>>At some point there was an effort to lower the complications at birth and specially in the postnatal care. The problem was solved by strictly forcing all the nurses and doctors to scrub their hands when leaving the restroom, every time, as they use left hand and water, not paper.
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>Perhaps I misunderstood (wouldn't be the first time), but it sounds too much like stereotyping to me.

Cuts both ways. The people of minorities get screwed up here and there because of stereotyping. OTOH, sometimes they screw up and then when they get caught they yell against being stereotyped. Of course, they're doing a disservice to their own that way, but then they're just human - and somehow we always expect the poor, the uneducated and all other sorts of downtrodden and humiliated to be near perfect and held to some high standard. Must be some iudeochristian prejudice.

> While I will agree that there are some minorities with no desire to achieve great things or even to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and be successful, I disagree that it is an entire group.

It's obviously not, but there's sufficient mass. I've heard the same anti-intellectual attitudes, same I-don't-need-to-know-that, same "screw those books let's play some ball" attitude as I've heard from my students (the worst of the worst in town, and then the worse half of that population). Those people got nowhere. And there's not much difference between my neighborhood back home and this one here, for that matter - the same sloppiness, dropping trash around, and... would it be offensive if I posted something to the effect "if your dog craps on my lawn again, smile... you may become famous on YouTube"?

>There are certainly those who blame others in order to excuse their lack of ambition or drive or even ability to obey the law. They fall into every group though. There are blacks who blame the system or whites, there are indians who do the same, there are whites who blame affirmative action and reverse discrimmination, and there are alcoholics who blame their upbringing or anything they can think of. It is the fault of the individual and the fault of the society lies in allowing it or condoning it. Didn't affirmative action programs designed to help the Albanians actually result in reverse discrimination against Serbs, Turks, and other groups?

That was not the US. There were no "programs", there was a system. Whatever was a rule in Lower Prtchilovitsa, was the rule in Upper Bighead. Flat. So there was a law - pieces of constitution and the subsequent laws - which made the minorities not just equal, but in some respect more equal. Belonging to a majority nation meant you may get prosecuted right away, not having to wait until an interpreter can be found (and the smaller minority you were, the better - until judge swears your brother in to interpret), or that you had to go to a school farther away because the one near had the concentration of teachers in minority languages - and they'd generally get everything in their language except maybe one or two subjects; they also had an extra subject, majority language and literature, so they had to stay longer, as they learned their own separately.

Discrimination because of nationality... I don't remember having suffered from it. I was much more irked by the free passes anyone with fast legs or big biceps would get as a "sportist of merit". You get one federal medal in anything, be it a bronze, your training count as if you've worked, there's a payment against your retirement, and you score extra on the job waiting list.

> What about the Gypsies?

My neighbors across were a family of Muslim Gypsies from Kosovo (and in part the Albanian-claimed parts of Macedonia) - they fled north. And that was in early eighties. At that time, we had about an hour a week in Rroma language on the TV and about each region had an hour a two on radio. I had a student (who later turned out to be a neighbor) who was just happy to get a 2 (our grading scale was 1-does not suffice, 2-suffices, 3-good, 4-very good, 5-excellent), while I thought he was material for at least a 3 with a view to 4, but he preferred to learn just as much as got him through, and went on doing whatever family business was. Saw him much later, selling cigarettes on the bus station. An Albanian Rroma.

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Um... a word of explanation here: the Rroma, aka Gypsies, superficially assume the culture of the host nation; they usually master the music, take the names, know the language well enough (with accent and minimal vocabulary), but generally don't take to the religion, and rarely marry out. So the ethnic mix in my area was replicated in them - we had Hungarian, Albanian/Muslim, Romanian and Serbian Rroma. Our neighbors on other two sides were Serbian Rroma. They seemed to be on better terms with us than with each other :).