Blogging community raises awareness against racism in Lebanon

An interesting post from the Independence ’05 blog is buzzing all over my Twitter timeline today. The subject is racism.

In brief, a tourist was denied entrance to the Beiruf Club in Lebanon because she was black. You can read the rest of the article here.

Appalling, disgusting, shameful  are some of the words that come to mind after reading the post. We are a nation that gets enraged when Lebanese are discriminated against in international media and Hollywood movies. Little does the world know, in our country, there are a bunch of assholes who are no better than prejudiced Hollywood writers.

I am not generalizing. In fact, the reaction of the Lebanese blogging community and Twitteratis prove that not all condone such despicable acts.

Over lunch, I shared the post with some relatives and they also had some racism related stories to tell.

A family member informed us that in one of the resorts in Northern Lebanon – The Palma to name and shame – the management forbids “colored people” not only from swimming in the ocean, but from dipping their feet in the water.

Shocked and infuriated, the family member approached the manager of the resort and told him: “do you think we have cleaner feet because we are Lebanese?”

Expectedly, she received a standard 'resort policy' PR response.

So, to the pricks of Beiruf and Palma, next time someone calls you a “sand people/terrorist/brown” because of your race, remember, an eye for an eye. 

Until we educate the ignorant and destroy racism, how about we add "Fair-colored Skin Only" to our tourism ads.