Nobody should be ashamed of the history of their people. That encourages some to hide from it. Instead one should not shy away, but try to study and learn from the mistakes of their forebears, so their children might get a better world someday.
Shame for something you yourself have not done, though? Pointless.
Basically, the US obsessing about race but refusing to face it’s history with blanket word bans that are frowned upon no matter the context.
The US is clearly not facing their slavery past and instead avoiding the difficult and deeply disturbing vocabulary associated with it.
IMHO there is nothing wrong with the N word used in an history lesson. On the contrary, I think it’s especially important to show younger generations how evil some our ancestors were.
And I say that as a french guy living in a city that was extremely important during the slave trade. We know what our ancestors did, we are not proud of it, we don’t feel responsible for it but we do make sure it’s not forgotten.
I think any view that tries to paint the whole US as obsessing over something is extremely incomplete. So extremely incomplete as to be basically pointless. It’s just a lot more complicated than that, with different groups thinking different things are important.
I understand that critic.
That being said, I really have never visited a country where race is mentioned as frequently as in the US.
In many European countries I have visited it just didn’t seem relevant.
Sometimes it’s not just a cliché or a prejudice against a nation, it’s just how it is.
I have no doubt at least that the peculiar history of the US has shaped the way racial discourse is prevalent or not in that society.
Would you agree that race is more commonly talked about in the US than in the rest of the world?
I think it’s pointless to ask on Lemmy for an accurate depiction of the importance of race in the american society. You may say it’s too reductive but I think it’s a more productive conversation than your comment. I would much rather have someone politely argue and explain that I’m wrong rather than calling my comment “almost pointless” and basically presenting it as some outlandish and prejudiced caricature of the US.
The “your comment is too reductive and therefore is pointless” could probably be applied to every posts in there. Just saying.
I think the anti immigration right wing rise across several European countries rn shows that they’ve just never had the dialogue that the US does about race from being such a melting pot, and as such have ignored racial issues and racism in their societies bc they haven’t had as terrible of a racist past as the US (Jim Crow laws, neoslavery, etc) that they have to confront. Now that the globalized world is causing more demographic change in Europe there’s a loooot more anti-immigration and racist rhetoric. That’s not a coincidence.
bc they haven’t had as terrible of a racist past as the US
You do know the Holocaust happened in Europe right?
Other than that, I do agree with you. Europe is still very racist but we like to think we’re not. Just because it’s less talked about, doesn’t mean it’s not there.
Unfortunately, it’s a complex topic that is sufficiently outside my specialization that I’m unwilling to really dive deeply into it. For instance, if I tried to say whether I personally thought race is more talked about in the US than in the rest of the world, that would just be one random guy’s (me) opinion. What would I be basing it off of, personal travels? That’s not good data.
The only even remotely honest answer I can give is “I don’t really know.”
I have to know what I’m talking about first, for there to be any kind of point.
IMHO there is nothing wrong with the N word used in an history lesson.
Have you spoken to any [other] people that have been subjected to anti-black bigotry directly about how its inclusion would affect them in a lesson?
I am a white man that had a similar view to you. About 10 years ago I had a conversation with a black classmate about appropriate use of that word. It was my position that it’s too bad we continually empower the word by avoiding it even in dry intellectual contexts and we shouldn’t censor it when reading quotations.
She said:
I know you’re not being racist but it still makes me super uncomfortable to hear you say it.
I made the decision not to say it ever again. Obviously my classmate can’t speak for all black people, every person has different experiences, and reactions will be along a continuum. There might be situations where the educational value of using that word explicitly, outweighs the discomfort it causes. But I think it’s pretty inappropriate for me to ‘whitesplain’ prejudice (and the language of prejudice, and the power… of the language of prejudice)
Teachers have to ask themselves: How much will its explicit use enhance the lesson? How many students are we willing to risk alienating? How much time would we like to spend defending our decision to use the word explicitly? How much of that will be class time?
Even with a lengthy preamble setting the perfect context to use it explicitly with minimal potential for alienating students there’s a significant chance we’ll fuck it up and spend the rest of the class reteaching the class why we think they are wrong to be offended.
Some of them will be disingenuous, some of them will be sincerely offended white soyboys not too dissimilar to me, some of them will be legitimately alienated racialized minorities.
We’d also be implicitly asking the non offended racialized minorities to stick up for us. Their well meaning friends will ask them to weigh in on the subject (and speak for all blacks). It’s not fair to them.
