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GambateBingBangBOOM
Joined: 04 Nov 2003
Posts: 2021
Location: Japan
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 Posted: Tue Aug 01, 2006 12:44 am Post subject: |
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| Chancellor wrote: |
I live just across the border from Canada (and can see Canada from my living room window) and have met a lot of Canadians. I have yet to meet even one who ever referred to himself as anything other than Canadian - no African-Canadian, Asian-Canadian, Irish-Canadian, Italian-Canadian, etc., except for French-Canadians (they so often seem to make it a point to distinguish themselves from other Canadians).
There is nothing racist about simply being Canadian (or about simply being American, for that matter). |
Canadians tend to do that more amongst ourselves than when talking to people from other countries. French Canadians aren't really distinguishing themselves from other Canadians in the same way that an "Italian-Canadian" is distinguishing himself or herself from the dominant culture of the area (assuming the person isn't in a Little Italy area). French-Canadian is as Canadian as Anglo-Canadian (we use the terms anglophone, francophone and allophone. The last of those means ALL Other phones). In Quebec, French is the dominate culture. Identifying oneself as French-Canadian is like saying someone is Swiss German rather than Swiss French.
It's just that it would be a little wierd for an English-Canadian to say 'Hi, I'm Anglo-Canadian.' when speaking to someone who is from the US. French-Canadians (aka franco-Canadian) sometimes drop the 'franco' if their in another French country for the same reason. |
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rusmeister
Joined: 15 Jun 2006
Posts: 867
Location: Russia
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| Posted: Tue Aug 01, 2006 6:36 am Post subject: |
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| GambateBingBangBOOM wrote: |
| Chancellor wrote: |
| There is nothing racist about simply being Canadian (or about simply being American, for that matter). |
It's the Assimilation theory that's racist, not with describing oneself simply as Canadian or American, and the reason is found in this:
| Henry_Cowell wrote: |
| Let's all shout "Hallelujah" for the god-fearing, Christian, white male, native-slaying, slave-owning entrepreneurs who founded the thirteen colonies. May their "culture" reign forever on Earth as in Heaven. |
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Thank you. Glad somebody said it.
That kind of racist response is precisely what is being fostered in our colleges of Education who train the teachers who teach everyone else - to focus exclusively on the wrong-doing in American history while spitting on the achievements of those "god-fearing...etc" men and women. Oh, wait. If they were women, we'll hold them up just because they're women. I suppose balanced history should always be balanced based on the age, race, gender...of the participants. Not on the actual achievements or events. Silly me. |
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rusmeister
Joined: 15 Jun 2006
Posts: 867
Location: Russia
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| Posted: Tue Aug 01, 2006 6:59 am Post subject: |
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| GambateBingBangBOOM wrote: |
Thre term 'native' as used by immigrant peoples when referring to themselves has been used to divide those who arrived earlier from those who had arrived earlier, or were born there (ie discrimination against new arrivals- something that ESL teachers know still occurs all too well). Is someone who was born outside of the US, but grew up in the US less American than someone who was born there? What if someone's grandparents arrived in the US but someone else's great-grandparents arrived in the US? Is the latter more 'American'?
The reason why the term Native is applied isn't because they were born in that palce, but because the linguistics and cultural group from which the people came from is from that area. The rest of the people who live in North America cannot say the same , and that's why they aren't 'native'. In this type of thing it's the macro version of 'culture'- the language etc of the people (English is a Germanic language, Italian is Romance Language, Polish is a Slavic language etc. These are all from Europe, as in decendents of proto Indo-European, the original language used from one end of Europe to South Asia- but not including Semetic languages like Arabic ones or Hebrew). And also it's the macro version of 'America'. Try to think of America in this case not as the US, but as in North and South America- the continents, and maybe it will all seem to make more sence. There is no mention of America (either North or South) in the term Proto Indo-European because the languages native to the Americas aren't part of it. If a language isn't native to the area, then the people whose heritage includes that language are also properly descibed as not being 'native' to the area. But that doesn't mean they aren't 'from there', just that their ancestors came from elsewhere.
see the WIkipedia article on these languages:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_American_languages |
I understand what you're saying, and as far as it goes, well and good. My problem is with the semantics of the word native. In it's popular use, it is much more clearly and popularly understood as to imply that I am NOT native to America, (and therefore not native to anywhere), rather than the narrow technical concept of 'native' as meaning what you describe. I would counter once again by pointing out that our best understanding to this date is that the Indians, although living in America significantly longer than European settlers, also ultimately originated outside of America, thus bringing us back to the question, "How long do you have to live somewhere to qualify for 'native' status? Is 100, 500, 1,000 years?
