Calories : 596
Recently Liam Neeson (the famous actor) has been making headlines because he admitted that twenty years ago he wanted to beat-up or even kill any random black man in revenge for the fact that a friend of his had been raped by a black man. To be fair he was telling this story to show how bad the idea of revenge is and he was not proud of it. The story has sparked outrage on social (and traditional) media, principally because Liam Neeson is deemed to be a racist for thinking and saying these things. The actor has defended himself by claiming that he is not a racist and that he understood that he was wrong.
We can all agree that Liam Neeson's reaction 20 years ago was wrong, but a more interesting question is whether he was right to make public his darkest thoughts or should he have kept them to himself ?
On balance I believe that he was right to talk about this to help show that bad instincts happen and the question becomes what do you do about them? Do you let them overtake you or do you control and suppress them when you recognise them as wrong?
Where I do object to Liam Neeson's confession is when he says he is not a racist. I am perfectly prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt in that he does not consider himself a racist now but what he did decades ago was definitely racist whether conscious or not. (Just the fact that he asked his friend what colour the rapist was, shows racism. How is that a relevant question!)
We all have unconscious bias to a greater or lesser extent its better to admit it and then let our rationality compensate.
Recently Liam Neeson (the famous actor) has been making headlines because he admitted that twenty years ago he wanted to beat-up or even kill any random black man in revenge for the fact that a friend of his had been raped by a black man. To be fair he was telling this story to show how bad the idea of revenge is and he was not proud of it. The story has sparked outrage on social (and traditional) media, principally because Liam Neeson is deemed to be a racist for thinking and saying these things. The actor has defended himself by claiming that he is not a racist and that he understood that he was wrong.
We can all agree that Liam Neeson's reaction 20 years ago was wrong, but a more interesting question is whether he was right to make public his darkest thoughts or should he have kept them to himself ?
On balance I believe that he was right to talk about this to help show that bad instincts happen and the question becomes what do you do about them? Do you let them overtake you or do you control and suppress them when you recognise them as wrong?
Where I do object to Liam Neeson's confession is when he says he is not a racist. I am perfectly prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt in that he does not consider himself a racist now but what he did decades ago was definitely racist whether conscious or not. (Just the fact that he asked his friend what colour the rapist was, shows racism. How is that a relevant question!)
We all have unconscious bias to a greater or lesser extent its better to admit it and then let our rationality compensate.
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