Larry, you know full well that most of us have been supportive of many of your views, and consider you a friend. As do I. But you continue to duck under the cover of the same old same old on this one. I am in agreement completely with your views on prejudice, never letting it go unchallenged, looking for it everywhere. And should you desire to start a thread about prejudice, I will be in it with both feet, challenging the majority population to examine their conscious and sub conscious prejudices.   But you predicated this whole thread on the fact that a video shows a woman beating a kid, she turns out to be a Traveller, hence it must be prejudice. It isn't. Period. In todays society, it is not OK to do what she did. Period. The authorities have an obligation just now to err on the side of the child's safety.

Another thing you seem to have a predilection for is stating an opinion as fact. An example is your contention that a four year old is fully encultured, and you seem to imply that they are fully developed culturally and socially. That is not a fact accepted by any professional I know of. In fact most professionals will tell you that a child doesn't even develope a real, values based sense of right and wrong until they are about 8 years old. Which is not to say that every effort shouldn't be made to put the child in an environment that they are comfortable in. But in abuse cases, they should err on the side of safety.

I think that you have trapped yourself, my friend, on this issue. Better to let it go and start a thread that deals with prejudicial viewpoints about Travellers. That would be a great debate.

Mick