When Did Telling the Truth Become Wrong?
Last entry I wrote might have been misunderstood by some people and in a way I deliberately left it a bit open ended to get people thinking.
I would first like to clarify that I am making no assumptions about the accuracy of the statement the little boy made. I just brought it up because it was the case that got me thinking about this, and I decided to make it a hypothetical example since I had it at hand.
The point I am trying to make is that it should not be a complete taboo to point out problems even if it might involve something sensitive such as a minority of some sort. Keep in mind though that with this comes responsibility! We shouldn't just make inaccurate statements to try to blacken and spread hatred about other people. It should, however, be possible to say that maybe something is a problem and start an investigation to verify its truth. If you are wrong, then you should apologize and make sure it is known that you were wrong.
Lets make an example case here. What if we had a group of immigrant kids from Iceland which were causing a lot trouble in a Norwegian school. They are repeatedly beating up the other kids and harassing them. One of the Norwegian parents becomes aware of the situation and goes to the school authorities and says is straight out that the Icelandic kids are beating and harassing the other kids. The school authorities investigate and find out that this is true. There is really a gang of Icelandic kids which are terrorizing their school mates.
Would it be prejudiced to say that the Icelandic immigrants kids are causing problems? In my opinion no, but I can imagine that there might be people that start shouting out that this is prejudiced or even racist. Ignoring the problem will only spread more hatred towards the Icelandic kids. A hatred that could potentially last generations. I see the solution being open about the problem and addressing it as soon as possible.
Why am I writing about this? Because I feel like I live in a society where people constantly get called prejudiced or racists because of the wrong reasons and it is only causing more problems. Those two words are extremely powerful and some people have learned to use them as weapons to defend themselves from taking responsibility for their actions or to make themselves look superior. The only thing that it accomplishes is hatred, and something that is more serious, hidden hatred which is much more difficult to uproot from society.
This is not to say that you can openly go out and say whatever. Looking back at my example, it would for example be wrong to say that “All Icelandic kids beat up and harass their school mates”. It should however be perfectly fine to say that “The Icelandic kids at that school beat up and harass their school mates”. In that case it would be the truth and when did it become wrong to tell the truth?
What is the truth?
I wonder if you have a majority of Iclendic children ganging up, and then you got two or three others... also Iclendic getting the same heat because of all the troublemakers (this is the more realistic picture by my view).
And in addition predjudice would be a thousends times worse for those kids if it was "accepted" in socieity to "state the truth"(that in many cases would actually be predjudice, it's a thin line!). Ending up as a social stigma !??
By making the distance lagrer between the Icelandic children and other groups, people can help to make the in-group connections within the "trouble-maker-group" tighter and also "pressuring" others to join (who else will accept them?).
---I am ofcource putting it up to the extreem, but I think some places it is as extreem---
Would it be wrong by a school to instead of saying we got a problem with the Iclendic kids causing trouble... They could actually say; " We got a problem at our school with gangs"
What is the reason to highlight what minority they come from? I do think that predjudice is such a big problem and causing tremendes problems for kids (innosent or not!) that beeing a bit sensible to the subject is the least we can do =)
And why not instead of focusing on the problems, see some possible ways for solutions.
Talk the truth, but be sure that it really is the truth... It is always easier to see truths that support the view that you already have then a truth that might be far from that of your own =)
---I speak from experience here---
Got a great link that is used on racial problems in schools, "The jigsaw classroom":
http://www.learnnc.org/bestweb/jigsawclassroom
Susy =)
"peaking out from my hole"
We are all different
Good to see that you are peaking out of your hole!!
Yes, I see your point that some innocent people could get heat for something they took no part in..
I however cannot see how you would be able to focus on the solutions when you cannot focus on the problem first. What if there was something in our Icelandic heritage which was causing us to be unneccesarily agressive? What if the other kids were using something bad that Icelanders had done to try to aggrevate the kids? I don't think you will be able to always address the problems correctly if you leave out details. The kids will still talks about how horrible the Icelandic kids are amongst themselve and discriminate them. Now, I am not saying the school authorities need to shout at the top of their lungs that it is the crazy Icelandic kids that are causing havoc. But shouldn't they be able to call in the Icelandic parents and ask them to try to tell their kids that they shouldn't behave like this? Or call in the other parents to educate them about the situation and get them to discipline their kids so they don't go around and tease the Icelandic kids about the "bad Icelandic thing"? I honestly have no clue about bringing up a kid but I would myself have been petrified if my parents had lectured me about not picking on the other kids. It would at least have became a bit nicer.
You can see an example of how hidden hate grows out of proportion. Look at how Frp (nationalistic party) has been growing huge lately. Nobody wants to admit that they vote for Frp but for some reason they have support of 1/3 of the population. I am not saying that the Frp politicians are all bad but there are definitely a bit too many pure racists in that party to be healthy for the society in its current shape.
Nothing is as black and white as this example, and every case needs to be treated differently. We are all different and we should be allowed to talk about the fact that we are and what kind of impact that can have on our interaction!
But now I am gonna take a closer look at the jigsaw classroom:-).
just a comment to my comment =)
ofcource... as I saw someone pointed out on the last post... There's a difference between predjudice and discrimination... But it is the starting point!