Re: The Net and Terrorism

[tcmay@got.net (Timothy C. May)]

Thanks for the fine comments (and the comments from your shrink-wrapped
friend on Ritalin). A very few comments:

At 8:16 AM 7/8/96, Arun Mehta wrote:

>because you were taught hate, doesn't mean you won't outgrow it. My mother
>was active in the freedom struggle against the British, and told me enough
>horror stories that I grew up hating them. But once I met some perfectly
>decent specimens, it evaporated.

This is my experience, too, with using common sense in deciding which
races, if any, to hate.

>India is a large, diverse country with lots of injustice, poverty and other
>problems. When we analyze what breeds terrorism, we find aspects such as:
>
>- Severe neglect by the government (i.e. problems keep getting worse): For
>instance, the north east (which is east of Bangladesh, and has a long
>history of militant opposition) had to agitate for a long time to even get a
>railway line to connect them to the rest of the country.

A case, of course, where the government set the policy on who to connect,
based on votes and influence. In a market economy, regions get connected by
rail when a market for goods to be shipped appears likely, when customers
will pay for tickets, etc. (Until the last several decades, this is the way
railroads and shipping in the U.S. expanded. J.J. Hill built the "Great
Northern" rail line across the northern part of the U.S. without a dime of
subsidy and without much interference by government.)

>- Meddling by politicians: in Punjab, there was a Sikh regional party that
>was quite strong. To erode its popular base, Indira Gandhi encouraged the
>fundamentalists on its right. Similarly, Rajiv Gandhi's government helped
>train the Tamil LTTE. Both paid for these blunders with their lives, at the
>hands of the very groups they had once tried to foster.

This "tactical move" of pitting one religious or ethnic group against
another should be a lesson for the rest of us. Much better to take a
hands-off attitude and essentially pretend that differences don't matter.
(As opposed, say, to giving special privileges to Baptists, blacks,
Catholics, etc.)

In this regard, I think the U.S. got it "right" (though we are drifting
toward a "minority rights" situation, which is sowing the seeds of
Indian-style sectarian conflict, e.g., the riots in Los Angeles a few years
ago).

(Arun is now quoting someone else)
>>The U.S. has a level of tolerance for diversity that I
>>only recently came to
>>appreciate.  We hosted a foreign exchange student from Scotland (hardly
>>culture shock to him), but he surprised me when he commented on how
>>surprised he was that different groups of people were mixed together
>
>I've had a similar experience. I was part of the Indian delegation to a
>couple of Amnesty International International Council meetings. In this
>organisation, multiracialism and multiculturalism are heavily promoted. But
>if you looked at delegations from Europe, even from countries with sizable
>racial minorities, they were typically all-white. The US delegation, on the
>other hand, had blacks, different kinds of Asians, Hispanics... and not by
>design -- the US section leadership is highly "mixed", so they did not have
>to think about multiracialism, it just happened. Of course, given the
>"melting pot" ethos in the US, this is hardly surprising.

Indeed, Americans are often branded as racist yahoos by the enlightened,
racially-tolerant folks of Europe. They cluck at our "racial problems."

However, America is a melting pot, as Arun notes. On a daily basis we
interact with blacks, Asians, Mexicans, whites of all flavors, etc. Blacks,
for example, are very well-represented in so many areas (not science and
technology, for educational/cultural/image reasons--see Note if you want to
hear why).

For anyone who buys the UNESCO line about how American is a fundamentally
racist society, a visit for a few weeks should clarify things. There is
still a lot of racial separation, by choice and not by law, and economic
disparities. But the fact is that the races mix on a daily basis, with
little or no conflict. Music, sports, entertainment, business, etc.

(Note: For various cultural and image reasons, science and technology are
_not_ emphasized as careers for black children. Contrast the image of
science in predominantly black environments with the image of science in,
say, predominantly Jewish environments. The result is clear: blacks are
severely underrepresented in these areas, and Jews are overrepresented in
these same areas. Hey, I'm just citing a basic truth of our times, at least
in this country. Similar statistics apply to Asians, with more than half of
all U.C. Berkeley science and engineering undergrad students being Asian,
and something less than 3% of them being black. The figures for who
_graduates_ are even more skewed. There are various reasons for this. One
of my pet peeves is how the terms "dweeb," "nerd," and "geek" are used to
characterize science and engineering majors and professionals. Hardly terms
that are likely to make a brother in the hood consider studying science!)

--Tim May

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