Posted on 09/12/2003 11:47:51 AM PDT by bogeybob
Note from the Editor (09.11.03)
Brace yourself for another guilt trip about race
By Peter A. Steele
Twin City Times editor
Here we go again, folks.
People from away are about to descend on Lewiston to lecture us, the horrible white people of European origins, about race relations and how we must strive to fully accept other cultures.
Quite frankly, it makes us sick.
An entire cottage industry has sprung up over the past couple of decades, selling its silly philosophy that people in all workplaces must undergo 'diversity training' and attend seminars on 'prejudice reduction' and 'conflict resolution.'
The New Age charlatans selling this garbage go to Fortune 500 companies and explain that if the company does not pay them handsomely to conduct these workshops, the company could be at risk for expensive lawsuits for discrimination or sexual harassment.
What a racket! Unwilling to face the potential of such lawsuits, the companies pony up the money for the workshops and force their employees to attend them. Now these types of workshops are coming to Lewiston. And the message is the same: if you don¹t attend them or agree with them, then you must be a racist.
The Maine Chapter of the National Coalition Building Institute (which appears to have only one member, Diane Gilman, its executive director) is coming here to somehow equate Lewiston with a brutal murder that occurred in Jasper, Texas, when two white guys dragged a black man to death behind their pick-up truck.
The theory is that even in your own small town, there is a dark undercurrent of racism coursing through your veins that might compel you to kill someone of another race.
Hogwash! The two morons who killed that poor man were not the unwitting cog of some vile, racist machine in that town: they were just hateful, stupid, idiot rednecks who did a horrific thing. (Would it have been less horrific if the man dragged to his death was white?)
Obviously, that kind of murder is completely unacceptable in any culture under any circumstances. We don¹t need someone who makes their living peddling 'value diversity' workshops to tell us that. Frankly, we resent the fact that Gilman and the NCBI have decided that Lewiston needs this kind of lip service.
These sessions are all based on guilt. The message is this: 'These poor immigrants have suffered terribly in their homeland, and you, the privileged white folk of European descent, have a duty to welcome them. After all, you are the people who killed the Native Americans and enslaved the blacks and prevented equal rights for women. So embrace diversity and wash away the sins of your past.'
Gilman and the NCBI are now laying this guilt trip on Lewiston. They have decided that Lewiston 'was a natural choice to begin this dialogue in the wake of events such as: concerns of long-time Lewiston residents about the influx of Somali immigrants; the controversy surrounding the mayor and his letter to the Somali community; white supremacists recruiting in the area; Somali residents¹ concern for their safety; many people visibly and actively supporting the Somali community; and the ongoing patterns of exclusion and discrimination experienced by black- and brown-skinned citizens in Lewiston, as in the rest of Maine.'
Gee, we had no idea race relations in Lewiston were so strained. We had no idea this was such a God-awful place to live. And we had no idea that all of us were such racists.
Well, we don¹t buy it. It¹s all a bunch of happy horse manure.
Worse yet, Gilman and the NCBI will be preceded by staff from Clark University, who will be in Lewiston tomorrow to conduct a three-day 'needs assessment' with Lewiston¹s Somali community.
These sessions 'will provide local Somali residents with an opportunity to share their visions and opinions about life in Lewiston, to prioritize the concerns, needs and resources available within the community and to provide them with the tools to become actively engaged in improving their quality of life in the community.'
Here¹s the kicker: 'The working language of the workshop will be Somali.
So, in an effort to help smooth the allegedly strained race relations here in Lewiston, some professors are going to conduct workshops in Somali. That means no newspaper or other form of media can report on the sessions, and no one in Lewiston outside of the Somali community will really know what was said in them. Apparently, discrimination is okay as long as it is reverse discrimination.
When are we going to offer local long-time Lewiston residents, no matter their color or race, the opportunity 'to share their visions and opinions about life in Lewiston, to prioritize the concerns, needs and resources available within the community and to provide them with the tools to become actively engaged in improving their quality of life in the community?'
We have a better idea for some workshops. Let¹s get some professors or consultants or other experts to come to Lewiston to explain to the Somali community ( and any other immigrants ) what American culture is like.
