Writing about Diverse Culture

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Diverse Culture

Edmund Burke said, ‘For evil to triumph it is only necessary for good men to do nothing’. 

There have been, and there are,  people who speak up for their rights or the rights of others that are exploited. Martin Luther King, Robert Lowell and Benjamin Zephaniah are just a few of these people. It is often the case that the exploited accept their abuse and do not, or are unable to, try and oppose the oppressors.

It is important not to confuse a clash in cultures with racism. It is in mans instincts to live with groups or in small communities. We often share our lives with people with similar  interests, cultures or race. This is why many people of similar religions or races, particularly if in the minority cut themselves off from other cultures. This segregation in society is the fundamental situation upon which racism is based. On 26th October 2003 The Times printed an article called ‘ Don’t call it racism, call it a clash of cultures’. Many times when people make allegations of racism it is a ‘clash of cultures’. The problem starts when a ‘feud’ develops because of a difference in beliefs. In the current pop song ‘Where is the love?’ sung by the Black Eyed Peas the lyrics state:

‘But if you only have love for your own race, Then you only leave space to discriminate, And to discriminate only generates hate, And when you hate then you're bound to get irate’.

This would appear to be a good overview of why racism is so common in the world today.

Also in late October 2003 there was a television programme on Channel 4 called ‘Disunited Britain’. This program looked at the issue of multiculturalism; it focussed on a scheme by the British government a few years ago, which encouraged the ‘promotion of minority cultures.’ This aim of this was to stop racism but what actually happened, as shown in the programme, was the minority cultures isolated themselves even more and ‘turned Britain into a segregation paradise’. Multiculturalism did not eliminate racism but increased it to an extreme where school children in Bradford now have to be coached between the white Christian community and the Muslim community.

However whatever the government are doing to stop racism it does not appear to be  working as racism in Britain seems to be as strong as ever. October 2003 was also the screening of a highly disturbing and provocative programme called ‘The Secret Policeman’. This showed a reporter training and working with the police force in Manchester for a short time with a hidden microphone and camera concealed on him. The programme showed a prime example of institutionalised racism in the police. They showed video footage where police officers admitted that they are more likely to arrest Black or Asian people and one even said that they thought the Stephen Lawrence deserved to die. The most worrying thing about the programme was the police are meant to be the force that keeps justice in Britain and this program showed just how perverted it really is.

There was an article on the BBC news website in October 2003 about gypsy effigies being burnt as part of the bonfire celebration at Firle in East Sussex. A caravan with pictures of gypsies with the slogan ‘pikeys’ was wheeled through the streets and then burnt. There is evidence of racism in the news all the time and as Trevor Philips, chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality said: ‘The idea that you can carry out an act like this and then apologise and get away with it, is exactly what produces a culture that says racism and discrimination and victimisation off people, because of what they are, is OK’

Although racism is still worryingly common, the official ‘line’ is all humans have the same rights. However this was not the official view in the 1960s. The 60s was the era where the minority groups started campaigning for equal rights. People like Martin Luther King and Malcolm X campaigned publicly for equal rights for all humans. One of the most famous occasions in the 60s was Martian Luther King’s speech, ‘I have a Dream’. Another very poignant image is the photograph of a Buddhist monk sacrificing himself by fire because of the oppression of the Buddhists in South Vietnam. The 1960s saw not only civil rights unrest but also a big step forward in that America became a lot more capitalist and the primary concern in society seemed to be only money. The  old moral and traditions were being lost. One person who picked up on this was Robert Lowell and his opinion on this in obvious from the poem 'For the Union Dead' written in 1964.

Robert Lowell was born in 1917 in Boston and died of a heart attack in 1977. ‘For the Union Dead’ was written in 1964, exactly one hundred years after the end of the American Civil War, at a time of political unrest where black people were campaigning for Civil Rights. The main leaders of the Civil rights movement were Malcolm X. and Martin Luther King. ‘For the Union Dead’ describes not only the injustice suffered by black people but also how the world has changed in his lifetime to being completely focused on making money and how morals and sentiments have been lost.

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'For the Union Dead' with Robert Lowell using the metaphor a ‘Sahara of snow’ to describe the current state of the Boston aquarium. This is effective because it connotations with a vast featureless wasteland, like the Sahara desert. Also because ‘Sahara’ and ‘snow’ are never normally associated with each other and are opposing ideas. The fact they are opposing ideas link with the opposing ideas of black people and racists which was the main issue at the time. The alliteration in ‘broken windows’ and ‘bronze weathervane’ links the two sentences together.

Later in that same stanza Lowell ...

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