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Making Money $150 An Hour

absolutely, i agree with the gist of the post i apologise perhaps didnt make that too clear earlier, i was in a bt of a rush.

there is nothing wrong with being proud of ones culture or roots or whatever else forms ones background.

the problems as you point out and i rather laboriously indicated are when

a) its used to deny or provide preferential services/goods

b) when this turns into a source of bigotry or chauvinism i.e when one person/group assumes their background or group to be superior to others and either lead to intolerance, abuse or other derogatory treatment

c) the third issue closely related to (b) is when one tries to “force” or coerce or otherwise hound others to adopt their culture as best practice (sometimes using frivolous or ambiguous reason such as we are better off because …)

both (b) and (c) above are the source for or contribute largely to stereotyping and associated lame/hurtful or good natured jokes.

etc.

in order to move forward especially in kenya we need to define services and minimum standards acceptable which must be adhered to and optional premium services at a fee or other known and published measurement so that any who “qualify” have access. and move away from this village talk/tribal whispers to gain favor or advantage.

other countries have defined the discriminatory practices that will not be tolerated in providing services

viz gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, age, disability, etc

overall am glad you’ve made a excellent attempt to touch on this subject and hope you are able to reach others out there as well.

i agree in principle, but i would like to add that its not so much on the underlying semantics or interchangeable vocabularies ethnicity vs tribal or some other glorified or catchy buzzword. one only succeeds in roping in other hitherto harmless concepts into the same dark dungeon.

to understand negative ethnicity or tribalism (and for that matter any other differentiator such as race, religion, gender etc that leads to segregationist practice) we need to understand and evaluate the discriminatory practices themselves.

for example you join a queue for a rare commodity – if the person serving at the counter denies you the service or product or on the other hand gives you preferential treatment while denying or at the expense of others based on whichever factor (race, tribe, height, girth, gender, religion …. you name it..) that there is a huge problem and that person should face criminal charges if they denied you services / products and both of you should face charges if you were provided preferential treatment at the expense of others.

however if you are on the queue and everyone is served equally with the product and services but on if on reaching the service counter the person serving engages you a little more on conversation/pleasantries due to common interests (culture, tribe, sports, gender, etc) without break in service or denying the others or is a little short for the opposite reasons but the product/services are still of the desired standard then i venture to say that is acceptable.

my point is – in order to deal with negative ethnicity/tribalism and other discriminatory practice we need to focus not so much on the diversity but on establishing the minimum acceptable standards for product and service delivery to clients/customers. once that is achieved, everything else is immaterial. you will notice that is the emphasis in countries dealing with race or religious issues, that way it does not matter whether the guy serving hates you or loves you, the product/service received is of the quality or standard expected

sorry had to repeat myself in there several times for the sake of clarity, many tend to misunderstand my brants (blog rants)