They could start, for instance, by explaining that while the United States is a pluralist society that tolerates many different cultures and religions, English is the primary language here and anyone who wants to be an American is expected to speak it.
Furthermore, let¹s get some experts to come to Lewiston to show a documentary on what life in Somali is really like. For example, the film could reveal the single biggest industry in Somali: the arms trade, selling automatic rifles, rocket-propelled grenades, shoulder-fired missiles and a variety of other weapons. The documentary could detail Somalia¹s time-honored practices of racism, slavery, butchery and gross abuse of women.
It could also explain why the Somalian Al-Barakaat hawala network, which operated in almost every Somali community in the U.S., Canada and Europe, had proven links to Al Qaeda.
Now, believe it or not, we have no ill will toward the Somalis, and we condemn anyone who does. The Somalis searched the entire country for the best welfare system, and they found it here in Maine, the sucker state. It's our out-of-control welfare system that needs to be thrown out, not the Somalis.
Rather, our anger is directed squarely at the phony 'consultants' and 'experts' who swindle paychecks for themselves by going to communities such as Lewiston and convincing them that they have a race problem, when in fact they don't.
These people are still clinging to the letter written by Mayor Larry Raymond, claiming it was evidence that Lewiston is a racist community. We've used barrels of ink to defend Raymond and to insist that the letter was not motivated by race, but by a strain on our fragile financial resources.
It was (and still is) a legitimate issue, no matter how Raymond chose to present it and no matter how badly the media blew it out of proportion.
Now here comes the news flash: diversity is overrated, and attempts to foist it on people simply create more divisions.
The fact is that love does not conquer all and valuing diversity does not create a utopia. To believe that is worse than naive; it is foolish and extremely dangerous.
We just watched a History Channel show recounting the horrors experienced by a group of people who traveled to Uganda to see some mountain gorillas. They arrived shortly after the gruesome, brutal civil war between rival tribes in neighboring Rwanda that killed one million people.
Well, they saw some gorillas, all right ...guerillas, that is.
The Rwandan guerillas swarmed over the camp, killed half of the people and marched the other half to the Rwandan border, where they were eventually released, terrified but okay.
The first to die was an American couple. Disgusted by the American woman¹s all-consuming fear that left her weak, paralyzed and unable to walk, the guerillas dispatched of her rather quickly.
Horrible? Yes, of course. But what were these people thinking? If they wanted to see gorillas, they should have tuned in to Animal Planet. Instead, they went to one of the world¹s most volatile and most hostile areas. Boy, that was dumb.
The terrors of the Rwandan genocide were well known; these folks should have expected some kind of danger. Having lived in the U.S., perhaps they thought that everyone in the world values diversity as much as Americans do. Perhaps they thought that if they ran into any trouble, they could offer the guerillas a rainbow sticker, ask them to 'value diversity' and give them a hug. That is, quite simply, insane.
It is almost as insane as a white woman from Lewiston traveling to Sierra Leone (another brutal African nation infamous for its enslavement of children, forcing them to work hard labor in deep, dark diamond mines) in hopes of doing some good.
We don¹t need self-serving 'consultants' coming here to educate us about how wonderful diversity is. The simple fact is that all cultures are different and all cultures are certainly not equal.
If we are to welcome people from other cultures into our communities, we must know the absolute truth about them. And we must insist that they uphold the principles of freedom and democracy that Americans have fought and died for over the past two centuries. They must conform to us, not the other way around.
In this world of terrorism and violence, we need accurate information about other cultures, especially those with a violent past and those with an intense dislike of us. To gloss over these facts in the name of 'valuing diversity' can literally cost us our lives. Just ask the innocent people who were in the Twin Towers on 9-11 or those unfortunate tourists in Uganda.
I'll sure do what I can to help.
I wish we could see articles like this in papers all across the nation. I'm so sick of the media-induced "white guilt" being perpetrated by the masses of sheeple.
Really glad to see someone taking very justifiable umbrage at this.
William Flax
After a period of unrest, some of the arrivals left the area, some stayed. Everyone seems to be getting along fine...other than the fact that there are few jobs available here.
Except for the liberals. They constantly raise the race issue. One bleeding heart after the other pops up and just refuses to let all of us live quietly, in peace.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.