h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/brune...F19585?thread=401889&skip=0&show=20 http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2002/10/21/BA22929.DTL one love

Well, who'd have thought it.....!

Hi Blicky,

I'd be interested to hear your opinion of what Trever Phillips has been saying recently:

"The head of the Commission for Racial Equality launched an attack on liberal Britain yesterday, claiming "misguided" polices on ethnic minorities were inherently racist.

Trevor Phillips accused council leaders, health professionals, social workers and police chiefs of practising a culture of political correctness which he claimed led to the "benign neglect" of ethnic minorities...."

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/story.jsp?story=515701

Hi Otto,

Broadly speaking I think he's right. I cant imagine there being any sense in using government money to preserve things we dont really want.

Would we smile on a scheme to preserve the cockeny accent? Theres nothing wrong with it but if it died out thats just the way things go. We wouldnt set up special rhyming slang schools. Then why do we allow inequalities in diet or other areas of healthcare, education etc... to persist. We do because tackling black eating habits or Asian styles of child welfare can all too easily be lumped in with the jokes of Bernard Manning and the policies of the BNP.

Being accused of racism ranks slightly behind being accused of paedophilia.

If any agency launches a campaign to protect women from domestic abuse that rises after an area loses jobs due to a plant shutting down we would understand that for what it is. Yet if the same organisation chooses to focus on the issue of domestic violence against women who arrive in the UK shortly after they are married. Some will see this as racist because we can see that practically all those it is aimed at will be from ethnic minorities.

Culture and ethnicity are very closely linked, ethnicity is pretty much a synonnym for race. So it is very confusing people are afraid to tackle differences that can be identified by culture, more so for ethnicity. It is hard to understand the issues that have grown up over the last few deacades because so many of them are buried deep in our culture.

Big Ron Atkison is a racist, he doesnt burn crosses on lawns. Infact he's positive about black footballers, but he doesnt see them as footballers he sees them as black footballers so he is racist. People call Paul Scholes the Ginger Ninja, but peole dont lose jobs because their copper tops or get hassled by the police or have shit shoved through their letterbox. Big Ron got the sack beause he used a word that reinforces the idea that people with different coloured skin are different. The truth is that *WE* fabricate these differences and force them onto people.

Only through education can we see that race is a total misnonmer and has no real meaning. Ethnicity is not important to who a person is and that while culture is important, no culture be it Geordy, Jamaican, Bengali or Welsh is perfect and each should be open to intervention about its individual problems just as much as we celebrate the history they store or the colour and flavour they bring to our lives

This will be a hard job some people both white and black cling to the fallacy of race because they are too stuborn to learn or have a vested interest in its continuance. Some people rightly recognise the positive aspects of different cultures but do not recognise that no culture is immutable and that some things do need to change. While people are still being treated negatively because of their ethnicity many of them will band together and this will reinforce cultural differences even the bad ones.

one love

Hi Blicky,

Sorry, took me longer than expected to reply....

I've been interested in these kinds of issues since a Jewish colleague said "we should celebrate diversity a little less and celebrate unity a little more", which I thought was interesting. I suppose Trevor Phillips' point is that if we insist on diversity then we insist on difference, whereas this difference might have no basis in anything other than skin colour.

At the heart of this is the great liberal dilemma. Is liberalism

1) a neutral or near-neutral response to the existence of conflicting cultures and value systems
or
2) a set of values that has something to say about what is right and what is wrong, and which considers itself to be the best set of values to use to organise a society for the benefit of all.

I'm very much with 2. It's one thing to have respect and understanding for other cultures, but it's quite another to *make excuses* for (e.g) homophobia, violence against women etc. Of course it's important to understand that to some extent, people are the products of their environments, but that's not a issue about race so much as culture. And as you say, no culture is perfect....

Otto

No need to say sorry sometimes its nicer to be in a slower moving convo

nothing to add at the mo, but did spot this:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/3652679.stm