the New Hate and Prejudice

Here in the UK after a uphill struggle we now have laws to protect people from racism, prejudice etc. and so we should, but these laws do not always achieve what they should in changing peoples attitudes.

But it now seems there are new emerging hates and prejudice, people who are overweight, smokers, drinkers and car drivers just to name a few. How can we claim to be a tollerant society with laws to protect minority groups yet go on a wholesale crusade on the aformentioned.

Very few would go on air today and berate homosexuals or coloured people but if your overweight then you are a media punch bag, how can this be right. It seems that these groups of people are all tied in with crime, environmental issues or health issues.

Its as if every car using drinking smoking overweight person is some how become a criminal and is a target for all and sundry.

Many people drink but do not go out fighting or causing trouble.

People who are overweight have full active lives raise families, work, exercise etc. why are they now a target for ridicule and public debate.

Smokers have an addiction and should be treated as people who need help rather than treating them as social lepers.

Cars are and have been for sometime the most popular and efficient form of transport, now this group of people are a target, why?

I the the heydays of rail transport and the canals nobody said lets get rid of them. Time and technology change things in a natural progression, car use will change just as other forms of transport have in the past.

But why do we allow the media, groups or individuals to spew this hatred against others.

I just don't see this mm.

I don't think you can make any serious comparison between the long history of racial prejudice or the way many gay people have been treated throughout the years......

...... to how car drivers, smokers, over weight people or drinkers are treated today in our society!?

No, not at all, the very idea is patently ridiculous.

Do you know of untold numbers lynched just for being a driver?

Do you know of anyone imprisoned for being known to smoke?

Of course not.

By all means have a discussion about changing social attitudes in these areas but that is not "hate" and to equate these subjects as if they are somehow similar or equivalent in the way you have done is, frankly, absurd (some might say grossly offensive).


[edit on 25-4-2007 by sminkeypinkey]

Hi Smink there is no offence intended but I dont remember anyone being lynched in the Uk and what Im talking about is the attitudes of the media and others to the people I have mentioned.

Its all about tollerance is it not, its not right to bash gay people but its alright to bash fat people is it. In the Uk at the moment were well into the blame culture, where a person may not call someone a 'n-word' they would quite happly abuse a fat person.

Abuse, hate prejudice etc. dose not have a shelf life, are you saying just because this may be a new trend it dose not matter if people are treated in this way.

The very fact that you state how coloured people, gays etc. have been treated over the years and in some cases still suffer racist abuse etc. is what I'm talking about, how can we say we are tollerant when were quite happy to abuse or berate others. Just because you are not aware of this dose not mean its not happening. As an Black MP I'm sure you would be aware of this as much of this is sourced from central goverment.

While I agree with what sminkey has posted, you cannot say that abusing gays/coloured people to abusing drivers are the same thing..... (you could also bring into this the way drivers abuse people who are on the road bycycles or waiting to cross the road also.

Any form off abuse, weither it being racial abuse, homophobia, or abusing overweight people, is wrong.

Is it not the norm in this present day, that this country has become so much a nanny state, that you cannot even look at someone the wrong way without being accused of being racist or being abussive.

As a gay guy I know what it is like to have abuse flung @ you from, people who are so ignorant, at the end of the day, Im the bigger man for walking away and ignoring it. ( It is the same thing with regards to overweight people being abused also)......

Thank you Spencer I was not trying to compare what Gays, etc. have been through with smokers etc. but rather the intollerance to all in genera.
Its seems we no sooner stop abusing one group and we start on another.

MM, great name btw... Yum! I work on behalf of substance misusers, and it was pointed out to me that one of the last acceptable prejudices is against substance misusers/addicts/alcoholics/wotEVER... Think about it, you can`t be racist, ageist, religionist, sexist, even fattest to a slight degree, and yet junkies and alcoholics (There are no good nouns) are repeatedly maligned and attacked in the madia(sic.)
But, more to the point, I agree that we just aren`t allowed to do what we want and get on with it these dayz! There`s some really weird cultural zeitgest of collective conformity coming over the horizon....Following restrictive legislation that I was so naive as to expect everybody to laugh and sneeze at! More the fool me....
Why should we all be forced towards some arbitrary ideal of `good healthy clean living` and punished! if we aren`t or don`t become that??!
The government has been happy enough to take vast sums of money off us in taxes on Tobacco, Alcohol and "Luxuries" for 10 years, and now they turn round and tell us we`re not allowed to enjoy these things any more!? Excuse me for thinking it`s all rather screwed up.

