>Well, I think they might not mind, if the
>question were asked in a friendly spirit.
That kind of question is always asked in a friendly spirit, which is even more to shag's point that "the first rule of anti-oppression work" is not doing it.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I think here we had enough of this multicultural ideology, which for me at least is often an inverted racism namely for example when people come here typically multiculturalists would say: Oh I want to understand how you are different. No, what you should understand is that fundamentally they are not different here just different things happened to them.... I think we should totally object to this liberal blackmail; we should understand each other no the world is too complex we can not I hate people, I don't want to understand people. I want to have a certain code where I dont understand your way of life and you don't understand mine but we still can coexist.
Slavoj Zizek in a recent interview, where he also calls himself "an old-fashioned Marxist."
http://www.euronews.net/2008/09/12/euronews-talks-films-and-balkans-with-slavoj-zizek/