When did Xenophobia replace Patriotism

 

Subject: When did Xenophobia replace Patriotism

When did Xenophobia displace patriotism, when does our instinctive love for our country, it’s practices and character become a barrier to accepting people who lived and grew up in a foreign land and who now reside along side us but demand their own customs and character.

Do we have an instinctive right to try to ensure that things should continue to proceed along a well established traditional path or should we at all times welcome outsiders for the diversity they bring, including their customs and religious affiliation.

Are we intrinsically pliable, cautiously amenable or are we hesitantly cautious not wishing to stray from the path we know.

Watching a program based in South Africa and the recent troubles and violence displayed towards black economic migrants from countries to the north, the feeling on the ground is that unemployment and scarce resources demands that these problems have to be fixed first before other people are allowed to come in and exacerbate the problem.

The panelist’s who I thought were impressive, perusing an argument for understanding and improved communication as to what is going on. Their's was the old story, tell the people the truth and they will support you but of course the truth to these articulate academically minded people is very different to the truth in the township. The very root of the program, (broadcast on Al Jazeera), was to define and condemn the apparent xenophobic attitude in the South African Townships as if it were a crime, whilst people living in such dire poverty  with massive unemployment, unimaginable here in Europe, they too only ask for understanding. 

Erudite and schooled in debate these young black, middle class people in Africa (as their white counterparts in Europe) argue from a philosophical convention, from the mores of longstanding classical questions regarding moral judgement and ethical rules. Perhaps the truth is, we are not naturally global but instead inclined to supporting what we can see around us, what we might call 'our own kith and kin', or at least would have before the economic drive to establish a global hegemony which disrupted everything.

It's a bit rich to expect poor people trapped in their impoverished communities to bail us out on the grounds of morality when our "betters" clearly don't understand the word as they troop like lemmings through the 'Aye lobby' in support of that arch dissembler of truth and morality, Boris Johnson.