Defining racism out of existence

Submitted by Anti-fascist (United Kingdom), Dec 1, 2005 at 09:23

Does anybody doubt that 'White Australia' was a racist policy?

Please note that many supporters of White Australia argued not that Chinese people were incapable of democratic citizenship because of some inherent racial inaptitude, but because the Chinese cultural environment allegedly bred a mentality of submissiveness to authority.

Does anybody with any understanding of Chinese culture think that this is adequate as cultural criticism? Does anybody think that making this generalisation from cultural misunderstanding to the propensities of an entire ethnic population is, in effect, anything but a sneaky and ignorant rationalisation of racism? I don't.

Be aware of people...who smoothly but illegitimately slide from specificities and statistics to gross generalisations, and on to simplistic support for anti-immigration politics. Yes, muslim culture has massive problems; no, this does not mean muslims as such are a problem.
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