Racism

The race riots in America, Australia, Britain and France brought into focus the global scale of 21st century religious and ethnic racism, growing divide and the violence it breeds. Yet racism continues rolling on into the 21st century. Whether it’s in America, where popular radio talk show host Don Imus called Rutgers women basketball team “nappy-headed ho’s.” That was not his first on the air racist or sexist remark, and probably not his last, especially if he stays unemployed.

The dismissal of the case against the three Duke University lacrosse players for allegedly raping an African-American stripper on the heels of Imus disparaging comment magnified and highlighted the highly combustible subject of race in America ─ on the eve of the 60th anniversary of Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier in America’s national pastime.

In France during their 2007 presidential election, farmers got more political attention ─ and subsidies ─ than the smoldering North African Muslims ghettoes in its major cities. The ambers of the last race riots a couple of years earlier are warming up and ready to re-ignite. Police are being ambushed in the Paris outskirts by young banlieusards alienated by racial discrimination, poor housing and a rate of joblessness that hits 40 percent in some hoods. An urban guerilla war is on-going in the run-down neighborhoods that ring the nation’s major cities, much like the U.S. ghettoes of the 60s. The introduction of “ethnic statistics” after the last riots, a forbidden taboo since the French Revolution, reconfirmed in 1978, French government because officials are forbidden to collect information about a citizen’s ethnic or racial origins when conducting a census or other efforts to gather statistical information on the population. One of the main reasons being that the painful and still vivid memories of the Vichy regime of the second world war, when citizens’ “racial” and religious origin was stamped on identification documents and used in rounding up French Jews for delivery to the death camps. Any wonder North African-French Muslims are concerned and upset? Hey, they could wind up in concentration camps in a Catholic dominated Christian Europe.

Things aren’t much better in Great Britain where the predominantly Asian community, that also lives in run-down ghettos, is reluctant to desegregate as it creates new divisions ─ not much different than Australia. Living parallel lives in any community by any two or more groups be they ethnic, religious, cultural, sexual or political in any village, town, city, county or country makes no sense in the 21st-century. We have to interact and communicate with each other at all levels. Schools have to be integrated and our children must be exposed to the real geopolitical world and taught to respect all cultures, races and religions.

The first step is to admit that racism is a reality. Assimilation and integration are the next step. To narrow the gap, parents, religious leaders and teachers of all colors, religious beliefs and cultures have to join hands and educate and show future generations by example the benefits of multi-culturism. All people are equals. With love, patience, respect for others, education, rule of law and order, our children will grow up in a kinder, safer tolerant and harmonious multicultural free world. How many more generations must we loose to gangs, prison or extreme religious and political ideologies before we wake up?