A Jew who is traditionally depicted with white skin, blue eyes, and light brown hair.
Plus, even with the more probable appearance of olive skin, brown eyes, and curly black hair* (though I hasten to add that phenotypes have a wider distribution than many think, and it's not implausible that he was a blue-eyed redhead or blond), Semites are counted as "white" in the classic racial typologies. It's why the Nazis invented the category "Aryan" instead of just saying they liked white people. Now, the classic racial typologies are of course racist as hell, but it's not like there's any better objective authority on the subject of the completely-arbitrary boundaries between labeled "races". If you want to call a native of 1st-Century Judea "white", do it. If you don't, don't. It's not like it would have meant anything to him either way.
*Oh, also, he probably went clean-shaven.
"Aryan" was also originally a linguistic category, now called Indo-European. Actually, Max Müller, father of the hypothesis, compared anthropologists who spoke of an Aryan race to "a linguist who speaks of a dolichocephalic vocabulary or brachycephalic grammar", saying this confusion was "worse than a Babylonian confusion of tongues".
The Nazis went into the stupidity of basically offering "Ehrenarier" status to whoever they liked, because they were apparently in on the secret that race was bull****.
Oddly, finding the most insane thing about Nazi ideology leads to only one conclusion: "But there are so many!"
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"Aryan" was also originally a linguistic category, now called Indo-European. Actually, Max Müller, father of the hypothesis, compared anthropologists who spoke of an Aryan race to "a linguist who speaks of a dolichocephalic vocabulary or brachycephalic grammar", saying this confusion was "worse than a Babylonian confusion of tongues".
Müller is a little off base here. The use of "Aryan" as an ethnonym goes all the way back to Zoroastrianism, and is much older than the theory of the Indo-Aryan language family. Modern "Iran" is etymologically "Aryana", i.e. "Aryan-land", and has long been what the Persians called their nation while the West, following the Greeks, called it "Persia". But this historical usage has jack squat to do with Nazi ideology; they just lifted the name.
The Nazis went into the stupidity of basically offering "Ehrenarier" status to whoever they liked, because they were apparently in on the secret that race was bull****.
There are some interesting private statements of Hitler's that imply this, certainly. He definitely thought that all the neo-Nordic mysticism and the Spear of Destiny stuff, so popular in modern depictions of Nazism, were a crock of fecal matter.
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So wait... 4th of July is a white holiday because we celebrate what white people did for our country?
That's absurd. We celebrate America. We aren't celebrating "Happy White People Accomplishments Day!"
On May 8th, 1945 for V-E day, we didn't celebrate accomplishments of white people. We celebrated our victory over the Nazi forces and the end to the Europe front of WWII. For the same reason your logic is flawed. You are putting the horse before the plow.
You're making the mistake of thinking that because these holidays aren't explicitly celebrated for white people, they aren't at all. But there's a vast difference between the ideals that large segments of the country celebrates and the practical reality of it. When a white man goes to a Fourth of July celebration and sees ten white soldiers and a black soldier who was especially brought there, that isn't multiculturalism, that's tokenism. It's still perpetuating the inherent racism of the project while pretending that the racism doesn't exist any more.
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Be aware of singing as if you were half dead,
or half asleep:
but lift your voice with strength.
Be no more afraid of your voice now,
nor more ashamed of its being heard,
than when you sang the songs of Satan.
So wait... 4th of July is a white holiday because we celebrate what white people did for our country?
That's absurd. We celebrate America. We aren't celebrating "Happy White People Accomplishments Day!"
On May 8th, 1945 for V-E day, we didn't celebrate accomplishments of white people. We celebrated our victory over the Nazi forces and the end to the Europe front of WWII. For the same reason your logic is flawed. You are putting the horse before the plow.
You're making the mistake of thinking that because these holidays aren't explicitly celebrated for white people, they aren't at all. But there's a vast difference between the ideals that large segments of the country celebrates and the practical reality of it. When a white man goes to a Fourth of July celebration and sees ten white soldiers and a black soldier who was especially brought there, that isn't multiculturalism, that's tokenism. It's still perpetuating the inherent racism of the project while pretending that the racism doesn't exist any more.
you are making the exact opposite mistake. you are making an huge assumption that they are strictly celebrated as white holiday's and they aren't.
this whole thing of "The Great White Guilt Trip" gets extremely old. to the point that it is obnoxious. fortuantly for me it doesn't work. I have no guilt.
4th of july celebrates the birth of our country.
memorial day celebrates the men and women of all races that died fighting for our country.
to say that they are explicitly white celebrations is logically flawed. it is also a bit of a my-optic point of view.
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So wait... 4th of July is a white holiday because we celebrate what white people did for our country?
That's absurd. We celebrate America. We aren't celebrating "Happy White People Accomplishments Day!"
On May 8th, 1945 for V-E day, we didn't celebrate accomplishments of white people. We celebrated our victory over the Nazi forces and the end to the Europe front of WWII. For the same reason your logic is flawed. You are putting the horse before the plow.
