Black as Evil

[Raveen Satkurunathan]

On Mon, 11 Dec 2000 13:22:52 +0100, Dr Y. Vassilkov
<iiasguest10 at RULLET.LEIDENUNIV.NL> wrote:

>     Being a resident of East Europe, I am probably more aware than you of
>all ethnic conflicts of recent years: several of them in Yugoslavia, many
in
>the former Soviet Union: Moldova, Abhazia, Southern Ossetia, North Ossetia,
>Karabakh, Chechya etc. In so many instances it all started from a "public
>discussion" of ethnic / racial problems.


Dear Dr. Vassikov,

Problems in Eastern Europe are fundamental and result from over 70 years of
suppression and denial of legitimate national rights of minority groups in
the name of ideology. The resultant ethnic conflagrations are not just an
out come of "public discussions" of these problems but a reflection of pent
up REAL frustrations and aspirations of these people and the violent
suppression of it by those who oppose it. In my view public discussions all
along would have prevented such carnage.

We also had a case of smooth separation of the Czech and Slovak people who
were able to separate by publicly discussing about their problems than to
kill each other. So you need two to tango!

>That is why we have now in Russia a
>law banning "propaganda of ethnic hatred". Unfortunately, it is almost
never
>used in juridicial practice.

Fortunately in the US, even hate speech is protected by the constitution,
we just try to run them out of business by bancrupting them not banning
them :-)

>But we have a moral taboo for public discussion
>of such topics
> as concepts of mental or moral inferiority of Africans
>/Asians / Westerners / foreigners in general, or of the concept of
>world-wide Jewish / Masonic conspiracy. Because there would always appear
>some people to use such discussion just as a pretext for putting in a
>"quotation"or two...


Sorry for the digression, could'nt help :-(