I reject the technical and debatable description limiting it to what we used to call American Indians in favor of the general understanding that one who is born and grows up in a given area as native to that area. I'm a native New Yorker and native to the country of America and reject attempts by certain groups to continue to assert that I am a "European-American" (at which real Europeans would simply snicker). The only people with any rights to hyphenated American-ness in my book are those that are born into mixed unions and truely live and practice the differing cultures of both parents. Baloney like the artificial adoption of "Kwanzaa" in America by people with no true connection to real African culture, for example, is just that - baloney (in most cases, the exception to which would be the child of the union of say, a central African, and an American (of any color) from any given state), who would have a genuine right to claim the title "African American".
The greatly overexaggerated impotance of ethnic division in America became apparent after Sept. 11th, when everybody suddenly began waving flags in the streets, and for a brief time saw that being united as Americans was something that eclipsed the ethnic terms so many love to embrace. That doesn't mean that someone can't feel affinity for a culture (or identify with a sub-culture) that they are connected to (as I am to Russia by marriage and education - "Ya obrusel" ( I have 'Russified') as the Russians say, but shouldn't be confused with my true and ultimate native culture - where did I grow up, what language do I speak, what culture did I grow up in, etc...? Saying that I am Russian-American is wrong, although my children can claim that title. What their children will be depends on where they find themselves - Russia? America? Or somewhere else? |
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Henry_Cowell
Joined: 27 May 2005
Posts: 3352
Location: Berkeley
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| Posted: Tue Aug 01, 2006 6:29 pm Post subject: |
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| rusmeister wrote: |
| The greatly overexaggerated impotance of ethnic division in America became apparent after Sept. 11th, when everybody suddenly began waving flags in the streets, and for a brief time saw that being united as Americans was something that eclipsed the ethnic terms so many love to embrace.... |
Unless, of course, you happened to be an American with ancestry in Egypt, or Palestine, or India, or Saudi Arabia, or Pakistan, of Afghanistan, or Iraq, or Turkey, or Indonesia, or Malaysia, or parts of the former Soviet Union, or ---
In those cases, you would hear this warning after September 11: "You'd better fly American flags on your home and on your car ... or else!!"
There's always somebody to despise in the U.S. It's a country built from its foundations on racialist superiority and power. That's what has always made it such a great, glorious, and "gory"-ous nation.
Hallelujah and Amen! |
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Chancellor
Joined: 31 Oct 2005
Posts: 1337
Location: Ji'an, China - if you're willing to send me cigars, I accept donations :)
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| Posted: Tue Aug 01, 2006 7:20 pm Post subject: |
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| Henry_Cowell wrote: |
| rusmeister wrote: |
| The greatly overexaggerated impotance of ethnic division in America became apparent after Sept. 11th, when everybody suddenly began waving flags in the streets, and for a brief time saw that being united as Americans was something that eclipsed the ethnic terms so many love to embrace.... |
Unless, of course, you happened to be an American with ancestry in Egypt, or Palestine, or India, or Saudi Arabia, or Pakistan, of Afghanistan, or Iraq, or Turkey, or Indonesia, or Malaysia, or parts of the former Soviet Union, or ---
In those cases, you would hear this warning after September 11: "You'd better fly American flags on your home and on your car ... or else!!"
There's always somebody to despise in the U.S. It's a country built from its foundations on racialist superiority and power. That's what has always made it such a great, glorious, and "gory"-ous nation.
Hallelujah and Amen! |
Considering that SOME of the Americans of Middle Eastern ancestry were involved with terrorist organizations (such as the ones in a Buffalo, NY suburb associated with Al Qaeda), a certain amount of caution is always appropriate. There were likely communist sympathizers of Russian ancestry during the cold war and there were likely Axis sympathizers of German, Italian or Japanese descent during World War II. While there are a great many Americans who lazily lump everyone who has a certain appearance into one category and choose to hate the entire group (not unlike the way some people in other countries choose to hate all Americans simply because of the actions of the American government), America, as a whole, is not that way.
Getting back to one of your earlier posts, though, I do expect people who emigrate to America to fully assimilate into American society. This means, in part, that they leave behind the culture from which they came. I suspect that if an American emigrated to certain other countries, he would be expected to assimilate into that country's culture - and I don't have a problem with that.
