I love reading tag on-line as it keeps me up to date and informed while we are away in frozen England!
But please could you temper some of the recent comments which, in my opinion, are bordering on racist! I appreciate that there is need to alert people of a motoring scam and people should always be aware that there are highway robbers who will try any trick to get you to stop. But the 'mixed race' comments seem to be designed to put fear into people that by implication of his colour, he must be a criminal.
The fact is that he appears to be the driver of a black BMW. That would suffice! And to say 'run him over' or 'roll on by' are just plain unpleasantness! Are you saying that if we see a person of any colour other than white in an accident we should ignore them, just in case? Apart from the inhumanity, it is against French law not to stop.
I don't mean to sound 'precious' in all this, as I realise there are many real dangers out there and this guy is one of them, black, white, or mixed race!!. But I think you should stop escalating the situation and making ordinary drivers to scared to stop in a case of genuine need.
The gendarmes will have been alerted to him in any case.
Ann
Val says
Anyone who knows me knows that the very last thing I would allow is a racist comment. I have fallen out with many friends who I have discovered to be racist and I will continue to fight racism in every form. I am pleased Ann has raised the awareness of the fact that the potential robber in the car stopping saga is of mixed race. When I received the first email with that description I was saddened that the man was of mixed race and did discuss with Malc if we should take out mention of his race. We decided that for the best description, the sort you would give to the gendarmes, it needed to be in. We cannot and must not tar every mixed race person with the same brush but if the man was white or black or had long hair, we would have put that in. This was a very specific threat from this one individual.
Believe me working so hard for the street children of Mali I know about racism and I know I have lost readers because of my close associations with this group. Those readers who are racist I do not want, so it does not matter to me.
Ann, I applaud your concerns and please keep on fighting perceived or real racist remarks or comments but in this instance I still think my editorial decision was correct.
My comment on the roll on by was meant to mean do not stop whatever for this particular individual, but rereading it might have been better not to say in that way,and sounded a bit uncaring, so I have deleted that comment. If readers keep sending problems with this individual, I will keep on printing them. Thank you for bringing your concerns to me. I appreciate your comments.
Val.
Comments to taglines82@gmail.com
 |
| I might have my eyes closed on this, but I never close them to racism |
