Originally posted by Bella Mafia UK:
Of course, the trouble with "positive discrimination" is that it denigrates the achievments of those minorities who have actually worked hard to get to where they are in life - people assume that they've got their status as a token gesture rather than on merit.
It can also be very patronising. I've been reading in the papers recently how many institutions in the UK are banning the word "Christmas" and banning Santa Claus/Christmas trees etc as it supposedly offends non-Christians....how ridiculous. If I lived in, say, a Muslim country, I wouldn't be offended by them celebrating Ramadan and so on. Its all part of the culture of the country that you've made the decision to go and live in.
BMUK, I agree 100%. We are on the way to a society where everyone has to be the same. Blandness and mediocrity are celebrated and the only thing worse than being an under achiever is being an over achiever.
As regards last night's match, in Ireland (and I suspect Spain, though Nicolas will know best) multi-culturalism is a fairly new phenomenon. Go outside Dublin or Belfast and you won't see many faces that aren't white Caucasian. In terms of society dealing with this we are probably where the UK was 20-25 years ago. At this time banana throwing and monkey chants were fairly common in the UK (at football matches). Now it has been virtually eradicated. It will take countries that are not naturally multi-cultural more time to conform with what Brits regard as "normal" behaviour. While I cannot condone the behaviour of some Spanish football fans last night, the amount of media hand-wringing has been a bit over the top. Especially hard to take was that pompous blowhard Alan Green pontificating a few weeks after he was censured by Ofcom for making a racist remark.
