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The Citizen, 1991-07-31, Page 5THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, JULY 31,1991. PAGE 5. Just what is racism anymore? The assumption that psychocultural traits and capacities are determined by biological race. The notion that one’s own ethnic stock is superior. Those are a couple of definitions of racism, culled from two different dictionaries lying around my house. I thought I ought to double-check because I was beginning to doubt if I knew what racism really was. It's a term that gets thrown around with great frequency these days — and all the accuracy of a Phil Niekro knuckleball. I've heard of a member of Phil Donahue's audience call him a racist. I've heard picketers fling the same charges at Brian Mulroney, General Schwartzkopf and the entire nationstate of Japan. Well, why not? It's a virtual hand-grenade of an epithet. Call somebody a racist and they're immediately put on the defensive. The International Scene Do we have too many rights'? BY RAYMOND CANON Those of us who have lived to the ripe old age of 39 and have either decided to continue, or prefer to hold for a while, are prone to compare the world as we knew it when we were young, innocent and inexperienced, to the one which exists in the 1990's and in many cases we are not too happy with what we see. I suppose that this could be construed as yet another example of the “good old days” which were not so good when you come to think of it but which did have their fine points. This year being the 700th anniversary of the founding of Switzerland, I thought it would be appropriate if I were to discuss with a number of Swiss as well as any visitors I happened to meet, the merits of today's society compared with what we knew it to be as young people. Since I spent some time in Germany before moving on to the land of William Tell, I expanded my original plan to include the Germans as well. What you have below is a composite of their thinking and I will leave it up to the reader to decide which of their views can be considered as appropriate to Canada. The people I questioned tended to agree that the work ethic was alive and well but that it had been diluted to a certain degree by the social welfare programs that have been developed since the end of World War II. Most agreed that these programs were necessary but perhaps they went too far. In essence, they were a mite too easy to get on and it was too hard for some to break the habit. In some cases the benefits derived from social welfare payments compete directly with wages earned while working. How do you avoid this competition? Both Switzerland and Germany have compulsory military service and the general feeling was that this should continue. While Gone forever is any debate over the merits (or otherwise) of the accused's position — he or she is going to be much too busy proving that they don't own any slaves or pay dues to a secret Aryan Nation cult. Ask Dr. Jeanne Cannizzo. She's the curator who last year mounted the Into the Heart of Africa exhibition at the Royal Ontario Museum. The exhibition was comprised of artifacts plundered by nineteenth century white soldiers and missionaries sent to Africa. Into the Heart of Africa did not make white imperialists look good. Alas, it did not whip, scourge and castigate them sufficiently for the taste of its detractors. Dr. Cannizzo made the political error of showing history as it happened, not as it Ought to Have Been. The exhibition was picketed, as was Dr. Cannizzo herself. Activists invaded her lectures to shout obscenities at her. They blockaded her residence. They hounded and besieged her out of her job and into a nervous breakdown. Ask Dr. Jeanne Cannizzo about the smear power of the shout “Racism!” — if you can find her. She's on indefinite sick leave. I wish it was possible to reincarnate Shakespeare, Milton, or William Blake. I'd love to hear what they make of the current carnival. Mind you, they'd require a police escort. Shakespeare, Milton and Blake belong to that most repugnant of literary legions — they are Dead, White and Male, there are professors who actually teach that all of Shakespeare's writings, from Hamlet on the battlements to Falstaff under the the reduction in tensions in Europe is welcomed, there is no guarantee that wars are a thing of the past (witness the Gulf conflict) and having a standing army of a specific amount of men is still essential. However, the feeling went beyond that. Most people I talked to stated that such service reminded the draftees of their responsibility to the country at a time when such people were prone to thinking about their rights. It was this question of rights and responsibilities that drew the most heated response. I was surprised at the number of people who stated that as young people they were given too many rights (or privileges) too soon and this led, it was widely believed, to dramatic increases in the use of drugs, alcohol, and the like as well as illegitimate births, marital breakdown; in short, almost all of society's ills could be traced to this freedom. When I asked about the cut-off point, there was a variety of answers but it was generally agreed that the pendulum had to swing back a bit in order to correct the Noisy party keeps neighbours awake THE EDITOR, Hamilton Street (Blyth) residents, lost a few hours sleep on Saturday, July 27. The loss of sleep was due to a very loud house party. Yes, the parents were away on holidays so the children played. Now I should not call them children, they were young adults that should have known better. If they don't have any respect for themselves, they should at least have respect for their neighbours. The sad part was that they didn't slay on their own property. They table, are irrelevant and reprehensible because