I read your posts and you say very good things and even now. I suspect that a country as large as the United States and your short history, you have managed it very well actually, you know that thing with assimilation that we in Europe have a very hard time getting started and into the minds of those who seek to come here from completely opposite cultures to ours.
I don't know how you feel in the US and with children's books, but here we got a false start from when we were little and looked at picture books. That chimpanzees illustrated in trees doesn't rhyme very well with reality, does it? They usually live on the ground. I think that some people simply haven't come out of that indoctrination and we see examples of that in ugly scenes in some stadiums in Spain, Italy, Poland and Israel. Some very racist types who separate people by skin color have drawn chimpanzees and gorillas in trees eating bananas and then these sub-humans make monkey noises and throw bananas down to the players of the wrong color. I also can't imagine that something like that could happen in the US. Imagine Superbowl and bananas.... Impossible.
But for the rest of us who are a little right and maybe a bit conservative and like to preserve historical things and traditions, we get a lot of heat as I think it's too easy to call us racist just because a curiosity can only mean one thing. Namely racism. I´m surprised to see some of those who call themselves right wing and vote republican also shout racism. I´m used to the left doing it, but as you said, we Europeans may have a different mindset than you Americans when to talk frankly about things that might be considered sensitive.
Cheers!
