Clayton, On Tuesday 02 May 2006 00:20, Clayton wrote:
You want to know what racism is? It's the belief that there is such a thing as race.
Tell that to the people making the laws in the country I live in - no I'm not going to say what country it is - suffice to say that the problems in the country seen to be always blamed on a specific race or ethnicity that is a very visible minority here. They are going so far as to make laws that are specifically targetted at certain enthic groups.
And I would be the first to acknowledge that the social phenomena surrounding so-called "race" are very real, very powerful and often very pernicious. I sometimes think that the reason your overt, KKK- or Nazi-style racist is so angry is the cognitive dissonance of knowing that what they expound is so very false. And I would never suggest that people should discard their heritage and customs. Then again, I think most societies have some negative customs, a common one being a despicable attitude towards women. People often point to custom as an excuse for nasty practices. Slavery was the custom in parts of the Americas for a few hundred years. Custom does not excuse immoral practices. This could go on, and it shouldn't, of course. Not here. I'm sorry to have done this, but race is a "hot button" with me, too, in my own way.
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Now... if only we could convince everyone to use SUSE :-) Ha ha
Up with SuSE!! Randall Schulz