Source: enterprise.southofboston.com/articles/2007/08/22/news/opinion/opinion01.txt

"The recently voiced supposition that debased American culture is behind a rash of violence in Brockton's Cape Verdean community has understandably offended many.

We'd like to believe the idea was born solely out of grief and frustration.

That's what we'd like to believe.

But Aminah Pilgrim, vice president of the Cape Verdean Association of Brockton, and other Cape Verdean leaders don't make it easy.

Pilgrim was quoted in a story in Sunday's Enterprise saying the violence affecting local Cape Verdeans is a product of how they perceive American cultural values.

“When many people become acculturated into American society, they will be affected by the violence that the United States promotes,” said Pilgrim, an African studies professor at UMass-Boston. “The American culture values material things and instant gratification more than it values people, and that's what leads to violent acts.”

Barbara Burgo, a cultural anthropologist from Taunton, added, “Cape Verdeans are more used to the family and looking out for each other. When they get over here, it isn't that way anymore.”

A nation that promotes violence? That values material goods and instant gratification more than people? Where families don't look after each other?

Granted there are people here, as there are elsewhere in the world, whose warped values are as distasteful as they are dangerous.

But painting the entire nation, and our community, with such a broad brush is no more acceptable than denigrating an entire religion or race based on the crimes of a few.

Pilgrim says Cape Verde is a much kinder place than here.

“The values that Cape Verde is known for include peace, love of family and community, include working hard, valuing education, and valuing life itself,” she said.

But sources ranging from the U.S. State Department to Afrol, an independent news agency that covers Cape Verde, say violence — particularly domestic violence against women on the island — is common.

That does not make Cape Verde a bad place, just not the utopia Pilgrim describes.

The growing Cape Verdean community for the most part enriches Brockton. It pains everyone to see the losses it has suffered recently and every effort must be made to stop the killing.

But people like Burgo and Pilgrim need to help their community see the rest of us as part of the solution, not part of the problem.

Yes, there are people and attitudes here that tear at our efforts to make this a better place.

But the vast majority of Americans care about their families and communities, promote peace and value human life more than material goods and instant gratification."

Related topic: One ethnic group hit hardest by killings
Link: enterprisenews.com/articles/2007/08/19/news/news/news06.txt

The american society promotes a violent culture for blacks and africans

the title of this post is also a hint of inferiority complex. Well what does it mean that america is not corrupting ethnic groups.

What is meant by ethnic? does it mean that some americans are ethnics and that other americans are ethnics? Does it mean that only non-white are ethnics? and that by a magical process the british-americans are not ethnic? Stop with this inferiority complex!