Origamist said:
I asked you to look at the paragraph (I had not made a statement about that paragraph), your over-active imagination conjured up the rest and then produced a strawman question!!
Yes, a strawman used to demonstrate that your implication could not possibly be what you meant. A strawman argument is only a bad thing when you're unaware of using it or, worse, using it to discredit someones views. Here, it was appropriate to discredit the view you were putting across.
Precisely, Cab, it look's like you've put your thinking cap on. The writer is not in a position to generalise (because the full picture is more complex and possibly unknowable), but does anyway, on racial grounds. You are apologising for him saying that's "just how people are". I'm of the belief that you should challenge this kind of lazy and crude prejudice.
Errm, no, there the writer was referring to what others say, the conclusions others (in Holland) have drawn, with the conversations you encounter.
Like it or lump it, thats how people are. Suppose you're in a town with an influx of people from (x). And they look similar to a subset of people who live in your town already. Suppose that you encounter dangerous behaviour from people who look like (x), say, five times in a week; disproportionate to their number. Are you more wary of people who look like they may be (x) when you see them on the road? Is that lazy prejudice?
To say that visibly ethnic people are dangerous on the roads because of their appearance is dreadful, its racist. But to say that people new to an area may have a different cultural perspective on road safety is in
no way racist. To then move on to say that if there is an influx of people with that different cultural perspective, and they're of a visible ethnicity, that people will be more wary on the roads around people who look that way... Well, like it or lump it, thats how people will act. The solution? Address the cultural differences that make integrating new immigrant communities difficult.