Shakespeare is a Dead White Male. Which is a devastating triple barrelled shotgun blast — better even than calling someone a racist. “Dead” -- that’s the ultimate in ageist slurs; “male” is nakedly sexist. And slamming somebody for being “white” ... isn’t that, umm, Racist? It’s a virus that's spreading. Last month the Toronto Humane Society announced its proposed new restrictions for members. People who will no longer be permitted to join the society include: rodeo promoters, circus performers, animal researchers, breeders and their spouses. Oh, yes, and sport hunters, trappers, most farmers and slaughterhouse workers would be turned away as well. Any native who makes the mistake of working in the summer as a guide, hunts moose or deer with his or her tribe — or who in fact, defends aboriginal hunting and trapping rights -- would probably be excluded. Which is virtually to say: Indians need not apply. But then I wear a fur trimmed parka, used to hunt groundhogs, own a couple of Ian Tyson (old bronc rider) albums and still have a porcupine-quill-bordered place mat from a restaurant in Muskoka. Guess I can't join either. I don't know how meetings of the Brave New Toronto Humane Society will work out, but I'll predict one thing: They won’t be crowded. abuses. Most people I talked to knew very little about Canada; it was not a country that featured prominently in the print media, radio or television. Those who were aware of our separatist problem opined that this was common in Europe also, not to mention the Kurds in the Middle East. We are perceived as a fortunate country with plenty of space, a high standard of living and a country where either a friend or a relative had emigrated to. They were not really aware of any differences between us and the Americans except, as a few pointed out, we were more subdued and conservative. As I indicated, the question of rights and responsibilities took up the bulk of my conversations. Most people had their pct likes and dislikes but I have filtered these out in order to arrive at the centre of their thinking. In closing, I can't help but believe that what they had to say is shared by a good many Canadians, all of which goes to show that the world is not such a small place after all. were all over other people's places. We were very concerned about our gardens, flower beds, etc. Fireworks were being let off on their property. This was a great concern for the residents, not only for the noise, but for the risk of fire, due to the dry weather. Yes, even in our homes with all the windows and doors closed, we were unable to escape the noise and get a good night's sleep. The party was so loud we stayed up to keep watch over our property. Finally someone must have phoned the Letter from the editor Censorship vs. responsibility By Keith Roulston A London bookseller is making headlines these days fighting a conviction for selling obscene material. He's standing against censorship, he says. Others claim he's standing up for smut. Marc Emery was convicted for selling a controversial rap album that has been ruled obscene many places on the continent. Critics say the album demeans women and is pornographic. Mr. Emery says he has to stand up for freedom of speech. He purposely sold the album he knew was controversial because he wanted to break what he felt was an unjust law. As a journalist and as a playwright, I don't agree with the principle of censorship, but I wish I saw things so simply as Mr. Emery. There's been a long battle to gain the kind of freedom of speech we have today in fact it's an ongoing battle because somebody is always ready to take away what we have gained. Books we now call classics, books that are pretty lame by today's standards were once banned from print. For half a century censorship didn’t allow a married couple to be seen in bed together in movies and television. The world needed to be opened up from its cloistered Victorian sensibilities to something approaching reality. But now that the door is open, how much to we let in? Do we believe so much in freedom of speech that we allow Nazis to slander Jews and blacks? Do we allow pornographic movies that delight in violence against women? If we believe totally in freedom of speech, do we accept laws against libel and slander? If we agree there must be some limitations on the right of a person to say and write things, where do we draw the line? The right to freedom of speech, it seems to me, is like any other right, it must be balanced by responsibility. But with freedom of speech, responsibility is often declared to be se//-censorship and that's almost as bad as being censored by someone else. The logical extension of this kind of thinking is that you've got to find ways to go farther and farther, breaking more and more laws and societal codes, just to prove you aren't censoring yourself. It's like driving down the highway and resenting the law that says you can only drive 80 km per hour so you feel you must break the law just for the sake of breaking it, even if the law makes utterly good sense in protecting other people (and yourself) from your stupidity. While I don't have a right to tell you what you can or can’t read or sec on television, while I shouldn't be able to tell you what you can't say, I'd also hope that you'd have the discipline and responsibility Continued on page 6. O.P.P. (Thank God for that). It took three police cruisers to break up the party. This was party number two so far this summer. The young lady who hosted the party was seen out the next day picking up some of the garbage, but it doesn't undo the noise and sleep lost by her neighbours. We sure hope her parents soon arrive home from their holidays, so we can have Hamilton Street back to its normal peaceful sited that we enjoy living on. Hamilton St. Concerned Citizen.