Tag Archive for 'Minority policy'

One thing I definitely admire here is the working integration. Well, in fact, there is no integration because people of different cultures – americans, chinese, europeans, latin americans – live here together since ever.

It seems so normal here to publish certain public information in english, chinese and spanish.

Hard to envision what would happen back in Vienna if the local authority dares to publish election information in turkish or serbian. Speeches of certain politicians would probably be full of phrases like “Loosing our nation and identity! We are going to be ruled by migrants!”, spreading fear and anger all over the city. Just have a look at what’s going on in Carinthia, the most southern federal state of austria and the discussion about the german/slovenian city signs (“Ortstafelstreit”). If the acceptance of minority rights wasn’t such a serious topic, I would call the behaviour of some locals down there simply childish.

We have an ongoing and almost endless discussion about integration of migrants to our society in Vienna. Basically the question is about if migrants should adopt our customs, should they live as we (“the natives”) do in this city. The most recent height, and probably the most ridiculous one, of this discussion was the initiative our beloved right-right-rightwing party to keep serving pork in elementary schools. Because of the fact that islamic people don’t eat pork and in some schools the percentage of islamic children is already very high, this party feared that pork would disappear from the menus of our schools.

In San Francisco you can observe so many and so different cultures living side by side for such a long time. No one had to give up his own culture or language. No one was forced to adopt another custom. They live in their community and it’s ok for everyone.

Nobody here is forced to eat burgers like this “Schnitzel for schools” initiative intends to do back in Vienna.