Further to the last post

I decided to post the 2 links about the racial baby adoptions on a favourite website of mine. It was interesting to see that I'm not the only one who was greatly disturbed by this.

You know that expression, "You shouldn't judge a person until you've walked a mile in their moccasins"? With that in mind, let me share with you all a brief glimpse of my background.

My father is German, born in the old country in 1931. So he was just 14 when WW2 ended. He saw no future for his homeland and emigrated to Canada in 1951. I was born 13 years later. He was so disgusted with what the Nazis had done, starting with - let's not dare forget - their separation of "us" & "them": "Us and the Jews", "Us and the Blacks" (think Jesse Owens), "Us and the Gypsies", "Us and the Homosexuals", etc.

From a young age my Dad taught me to treat everyone equal. He pointed out that I had a right to dislike anyone, but I should do so based on that individual's words and actions, not on their skin colour, accent, religion, etc.

Where I went to elementary school and high school, there was a grand mixture of children of all ethnicities. In elementary school my 2 best friends were a Filipino kid named Paul and a half-Filipino / half-Caucasian kid named Jimmy. In high school my 2 best friends were an Indian-Muslim fellow named Deenu and a half-German / half-Swedish fellow named Richard. Also in high school, most of my other close friends with ethnically Chinese. But we were all Canadian.

At the time I didn't appreciate the apparent rarity of how all of us kids, whose parents and grandparents had come to Canada from all over the world, got along so incredibly well. There simply wasn't any racism amongst us. There was a separation of dopers and jocks and braniacs and artists, but never were there any separations by race.

Sadly, much has changed since I graduated from high school in 1982. The governments throughout my country (federal, provincial, and municipal) have created an assortment of programs that quite deliberately distinguish people by race. Oh, of course they haven't spun it the way the Nazis did. It's all done in a supposedly positive or affirmative way. But the end effect has some strong similarities.

Nowadays in Vancouver you see large groups of people in public spaces who are entirely of a single ethnic make-up. In high-schools the kids have self-segregated themselves down ethnic lines, often speaking their own native language, which nobody else can understand. There are jobs posted by government agencies where "only minorities need apply". There are entire neighbourhoods where no English (or French) is spoken. Political candidates are nominated from a sudden horde of brand new members where strangely enough, 99% come from a single ethnic minority. And now we have babies that can not be adopted by anyone outside of their "community".

This is "progressive"? This is positive? Yet this is the Canada (and I assume the United States) of 2008. Are there any spaceships leaving for Mars? I want to book a seat.