In other words, the extreme cases are an opportunity to point to the mainstream problem. That is the proper way to characterize incidents such as Littleton, and that is my protest about the playingdown of the racism. ____
I've not been following the Littleton shootings and commentaries on them, so my comments don't go to that event specifically. but I can be fairly confident in saying that here in Australia, overt acts of racist violence and speech, including the overt appearance of racist organisations such as One Nation and National Action, are separated quite deftly from the issues of more a banal racism, but no less vicious and destructive for all that. in fact, the organisation of opposition to One Nation as the almost exclusive focus of left activity on the issue of racism in Australia has not only let other racist organisations off the hook, but has allowed the parties who share key planks with One Nation to appear as anti-racist when in plain fact they are not - they are simply more respectable and do not wear swastikas. they do however pose a more sustained and entrenched danger.
I can understand why the media is happy to generate such a focus: it is spectacular, it allows the audience to think itself as civilised, etc. and I can also understand why the left organisations here prefer the spectacular to the banal as well: it allows them to organise recruit-fests on the back of media focus. I can also understand why parties such as the democrats who have very similar policies to ON on immigration were quite happy to position themselves as the 'alternative to ON' in time for election preference deals from the major parties.
what I cannot understand is why anyone who insists they take seriously the struggle against racism would similarly claim that focussing on the spectacularly horrendous will make it easier to focus on the daily horrors, without any evidence that this has ever been the case before. if it has, I'd be glad to be proved wrong, but this has never been so here, in my experience.
I think you are right to say "One way to get rid of the extremists is to irradicate the lesser levels of racism from the mainstream." it doesn't follow that a focus on extreme events brings us any closer to this, tho it has been the case that such a focus has had the opposite effect: it makes mainstream racism look good.
btw, Chaz, do you think anti-immigration is a racist position?
Angela --- rcollins at netlink.com.au