Friday, November 5, 2010

Are we overreacting to KKK costume at Legion?

Unless you live in a lighthouse, you've probably engaged in, or heard conversation surrounding the events in Campbellford Ontario where a man came dressed in a KKK costume with another man in black face trailing behind with a rope around his neck.

I'm not going to re-hash the story, if you're reading this then you most probably know all the details.

I have heard plenty of comments and read some commentary suggesting that, by and large, this story has been blown all out of proportion. The implication is that in our liberal, touchy feely society, that we've gone overboard. Okay, it may have been in bad taste, but let's not go crazy about it.

I don't know about that. I wonder if there would be suggestions about things being blown out of proportion had the costumes been offensive to a different minority?

What if it had been a man dressed as Adolf Hitler, with a rope around another man dressed like a concentration camp prisoner with a tattoo on his arm?

I wonder if there would be any suggestion that a police investigation and the temporary closing of the offending Legion branch was taking things too far? My overwhelming inclination is that the uproar would have been far worse had the insensitivity been Anti-Semitic in nature.

But then, offending blacks might be more acceptable perhaps?

Any discussion?

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