In the darkness the trees are full of starlight (henwy) wrote,
In the darkness the trees are full of starlight
henwy
  • Mood: moody

Land of Hate

It's pretty much a cornerstone of accepted doctrine that the US is often a place filled with intolerence and bigotry, or at least if your subject pool are left-leaning europeans. In my personal experience, I can barely begin to tally the number of times someone from europe dregs up race riots, jim crow laws, segregation, slavery, etc from this country's past, suggesting that it is indicative of a bigoted society. My first thought is always that isn't it nice that a relatively homogenous europe can preach and prattle on about such issues when it has never been forced to deal with the huge amount of diversity that america experiences in religious, cultural, and racial strata. There's a reason you never hear about racial divisiveness in a place like vermont, because 98% or something of the population is white and while not to that extreme (though I'd look at some of the nordic countries frankly) this is where Europe is coming from IMO.

So surprise, surprise.....lately whenever I read the international news it seems that it's hard not to find at least a few articles every week about the tremendous increase in attacks against minority populations. Here for instance is just one example of something recent in Time magazine discussing the situation and how these events are often unreported or unclassified as hate crimes. What truely surprises me is that what these crimes suggest when you look at their perpetrators is that this is not the lunatic fringe.

In this country we are so sensitive to racial issues that people can even play the race card in the case of Michael Jackson, who frankly, I'm not sure necessarily belongs to our species much less a particular race. I've never been a fan of this fixation on race and racial issues but I'm starting to think it might be better than what Europe obviously has chosen as the alternative. To let it seethe and bubble in the shadows where no one sees. America tried that once and we've all seen images of the days of fire and blood. The funny thing is, that europe's very lack of diversity might be what allows people to keep the pressure cooker covered and boiling.
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