People who seek to promote equality usually do it in precisely the wrong way. Take, for example, the hard-line feminists who are really just sexists in a lazy disguise. In fact, ‘feminism’ is fundamentally flawed – it claims to want equality, but its tagline is usually ‘equality for women’. Why not ‘gender equality’? Focusing on women is not the way to go about it, as you are blinkered by focusing on one goal. However, with the general goal of gender equality, you can see the wider issues instead of focusing on just one gender. Equality is universal, it is not ‘equality for ____’.
The issue of racism is also important. In fact, the very word ‘racism’ is flawed because it highlights differences. Instead of focusing on differences, you should just not care. I don’t care what ethnicity someone is! Why should it matter?
I don’t think we should get so angry about past racist attacks; this just perpetuates the notion of racism when we should instead be moving forward and working to eliminate it. Living in the past helps no-one.
Newspapers such as the Sun and the Daily Mail do nothing to help feelings of xenophobia. ‘Islamist’ and ‘terrorist’ are thrown around as if they are synonyms. ‘Terrorist’ now means ‘religiously motivated’. It’s even the same in the Guardian – when the paedophile ring was recently uncovered, the religion of the criminals was mentioned as if it was important. Why? Why do I care about the religion of these people? Why does it matter?
I think the idea of ‘not caring’ should be promoted. ‘Black’ and ‘white’ need not be used to describe people. I can see from the photo, thanks very much, and anyway I don’t really give a damn. I also don’t care about the person’s religion. So don’t mention it, please. No wonder the EDL and BNP exist.
We should focus on eliminating the source of racism and xenophobia rather than celebrating certain ethnic backgrounds/religions. Even celebration of diversity highlights differences rather than equality. I think targeting racists and making them not care about ethnicity is much more important.
Here’s something just for fun:
This Statement Is Not True 