[Ethnicity Thread] Who Do You Think You Are?
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I was expecting way more funny.
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@HelloRaptor said:
I was expecting way more funny.
Me, too, and when I didn't get it I decided to inflict disappointment upon you. See how that worked out for me? Now I'm amused.
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Ah ha, written by a white woman. Makes sense. White people have notoriously bad senses of humor.
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Counted, believe I have five of those? The first two volumes of A Song of Ice and Fire, George R.R. Martin, The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown, The Wheel of Time, Robert Jordan and The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien
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I was at least amused that the best of the ASoIaF books ("A Storm of Swords") was not the one the stereotypical white dude owns. Do people really exist who sink that much time into the damn things and then stop at the second one?
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@Misadventure said:
Who, alive today, would you blame?
People who fly the Stars and Bars or the Bonnie Blue Flag without understanding what they mean.
People who fly the Stars and Bars or the Bonnie Blue Flag who absolutely understand what they mean.
Individuals who serve or have served in the U.S. government or the military who fly either flag, doubly so.
People who build monuments to Stonewall Jackson.
People who name bridges, schools, or hospitals after confederate generals.
People who refuse to admit their state turned traitor over the right to own slaves, even after you read said state's secession declaration aloud, to them.
People who support Voter ID laws.
People who use gerrymandering to put a political stranglehold on any area with a large minority population.
Politicians who punish participants in SNAP for a statistically insignificant amount of fraud instead of coming down on the crooked shop owners who must be in on it for SNAP fraud to happen, at all, period.It's a long list. I blame them. I absolutely blame them.
“Real magic can never be made by offering someone else's liver. You must tear out your own, and not expect to get it back.”
― Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn -
Regarding this list:
I'd read any and all of them, even by the ones whose authors I object to on moral grounds or just because I think they're complete d-bags, before I picked some of the lit I had to read in college back up.
I don't know what was up against A Thousand Acres when it picked up the Pulitzer, but it must've been, like, How to kick pregnant women in the stomach or something. That book was AWFUL.
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@The-Tree-of-Woe said:
@Misadventure said:
Who, alive today, would you blame?
People who fly the Stars and Bars or the Bonnie Blue Flag without understanding what they mean.
People who fly the Stars and Bars or the Bonnie Blue Flag who absolutely understand what they mean.
Individuals who serve or have served in the U.S. government or the military who fly either flag, doubly so.
People who build monuments to Stonewall Jackson.
People who name bridges, schools, or hospitals after confederate generals.
People who refuse to admit their state turned traitor over the right to own slaves, even after you read said state's secession declaration aloud, to them.
People who support Voter ID laws.
People who use gerrymandering to put a political stranglehold on any area with a large minority population.
Politicians who punish participants in SNAP for a statistically insignificant amount of fraud instead of coming down on the crooked shop owners who must be in on it for SNAP fraud to happen, at all, period.It's a long list. I blame them. I absolutely blame them.
Your list here is slightly contradictory. The stars and bars are a symbol of States' rights, not a pro-slavery tribute, though since we're taught in school now that the Civil War was about slavery (which it was not) that's an understandable attitude. You can't completely suppress a piece of american history that's important for the development of the current nation and still expect to build a foundation for an argument based on an outcome of that part of history. So, like... you're arguing on both sides of the fence, here.
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States' rights to what?
I'll give you a hint. States rights to own ssssssssssssl...
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@Derp
The swastika is a symbol of good fortune in various belief systems, not specifically a tribute to the murder of millions of Jews, but it's still probably a safe bet that if you run into a bald guy with a swastika stamped on his skin or clothes he's probably not a Greek history afficianado or a follower of Jainism.It's entirely possible the guy in the pickup with the stars and bars splashed along its side is in fact merely showing off his southern pride and his discontent over government crackdowns on gun control and other things he views as his personal liberties, but it's also fair to say that he still qualifies for @The-Tree-of-Woe's list whether he understands the reaction his choice of symbolism provokes or not.
On the subject of the American civil war, it may have been about states' rights, but a prominent one of those rights (and the one most people care about now, frankly) was slavery, and everybody involved knew it. The north might not have officially gone to war to end slavery, but the south was absolutely fighting to keep it, so pretending the flag flown towards that end has nothing to do with it is exactly the sort of bullshit white-washing that has been talked about here.
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More to the point, the States' Rights argument is bullshit.
If they really gave a damn about the rights of the states, when Northerners did their level best to undermine the Fugitive Slave Law (speaking of the imposition of unjust laws...), they wouldn't have bellyached to the Fed about it.
And oh, the bitching and moaning they did! "Uncle Sam, make the mean Yankees send back our darkies!"
And it's true. The North was not united in its desire to end slavery. But that doesn't excuse the perfidy and, well, evil of the Southern aristocracy, which was without a doubt the worst enemy a white Southerner could ever hope to have.
