The Editor,
Can we please, once and for all, bring some clarity to the following issue: People’s values and modes of behaviour are not determined by their races, but by their cultures.
For example, my circle of friends includes a wide diversity of ethno-racial heritages, but because we have all been born and raised in Canada, we generally share the same values and behave in the same ways. Such is the case in every society.
Arrogant aggressiveness, disregard for the comfort, welfare, and even safety, of one’s fellow human beings; rudeness and incivility, misogyny, and ethnocentricity are learned attitudes and traits and they are assimilated from immediate family, a sub-culture, and/or a culture at large.
Therefore, just as I have the right to disrespect and be intolerant of such behaviours on the part of individuals, I also maintain the right to show equal disrespect to cultures that foster and propagate them in their populations.
This point-of-view has literally nothing at all to do with racial prejudice, but rather the process of discriminating between that which one considers to be humane, appropriate, and respectful behaviour, and that which isn’t.
So, whenever I see someone playing the race card as a means of either avoiding or defeating reactions to certain attitudes and behaviours, I do not run and hide or use political correctness or cultural relativism as a convenient excuse for not drawing attention to disrespectful attitudes and behaviours, as so many other Canadians are inclined to do.
Instead, I outline the case I’ve stated above and do everything I can to both override the reasoning that would label such reactions as racially-based and blunt attempts to use the race card as a weapon to silence others.
Prejudice against other races? Nope, nada, zero, zip, no way, nothing there, get real, wake up, never happen!
Prejudice against some attitudes and behaviours entrenched in some other cultures?
You bet — and as examples let’s refer to the kinds of subjugation and brutality that is inflicted on women that is deemed justifiable in some other cultures, or the fact that child-indentured labour and exploitation of the poor are accepted practices in some societies.
See what I mean?
Ray Arnold
Richmond
