Tuesday 13^th December 2005 JIM BALL Editorial

Culture and Race 

Well I don’t know about you but I’m becoming increasingly irritated and annoyed by the constant references to racism that continues to swirl around the events of last Sunday.

It was grog fuelled yob behavior nothing less.

The underlying causes have been well chronicled over the past week or so and the intention by the majority at Cronulla last Sunday was meant to be a statement by a community who have simply had enough and decided it was time to draw a line in the sand because nobody else would.

It was a clash between two groups over culture and had nothing to do with race.

As far as we know it involved Lebanese men from SW Sydney…That is Muslims.

If it was about race why didn’t it involve Christian Lebanese men as well…

And what about the bashing of the life-savers that started the whole sorry mess…. or the retaliatory attacks on Sunday night at Maroubra and last night at Brighton Le Sands.

Notice how they only come out at night for their hit and runs…Like some kind of suburban ram raid..Then spear off into the dark..

No reference to them being racist as near as I can see.

I suppose that must be different.

The reference to racism is for the intellectually lazy.

A one-size-fits-all catch cry of convenience

This is surely about culture and religion but has absolutely nothing to do with race

It’s about a group of people who see themselves as culturally superior.

How a bunch of rampaging rock apes could believe themselves to be superior is beyond me.

If it were about race why haven’t there been other turbulent racist outbreaks over the years with other racial groups. Pakistanis, Indians, and Koreans for example.

It’s a fairly hollow and shallow but predictable call…a simplistic below the belt shot that’s guaranteed to work on any occasion when an Anglo needs to be brought to heel.

So much for the race card.

To the extent that it’s about culture count me and most other Australians in.

In Australia despite the official line on multiculturalism, (a policy that’s never been tested in the court of public opinion) the Australian culture is superior. Self deprecation, irreverence, not taking yourself too seriously... a stoic pioneering ethos, mateship these kinds of attitudes and qualities…

In Japan the Japanese culture is superior, Ditto for China, Saudi Arabia..wherever.

Until we come to terms with the fact that we and our culture are under attack and recognize and diagnose a culture war when we see it, you can forget about this being over anytime soon.

As Piers Ackerman pointed out in his column in the Telegraph today:

“..Any question of a deep underlying racism in Australia was dispelled almost one year ago when Australians from all walks of life opened their hearts and purses to aid those devastated by the tsunami.

There is a solution to this violence and it lies in breaking down cultural barriers.

Those who claim to be outsiders in Australian society must ask whether their isolation is self-imposed, whether they live in self-made ghettos and have made any attempt to accept the culture of the land they have chosen to live in.

They have no one to blame but themselves, their parents and community leaders if they accept second-class citizenship and an apartheid of their own making…”

As the US writer Thomas Sowell observed back in September 2002: 

“What multiculturalism boils down to is that you can praise any culture in the world except Western culture -- and you cannot blame any culture in the world except Western culture.”

Our leaders, like the leaders of Holland, France Norway and Denmark have been struck dumb…are catatonic as they watch the experimental laboratory of multiculturalism and political correctness (cultural Marxism) burn to the ground…

Collectively they are the arsonists now turning up as firemen…