Your statement, "It's a country built from its foundations on racialist superiority and power" is essentially nonsense. Some of the original colonies were started for religious purposes (some of which insisted on conformity to one set of doctrines and some of which embraced a degree of religious freedom) while others for economic purposes (making money for old Mother England). It was because of confrontations with the mother country (England) over such issues as taxation and not having the same rights that other British subjects had that America decided to declare its independence and strike out on its own. America wasn't interested in becoming a world power and, for the most part, didn't involve itself in the affairs of other nations (a policy to which I'd like to see America return). |
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stoth1972
Joined: 16 May 2003
Posts: 674
Location: Seattle, Washington
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| Posted: Tue Aug 01, 2006 10:49 pm Post subject: |
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| Please kill this thread, MOD. |
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RyanS
Joined: 11 Oct 2005
Posts: 356
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| Posted: Tue Aug 01, 2006 11:37 pm Post subject: |
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| Stop calling them native americans then call them by their national background, Mohawk, Iroquious, Mic-Mac, Blackfoot, Cree and so on, you racists. They aren't American, they have their own nations. The Iroquious don't like being called First Nations, its a term invented by Liberal bourgeiois politicians who want to make everyone canadian while denying their national rights. |
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rusmeister
Joined: 15 Jun 2006
Posts: 867
Location: Russia
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| Posted: Wed Aug 02, 2006 2:39 am Post subject: |
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| RyanS wrote: |
| Stop calling them native americans then call them by their national background, Mohawk, Iroquious, Mic-Mac, Blackfoot, Cree and so on, you racists. They aren't American, they have their own nations. The Iroquious don't like being called First Nations, its a term invented by Liberal bourgeiois politicians who want to make everyone canadian while denying their national rights. |
That's fine by me - although some people (including some of the various tribes/nations) want a lump term. They can pick any name they like as long as they're not trying to say that I'm not really American, or that I'm only an immigrant to my own country.
I can't say much to you at this point, Henry, because you're living in a pretty narrow world. I do agree that unfair treatment and persecution should be punished by law. But frankly, if you speak my language as a native language, and we can talk about baseball and Bugs Bunny, you're an American in my book regardless of your color and I am not terribly interested in your ancestry (unless you want to stick it in my face). I will see you as an American unless you desperately want me not to, in which case...I'll see you as a foreigner. If you can't (esp on the speak English part), you're an immigrant, and you'd better take ESL classes if you want to live in America. The silliness of expecting anything else becomes apparent as soon as we try putting the shoe on the other foot. Imagine my going to Russian authorities to immigrate and expect them to speak English. If I want to immigrate to Russia, China, France... I'd better learn the national language, history and customs and at least respect them or I'd better not go there to live. The irony is Americans, laconically and sometimes foolishly tolerant because of our foundation in immigration, put up with silly demands by some (a minority of) immigrants to let them come to America to live and not assimilate. "I want American passport, yes, want speak English, no." |
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Henry_Cowell
Joined: 27 May 2005
Posts: 3352
Location: Berkeley
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| Posted: Wed Aug 02, 2006 5:31 am Post subject: |
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| rusmeister wrote: |
| I can't say much to you at this point, Henry, because you're living in a pretty narrow world. |
I think I've lived in a much wider world than you for a much longer time. That's why I don't try to insist that there is only one way to be an American -- and why I don't need to insist that my 'culture' and/or religion are somehow being persecuted, degraded, or polluted. |
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Chancellor
Joined: 31 Oct 2005
Posts: 1337
Location: Ji'an, China - if you're willing to send me cigars, I accept donations :)
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| Posted: Wed Aug 02, 2006 12:31 pm Post subject: |
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| RyanS wrote: |
| Stop calling them native americans then call them by their national background, Mohawk, Iroquious, Mic-Mac, Blackfoot, Cree and so on, you racists. They aren't American, they have their own nations. The Iroquious don't like being called First Nations, its a term invented by Liberal bourgeiois politicians who want to make everyone canadian while denying their national rights. |
That sounds nice, in theory; but what is their equivalent to such generic terms as Asian, African or European.
As for whether they're American (or Canadian), if we shut down the reservations (which have seemingly done more harm than good) and fully assimilate these people, they'll be American (or Canadian). |
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Chancellor
Joined: 31 Oct 2005
Posts: 1337
Location: Ji'an, China - if you're willing to send me cigars, I accept donations :)
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| Posted: Wed Aug 02, 2006 12:35 pm Post subject: |
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| Henry_Cowell wrote: |
| rusmeister wrote: |
| I can't say much to you at this point, Henry, because you're living in a pretty narrow world. |
I think I've lived in a much wider world than you for a much longer time. That's why I don't try to insist that there is only one way to be an American -- and why I don't need to insist that my 'culture' and/or religion are somehow being persecuted, degraded, or polluted. |
A nation divided against itself (which is what you are proposing with all this diversity nonsense) will fall.
