Tuesday, October 4, 2005
Exploring the limits of multi-cultural accomodation...I accomodate you, or you accomodate me? If I perceive it to be something, is it so, and if I misperceive, should it be you that changes?
CNN: Race fears spark St. George ban
The pins showing the English flag -- which has often raised hackles due to its connection with the Crusades of the 11th, 12th and 13th centuries -- could be "misconstrued," Chief Inspector of Prisons Anne Owers said in a section on race in a report on a jail in the northern English city of Wakefield...
...Chris Doyle, director of the Council for the Advancement of Arab-British Understanding, said Tuesday the red cross was an insensitive reminder of the Crusades.
"A lot of Muslims and Arabs view the Crusades as a bloody episode in our history," he told CNN. "They see those campaigns as Christendom launching a brutal holy war against Islam.
"Muslim or Arab prisoners could take umbrage if staff wore a red cross badge. It's also got associations with the far-right. Prison officers should be seen to be neutral."
Doyle added that it was now time for England to find a new flag and a patron saint who is "not associated with our bloody past and one we can all identify with."
(via LGF)
You'd think I would no longer be surprised by the assininity of PC run amok...
Personally, I believe the Muslims are onto something here. I'm also a religious minority, a Jew living in the US, and so I can understand how alienating it can be to live under a flag that doesn't reflect one's identity.
I am personally affronted by the American flag. First of all, those five-pointed stars. I simply can't relate to them. Any sensitivity to people of my background would require that we make them six-pointed.
And the colors! Do we really need red? Blue and white will suffice perfectly well, thank you very much.
Plus, the design is way too busy. Why have so many stars? I don't think that the Founding Fathers anticipated so many new states. The design of the flag is ruined because it's crowded with too many of those stars. Having fewer of them, or even just one, would make the design a lot more pleasing.
And those vulgar stripes! That jarring red color. The whole effect is just too much. Fewer stripes please, maybe one, or how about two of them? Maybe in a nicer color. Perhaps a shade of blue, against a white background, would be just the thing.
Am I asking for too much? Not at all. It's just a matter of sensitivity. After all, even though my ancestors came to the US long after Betsy Ross sewed the first flag, I feel that I have every right to mandate a new design. Speaking of new designs, how about that bald headed eagle as the symbol of our country. Sorry, it doesn't work for me...
If these guys are offended by the flag of England, and presumably what it stands for (like rule of law and personal liberty for example) they can go back to whateve sewer they, or their parents, immigrated from to escape the horrible life they had there.
Once they finish the jail time for the crimes they committed, of course.