Stopping racism is descending into a farce

Stopping racism is descending into a farce

I find it incredible that "Police are considering charging a 10-year-year boy with a race hate crime after he was beaten by a Slovakian woman with an iron bar".

Ok, it was wrong for the 10 year old boy to tell the Slovakian woman “to go back to her own country”. And, he should not have thrown a blackberry at her. However, I feel that the woman overreacted by attacking the 10 year old boy with a 2ft long iron bar. And, the police are overreacting by calling the throwing of the blackberry "racially aggravated assault". It wasn't that long ago that a judge criticised the police for prosecuting a young boy for throwing a cocktail sausage at an old age pensioner.

Eastern Europeans are not even black or brown, they are white. They are different only in their language. All too often people are badly treated for being different. And this is clearly wrong. I feel that parents and schools should teach children that it is wrong to pick on people just because they are different. And, where it comes to their or police attention, then they should speak to the children and tell them about the error of their ways. However, to use laws designed for more serious offences for such trivial matters makes a mockery of justice. It is like taking an elephant gun to swat a fly.