[tw]

Originally Posted by jaguar

This isn't like immigration in the past TW, and you have to face up to that.

Unfortunately, Jaguar, you have described immigration of the past AND problems created when the intolerant fear to assimilate or integrate those immigrants. Assimilate and integrate are the same thing when it comes to the bottom line. I see nothing in your post that defines current immigration different from immigration of generations and millenium past. But I do read so many of the same biases that caused immigration problems in generations past. Feel free to post better and specific examples. But somehow we and France must immigrate people as America did in the 1800s and early 1900s. That is the reality of the world.

Clearly those rioters are the only reasons for these problems. Therefore massive strongarming and bullets will solve the problems. Well more police only expanded the outbreaks into cities from Normandy, to the Perennes, to the Med coast, and to the border with Germany. Outbreaks even in Belgium. Clearly we need more force - rather than address why things have been getting this bad for so many decades.

The home country has some standards that need be maintained. One is a common language. Another is that no religion should ever demand political action (outside of basic human rights and religious freedoms). But problems are created - integration / assimilation does not happen - when racist attitudes are problematic especially at the individual level.

Notice comments from Frenchmen literally on the other side of the tracks. They claimed they had no problem with those other people. But where on their side of the tracks were those other people? Racism exists when communities do not share the same streets. Integration and assimilation does not exist when it is only their side of town and our side.

Is that overt racism? No. But Jaguar is talking about overt racism when he claims it does not exist. He also posts as if I was discussing overt racism.

When confronted with specific examples, then we see so many who deny they are racist and yet don't even know any of 'those people'. If your circle of friends does not include those people, then why are you not routinely asking why? Circles that don't include the 'others' are not overtly racist. We just don't associate with them. Is that racist? Yes.

Is it natural to hate everyone who is different? Yes. Of course. It is naturally inbreed in how humans think. Those who don't logically acknowledge that racism naturally exists in everyone and then don't overtly confront that racist tendancy, are therefore passive racists. To not be a racist, one must intentionally cross that divide between 'them and us'. And that applies to both them and us. That is how immigrants assimilate into a nation as a nation assimilates into that new immigrant culture.

Confronting passive racism may even mean hiring a minority that is less qualified because your organization is too myopic; desperately needs multicultural attitudes.

jaguar - do you intentionally cross class and race lines especially when you are not comfortable doing so? If not, then you are part of a racism problem - a passive racist. People that a progressive country with immigrants cannot tolerate.

What has obviously contributed for over a decade into inevitable France wide riots? Passive racism. "We don't have any problem with them." Then are 'they' also shopping in the same stores? Then 'they' are also properly represented (in proportinal numbers) in your employment? At what point do the citizen of France address their own passive racism?

Why is multiculturalism a topic? Passive racism exists in us all if we all don't confront it every day.