Extreme PCness drives me up the wall but thankfully I don't have to tolerate much of it on a daily basis. I have a fair few Asian mates at uni and we all greet each other with a healthy 'herro' and everyone happily gets on with their lives.
I maintain that a glimpse through the smokescreen of many of these self-righteous PC wankers would reveal a lot of racist and prejudiced individuals. Just because they don't put it out in the open for everyone to see doesn't make it ok... and trying to mask it under a smarmy sanctimonious guise is frankly just insulting to the rest of us.
Someone snapped at me recently for using the term 'mentally retarded' and I was like wtf, 'retard' doesn't have to be an insult... the French use 'en retard' to mean late and we use retardation to mean deceleration.
I saw a facebook group the other day and the description really struck a chord:
Quote:
New Zealand is a multicultural country. Anyone who has ever visited South Auckland, Howick or been inside a dairy knows this. And yet we can claim to be one of the most racially harmonious societies in the world.
Why is this?
Because we keep our senses of humour. And this includes our ability to be casually racist, and for people of that ethnic group to laugh at it and return in kind. I am Indian and Fijian, and I expect nothing less from my honky and ***** friends to abuse me for this. And they expect the same from me. Then we laugh about it, get a beer and all is well.
And this works. People from less tolerant cultures often report that the kind of things we say in New Zealand to each other would get you beaten and/or killed in their countries. Yet New Zealand has one of the lowest rates of hate crime in the Western world.
Why? It's because of our ability to laugh at each other, and ourselves, without causing harm. This is a great thing about this country and I for one want to keep it that way.
However, in recent times, the PC-wanker brigade are putting this facet of Kiwi life under threat, with events like the removal of a mildly controversial Hell Pizza billboard among others.
What these bleeding heart do-gooders don't realise is that in taking away our ability to poke fun at other races, we are not breeding a less racist society, we are building a more racially tense society which will only divide us, not unite us. Do we want to turn out like America, where race becomes a defining factor in every facet of our everyday life rather than an afterthought like it is for most people?
Sure, New Zealand's not perfect. But compared to other countries, it's pretty ****in' good. And so I, along with my white, Maori, Asian, Pacific Islander, African and everyone else I've missed brothers and sisters stand up and untie in the cause of smart arse casual middle class racism!
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