Anyway…point being, this whole article really is him – that’s how he talks in his emails. It was really disturbing to me because I’ve haven’t encountered many people like him in my life. It’s hard for me to believe, but there he is.

read on at: http://radicalnegative.blogspot.com/2007/11/viscious-circle-of-racism-and-war-on.html

“the south was born out of fear. fear of the indian, fear of the mexican, fear of the slaves, fear of the damn union. ” – ‘quote from cape fear’

Further, there is nothing racial about culture. Culture isn’t indoctrinated into your genes, it is in your stories, language, ideals and concepts, so to refer to something as “brown” or “white” culture strikes me as being patently absurd.

While some traditions are worthwhile we shouldn’t kid ourselves about things being worth keeping around simply because they belong to another culture – which is the real difference between integration and multiculturalism.

I think this is a very sober and a realist’s point of view. Culture, race, heritage, tradition… It is a POWDER KEG in terms of discussion. Rarely can you speak about them without raising hackles but I think you’ve made an important distinction between multi-culturalism and cultural integration. I got it and I agree with you.

Good grief.

Apartheid was basically the Afrikaaners trying to preserve SA’s various cultures against alien influences – or it was if you listened to the rhetoric they were spewing when they came up with the idea. Apartheid was in essence, a very extreme interpretation of the multi-cultural viewpoint.

Afrikaaners were very white, and very concerned with “Onse Kultuure.” In America today, you have a religious movement whose cultural values include lying to your children about what constitutes science – and it is very pale.

Integration actually isn’t about trying to preserve “white” culture, it is about trying to take the best of what each culture has to offer.

And besides, lets be honest here, “brown culture” can include torturing a domisticated herbivore to death to celebrate the festival of the “First Fruits”, quackery called “Muti”, sending your kid off into the mountains to get circumcised by a drunkard with a loose definition of “sterile”, and a negotiable belief in female rights.

Those values we can do without, just like the very white, very English traditions of watching a pack of dogs tearing a small canine to bits for fun, bear-bating and dog fighting.

Further, there is nothing racial about culture. Culture isn’t indoctrinated into your genes, it is in your stories, language, ideals and concepts, so to refer to something as “brown” or “white” culture strikes me as being patently absurd.

While some traditions are worthwhile we shouldn’t kid ourselves about things being worth keeping around simply because they belong to another culture – which is the real difference between integration and multiculturalism.

Comment by Bruce Gorton — November 26, 2007 @ 8:50 am

Cultures can integrate and preserve traditions at the same time. I don’t see them being mutually exclusive. And comparing multiculturalism to Apartheid is more than a little bit extreme.

My concern when seeing this type of language is that there’s a coded message- that it’s white culture that needs to be integrated into brown culture, and it’s dangerous if brown culture is preserved. That may not be your intended message, but that’s a pretty strong implication.

You’ve got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made,
And people whose skin is a diff’rent shade,
You’ve got to be carefully taught.

You’ve got to be taught before it’s too late,
Before you are six or seven or eight,
To hate all the people your relatives hate,
You’ve got to be carefully taught!

My argument is in favour of integration, where differing cultures are brought together and ideas are traded, leading to a synthesis.

Multi-culturalism is more along the lines of attempting to preserve different cultures and cultural identities – which is basically what they were trying to do with Apartheid.

Comment by Bruce Gorton — November 26, 2007 @ 7:59 am

This is why multiculturalism should be encouraged. People can’t exchange ideas if they’re segregated. Your argument against multiculturalism seems to support it instead.

If you can pull “It’s my culture” out of your hat whenever you are losing an argument, you end up with a situation where you have your minister of health advocating the virtues of beetroot and garlic in fighting AIDS (Guess what country I am referencing here.) Don’t make that mistake.

While cultural differences should have to be fairly extreme to justify violent action (Such as, we don’t sacrifice virgins to the sun god) multiculturalism should never be used to defend something from honest argument.

Culture changes with time, and cultures grow together as good ideas are exchanged and bad ones are ditched. We shouldn’t get in the way of that, because these changes are healthy and the synthesis we arrive at over time is not a negative one, but rather something which is better then all of the cultures it came from.

As to allowing people who literally want to kill you into Government? The Republicans have been around for a while now. They are hardly remarkable.

“the State Department, which is one of the most important government departments, is thoroughly infested with communists.”

http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/cold.war/episodes/06/documents/mccarthy/

FSM ~~~>>> Fellating Senator McCarthy.

Here endeth the history lesson.

Comment by DreamCrusher — November 26, 2007 @ 6:49 am

Which groups have we let in that want to kill us? Is it the tired, the poor, or the huddled masses yearning to breathe free? I’m wagering on the huddled masses. They have to be up to something, what with all that huddling.

This is true – neocons are all over the State Department, DoD, the White House, FEMA, and other places. Luckily, many of them have already retired from government and gone on to far less damaging positions in the private sector.

They will be coming to homes near you . . . .
They’re coming to get you bar-bara . . . .
They will have darker skin than you . . .
Be afraid, be very afraid . . .