We often think of racism as something between whites and
minorities, but what if it is between two minority groups? What may be the causes
of such racial conflict? Is it a legacy of colonialism for example? What can be done to help ease tensions when one
group has economic advantages? Is the
author right in claiming that organisations who help certain religious and
ethnic groups defend their interests can make the situation worse?
Hi. Welcome to the blog for my IB English B class at Jur Hronec High School in Bratislava, Slovakia. Below you will find links to other websites and discussion questions. My students are required to comment on one of these postings every month and also respond to each other's comments. Feel free to add your two bits, but be aware that all comments are monitored before being posted.
I was quite baffled by how quickly an argument between 2 random people who have possibly never met each other before can turn into violence. In my opinion, even if they disagreed with the other person’s view and thought they were right, they should not have started physically attacking one another and should have communicated the issue or called the police or some other local authority.
ReplyDeleteFurthermore, I am puzzled by the response of the residents to this conflict. First of all, the argument does not seem racial to me. The article does not mention that the shop owner or the customer called each other with racial slurs, they only faced a disagreement concerning the refund. In addition, whilst I disagree with how both of them acted and am against such behavior, I think if faced with a person with the same personality but from the same race, both of them would act just as they did now and the race of the other person would not change their behavior. Their motives are not known and it is possible that they were motivated by racial thoughts; however, I believe that, given the available information, their actions were not racially motivated. Secondly, the author mentions that when interviewing one black community leader, he answered with: “Asians have always had it for the black man. It was like that in Kenya and Uganda. And it’s like that here. It’s in your blood.” From my point of view, expressing hate like this after only 1 incident between just 2 people happened seems quite absurd to me. I am strongly against any racial expressions, the leader should have said that racism is not the answer and this situation must never happen again. Instead, he only made the issue worse.
I think that no evidence shows that the incident happened because of hatred towards the other race and the residents’ response to the incident seemed to show how easily one can spread false rumors. Moreover, neither violence nor racism should be further spread, and people should communicate their issues instead of promoting hatred.