Thursday, January 18, 2007

UK Racism, an Example of Attitude and Identity

Racism is one of the attitudes that many societies in the world face because of their racial diversities. There is open racism manifested, for example, in Far Right parties, as there is implicit racism. This kind of racism shows itself when people of different races rarely mix socially each keeping to their own race despite aspects of courtesy and tolerance.

Britain as well as many countries in Europe is a multi-racial and multicultural society. It has been successful in being the home of people from all corners of the world, especially Asia and Africa. It respected the specificities of its minorities, which paradoxically made them look as societies within the major British society. This has made it look heterogeneous but not totally harmonious as there are incidences of racism that erupt from time to time in which black sport stars were the victims.

Britain is still facing racism because of the failure of the integration of minorities from Muslim countries whose some of its members refuse to join mainstream values. The most noticeable aspects of the rise of racism is the veil issue that raised a lot of debates in the UK and across the world. Terrorism is still considered attributed to Islamic fanatics. This makes people generalise their attitudes and consider Muslims as alien to their society.

Old habits die hard. There can be legislations guaranteeing the right of everyone to equal treatment. But there are the social attitudes that perpetuate racism. A person can be persecuted for showing racism. But there is no law to punish a person for refusing to make friends with another person from a different race. Despite efforts to eradicate racism there is always resistance on the part of some as they cling to their likes either because of their feeling of superiority or fear of being rejected by people of a different race.

Concerning the Indian actress who was the victim of racism, it must be remembered that Indians are still the subject of discrimination in their own country because of their social cast. Low cast Indians still live in medieval conditions despite India’s economic and technological boom.

Racism and discrimination are still obstacles to human harmony. They remain hard to end as long as there are those who hold them to feel distinction and to consider anyone with different values as not worth appreciating getting to know.

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