Adam Balm wrote: Pacino86845 wrote:So behind the racist jokes I've read here, do any of you actually know ANYTHING true about the United Arab Emirates?
Okay, the dinosaur oil thing was probably wrong. And also the burqa comment isn't applicable, but I saw a cheap joke and went for it to point out a broader issue. What I do know about the Emirates is that they've made a lot of strides in hopes of getting westerners to invest in their country, but the fact is that citizens still aren't able to vote, freedom of speech, that they can't organize labor unions to seek better working conditions, and that the slave trafficking of women and children is cited as a continual problem by the US state department. (You can read the assessment here:
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2002/18291.htm)
I don't think it's racist in the least to point out stupidity wherever we see it.
Well it's racist to resort to stereotypes in order to do so...
Though I think some of the points you make are disputable... for instance, most of workers in the UAE are foreign. And of the foreigners, there are loads of westerners/Americans, and they all get treated like kings/queens. Maybe they can't ever become citizens, or own land, but the absurdly studly paychecks make for nice savings.
On the other end of the spectrum, you have if I'm not mistaken, a largely Indian workforce doing all the jobs no one else wants to do. Without going into further detail, the situation can be likened to that of many western countries, btw.
Trafficking of children and women is an artifact of the old, and it's on its way out, this I promise. It even suggests this in your report: "the Government implemented and enforced a ban against the use of juvenile camel jockeys, a number of whom were trafficked to the country from South Asia."
The main motivation? The UAE is a small country, but is slowly being turned into one large tourist resort. Though they may have one of those "silly monarchies," one of the princes (I forget which one, the Dubai one) has been strategically planning development of Dubai for years now, emphasizing a strengthening of binds with western nations, particularly the United States. And westerners are lapping it up btw, and have been for years. The Emirates are enjoying a prosperity uncommon to the rest of the Middle East, and with that prosperity naturally come the freedoms enjoyed in western nations. Nevertheless, they still seem to want to uphold Muslim values in their legal system, but that's not necessarily very different from western/Christian nations, and does not necessarily mean the Saudi Arabian way of doing things.
