The following blog entry has been republished here courtesy of With a Grain of Druska.

An article I read the other day: Tension fills Oregon campus over extremists. My thoughts about this are clear from the title of this entry. I decided to include this article since a Lithuanian was mentioned–not in the best light, I’m afraid. I’ll refrain from making generalizations since I don’t think they would be accurate or fair, but I can say that as a fairly racially homogeneous country, Lithuania couldn’t be described as a beacon of tolerance for people whose skin is any shade darker than pale. What’s strange, however, is that I’ve heard some of the most vehemently racist comments from Lithuanians who’ve lived abroad in multi-cultural countries. I should probably add that those comments came not from educated professionals, but from less well educated people. Quite likely the negative stereotypes of certain people can be reinforced by their negative experiences abroad, while at the same time people with more enlightened souls would tend to find the positive in their environment and understand that people are people.