You're making the mistake of thinking that because these holidays aren't explicitly celebrated for white people, they aren't at all. But there's a vast difference between the ideals that large segments of the country celebrates and the practical reality of it. When a white man goes to a Fourth of July celebration and sees ten white soldiers and a black soldier who was especially brought there, that isn't multiculturalism, that's tokenism. It's still perpetuating the inherent racism of the project while pretending that the racism doesn't exist any more.
you are making the exact opposite mistake. you are making an huge assumption that they are strictly celebrated as white holiday's and they aren't.
this whole thing of "The Great White Guilt Trip" gets extremely old. to the point that it is obnoxious. fortuantly for me it doesn't work. I have no guilt.
4th of july celebrates the birth of our country.
memorial day celebrates the men and women of all races that died fighting for our country.
to say that they are explicitly white celebrations is logically flawed. it is also a bit of a my-optic point of view.
Myopic. Myopic is the word you're looking for. My-optic doesn't mean anything. Myopic.
Anyways, I disagree with this sentient largely because it ignores the history of the founding of our nation. Celebrating the "birth of our nation" is in large part a white celebration because the only people that were citizens in said founding were white male landowners. Do you really think the 4th of July celebrates indigenous persons in America?
You presume that just because something is not de jure white it cannot be de facto white.
Asking people to remove quotes in their signatures is tyranny! If I can't say something just because someone's feelings are hurt then no one would ever be able to say anything! Political correctness is stupid.
you are making the exact opposite mistake. you are making an huge assumption that they are strictly celebrated as white holiday's and they aren't.
What? I never said they were strictly celebrated as such. I'm saying that they are mostly celebrated as such by white people, who use what amounts to tokenism to dispel criticisms that they are exclusively white holidays when they are inextricably tied up in centuries of discrimination and prejudice.
this whole thing of "The Great White Guilt Trip" gets extremely old. to the point that it is obnoxious. fortuantly for me it doesn't work. I have no guilt.
4th of july celebrates the birth of our country.
memorial day celebrates the men and women of all races that died fighting for our country.
to say that they are explicitly white celebrations is logically flawed. it is also a bit of a my-optic point of view.
I don't think you're really trying to understand my point.
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Sing lustily and with good courage.
Be aware of singing as if you were half dead,
or half asleep:
but lift your voice with strength.
Be no more afraid of your voice now,
nor more ashamed of its being heard,
than when you sang the songs of Satan.
People of all races born of families that sacrificed during the various Wars America has been in celebrate Veteran's Day. It's not limited to Whites, Blacks, Asians, Mexicans or what have you. It's an American celebration.
We don't have predominantly white holidays, and we don't need them. I'd rather we celebrate our holidays like they were meant to be celebrated, and not try to turn them into some sort of white nationalist thing that we should be ashamed of.
Christmas is a Christian thing, and there are more than just white Christians.
4th of July is an American thing, and there are more than just white Americans.
Thanksgiving is a family thing, and there are more than just white families that celebrate it every year.
The ONLY reason somebody could be trying to declare that these kinda of holidays are "white holidays" would be because they want to stand on a pulpit and decry racism when it's not even pertinent to the celebration everyone is trying to have.
It's like the extremist decrying rape culture while everyone's trying to enjoy Father's Day.
It's disrespectful to the heritage of American minority families to try and tell them that the various national holidays are "for White people". Moreover, it's just plain sad when I see people who've lost so much faith in a holiday that all they see is racism every time they get a federally granted day off of work or holiday pay.
America welcomes all of it's citizenry regardless of race to celebrate in our culture. That's just the reality of it.
I cannot believe that you thought including Thanksgiving was a genuinely good idea after I had already discussed the role of American treatment towards indigenous peoples. That was a joke, right? Like, you know you can't list Thanksgiving, right?
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Asking people to remove quotes in their signatures is tyranny! If I can't say something just because someone's feelings are hurt then no one would ever be able to say anything! Political correctness is stupid.
There are some interesting private statements of Hitler's that imply this, certainly. He definitely thought that all the neo-Nordic mysticism and the Spear of Destiny stuff, so popular in modern depictions of Nazism, were a crock of fecal matter.
Well, technically, if you know the truth, you're lying. Bull****ting is when you actually believe what you claim. Gillian McKeith saying eating spinach oxygenates your blood (I'm not making this up.) is bull****ting, but if anyone with a basic knowledge of biochemistry said it, it would be lying.
The difficulty with politicians is knowing when they're bull****ting and when they're just lying. I generally assume, for instance, all religious bull****ting is simply bull****ting, as admitting the truth, even to oneself, would be, to a creationist or abstinence-only advocate at least, tantamount to denouncing his religion. (And also putting him at the back of the unemployment line.)