In a context where class time is limited, I have to think that students are best served with more lesson time and less meta-discussion. So I don’t think it’s a good idea to use the word explicitly in educational contexts, unless maybe there’s some sort of vetting of students for the course.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
and the language of prejudice, and the power… of the language of prejudice
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
The US is clearly not facing their slavery past and instead avoiding the difficult and deeply disturbing vocabulary associated with it.
Certain individuals and organizations are doing this, sure, but then you have the monumental amount of academic research in the humanities into slavery, you have publicly and privately owned historical sites and museums that explicitly teach about the history of slavery in the United States, and you have a non-trivial amount of media depicting the horrors of slavery. It’s not a monolithic cultural rejection in the same way that a nation like Japan has attempted to totally erase any record of its wrongdoings in the first half of the twentieth century.
The problem with the US is we have the state too much individual rights when it comes to how we handle our citizens. There should be a federal curriculum standards, such as teaching about slavery. Same with voting, especially in federal elections.
I always think about this when I hear people talk about their ancestors or criticize other people’s ancestors. They were other people. Ppl get “proud” of their ancestors siting in a fucking chair eating doritos. Go do something yourself
Hey, my ancestors sat in a fucking chair and ate doritos while being proud of their ancestors. That’s a tradition I intend to keep
Experience shows, that the general population – and people in power especially – are inherently bad at learning from history or even their own mistakes.
Psychopathy can sometimes be a positive asset in politics. This dramatically slows down how quickly we can move anything forward on the larger scales. You just can’t make everyone have the same values, that would destroy the very innovativeness and adaptability that we prize so much.
For instance, had the Israeli PM working on the peace deal never been assassinated and replaced by Netanyahu, our world might look very different today. That one bullet, fired by a psychopath, killed someone who did study history and replaced them with someone who did not.
Virtually all countries have many corpses in their basements.
Define “many”. San Marino? Probably not very many. UK? Oh boy.
How many are killed in the wars and invasions in the past of any country? Germany, Spain, GB, USA, Rusia, Israel, China…since the first Australopithecus discovered that a stick was very useful for smashing the skulls of others. It is inherent in human nature to have a tendency to destroy one’s neighbor, at the command of leaders eager for power and often for childish reasons…
It’s inherent to be territorial as much as it is to be jealous and greedy. Yet we still build mostly working societies.
It’s just that the current international framework is still stuck in the primitive ‘right of the stronger’ principle.
San Marino? You count Rome in that?
That’s Vaticano, not San Marino
No, San Marino is independent state since 200 years or so (Edit: actually over 700). Sure, a very minor one, but still fit the incredibly sweeping definition of the guy i was answering to. Also why i would count Rome, it’s over 300 km away from it.
Rome. The empire in which the citizens of San marino were apart of and engaged in authorities.
Roman Empire fell over 800 years before San Marino first became independent, and if you meant Rome as in the Papal States, it was since 1291.
Beside it would be pretty weird to blame specifically San Marino for what Roman Empire did, especially that the city itself was allegedly founded in 301 CE by christians fleeing from the Diocletian persecution.
Why not? Same people. Same culture. Recieved the benefits of genocide.
I think if you look, you’ll find the bodies. Probably even San Marino, either directly or indirectly.
Undoubtedly they do have some, but the number is not comparable to for example UK. I meant that sweeping statements like above are basically useless, even for a meme. Also this particular usage in this meme definitely sound like “all lives matter”.
Fair enough
Some of us just been collecting for a long time.
It’s honestly impressive how much shit the UK has fucked up over the last millennia.
Don’t see why I should be ashamed of it though. I didn’t do it.
It’s never the people, but their shabby leader and his propagand.
Second pic doesn’t even need a flag and it will still work perfectly lol. European conquest sure did a lot of damage to the rest of the world back then.
Back then is misleading, they actually try to keep their influence one way or another to exploit resources. If they can’t then they will pertend there were weapons of mass destruction.
I love history!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Partition_Plan_for_Palestine
According to the source above, the Arab leaders used arguments such as: “We will sweep them [the Jews] into the sea.” or “We shall eradicate Zionism.”
Now we can all be ashamed together.
You inserted brackets “[the Jews]”, but the text refers to Zionists. This is not the same. One could be interpreted as anti colonial, while your edits implies it’s against an ethnicity
OP copy pasted from Wikipedia, your point is valid. Just wanted to point out it’s not OP who inserted brackets, someone else is to blame.
You inserted brackets “[the Jews]”, but the text refers to Zionists. This is not the same
I mean it could have the same implied or real meaning. Did they mean to imply that they’d drive all Jews to the sea or would some Jews have been allowed to stay?
