It’s possible that the suspect shot by British police on Thursday as a possible terrorist was a Brazilian gentleman with no connection to terrorism. On the first day, all we heard were eyewitness accounts about an ‘Asian’ getting shot to death. Britain can’t realistically claim to be multicultural if Londoners have made such an error of judgement about 27-year-old Jean Charles de Menezes. The fact the racial misjudgement was made suggests that people see what they want to see. And if it makes them feel better than the dead man was ‘Asian’, then there is something very wrong with how we in the west perceive other cultures. As a people, how far have we really advanced? It makes our inquiry in Beyond Branding all the more pressing. posted by Jack Yan, 3:04 AM  permalink