Recently TVs' brazilian stations show children under 3 years old working=20
in an improved fabric of mandioca flour in northwest of Brazil (country=20
area of Pernambuco - a brazilian state colonized during some time by=20
netherlands). They (children) use knifes better than some adults. (It=20
was shown that childhood is cultural determined). That's an ugly feature=20
of capitalism. Their parents receive U$ 50,00 per mounth with their=20
help. Without children help the parents could earn very less money.=20
Public Power could not solve that situation constraining their parents=20
to put them in schools because family gains would not be enough to eat!
=20
There are other terrible situation like the "slave-workers" in dend=EA=20
farms in Amaz=F4nia. They can never pay, with the money they receive as=20
payment for their work, things they buy to EAT in the farm "market"=20
(witch owner is the farmer).
In Rio and Sao Paulo, big cities of Brazil, there's a permanent "civil=20
war" between police and drug trafic. Many young black poor men die every=20
day (and white middle class white people victims of lost missiles).
That's a parallel State governed by traficants who give social=20
assistance, medical care, food and job to poor people who lives in=20
"favelas" - comunity improved built in the top of hills that surrounds=20
Rio.
One thing is to look to someone "different" from an above-below=20
perpective. Other is to look at them "face to face".
Phil Graham wrote:
>=20
> The guilt that many progressive "Anglos" express for the unfortunate
> circumstances of the so-named "minorities" seems to produce a
> well-defined sense of the "other", thus dialectically defining the
> "us" and the "them" with increasingly finely-focused criteria.
>=20
> While such sentiments are no doubt well-intentioned, my fear is that
> once the "other" becomes precisely defined, they will have little
> choice but to remain outside, marginalised by definition.
>=20
> Generalisations and presuppositions about persons based on race,
> ethnicity, gender, economic status ... whatever; whether positive or
> negative, whether well-intentioned or not, are dogmatic 'isms that
> assumes an intrinsic, immutable difference based on some arbitrary
> qualitative or quantitative "difference".
>=20
> Witness the effect of similar progressive efforts circa 1870 through
> to 1930 (the pluralist movement of Western Europe, very strong in
> Germany). The well-defined, publicly mourned but privately decried,
> increasingly well-defined groups of "others" have been gassed, burned,
> shot, or starved in their millions ever since. A few gruesome
> statistics about the current state of globalised society:
>=20
> Two hundred million children aged four to fourteen are currently in
> the global workforce. Life expectancy in Africa is 43 and falling.
> More than 50 armed conflicts throughout the world are currently
> claiming roughly two million lives per year =96a total of 75 million
> violent deaths in the last 35 years. One billion people, a third of
> the world's workforce, are unemployed or severely underemployed.
>=20
> Who is in the minority? Relatively comfortable academics and
> bourgeoise professionals, or persons who are oppressed or starving or
> constantly under threat of violence?
>=20
> Such a question highlights the rhetorical effect of the term
> "minority". It actually obscures the facts of the matter.
>=20
> The characteristic of civil society is acceptance of _equal_ others,
> not "different" others who are more easily identified by increasingly
> finer definitions of their "differences". Such definitions are
> unhelpful.
>=20
> Phil
>=20
> Phil Graham
> pw.graham who-is-at student.qut.edu.au
> http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Palms/8314/index.html