Friday, September 26, 2008

I don't get it.

"Particularly in big cities, we've got people that have grown up in a different culture, and they don't have the same background in terms of the stable communities we had 20, 30 years ago in our cities … and don't have the same respect for authority or people's person or property. Talk to the police. Look at who's committing these crimes. They're not the kid that grew up next door."
- Lee Richardson, MP

Racism is always a topic that always catches my eye, particularly when it involves a publicly elected person in office. I come from a mixed race family, as many of you know. I live in a mixed race culture. My iPhone is loaded with tunes from artists of all colour. I worked in an immigration aid organization for a couple years. I'm down with the whole cultural mosaic thing. Racism sucks. It is not cool. So 1950's.

So, when I noticed this most recent racism charge against an MP, I needed to read the quote for myself. I had to check it out. You can see it above.

Now, as for myself, I don't get it. I guess its all in how you read the word "culture". Sure, culture can mean a particular type of people with similar skin colour from a certain geographic area: African-American culture, Native American culture, Asian culture, etc. But we also toss the word around to mean any sort of common perspective from a group of people: gun culture, culture of fear, digital culture, etc.

Was this MP, who has served publicly since 1988, secretly seething inside with racial animosity, until this quick-witted, much experienced pit-bull reporter from the... what media outlet was that again? ... oh yeah, "Fast Forward Magazine" grilled Richardson, verbally pummelling him causing him to go into a racial rant?

Somehow, I just don't think that "Fast Forward Magazine" got the big scoop here.

But what was Richardson getting at? Was he proposing an inner-city education program to raise a positive profile of the police? Was he offering to propose a law to toughen laws against crimes involving personal property? We need to emphasize our sense of community? What was the discussion about?

I guess we'll never know. The media would rather beat the shit out of him.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I am surprised you care about a PC candidate. Wasn't your last post all about how you signed in blood to support an NDP candidate?

Plosivity said...

The last post was about how I took pity on a dead man walking. Like watching lambs to the slaughter. This NDP guy, if he wants my signature so that he may be beaten into submission on Oct 14th, hey, I'll sign.

Sometimes media "people" are like weasels. I didn't give a rats ass about this PC candidate before, but now I hope he beats the tar out of that coward Tyler Kitsch.