RACE RIOT OR CLASH OF CULTURES

Keith Windschuttle takes issue with the notion the Cronulla violence was racially motivated:

IT was inevitable, given the prevailing mind-set within government and the media, that Sydney's beachside violence this week would be called race riots. The NSW Premier, his ministers and many newspaper headlines all used the term. However, a more ungainly but nonetheless more accurate description would have been multicultural riots. For the doctrine of multiculturalism is really to blame.

The tensions that exploded this week were defined into existence by multiculturalist policies and ideas. It wasn't the youths at Cronulla beach who decided that all Lebanese constitute an ethnic group. That was done for them by politicians, bureaucrats and academics in the name of constructing ethnic communities. Those youths certainly can be blamed for trying to beat up a few outnumbered innocents but not for responding to people as ethnics in the first place.

Windschuttle, already much reviled by the left for, amongst others things, The Fabrication of Aboriginal History, is going to stir up the lefties with this opinion piece.