing it is worse than the alternative of brushing it under the carpet.
What do you think of the localisation aspect of it? That its almost exclusively, bar the one case in Derby, happening in the milltowns?
I think the real problem is that we have effectively two Englands and one of them is a transplant , lock, stock and barrel Pakistani England across the ex Cotton Belt in the North of England (Bradistan, I've seen some of you refer to it as).
It may have been the ingrained racism of certain social groups in England coupled with the concerns of the English working class around the importation of cheap foreign labour and the erosion of their assumed entitlement to those jobs that started the ghettoisation of the early Pakistani immigrants. This is closely tied in with the ability, at that time (1960s mainly), to be able to afford only the cheapest and worst housing; that and being Muslim and espousing an archaic tribalistic social structure. So we had whole areas where English moved out and Pakistanis moved in, the establishment of Mosques and the consolidation of local 'area identities' soon followed.
This , in turn, allowed non English-speaking Pakistani immigrants to function, on a daily basis, cocooned within their own kind, without the trouble of becoming Anglicised. Today we take satellite TV and the internet for granted but it all serves to isolate peoples as well as to integrate. I should hazard a guess that some within the Pakistani community have more social intercourse with friends and relatives in Pakistan than they do with any indigenous English. This has effectively led to a state within a state and the concomitant establishment of Muslim organisations (Muslim parliament, Islamic centres, Islamic banks, etc) and calls for Sharia Law to further separate immigrant from host community. Indeed there appears to some extremist Muslims a desire to overthrow the British establishment and replace it with an Islamic Republic.
Contrast this with the integration of the first mass black immigration from the Caribbean. After the steam had escaped from the initial racial hatred the indigenous population have come to admire their achievement in becoming fully integrated and now applauds their accomplishments as 'our' accomplishments. Their desire to become fully functioning Brits has been achieved in grand style and they have been accepted in the same spirit.
This has in part been achieved by following the same broad Christianity and by intermarriage, the most sincere form of acceptance as 'one of us'.
Topic: Jack Straw says some UK Pakistani men see white girls as "easy meat" for sex