Open-mindedness is the future

Open-mindedness is the future

“Racism isn’t born, folks, it’s thaught. I have two-year-old son. You know what he hates? Naps! End of list”

This quote is written by Dennis Leary and I agree, racism and prejudice are usually not words that can be found in a little boy or girl’s dictionary. However I think a lot of people automatically creates a defence against what isn’t exactly similar to themselves, instead of open up and try to learn something about the other culture. I think it’s the competitor switch that goes on and they want to prove themselves as better than the other.

I know a lot of people who denies being racists, but makes jokes and talks degrading about foreigners and different cultures. I think that it has never been less racism than it is today. My grandmother is more prejudiced than me, probably because she wasn’t used to foreigners when she was young. That is an example that proves that we’re are not born with racism, but the defense against what’s new goes on. Racism has been in progress for decades, Europeans took Africans as slaves the races and Hitler tried to wipe out all the Jews. These are just some of the examples and mostly it was white people who tried to prove themselves as the better ones. We have white groups as Ku Klux Klan, and black groups as Black Panthers who are driven by hate against other races. Almost as long as people can remember it has been some kind of fence between the different cultures, most clearly against black and white.

I think media can be blamed for a lot of the hate going on today. After 11 September they have presented the Middle East as one big terrorist organization. And a lot of European countries is influenced by America. We are watching American movies, TV shows and news that of course represents Americans as angels and Iraqis as devils. I don’t think it’s many ambulatory people that haven’t heard Bush’s nickname for the Middle East, “The axis of evil”. It has probably been in every newspaper and TV station in the western world. When many people find it much easier to just listen to the leader instead of drawing own conclusions, the hating just goes on.

It’s true that there are a lot of illegal foreigners who is hiding in Norway and are working black. Of course that creates frustration among Norwegians, but it doesn’t mean that everybody is like that. Most of them are legit workers that deserves to live here just as much as anybody else. What about the Norwegians who moves to Gran Canary with full social security, but at the same time is stealing jobs from the locals. Of course the natives are furious. We don’t like being compared to those few criminal Norwegians, so we shall not take for granted that all foreigners in Norway are bad people. There are different people in every country. I understand that people were skeptical for 200 years ago, but in a modern, internationalized community like today it won’t work.