David Bailey
Member
I think that unless you've experienced being a coloured guy growing up in the west you can have no idea what undercurrents of racism exist. And exist they definitely do! I see SO MANY subtle (and not so subtle) hints that being a man of colour in the west is an uphill struggle - it is improving, but slowly.
As for Muslims? A recent thread on this very forum opened my eyes.
You are so right in pointing out how the statement about African-American women is accepted with quiet nodding of heads, when if the same thing were to be said about whites it would be met with gasps of horror! Such hypocrisy is rife in our society. Fetch ME the bucket! :( You kept bringing it back to science, a worldview that encourages such views, I think that you were right to do so, but it goes far beyond science.
Walk a mile in their shoes.
The story that you related involving Ram Dass is just an example of how tough it is to navigate through this life, every day of it. It is a question that I wrestle with a lot, it's not easy. I think that my stroke was caused by not coping with the inequality of things that I saw in the workplace. Now I think that the problem was MINE, no one else's. I had a choice to make, I put off making the choice until eventually I was no longer given a choice - it was made for me!
I think the problem here is that people on BOTH sides of these divides can hurt at the same time. I remember a Muslim lady explaining how she winced every time the news reported that a bomb went off in case it was a Muslim who did it. Conversely, if you knew someone in the Paris massacre you would also hurt.
I don't think encouraging mass immigration is a kind thing to do.
I also think that encouraging a vague sense of collective guilt for what our ancestors did, is both wrong and counter-productive.
Wrong because responsibility really has to be personal - we weren't even born at the time, and our ancestors (most of them) had no say whatever in what went on.
Counter-productive because guilt seems to motivate some crazy policies - like CAGW.
I don't think politics and spirituality mix very well.
David