In this sort of climate, it sometimes pays to put your `Liberty Cap` on.
Be Well

[edit on 27-4-2007 by MistahBear]

Originally posted by MistahBear
Think about it, you can`t be racist, ageist, religionist, sexist, even fattest to a slight degree

- I disagree. Yes you can.

It is not illegal and 'against the law' to be a bigot as a private individual in your private life, no matter what exaggerated nonsense the reactionary element might try and claim.
We do not have a 'thought Police' here.

It's just that you can only be like that in private.

....and as more and more people refuse to accept that nonsense in their own private lives it becomes less acceptable generally and you'll find that for many it's a sure way to end up ridiculed, with few friends and many turning their backs on the minority of 'Alf Garnets' we have left (that's 'Archie Bunker' types in the US).

But if you really must be sexist, racist, homophobic, agist, sectarian or fatist(?), then you can be in private and in the privacy of your own home etc; what you cannot be is like that as an individual in public and go around offending others and creating a breach of the peace or public disorder
(these are nothing to do with 'PC', they are ancient British laws that have been around in one form or another for at least 200yrs - the Rural Police Act of 1839 being one such example but you'll find formal 'breach of the peace' laws going back to at least the 14th century here).

Nor can you operate in commercial life or public life on those grounds.

'We' as a society will no longer tolerate prejudice as a basis for behaviour in public or commercial life.

Quite right too.



[edit on 28-4-2007 by sminkeypinkey]

Originally posted by MistahBear
The government has been happy enough to take vast sums of money off us in taxes on Tobacco, Alcohol and "Luxuries" for 10 years, and now they turn round and tell us we`re not allowed to enjoy these things any more!? Excuse me for thinking it`s all rather screwed up.

You'll find that every British government of the twentieth (and now twenty first) century has taxed tobacco, alcohol and luxury items. It's a great way to rake in the taxes, along with things like petrol. The position of Chancellor of the Exchequer has been sometimes considered a bit of a political death sentence since the public remember the increases in booze and fags on polling day

It's all about 'division', isn't it?

All about Divide and Conquer.

And about the need of large sections of society to stigmatise, ostracise, criticise and 'bully' other sections of society.

People cannot get along.

It makes you question who or what put this world together and spun it into being.

We're all different, or at least we 'feel' we are. Yet at the same time, we do want to conform and 'belong'.

We 'feel' we 'belong' if we can pit 'our' group against another group.

The division between 'our' group and the next is the glue that bonds 'our' group together. So we create those divisions which we then utilize as glue.

It occurs in kindergarten and primary school and it continues all through our lives.

The workers have their canteen and management has its own.

The 'rich' have their enclaves and the poor have their ghettos.

One religion teaches its members that they are in some way better or superior to the next.

This competitiveness is encouraged in sports --- the Olympics for example, and soccer, and swimming carnivals.

We're constantly being encouraged to join a group or idealogy. If we don't, we're regarded (and often feel) as outsiders, as belonging to nothing, of being of no value, of being vulnerable and easy to pick off.

When society and groups 'lose' one sacrificial lamb, they find another.

It seems that when people are prevented from expressing prejudice against one group, they're encouraged to find a new group to pick on. It seems as if people cannot enjoy their lives or function properly without 'someone to hate'.

Governments and world leaders encourage this prejudicial mentality and have done so all through history. 'Bogey men' are created by governments, as means to an end.

Not long ago, the bogey-men were 'the Commies', or 'the Japs' or 'the Germans'. Currently, it's muslims --- as long as they reside in the Mid East.

Governments are happy to demonise smokers, yet pay only lip-service to 'curing' gambling and drinking. As the song says: 'Two out of three aint bad'. Governments are laughing as long as gamblers and alcoholics remain addicted.

Yet how many homes have been bankrupted or have broken up because of smoking? Gamblers and alcoholics are the cause of millions of hours of lost work-time, theft, homicide, automobile accidents, etc. People don't go out and rape someone after half a pack of cigarettes. They do after half a bottle of whisky though.

Now 'fat people' are being demonised. When governments punish those who demonise heavy people, then sections of society will find someone else to demonise. On and on.

What other conclusion can be reached other than humans enjoy pushing someone down in order they can climb on that person's back to elevate themselves an inch or so.

Humans might wear clothes, but underneath, many are not far removed from their animal ancestors. Long, long way to go.