Too many people will find a reason to despise others
By Letter to the Editor on May 13, 2021.
Editor: Westerners of East Asian heritage have been increasingly verbally and/or physically assaulted during the last year, the perpetrators perhaps under some delusion their targets are willful creators/spreaders of Covid-19. Many have no Chinese lineage, though their assailants seem to not care, maybe due to a hateful perception that they’re ‘all the same’. Overlooked is that there’s a good chance the assault victims came to the West to leave precisely that which so many Westerners currently dislike about some East Asian nation governances, especially that of China.
The unprovoked hatred can be even more intense if the target happens to be deemed professionally successful and/or has managed greater savings (et cetera), regardless of it all having been through hard work and/or thrift budgeting.
Sometimes the victim is a convenient political football or scapegoat. The current anti-Asian abuse brings to my mind the 2007-08 financial crisis, which resulted in the biggest, and perhaps the most culpably corrupt, mainstream U.S. bankers not being criminally indicted but rather given their multi-million-dollar performance bonuses via taxpayer-funded bailout. Yet, the feds, in a classical cowardly move, only charged some high-level staff with a relatively small-potatoes Chinese-American community bank as a figurative sacrificial lamb that couldn’t really fight back and who looked different from most other Americans.
Too many people will always find an excuse to despise and abuse those who are superficially different, including religious wear. That was evident recently when a non-white man wearing a red “Keep America Great” cap (with “45” on the side) called a nine-year-old girl wearing a hijab a “f—–g Muslim terrorist” at a local grocery store. The girl’s father rightly confronted the man and repeatedly called him a racist. (One can imagine the shameful pleasure felt – and rampant media posts left – by white supremists upon learning the accused racist is not Caucasian!) As far as terrorism goes, the girl’s family is far more likely to be fleeing extremist violence abroad than planning to perpetrate it elsewhere. But that fact may not matter, anyway; ‘their kind’ still not welcome.
Frank Sterle Jr.
White Rock, B.C.
-1
It’s naïve to think that those who come to Canada from Muslim countries and who display their religious beliefs via wearing their religious costumes are “superficially different”. There is nothing superficial about the ideology they harbor and the effect such ideology has had on their own people. Take a look at the outcomes of their belief system. No where in the Middle East do you see success. Rather it’s riddled with poverty and human rights abuses; all the result of their religious beliefs that has been indoctrinated into them. Notice too that they all seem to want to escape to the Western world rather to their own Islamic countries. That speaks volumes. Once here, they maintain their beliefs and customs and do all they can to influence our society with the model from which they operate (part of which is viewing us as less than pure). Their influence is creeping into our society so is it any wonder there is resistance?
great letter. the blue entry is yet another missive that stinks of fear and ignorance. foolish “thinking”. the reason for the mess in the middle east today is colonialism…we can thank the idiot brits and french for the ongoing mess.
what idiot today would lump all people of race, ethnicity, sex, or religion into one simplified mindset? it is a special kind of idiot, to be sure.
let us keep in mind christianity is also riddled with backwardness, stupidity, cruelty, controlism, lies… and has been as such throughout its history. it has taken the great messages shared by jesus – and shelved the love.
keep in mind – for those that have one that is at all open – that adherents to religions of all ilk have varying degrees of orthodoxy and fundamentalism practiced. would we lump all christians into the same nonsense as the most orthodox? grow up, wake, and stop being ignorant, uninformed bullies.
You have described why these people have left their homeland to get away from this mess and it’s no different as to why my Irish relatives came to Canada to get away from the violence there, or why the German part of our family left Germany. Why is your family here?
Police officers tell me they are not a problem , but some of the immigrants from Africa certainly can be. You certainly can’t ignore what a disaster our North American Indians have been. Even some of their own people will tell you that including members of my Cherokee family.
Blue, Muslims have been in Canada for generations. In fact the oldest mosque in this country was built in Edmonton in 1938. The religion is just the last book in the series of Torah, Bible and Quran. All of them have proscriptions on head coverings & hair so I think, yes, superficial.
But my aren’t Muslim majority countries a mess! But maybe that’s not due to Islam?
I know, let’s stop supporting dictators, invading, bombing droning and generally messing around in Muslim majority countries and see how the lands and people fare then.
Today our good ally Israel has killed Palestinian children, destroyed homes and schools and we – l like most Western nations – simply look away.