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This shit is not hard, people:
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All forms of (non-consensual) kidnapping and slavery are gross violations of human rights. The kidnapping of Africans (mainly by Africans) and their enslavement in the New World (mainly by whites) were crimes against humanity. Likewise, ethnic cleansing and physical genocide are gross violations of human rights and crimes against humanity.
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Some portion of some particular US families' inherited wealth is due to the historical exploitation of slaves.
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It does not therefore follow that a significant fraction of the US or 1st world wealth wouldn't have occurred without slavery. (E.g. see Canada, Australia, New Zealand, which are wealthy now even though slavery was never important in their economies.)
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The ethnic cleansing and physical genocide of native peoples did support the high level of economic development we see in many countries. E.g. compare/contrast the comparatively high level of economic development in places where most native people were wiped out (US, Canada, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Australia, New Zealand, Siberia) with levels of economic development in neighboring places where native peoples were conquered rather than exterminated (Mexico, Paraguay/Peru, New Guniea/Polynesia, Mongolia.) The ethnic cleansing and physical genocide allowed the seamless replication of the already highly productive European economic model in these land areas.
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It does not therefore follow that the ethnic cleansing and physical genocide were good things or even historically inevitable. People at those times chose to commit those crimes.
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It does not therefore follow that the slavery of Africans, the genocide of native peoples, colonialism or imperialism were necessary prerequisites for the Industrial Revolution. (E.g. See Switzerland, Norway, Finland, Ireland, Taiwan, Singapore, which all either never had colonies or were themselves imperial possessions some empire .... contrast vs. Spain, Portugal, Russia which were early colonizers, imperialists or slavers, but which failed to have early Industrial Revolutions and are all still economic laggards.)
If you want to argue about the preceding and haven't read at least 3 or 4 books and 10 or 20 serious scholarly articles on economic history and development, STFU and go do your homework. You're like people who want to argue about vaccines and moon landings who've never studied biology or taken a physics class.
If you have done your homework, I'd love to talk.
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@Three-Eyed-Crow Way off topic but to answer your question, yes some people do stop after the second one. I did. When I first heard about the series one and two were the only books out since they were highly recommended by someone who I usually agree with I got hem both. Read and enjoyed them both, but had to wait for the third to come out but the time it did I realized I was going to by it more to complete the series then actual enjoyment so I stopped.
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@DamnitJim said:
This shit is not hard, people:
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All forms of (non-consensual) kidnapping and slavery are gross violations of human rights. The kidnapping of Africans (mainly by Africans) and their enslavement in the New World (mainly by whites) were crimes against humanity. Likewise, ethnic cleansing and physical genocide are gross violations of human rights and crimes against humanity.
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Some portion of some particular US families' inherited wealth is due to the historical exploitation of slaves.
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It does not therefore follow that a significant fraction of the US or 1st world wealth wouldn't have occurred without slavery. (E.g. see Canada, Australia, New Zealand, which are wealthy now even though slavery was never important in their economies.)
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The ethnic cleansing and physical genocide of native peoples did support the high level of economic development we see in many countries. E.g. compare/contrast the comparatively high level of economic development in places where most native people were wiped out (US, Canada, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Australia, New Zealand, Siberia) with levels of economic development in neighboring places where native peoples were conquered rather than exterminated (Mexico, Paraguay/Peru, New Guniea/Polynesia, Mongolia.) The ethnic cleansing and physical genocide allowed the seamless replication of the already highly productive European economic model in these land areas.
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It does not therefore follow that the ethnic cleansing and physical genocide were good things or even historically inevitable. People at those times chose to commit those crimes.
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It does not therefore follow that the slavery of Africans, the genocide of native peoples, colonialism or imperialism were necessary prerequisites for the Industrial Revolution. (E.g. See Switzerland, Norway, Finland, Ireland, Taiwan, Singapore, which all either never had colonies or were themselves imperial possessions some empire .... contrast vs. Spain, Portugal, Russia which were early colonizers, imperialists or slavers, but which failed to have early Industrial Revolutions and are all still economic laggards.)
If you want to argue about the preceding and haven't read at least 3 or 4 books and 10 or 20 serious scholarly articles on economic history and development, STFU and go do your homework. You're like people who want to argue about vaccines and moon landings who've never studied biology or taken a physics class.
If you have done your homework, I'd love to talk.
Economic development I have not followed, to be honest, though I would agree with most of your points simply from studying another of the tangentially related social sciences.
Re: pts 1-3, yes, I believe that slavery was barbaric and should not have happened, but it did. That's unfortunate. I also feel that it happened about a century and a half ago, and so it has had time to cool down. Given that there has been plenty of social and legal reform to try and correct that mistake (with limited success, given that even laws can't change cultures, on both sides) I don't think that we're living in a culture that in any way condones it. Therefore, I don't particularly respond to arguments that root back to slavery with any sort of seriousness, but I'm more than willing to engage in such discussions as urban segregation and poverty, equal opportunity, etc. Those things are contemporary and relevant. Slavery is only as related to those issues in the same way as religious persecution and crowding is related to the State of the Union. You can make a foundational argument, yes, but -plenty of shit- has happened between Point A and Point B that can't just be easily glossed over. Loving, Brown II, Cooper. Strides have been made, equality has been established. It's time to start looking for contemporary causes of issues rather than focusing on historical ones. Especially in regards to point 3, in 1860, only something like 8% of american households owned any slaves at all, and far fewer owned slaves in any number that would allow for substantial economic prosperity based on it.
I am firmly NOT saying that I agree with racial discrimination in any sense. It's just dumb, at this point. Any sort of discrimination is, really. What I AM saying is that if we're going to make any progress on it going forward, we have to focus on issues that are actually contemporary, much as they did in Brown and the other cases mentioned above, wherein they determined that 'seperate but equal' as was established in Plessy was NOt in fact equal due to psychological and social stigmas (the doll test is pretty famous). Nobody argued that this was an effect of slavery, they argued that they were caused by contemporary cultural issues, and in doing so they made fantastic headway. Hearkening back to arguments about slavery ignores the very real implications of things like cultural indoctrination into poverty and urban isolationism.
But this is exactly why you can never really have these types of arguments. As soon as you do, it sets off a chain reaction of things that are entirely unwinnable, because you either agree with the other side, or you disagree and get labelled a flaming racist. It doesn't matter -what- your grounds for dissent are, or why you feel that one argument is relevant whereas another is not, you're just hating all over someone else. Example above: I feel that the confederate flag is a symbol of state's rights and a pushback against encroaching federalism that grossly violated the Constitutional rights of the states and their sovereignty (and we had to add three Amendments to the Constitution to back the view of the Union on the matter, so it's not like this was at all clear cut on either side), but people are very gung-ho about it being all about race. And then you look at things that have stemmed from that (like the Affordable Care Act and its Individual Mandate, or the cutback on workable hours for part-time workers who -already- weren't making that much working 40 hour weeks on minimum wage) and you say 'maybe they had a point' you're a bigot.
It's unwinnable, sure, but I also don't feel that it should be kept silent for fear of hurting other people's feelings. It's a real issue, there were -other- real issues, and there -are- real issues with civil rights that could be examined without someone taking it all the way back to the white man keeping his boot on the neck of the black man to run the plantations.
Racism isn't Tinkerbell. It doesn't need you to believe in it for it to exist.
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Sweetie, you really need to get laid.
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@Derp said:
Example above: I feel that the confederate flag is a symbol of state's rights...
I think you're partially correct. The Confederate flag is a symbol of states' rights when you take into consideration that the phrase 'states' rights' is a dog whistle. What else do they trumpet states' rights about? Segregation. Miscegenation laws. And most recently, the right to discriminate against gays. They are indeed inextricably linked.
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I apologize if this is throwing fuel on a fire I would rather see kept at a productive level, but has anyone looked into the way slaves were treated in antiquity versus Americas slavery? The latter seemed much more degrading, barbaric and destructive, but that may just be lack of details about the past on my part.
Example: Egypt - pyramids not made by slaves. Columbus - works Carrib island tribes to death by the hundreds of thousands.
I have a waggish sense of humor.
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@Derp said:
But this is exactly why you can never really have these types of arguments. As soon as you do, it sets off a chain reaction of things that are entirely unwinnable, because you either agree with the other side, or you disagree and get labelled a flaming racist. It doesn't matter -what- your grounds for dissent are, or why you feel that one argument is relevant whereas another is not, you're just hating all over someone else. Example above: I feel that the confederate flag is a symbol of state's rights and a pushback against encroaching federalism that grossly violated the Constitutional rights of the states and their sovereignty (and we had to add three Amendments to the Constitution to back the view of the Union on the matter, so it's not like this was at all clear cut on either side), but people are very gung-ho about it being all about race.
I don't think the way you feel about the Confederate flag signifies anything about you personally, because I know absolutely nothing about you.
Here's how I feel about it.
I was born in a town by the name of Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, a place that is not terribly remarkable except for some gorgeous scenery. And for being, at the time I lived there (which was late 1980s/early 1990s), the base of the Aryan Nations hate group. They were actively robbing banks and blowing up people's cars. If you got on the back roads, you had to be very careful about where you drove, lest you end up passing by some psycho's compound while he was on patrol (my house was literally three miles from Ruby Ridge, which is the sight of a somewhat famous FBI stand-off, as such things are famous). The Confederate flag was a very popular symbol for these particular psychos. This is an entirely modern thing that still exists and these people are still horrible.
This is not what the Confederate flag means to everyone who wears a t-shirt with the symbol on it. I don't have a knee-jerk "This person is a skin-head" reaction every time I see it. But I do think it's naive and willfully blind to the way it's been co-opted to think we live in a time where it's no longer a relevant association to have with it, because I have personally met people for whom it means, "I'm a neo-Nazi."
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