It's hard to know where to find the balance between recognizing and respecting cultural differences, but also having a baseline of some moral values that we're prepared to impose on everyone, as well as acknowledging that human beings everywhere deserve basic human rights. If we always respect cultural difference, then we'd end up having to respect the practice of female clitoridectomy, just to give one example.
Sarah
At 12:24 PM -0800 02/09/2003, Kate Bennett wrote:
"In covering the Afghanistan war, Pitts said, "I wanted to avoid the temptation to label people with terms like 'savage,' words like that, which journalists have used in the past to describe minority communities in the United States. Those words are loaded with the biases of the reporter and have no basis, and I didn't want to make the same mistake in referring to the Afghanistan people." He remembered covering a Jesse Jackson speech in a small southern church a few years ago, where the black audience was shouting vehemently as Jackson talked. "Some of my colleagues thought these people were upset and angry with Jackson, that because the people were shouting they must have disagreed and were voicing their disapproval," Pitts said. "I had to explain that in the culture of Black America, shouting was actually their sign of total agreement with what Jackson had to say. I had to bring the same sensitivity to covering the people and the war in Afghanistan."