If you were born within the geographic confines of the United States of America, or are a naturalized citizen, then that makes you an American: and that's enough for me. |
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Henry_Cowell
Joined: 27 May 2005
Posts: 3352
Location: Berkeley
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| Posted: Wed Aug 02, 2006 5:14 pm Post subject: |
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| Chancellor wrote: |
| A nation divided against itself (which is what you are proposing with all this diversity nonsense) will fall. |
If that's how you interpret my writing, you should stay in upstate New York and quit teaching English. Your reading and analytical skills are rather lacking. So is your understanding of 'culture.' But what does one expect from Buffalo? |
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Chancellor
Joined: 31 Oct 2005
Posts: 1337
Location: Ji'an, China - if you're willing to send me cigars, I accept donations :)
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| Posted: Wed Aug 02, 2006 8:09 pm Post subject: |
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| Henry_Cowell wrote: |
| Chancellor wrote: |
| A nation divided against itself (which is what you are proposing with all this diversity nonsense) will fall. |
If that's how you interpret my writing, you should stay in upstate New York and quit teaching English. Your reading and analytical skills are rather lacking. So is your understanding of 'culture.' But what does one expect from Buffalo? |
Yes, that is how I interpreted your statement, "That's why I don't try to insist that there is only one way to be an American." |
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Henry_Cowell
Joined: 27 May 2005
Posts: 3352
Location: Berkeley
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| Posted: Thu Aug 03, 2006 1:02 am Post subject: |
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Note that Chancellor jumped to the rather surprising conclusion that I propose that the U.S. become "a nation divided against itself." It was, of course, he himself who wrote this phrase -- not I. Funny that this is the very Chancellor who constantly complains on these forums about the sorry state of Americans' reading and language skills. 
And thus did Chancellor go on to provide us with an insight from the Dark Ages:
There is more than a single way to be an "American" = nonsense
From such narrow-minded views spring movements like Aryan Nation, Posse Comitatus, and The Order (and, in other cultures, the Taliban, Al Qaeda, Jean-Marie Le Pen in France, and Pauline Hanson in Australia). Of all people, English teachers who work abroad should be above this sort of medieval xenophobia. |
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rusmeister
Joined: 15 Jun 2006
Posts: 867
Location: Russia
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| Posted: Thu Aug 03, 2006 2:30 am Post subject: |
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What Chancellor is saying is that the end run of too much diversity will lead to anarchy - the nation will fall, just as too little diversity will lead to a police state. His wording may not be ideal, but united we stand, divided we fall is a truism, and diversity is a nice way to express 'division', 'difference'. Too many differences, and we can no longer be united.
I apologize for the 'narrow world' comment. It was a narrow and patronizing way way to say what I was trying to say. What I meant was that the current fashionable insistence on diversity is excessive - if we spend all our time admiring our differences, soon we will have nothing in common. The only way we can both be "American' is if we have something in common, and geography of birth is not enough. If I walk past people every day who don't speak my language, how can we share much meaningfully? If they don't share my culture, where is our common ground? An alien is an alien. Funny to look at, and to the scientific mind, fascinating, but the goal is to find common ground, not diverse ground, if our goal is to communicate. If we don't have common ground, we can't be united. Sept. 11th demonstrated a need to be united and that's why everyone was out with the flags at the street corners (voluntarily). FYI, I was one of the voices shouting against the treatment of Arab-Americans, that questioned (in 2001, as now) Afghanistan, and totally and loudly objected to Iraq, and voted against Bush (in spite of the rest of my family supporting all that). I AM AGAINST WRONG-DOING (aka evil aka sin).
But good grief, right now we have an excess of diversity, foisted on us by the ideology driving our teacher prep programs(which Chancellor is right to complain about), just as we have had excesses of mono-culture at times (Alien and Sedition Act, and other excesses.
The point is to avoid the excesses. Variety is the spice of life, but you can't live on spice alone. THAT, imho, is Chancellor's point. Is there anything that I've said that you can acknowledge? If not, I don't think we can have intelligent conversation, because talking past each other is tiring.
(This can be one of the steps to finding common ground)  |
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