Congressional hearings in the United States have been called by the powerful Homeland Security Committee of Congress into “the Muslim threat to the country”. A hue and cry has gone out from the liberal press decrying these hearings as discriminating against a minority group. This, they say, is akin to McCarthyism. Bob Hebert in an op-ed piece in the New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/08/opinion/08herbert.html?ref=opinion) writes that Rabbi Marc Schneier, the president of the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding, was among some 500 people at a rally in Times Square on Sunday that was called to protest Mr. King’s hearings. “To single out Muslim-Americans as the source of homegrown terrorism,” he said, “and not examine all forms of violence motivated by extremist belief — that, my friends, is an injustice.”
We have all lived through (or at least, for my younger readers, read about) the circumstances where minority groups have been singled out for “special treatment”. While the Holocaust immediately comes to mind there are other equally egregious actions that are undertaken under the watchful eye of human rights activists. Think Darfur, the Balkans and the unending tribal strife in Africa.
However, that is not what I want to write about today. I want to recount an emotional walk that I took in Berlin where banners were flying from streetlamps. The banners indicated the subtle “rights” that were taken away from Jews in Germany by a legally elected Reichstag. These included a ban on sitting on park benches, a ban on attending concerts, a restriction on shopping hours and the removal of healthcare rights. Each ordinance by itself was a small matter. Each one, by itself, would hardly stir up the local population. The local population, as a whole, did little or nothing to protect a minority group from these injustices. I wonder why.
I once asked my brother what he thought about the interment of the Japanese and the confiscation of their property during World War II. After all, he was a member of a minority religious group who, at that time, suffered prejudice almost every day. My brother thought nothing of the injustice meted out to the Japanese. They were, after all, the “enemy”. The fact that they were Canadian citizens did not seem to count. The mere possibility of “dual loyalty” was enough to put them away.
We are too fast to categorize minority groups, whether ethnic, religious or otherwise as having, as a group, this or that undesirable trait. We accuse some of being, at best, unpatriotic and, at worst, enemies of the state. As the song in South Pacific says, “You Have to Learn to Hate”.
In Canada the problem is exacerbated. Our immigration policy has encouraged people from third world countries to make Canada their home. We have some of the largest expatriate populations of any country in the world. For the most part these immigrants have made splendid contributions to Canada. However, some of the younger members of these groups have fallen on bad times. This is, largely, because our education and social services systems do not have the infrastructure and the money to give these young people the necessary skills to obtain higher education or to be integrated into our workforce. Too often, I hear racial slurs against minority groups as a whole.
We can all help. It starts with our children. If they hear racial slurs at home they will get repeated at school or in the playground. It starts with standing up to someone who utters a racial slur or tells a racial joke. Tell them that this kind of behavior is unacceptable. This takes fortitude. It starts with joining civic groups that help newcomers integrate into our communities as productive members. Possibly we can avoid the kind of finger pointing that is now going on in the US congress.
Bernie
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