Thursday, November 16, 2006

Must not Call Anybody Stupid?

So it seems. A member of the crowd at an Australian cricket match called out to one of the players: "You can't speak English, you stupid Indian".

Those words have been hailed as proof that Australians are "racist". See here.

I think the words show that the player addressed was rightly seen as having Indian ancestry and as expressing the opinion (right or wrong) that the player was stupid. I cannot see that they imply anything more. Or are we not allowed to say that any member of a "minority" is stupid? But what if a particular minority person IS stupid?

And for that matter, since there are about a billion of them, Indians are hardly a "minority". And claiming that the words of one person represent what an entire nation thinks is the sort of hysteria we have come to expect where the claim of "racism" is hurled about.

No comments: