ugliness

Riots have broken out in Paris, and everyone is confused, as the chaos approaches the main part of the city, the analysis over how this has happened has already begun. History, and current events do not happen in a vacuum. This is the biggest flaw in news analysis. It's easy to pronounce from a comfy chair in New York, that these kids rioting are just troublemakers. Some of them certainly are, however, it takes a fair amount of internal gumption to go on a looting spree. This is the debate I always had with people about the intifada in Israel/Palestine. Without engaging in a debate over the merits of their cause, you have to be pretty pissed off to start throwing rocks at soldiers who are pointing guns at, especially when you know those soldiers won't think twice about opening fire. Code words are especially important when analysing news coverage, I talked yesterday about the use of the word anarchists. In the past few years, another term which has become a code word is "muslim youth". Those two words strike fear into the heart of middle america.

As much as we would like to think our racist days are behind us, they're not. We're just more polite about it now. We're also more selective over who direct our racist barbs at. It's uncouth to use the "N" word, however it's still acceptable to refer to Aboriginal peoples as Indians, not correcting a 500 year old mistake. The term "Insert racial group here" youth gang, has been a source of irritation to me for almost 15 years. I've never heard of an anglo saxon youth gang, or a scottish youth gang. We've learned to become more eloquent about our racist leanings, and by getting rid of the ugly words, we've been able to convince ourselves that we're not really racist at all. But it's still ugly, Juliet, in the classic play with her name said "that which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet".