Where to draw the line when respecting other cultures?

Discussion in 'The Lounge' started by thirdwind, Oct 17, 2013.

  1. JJ_Maxx

    JJ_Maxx Banned

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    Erebh, I will address some of your thoughts without responding to the flamebaiting.

    If you look at the history you'll find atrocities on both sides of the conflict between the Native Americans and the Europeans, the Native American against each other and Europeans against Europeans. This is a human condition, and as I said placing Native Americans on a higher moral plane then the European settlers is misguided.

    To say this was 'their land to fight over' is incorrect, as it doesn't look at the individual tribes. It was not 'Native American land', it was Souix territory, Mohawk territory, Seminole territory and do you think the tribes that attacked rival tribes cared about 'who's land it was'? No, if they could take it, it became their land. This was the way of the world. They took slaves, killed women and children, the whole messy shebang known as war and conflict. To cite examples of settler atrocities while ignoring those of the Native Americans is biased and revisionist history.

    Brown skin, white skin, black skin every tribe/nation/country shed blood for land and resources.

    War is hell, they say and they're 100% damned right.

    I respect your opinion and I do respect the fact that you seem to be sticking up for a friend, but it does not change my offense in the least at her post, and the only reason yours doesn't bother me as much is because I know you're doing it on purpose to encite me to retaliation, which I refuse to do.
     
  2. 123456789

    123456789 Contributor Contributor

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    JJ. Everyone knows the Europeans have colonized most of the "non white" world. Africa, India, South America. North America. Australia. Who else in the last thousand years besides "Whites" have done this?
     
  3. erebh

    erebh Banned Contributor

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    no one is arguing that war is as old as...
    and no-one put Natives on a higher moral plane. The Brits did the same to Ireland over hundreds of years - that conflict has still to find a resolution too.

    So who's land was it? All of the tribes you mention are Native right? So they were fighting over their own land. Do you want to break up the Americas into individual parcels and then say Sioux V Cherokee? Just because it wasn't all hearts and flowers didn't give Whitie the excuse go exterminate everyone - or at least try to. [/quote]

    Don't flatter yourself - It's a calm debate ;)
     
  4. Lewdog

    Lewdog Come ova here and give me kisses! Supporter Contributor

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    Actually the Persians colonized a great deal of Europe, Asia, and North Africa first, then Europe dominated most exploration and colonization, but by that time many Europeans had gained some Arabic blood lines.
     
  5. erebh

    erebh Banned Contributor

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    I think your important word there is colonized. [Europeans] killed all in sight when landing on this continent. Those that weren't killed were kept as slaves and the best the survivors could ask for was to be frog-marched cross country and hope not to starve to death or die of purposely infected small pox on their way to where nothing grew.

    The Trail of Tears was a terrible episode in [European] domination.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Oct 21, 2013
  6. JJ_Maxx

    JJ_Maxx Banned

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    Okay, so follow this statement up with the next logical conclusion. What traits are you applying to a group of people based on the color of their skin?

    Was it because they have white skin that they had military supremecy or industrialized before the rest of the world? Or maybe they had military and industrial supremecy because they were white?

    Again, when you make broad negative characterizations about a group of people based solely on the color of their skin, you are being racist.

    Also keep in mind that @mammamaia wasn't speaking historically, she was speaking presently, which lead to the response.


    Who's land was it? It was whoever had control of it when the dust settled and the bodies were buried. Same as in Europe and Asia and every other continent on this planet. You would be hard-pressed to find a single parcel of land on Earth that doesn't contain the blood of those who fought and died to keep or claim it.

    If you say so, but I wouldn't put harassment into the 'calm debate' category. :shrug:

     
  7. 123456789

    123456789 Contributor Contributor

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    Notice my caveat about the "last thousand years," put in precisely for people like you ;)
     
  8. Duchess-Yukine-Suoh

    Duchess-Yukine-Suoh Girl #21 Contributor

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    Good Lord.

    It does make me feel bad that Native Americans were forced through so much and so many innocent people died. :(
     
  9. 123456789

    123456789 Contributor Contributor

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    How is that racist to say that England did this, or France did that?

    You're right, of course, that to turn that into some characteristic regarding all French people, or all English people, would be racist.

    However, the White Man, collectively, has displayed over and over again extreme actions of greed. Whereas, as you say, all groups have fought among themselves, the Europeans have the added atrocity of going after other ethnic groups, in the last THOUSAND years, which cannot be said for other races, at least not to the same degree.
     
  10. Lewdog

    Lewdog Come ova here and give me kisses! Supporter Contributor

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    You mean smart people like me that know our history? Well thank you! :D
     
  11. 123456789

    123456789 Contributor Contributor

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    Smart people like you who miss my caveats, yes.
     
  12. erebh

    erebh Banned Contributor

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    Or was it because they were white supremacists who looked down on anyone not their shade of pink?


    Oh so it's ok to go demolish a land and its people as long as you win - then it's rightfully your land? Ok - where do you live? On your own thoughts it's fine for me to come around your house, wipe out your family and when the dust settles and you're all buried, I'll be the rightful owner and put it down to it not being the first dispute in New York?

    Obviously I'm not going to, that was purely a 'secondaire' to your own example [/quote]

    Harassment? Really?
     
  13. Wreybies

    Wreybies Thrice Retired Supporter Contributor

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    No, that doesn't follow. The Spanish (my own ancestors) were the first to truly leave their negative mark upon the landscape of the Americas, this before intermarrying with local peoples, and still, the majority of them who crossed the Atlantic would not have made the mark as "white men" in the eyes of those who cared about such things at the time.

    I am going to ask that we please stop using racial terms for this conversation. The Americas were conquered by people of European derivation. To refer to them as "white men" or other racial terms of questionable ilk is to demean the conversation and take it too close to the fire.

    If someone were to post "Yes, Europeans conquered and killed the Native Americans, but I'm sure the niggers they brought with them had a hand in it too." there would be absolutely no question as to the shocking inappropriateness of that.

    To anyone in the forum who is offended by that word, please understand it offends me too and it hurt me just to type it in this example for comparison and is not a word I would ever in a million years allow to slip from my mouth. I apologize, but hope you understand my intent.
     
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  14. Lewdog

    Lewdog Come ova here and give me kisses! Supporter Contributor

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    Is sexism out of bounds too? Just ask'n. :p
     
  15. KaTrian

    KaTrian A foolish little beast. Contributor

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    Wow, okay, having read the past couple of pages, it looks like people are feeling collective guilt for things Europeans did after they learned to build ships...

    On the subject of whether we should also try to change the source culture of immigrants that was brought up earlier in this thread. I started to think about the US in this regard, and not from the negative point of view this time.

    What I find curious is that there doesn't seem to be ONE definite "American" way of doing things. Different people from so many cultural backgrounds have made the US their home, and apart from learning English, you are free to practice the customs of your own culture as long as it's in line with the laws (so no domestic violence, no murdering your daughters for honor and getting away with that etc.) Many people seem to want to move to the States to get away from certain things about their original culture, specifically the lack of freedom. I don't even mean the most extreme example of a 9yo having to sell herself to support her 11 siblings if she stayed in her home country. I'm also thinking about this Belgian guy who's selling Belgian waffles topped with barbecue in NYC, 'cause he can, and people love his cooking, but no one really wants to eat them in Belgium where the waffle is holy and should not be desecrated with heretic toppings.

    I think it was @TessaT who mentioned that the melting pot means in the context of the US that one has to, more or less, give up their own culture? (correct me if I misunderstood, I can't find the post 'cause the browser keeps crapping out on me).

    Anyway, compare that to a country with 5 million people and a weird language that no one else speaks in any other part of the world. You go there as an immigrant, and you aren't asked to integrate, you have to assimilate in order to be accepted. There's really no other way about it. I think the US shows a better example of the citizens being able to retain a lot of their original culture. You have your China Towns and Little Italies, for example. Of course, I'm not saying it's perfect, nothing ever is.

    I've also noticed that some Americans almost flaunt their rich heritage, which I think is kind of cute. Suddenly it's cool to be 1/16 Native American (and probably less cool to be part Irish, if our Irish-American English professor is to be believed, lol. What's up with that anyway, why are you putting yourself down, guys?).
     
  16. TessaT

    TessaT Senior Member

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    It wasn't so much that someone has to give up their culture, but that America itself doesn't actually have a culture. That it's a mix of other cultures, and that though there may be its pockets of culture, it's normally rich in someone else's culture.

    Oh yeah. I had a boyfriend who loved to flaunt that he was Native American....it probably had more to do with the fact that he was gorgeous than anything. In a town full of only white people, he was considered exotic. (Too bad he was full of whine and self-pity. He was so pretty!) lol.
     
  17. T.Trian

    T.Trian Overly Pompous Bastard Supporter Contributor

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    But isn't that how cultures are born? USA is just such a new country that they aren't quite there yet. If you think about how, say, Russia's culture was born, you'd probably see lots of similarities, except that all of that happened much longer ago, starting from when people first started moving to the area that is Russia today. I'm willing to bet these people weren't all from the same culture, yet nowadays, even though there's some cultural variety within Russia, there are also notable similarities, especially of the Slavic variety, all the way from St. Petersburg to Khabarovsk.
     
  18. Wreybies

    Wreybies Thrice Retired Supporter Contributor

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    Yeah, this is correct. America does have a culture as valid as any other culture and evolved in the same way. As you point out, T., it's just that it's new compared to the rest so we see it in its nascent form. This same kind of perceptual error happens in linguistics when I hear people say that X language is a "bit of a mix between Y language and Z language". That's wrong. The only languages that answer to that description are creoles, patois, and pidgin languages. The fact that there are similarities between Italian, French, Occitan, Catalan and Spanish doesn't make any one a mix of the others, it just means they are family and share commonalities of origin, but display differences of divergence.

    We are a country of narratives (I'm starting to warm up to the word). One of those narratives is the Guilt Narrative. We obliterated the Native America. We stole Mexico from the Mexicans and now refer to hispanic families as immigrants when their families have been living on the same piece of land since before it was even incorporated into the U.S. (True story. "We didn't cross the border; it crossed over us.") We go to Pandora, mix with the Na'vi and then smash their giant tree house... It's part of our inner mythology.
     
  19. KaTrian

    KaTrian A foolish little beast. Contributor

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    I remember from my cultural studies how strong and overwhelming the Guilt Narrative was, as if somehow we, the descendants (well... I guess my predecessors were actually colonized rather than the colonizers), still carried the burden of our predecessors and were supposed to pay for their greed and mistakes. Kind of like how a 21st century man is supposed to pay for the oppression and cruelty the generations before him inflicted on women.

    The point was to learn from it, of course, not to start self-flagellating ourselves. So I'm not saying we should be ignorant of the past.

    Curiously enough, one student from my class is writing her thesis about otherness in the Song of Ice and Fire. I'm not sure if she's going to analyze "admissions of guilt," though. Should be interesting.
     
  20. TessaT

    TessaT Senior Member

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    That's probably completely true. I feel, as an American, a lack of connection with my country though. It could be a 'me' thing, but a lot of younger generations that I've talked to feel the same. For instance, Thanksgiving used to mean something. Now its just a corporate coupon day full of angry shopping, shoving and cussing... and completely overshadowed by the commercial idea of Christmas. On that note, Christmas used to mean something. But not so much anymore. Does that mean that consumerism is our culture, or simply that we haven't found our footing yet?
     
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  21. shadowwalker

    shadowwalker Contributor Contributor

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    I think it's a combination of that "guilt" thing and consumerism. People have been made to feel they can't celebrate Thanksgiving because "we" slaughtered the NA, and it got to the point where one couldn't even say "Merry Christmas" without being accused of being "non-inclusive". So what's left? Sales. Personally I ignore the guilt trip (I wasn't there) and the inclusion bit (they have their holidays, I have mine).
     
  22. T.Trian

    T.Trian Overly Pompous Bastard Supporter Contributor

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    A part of the problem is probably you. Meaning that as kids, people are usually so immersed in the wonders of Christmas, Thanksgiving etc, the notion of getting presents and their favorite foods etc. that it makes all of it feel somehow magical. Also, because our perception of the world is still so limited when we are children, we don't see the big picture. Once we grow up, learn about the world, how it works etc. (e.g. I didn't know what consumerism was when I was 5) we grow disillusioned and have a hard time reverting back to the mindset where we only noticed the magic.

    That notion stems from the idea that people have always been greedy. As a race, our basic desires and needs haven't really changed: even 50 years ago businesses wanted to make more money, people wanted to be successful, but their avenues were just far more limited than nowadays. For instance, compare the number of media advertisers have nowadays to what they had 50 years ago or even 30 years ago. Big difference. Nowadays it's not uncommon to get spam to your e-mail account, mailbox, cell phone (phone sales, SMS ads, ads in applications), TV, radio, internet, jumbotrons, what have you. Way back when advertising wasn't so in your face, it wasn't everywhere all the time, but I wager businesses wanted money just as much as nowadays.

    Another thing that might affect our feelings towards our favorite holidays is that because of the aforementioned disillusionment, we can't enjoy the holidays like we used to, and that's pretty frustrating, which further mars the mood. Kinda like being angry about not being happy.

    Also, feeling uprooted isn't a purely American thing although it might be very common there because of the young culture, but a part of it is likely globalization. 50 years ago Finland was pretty much cut off from the rest of the world. We lived in our tiny cities and villages and had very little contact to other countries, barring the relatively few exceptions. The sense of community was much stronger when we weren't dealing with the world outside of that community nearly as much.

    Nowadays teenagers, even children have FB accounts, internet penpals from around the world, and they hang out on international discussion forums / chat rooms. In schools they are taught far more about other countries and other cultures than 50 years ago. We are no longer Finnish, we are cosmopolitans (or, rather, moving in that direction at an increasing pace). It can be a wonderful thing but it can also leave us feeling like we don't really belong anywhere. We are jacks of all nations, members of none.
    I like to think of it as freedom to choose your true home, wherever it is, instead of being trapped in a country you don't really like and having no realistic ways to explore other places. Granted, Finland will always have a place in my heart, but I have no desire to spend the rest of my life here. Maybe pay a visit come Christmas time...
     
    Last edited: Oct 21, 2013
  23. TessaT

    TessaT Senior Member

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    Perhaps I just haven't found a place to really call home yet. I don't connect much to the country that I was born and raised in, and my family never was a big 'MERICA!' type of family. Thanks for the breakdown and the insight. :)
     
  24. 123456789

    123456789 Contributor Contributor

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    You forgot about Hawaii.
     
  25. Wreybies

    Wreybies Thrice Retired Supporter Contributor

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    Nope, just felt I had given enough examples. Funny that you mention Hawai'i, though. I spent 8 years of my childhood there, and Hawai'i is often used here in Puerto Rico by the PIP as an example of what would be Puerto Rico's fate were statehood to happen, that our unique culture would be reduced to a "museum culture".
     

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