Dear Editor,
It is time for people to take responsibility.
I have served overseas and seen just what ethnic intolerance can lead to — it is truly sickening.
It is easy to sit back and expect local, provincial and federal government to fix the problem, but they cannot. They have put the laws in place and those laws will be enforced, government pressure will not rid us of intolerance but peer pressure will!
We must not allow intolerance to feel comfort in our company and we must not teach it to our children.
The problem is not new in Richmond. The Japanese, Ukrainians and others have faced the same problems and with the help of their neighbours, they have overcome intolerance.
Intolerance can only survive when it is allowed to survive. That so-called, harmless racial joke is not harmless. It dehumanizes and humiliates.
Offering advantage to a person based on ethnic origin, disadvantages another person for the same reason and it gives something for bigots to use as an excuse for their intolerance.
If you think that hiring from a certain ethnic background is good for business, then you assume that your potential customers are racist.
Personally, I find that very offensive. The solution starts with every person in Richmond.
We must all commit respect to ethnic, religious and gender differences and treat every person exactly the same, as complete equals because they are equals.
With that one commitment, all the idiots and their handbills will have no effect. But we must be unwavering in our resolve to quash all forms of racial, religious and gender intolerance.
Scott Stewart
Richmond
