Psychology - Abuse and Recovery

Today's racism news reports from around the world include:

EU and Israel experts meet on racism and anti-Semitism
(European Jewish Press)

Brussels (EJP)- Experts from the European Union and Israel met Thursday in Brussels to exchange experiences on combating racism, xenophobia and anti-Semitism.

The one-day seminar, which took place at the European Commission headquarters, was organized in the framework of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP).

Under the ENP EU-Israel Action Plan endorsed in 2005, the European Union and Israel agreed to work together to combat anti-Semitism as well as racism and xenophobia.

The seminar examined policies and best practice on combating racism in the European Union and in Israel.

It looked at how statistics are collected, how anti-discrimination policies are put in place and how mutual understanding can be fostered.

Sessions were also devoted to fighting racism through education, how penal legislation can be used to treat racism, xenophobia and anti-Semitism as a crime and how to combat hate speech in the media.

The European experts came both from the European Commission and from the Member States of the European Union. (Continued)
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Racism lurks in all of us - let's face it
(Palm Beach Post, Florida, US)

Few people have the courage to admit they are racist or anti-Semitic. That understandable failure blocks healing for one of the most fundamental and universal human characteristics.

Is Michael Richards, aka Seinfeld's Kramer, a racist? Of course he is. Everyone is. We don't choose to be. We are.

There can be little doubt that Mel Gibson is anti-Semitic as well. Richards and Gibson suffer, as we all do, from the human condition, what the Catholic Church calls original sin — the fundamental human predisposition to be self-serving that Scripture suggests everyone inherits from Adam. Teachers in seventh grade confirmation class describe it as the "I" in the middle of the word "sin."

Original sin is not an excuse for racism or anti-Semitism but an attempt to find its roots. We are, all of us, afraid, needy and defensive. When threatened, we circle the wagons and trigger the tendency to set others apart.

Sadly, we do not see "our own" as the entire human community but as black or white, Hispanic or Asian, Protestant, Catholic, Muslim or any of a legion of sub-categories we use to define ourselves. Then, when threatened, we reject those who are unlike us. (Continued)
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Hamburg Looking Into Racism Allegations Over Atouba Incident
(From Playfuls.com, Romania)

SV Hamburg are looking into whether their player Tomothee Atouba was the target of racist insults from the club's fans before disgracing himself with an obscene gesture at the fans at a European Champions League match.

Citing spectators who attended Wednesday's match with CSKA Moscow, several Hamburg dailies reported on Friday that the Cameroon defender was heavily insulted, allegedly mainly from the VIP section.

Atouba reportedly confirmed that he was insulted, but said it wasn't the reason why he offended the fans by sticking out his middle finger several times when he was substituted.

Atouba was red-carded for the offence, suspended for the final two Bundesliga matches of the year by Hamburg and fined 50,000 euros by the club as well.

"Atouba told us that the racist slurs were not the reason for his misbehaviour," club president Bernd Hoffmann told the Bild daily. (Continued)
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Info on Racism:

Racism is commonly defined as a belief or doctrine where inherent biological differences among the various human races determine cultural or individual achievement, with a corollary that one's own race is superior and has the right to rule others.[1]

The term racism is sometimes used to refer to preference for one's own ethnic group (ethnocentrism),[2] fear of foreigners (xenophobia), views or preferences against interbreeding of the races (miscegenation),[3] and nationalism,[4], and/or a generalization of a specific group of people (stereotype); regardless of any explicit belief in superiority or inferiority embedded within such views or preferences. Racism has been used in attempts to justify social discrimination, racial segregation and violence, including genocide. Politicians are known to practice race-baiting in an effort to win constituents.

The term racist, when used to describe someone who supports racism, has been a pejorative term since at least the 1940s, and the identification of a group or person as racist is nearly always controversial. (Continued)

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