BNP

[mrph]

About an hour ago, someone pushed the latest BNP leaflet through my letterbox. The "Which do you find offensive?" one, republishing one of the cartoons of Muhammad alongside a photo of the "Muslim demonstrators calling for terrorist attacks on Europe and the 'extermination' of non-Muslims".

The first line of text on the other side of the leaflet states that "a healthy democracy needs cartoonists to poke fun at humourless fanatics"...

...and I suddenly feel the need for some BNP cartoons.

Comments

[jruske.livejournal.com]

*hmmm*

Well while the comparison between cartoons and bombings/death threats is one that makes it obvious that some of these folks need to be brought to justice - I'd say it's hijacking if BNP tries to use that to generalise all Arabs or Muslims as enemies of the people as a racial/ethnic/religious Stereotype statement.

Then again, here in the USA I'm probably painted as a racist because I think immigration laws should be enforced. Nothing but fun when someone starts screaming at you about how you must have it in for Hispanics and poor people and you have to tell them you are hispanic and your mother was raised in the projects.

Course they don't believe that. The notion that anyone could better thier situation through education and hard work baffles these sort sof people. Furthermore, the notion that breaking the law is in fact something you should be held accountable for is unfair in their eyes.

[sobrique.livejournal.com]

Racism is an emotiaonally loaded issue, that's used, much like terrorism, as 'political capital' rather than anything 'meaningful'. (I'm getting increasingly annoyed at the number of issues that 'terrorism/security' is being used as a justification for)

It's not racist to be 'tough' on immigration. It's racist to be tough on immigration if it's because you don't want to see more blacks (or ... well any other race) on your streets.

Now, there's good arguments either way for immigration policies. Personally I'm of the opinion that _more_ immigration is needed, but balance it out by deporting morons (and that does include some of the immigrants, but it also includes an awful lot more who were 'born and bred' in this country). Cultural diversity is something positive, provided it's handled right - as something to appreciate, find out about, and enjoy, rather than something to treat as a wall in a 'Them and Us' divide.

I dislike this 'political correctness' wave. Race is relevant if you're giving a description of someone (Go and see Sanjeev, he's an Indian guy who sits by the window in the other office). Prejudices aren't always unreasonable - if you know someone's a muslim (for example) then it's not unreasonable to assume that they're not going to be keen on a night out doing beer and pork scratchings.

The problem is that there seems to be a vocal group who want to use 'rascism' accusations to silence debate. And that to my mind, is just as flawed as actually being racist.

[jruske.livejournal.com]

The problem is that there seems to be a vocal group who want to use 'rascism' accusations to silence debate. And that to my mind, is just as flawed as actually being racist.

Very true. I also see a lot of confusion between "permissiveness" and "tolerance." A vocal minority seems to believe tolerance means allowing any group of people to do anything as long as the buzzwords "culture" or "heritage" are invoked.

Tolerance - the capacity for or the practice of recognizing and respecting the beliefs or practices of others - is very different from Permissive - granting or inclined to grant permission. While the dictionary will suggest that being permissive includes being tolerant, tolerance does not include a carte blanche granting of permission or rights.

So when confronted with diversity I see no problem acknowledging that people chose to do different things and have different ways. So long as the end result is largely the same and the process doesn't break any written laws, who cares? But when the outcome and/or the process deviate so far as to specifically prove damaging to others and self, when the outcome and/or the process leads not to achievement but rather to a collapse of community, then you have to question why that should be permitted.

Unfortunately this kind of questioning may be genuine and well meaning, or it may be the artifice of other vocal minorities trying to limit the freedoms of or reject the presence of others. Furthermore, no racial group or ethnic group or other "minority" is really homogenous - so the actions of a few tend to unfairly be applied to the whole group.

Underlying that is the ugly bit about stereotypes. A lot of them are a bit distorted and mean, but otherwise fairly accurate one diemensional portrayals of some members of a particualr group of people. Stereotypes wouldn't exist if they didn't allow people to anticipate (and live up to) certain behaviours. So when people see stereotypes confirmed over and over again then they are even more likely to accept small examples as indicative of the whole.

*shrugs*

In the end people are mroe the same than different. The more we try to carve off slices of humanity and label them, the more problems we create for ourselves. And when it comes to immigration, the more we tell people they do not need to make a new home, they do not need to fit in, they do not need to speak local languages - the more we create a circumstance where these people fail to live any differently in one country than they did in their country of origin. Which means they are burdened by both old baggage and dealing with massive challenges and change at the same time.

That cannot be a recipe for success.