Anger, Insult and Cognitive Failure

[erudito]

Let us suppose you are a newcomer group a minority of whose members are associated with spectacularly hostile actions, both locally (rapes, thefts and bashings) and overseas (Bali, 9/11, London, Madrid …). What is the thing you could do to most piss off ocker sentiment? The biggest iconic insult you could manage?
Hmmm, let me think.
I know,

Comments

[taavi]

Have you examined your own warm inner glow of superiority in the light of blaming the left for everything from race riots to genocide to aboriginal poverty to the death of epistemology?
Just a thought.

[jadeluxe]

hear, hear. that comment pretty much says what i want to say in a far more concise fashion.

these sort of posts continually appear to be prevaricated on the same sort of assumptions and leaps to conclusion the left is accused of.

Ideas have consequences

[erudito]

Actually, they are just based on the notion that ideas have consequences.

Not quite

[erudito]

Bad ideas lead to bad policy which have bad consquences.

And saying a particular group has a crippled epistemology is hardly claiming all epistemology is dead.

[tcpip]

When Lebo's bash Skip surf-life savers, that is racism

Sydney

[erudito]

If we can generalise from one Shire to all of Sydney then all of Australia, then why doesn't this happen all over Australia?

I make a prediction -- nothing like this is likely to happen in Melbourne. Why not? Because, unlike the Carr-Iemma government, the Bracks government has not screwed up policing.

Sutherland Shire may indeed have a particular problem of intolerance. Local areas can develop nasty dynamics. (Gippsland has some "interesting" issues, for example.) But lots of factors are feeding into this, not merely white racism (which does, of course, exist).

And talking as if the problem is only, or even predominantly, white racism is to miss the actual dynamics and therefore fail to deal effectively with them.

Re: Sydney

[tcpip]

The point being is that you can't generalise from the Shire to all of Australia - the Shire is the most monocultural locality in the country.

Nothing like this will happen in Melbourne not because our police are particularly more effective (hello, gangland warfare?) than Sydney's but because we've dealt with multicultural issues much, much better.

http://www.theage.com.au/text/articles/2005/12/13/1134236064283.html

Re: Sydney

[erudito]

Criminal gangs in Melbourne are simply not the same level of crime problem that exists in Sydney.

And these things are interactive. The pressure level in Sydney is higher because there is a worse crime problem. It is easier to get multicultural integration "right" in Melbourne than in Sydney because the general social stress levels are lower.

Sydney Riots

[anonymous]

Hi there Lorenzo, Dafydd here

Re: Sydney Riots

[erudito]

Quite. One of tcpip's links suggests that Cronulla has the sort of problem you allude to.