Attitudes toward otherness form the basis of every religion and every political system. In the twenty-first century, their evolution has been unevenly distributed across the globe, and not only in terms of governments, but also among ordinary citizens.

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In one of those frequent ironies that dot the world landscape today we can only be struck by these contrasting events: as America's black population becomes increasingly organized and determined to confront police brutality toward its members, Europe's leaders mourn the deaths of 1700 African migrants trying to reach its shores via the Mediterranean, the South African government chastizes its people for targeting immigrants and on the hundredth anniversary of the slaughter of 1.5 million Christian Armenians by the Ottoman Empire, Turkish President Erdogan lashes out at the Pope for calling it the first genocide of the twentieth century.[tag]

What do these strikingly different attitudes tell us about attitudes toward Otherness upon which political and religious systems rest? While recently revealed American police reports refer to black demonstrators as 'enemy forces' and 'adversaries', mirroring not only recent police militarization but a heritage in which minorities are fair game, Europe's politicians, though determined to limit African immigration, are forced by a heritage that goes from the French Revolution to the UN Declaration on Human Rights to deplore mass drownings and seek ways to avoid them.

This stark difference underlies the growing divide between Washington and those it took for granted as allies for three quarters of a century, mainly the Europeans. But I also see a difference between mainstream America and the black majority population of South Africa that after only a few decades of rule, is already telling its less tolerant members that the bible says 'Love they neighbor' and 'God loves us all', while Australians have set up a grass roots campaign condemning the concentration camps their government has set up for illegal immigrants from Asia.

Clearly, the US is behind on this one, but our focus on elections has little chance of remedying attitudes that began with the first slaughter of Indians.

P.S. France 24 is airing an interesting debate on the Mediterranean migrant problem right now, to be repeated at 6 pm and again at 9 pm est.

Authors Website: http://www.otherjonesii.blogspot.com

Authors Bio:

Born in Phila, I spent most of my adolescent and adult years in
Europe, resulting over time in several unique books, my latest being Russia's Americans.

CUBA: Diary of a
Revolution, Inside the Cuban Revolution with Fidel, Raul, Che, and Celia
Sanchez

Lunch with Fellini,
Dinner with Fidel: An Illustrated Personal Journey from the Cold War to the
Arab Spring

America Revealed to a
Honey-Colored World

A Taoist Politics: The
Case For Sacredness

I began my journalistic career at the French News Agency in Rome,
spent two years in Cuba finding out whether the Barbados were Communists before
they made the revolution ('Cuba 1964: When the Revolution was Young'). After
spending half a decade in Eastern Europe, and a decade in the U.S., studying
Global Survival and writing speeches in the Carter State Department, I wrote
the only book that foresaw the fall of the Berlin Wall AND the dissolution of
the Soviet Union ("Une autre Europe, un autre Monde'). My memoir, 'Lunch
with Fellini, Dinner with Fidel', tells it all. 'A Taoist Politics: The Case
for Sacredness', which examines the similarities between ancient wisdom and
modern science and what this implies for political activism; and 'America Revealed
to a Honey-Colored World" is a pamphlet about how the U.S. came down from
the City on a Hill'.