Two nitpicks:
- that was said by Abdul Rahman Hassan Azzam, who is Egyptian, not Palestinian
- there’s a huge difference between a threatened expulsion of some colonizers (words) and actual genocide of the indigenous population (actions)
“Well they didn’t manage to do it so it’s fine”
I mean, there is a big difference between the crimes you commit and the ones you don’t commit.
If we’re going to judge countries based off what politicians of OTHER countries say, we’ll be here all night. Fuck Canada for the shit Trump says, etc.
We do judge countries based on that what is said and what they do.
Okay, but then address the point that the guy was Egyptian and not Palestinian?
It’s not like they haven’t expressed the same desire.
Then post that instead
But they tried.
Oh they tried, what do you think would have happened if Israel lost their first war?
You’ve already made up in your mind that the Palestinians are genicidal, in order to justify their colonization, oppression and murder by the Israelis. You do this for your own peace of mind. You need to do that because if you didn’t, you would see it for what it is, a people fighting for its liberation. You require the Palestinians were all perfect pacifists, going along with their own ethic cleansing and genocide.
That is scary but also Israel is a Christo-fascist white colonial settler project to establish a base of operations and influence in the strategically important middle east.
It may not be an individual citizen’s responsibility, just like a Canadian citizen isn’t responsible for the 60s Scoop, or an Americans for Manifest Destiny. But no progress can ever be made unless those of us who are settlers acknowledge the sins of the past, and how we perpetuate them today.
Arab leaders being bad does neither make the Palestinian People bad nor does it make “the west” better.
He never implied that, he said let’s be ashamed “together”.
Sounds kinda centrist…
Ah ok I didn’t really know what they meant with that.
Canadian here, ashamed of our history big time. Myself and government believe truth and reconsiliation. So there is shame in our past. Also, I don’t think the country representing Jerry is a good use…
Canadian here. I believe in reconciliation with the indigenous population, but I’ve yet to see anything but words from provincial and federal governments
Well, there’s always the practical question of: how do you reconcile for genocide? Leave the country and hand it back to the natives? It would honestly surprise me if you would go that far, let alone your government or countrymen
Well you start by not continuing to fuck over the indigenous peoples.
Are Canadian cops still doing the driving people out into the snow and letting them die walking back to the city thing?
Clean drinking water would also be a good start ffs
How about respecting the sovereign land of the people that don’t have treaties yet? Wetsuoten (spelling?) land defenders are still being harassed by the RCMP on the regular
I agree.
Vexillology may not be for you.
You got me!
Which flag do you think the 2nd one is?
And Spain And The Netherlands
I don’t really think a country, where half of the population support a terrorist group, that recently performed one of the worst attacks on innocent people the world has seen in a long time, really has the right to claim any moral high ground.
The other “half” are who I care about. They’re getting killed by Israel non descriminately, while, Hamas( a group Palestinians don’t care for, who has taken control of Gaza by force)ignores their needs.
Also worth questioning exactly why Hamas is so ascendant compared to the much more peaceful PLO… Not saying there weren’t still problems back then but nothing, nothing like this
Neither do the rest of us on the list.
We just full on support it and give weapons to people who have already proven they do not care about innocents
Yeah supporting any side in this conflict or acting like one side is good and the other is bad is just too simplistic.
Giving any side more weapons, isn’t going to bring a long term peaceful solution.
The only way out is with negotiations, not with more violence. Both parties need to make concessions.
Do you condemn american natives who attacked settlers ? There are no innocents in a settler colonial project, that’s like calling a card-carrying member of the Nazi party an innocent.
The native jews are a very small minority. Most of those “innocent” chose to be there and partake in this genocidal apartheid state.
Israel has no right to self defence, because it has no right to exist. If the Jews have to have a state (which isn’t necessarily a good thing as it gave European countries an excuse to not tolerate them as they could always “go back home”), why not put that state in Germany ? You know, a country that actually did something to them.
On the other hand, the UN recognized the right of the Palestian people to fight against the Israeli occupation, which was explicitly described as an apartheid state on the same level as South Africa at the time.
You have no idea how history work. How do you think anti-colonial partisans all around the world were treated by the occupying press ? It’s never “people legitimately fighting for their country”, always “unjustified targeting of ‘civilians’ and ‘state officials’”.
Israel isn’t there to protect Jews or any such fantasies. Jews lived in Palestine before the colonial project, and they will continue to live there after it.
dropped one flag from the top part, here: 🇷🇺
Edit: on the second thought, Russians are actually ashamed of their history, considering how little of it is actually taught
I was so disappointed at Jerry Seinfel’a stance on the whole thing though. Which makes this meme ironic
