well, it's a touchy subject

i don't deliberately start all my blogs with lines from musicals although the last two have turned out that way. guess it's just cos i'm a musical geek and often it's when songs are running through my head that i come up with the subject of a blog.

so, for those of you who know the musical Avenue Q (puppets and awesome is all i'm gonna say) you might recognise this line from the song everyone's a little bit racist.

recently i saw something where someone had made a slightly racist comment which was then followed by other slightly racist comments from other people and continued in a downward spiral until there were some offensive remarks made.

seems that the general consensus of this was that it was okay to say because the precursor "i'm not racist but" had been used

now, i'm not the thought police (reading 1984 at the moment, albeit very slowly) and i would never try to tell people what to think but i would like to knock sense into people to make them understand that just by saying your not racist doesn't make the comment not offensive.

it's actually pretty much the same as when someone says "no offence but". we all know that we're about to be negatively impacted emotionally. and why don't people understand that they could say the same thing in a constructive manner that would be so much more effective!

anyway, back to the touchy subject. clearly we've just finished yet another festive period and there are some people who have taken political correctness to the extreme and may try to remove christ from christmas... oh wait... that was done years ago when it became xmas... ho hum.

what i want to know, is who are these politically correct people? what is their race or nationality? why do we always feel that we have the right to speak up for people of whom the majority we've not met?

so what does it actually mean to be racist? i'm a bit of a geek and tend to look towards dictionaries in situations like these. the online oxford dictionary defines racism as the belief that all members of each race possess characteristics, abilities, or qualities specific to that race , especially so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races.

so the first part of that is true, different races tend to possess different characteristics etc and it does help to distinguish them. the whole superior/inferior thing... surely that's a subjective matter depending on who is contemplating the issue and what the issue actually is?


someone was telling me about a great relationship they have with someone from nigeria where they can joke using racial characteristics, one may be able to survive if both of them were running away from a bear however the other would have a better chance if they were in a sinking dingy! i had to have this explained to me cos at the time i didn't know too much about racial characteristics, d'oh!

apparently the un hasn't given a definition of racism but it has defined racial discrimination as the term "racial discrimination" shall mean any distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin which has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal footing, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural or any other field of public life.

i guess my point is that everyone is racist, it's how people manage this that important. if there's something that you want to say that may cause offense actually use your brain to see if it's necessary to say it the way you were planning or can you say it in a constructive manner? is it actually worth saying at all?

and if you do decide to say it make sure you've got your facts straight. don't blame other races for decisions of people who have gone too far on the politically correct train.