Attitudes are no worse than elsewhere
EQUALITY Commissioner Bob Collins has made a timely intervention to debunk false claims that Belfast should be labelled race capital of Europe.
Ill-informed commentators from a distance have attempted to stigmatise the decent citizens of our capital city after deplorable incidents involving a very small minority which violently targeted Romanian migrants.
Mr Collins, while accepting the negative effects of the recent incidents on the image of Northern Ireland, counters: "The notion that this is the racist capital of Europe, more bigoted than anywhere else, is not so. I think it is a point of view that needs to be challenged. We have to manage a sense of perspective and we have to be sure that the conclusions we draw are justified by the evidence."
A survey reveals attitudes in Northern Ireland to minority groups like homosexuals, the Travelling community and even those with a disability are far from universally welcoming and Mr Collins has committed his organisation to try and soften perceptions on these issues.
Europe-wide research indicates that in many other countries, including the various regions of the British Isles, attitudes towards minority interests are just as fixed as they are here.
Coming out of a period of conflict, Northern Ireland is far from being a perfect society, but it does not deserve to be tainted by generalisations that emanate from localised incidents perpetrated by the few.
Sectarianism has long been identified as a most serious social problem in Northern Ireland, but one encouraging point in the public survey is the statistic that only six per cent of those surveyed have a problem with a neighbour of a different religion.
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Weather for Belfast
Thursday 24 May 2012
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Temperature: 12 C to 23 C
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