Hi Walter,

And again such a long reply. I'll reply between your lines. :)

>Hi Peter,
>
>>>There are certainly things I think we have arranged better than in the US. OTOH, I think the US is the country of opportunities and has to power to make the difference in this world.
>
>>In certain aspects I think the US is far ahead, for example in the way they deal with discriminination. Yes, that may sound odd, but they have had the battles in the sixties that we may soon gonna get.
>
>Um.., I don't think I agree. We have different problems with minorities, that are related to the different rules for immigration and the past we carry with us. We have the same fears from minorities were terrorists regulary come from as in the US.

Well okay, I may have exagerated. But you can think of a citizenship test, an oath ceremony and, one of my favorites, the preparedness/normalcy of changing one's name. These things are normal in the US since decades, we are only beginning to think about such things.


>Living far from the city, you might better able to judge this, but I don't think that many people regard the black girl on the corner to be less than the white girl on the corner. We do have created an allergic reaction towards certain ethnic groups who seem to be involved in criminality all too often. Based on percentages you cannot talk about discrimination, but about a factual observation. The question is not how we should classify such groups, but how we can solve the problems they have. With our former administration people were too frightend to do something about it, because they did not want to be called a racist. Do you remember Frits Bolkestein beeing burned for statements he made about the relation between minorities and criminality? We should not turn our heads away, but do something about it. Not with force or excluding them from society, but creating the circumstances exclusively for these types of groups to get out of this mess. I'm not an expert in this field, but I
>think a lot of social workers have a pretty good Idea what is needed to get them on the right track again.
>
>Maybe I'm an optimist, but after the murder to Theo van Gogh the whole country was confused and angry at the muslim extremists, but now we realize that our government has got the message and is doing their best to isolate them. There is no need to be angry at muslim in general.
>
>I don't think I'll see the demonstrations against blacks when a black girl goes to university for the first time. I don't believe in the rise of extreme right in Holland. Sure there will always be a certain level of discrimination everywhere (US or Europe), but we have to realize that people ARE different.
>
>My uncle told me once, that he was a referree at a soccer game. At a certain point someone from team a said to a team member: "Can you cover the black guy ?" Someone from the supporters walked up to my uncle why he did not gave a red card for discrimination ? My uncle replied, "Would you have done the same if he said "Could you cover the red (haired) guy ?"
>
>The point is, we should be that sensitive. People here often don't even know what is discrimination is. If I say: "That turk on the corner smells bad", I'm just saying something about an individual, not about turks..., yet it is so easy to light the fuse this way.

But how can you be sure it's a turk? My father resembles a turk, but he isn't. In practice, I never say that. I'd say "That person on the corner smells not so nice". But if it helps in a discussion, I do use words that are seen by some as discriminative. The most recent debate is about 'allochtoon'. I like that word and don't regard it as discriminative.

>>A good book is: Charles Groenhuijsen, Amerikanen zijn niet gek. (Americans are not crazy. About Bush and baseball, crime and millionaires, churches and casino's, porno and politics.)
>
>Well, I'm a fan of charles, though I tend more to agree more with max westerman. Unfortunately I not much of a book reader though: It blurs my mind to absorb just the viewpoint of one individual.

This is a book with readable sections, not much longer than your epistles. :)