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Card advantage is not the same thing as card draw. Something for 2B cannot be strictly worse than something for BBB or 3BB. If you're taking out Swords to Plowshares for Plummet, you're a fool. Stop doing these things!
People of all races born of families that sacrificed during the various Wars America has been in celebrate Veteran's Day. It's not limited to Whites, Blacks, Asians, Mexicans or what have you. It's an American celebration.
We don't have predominantly white holidays, and we don't need them. I'd rather we celebrate our holidays like they were meant to be celebrated, and not try to turn them into some sort of white nationalist thing that we should be ashamed of.
Christmas is a Christian thing, and there are more than just white Christians.
4th of July is an American thing, and there are more than just white Americans.
I can't tell if you're intentionally missing my point, or just being dense, but let me try to go through this again.
The point isn't that white Americans actively say "the Fourth of July is only for white Americans" or "only white veterans should be celebrated on Veterans' Day." But they don't have to. To a huge percentage of this country, "American" implies a lot more than citizenship in the United States of America; it's a statement of shared ancestry, shared culture, shared values, and yes, shared race. No-one calls George Bush a "British American" like they call Obama an "African-American," because to many people the unadorned "American" is the only kind of true American.
When many people celebrate holidays like the Fourth of July, they're celebrating an America which they understand without stating it as a white America. They may pay lip service to the idea of a multicultural country, but that's not how they celebrate the holiday, and that's not how they understand it. And this extends far beyond those who are openly or even aware of their racism; there's a reason shows like Band of Brothers only have relatively small roles given to minorities, and it isn't that Spielberg and the rest of Hollywood is racist.
Quote from Kraken B. Trippin »
Thanksgiving is a family thing, and there are more than just white families that celebrate it every year.
Thanksgiving is a holiday celebrating the systematic disenfranchisement of Native Americans from their lands. It's a "family thing" in the sense that Christmas is a "family thing"; yes, people come together to eat with their families, but they aren't doing it in a vacuum.
Quote from Kraken B. Trippin »
The ONLY reason somebody could be trying to declare that these kinda of holidays are "white holidays" would be because they want to stand on a pulpit and decry racism when it's not even pertinent to the celebration everyone is trying to have.
Uh-huh.
Quote from Kraken B. Trippin »
It's like the extremist decrying rape culture while everyone's trying to enjoy Father's Day.
Straw man.
Quote from Kraken B. Trippin »
It's disrespectful to the heritage of American minority families to try and tell them that the various national holidays are "for White people".
I'm not the one saying that they are; I'm saying that they are treated that way by a large class of white Americans. I agree that it's shameful, but I'm saying that it does exist.
Quote from Kraken B. Trippin »
Moreover, it's just plain sad when I see people who've lost so much faith in a holiday that all they see is racism every time they get a federally granted day off of work or holiday pay.
America welcomes all of it's citizenry regardless of race to celebrate in our culture. That's just the reality of it.
What's truly sad is to be so jingoistic as to deny the possibility that not everything is as perfect as you'd hope.
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Sing lustily and with good courage.
Be aware of singing as if you were half dead,
or half asleep:
but lift your voice with strength.
Be no more afraid of your voice now,
nor more ashamed of its being heard,
than when you sang the songs of Satan.
I don't think you're really trying to understand my point.
Well, in fairness, I don't understand your point either -- or rather, if I do understand it correctly it amounts to overtly racist twaddle and so I am assuming that I mustn't understand it correctly. For instance, this:
You're making the mistake of thinking that because these holidays aren't explicitly celebrated for white people, they aren't at all. But there's a vast difference between the ideals that large segments of the country celebrates and the practical reality of it. When a white man goes to a Fourth of July celebration and sees ten white soldiers and a black soldier who was especially brought there, that isn't multiculturalism, that's tokenism. It's still perpetuating the inherent racism of the project while pretending that the racism doesn't exist any more.
What? I never said they were strictly celebrated as such. I'm saying that they are mostly celebrated as such by white people, who use what amounts to tokenism to dispel criticisms that they are exclusively white holidays when they are inextricably tied up in centuries of discrimination and prejudice.
When many people celebrate holidays like the Fourth of July, they're celebrating an America which they understand without stating it as a white America. They may pay lip service to the idea of a multicultural country, but that's not how they celebrate the holiday, and that's not how they understand it.
...is actually offensive to me, and that's saying something. In fact, this notion is racist in at least four different ways, which is extraordinary to me:
First of all, as has been pointed out a number of times, our armed forces have ethnic minority representation that meets if not exceeds that of the prior population distribution -- it is more ethnically diverse than the population itself. This means that if you choose a random Fourth of July parade weighted by population density, there are likely to be more soldiers of a particular ethnic minority there than members of that minority in the population at large. the And even if there is only one individual of ethnic minority present, he's there because that's where he happens to be at the time.
Not only is it a monumentally ignorant and contradictory presumption to suggest that soldiers of ethnic minority are being carted around and shown off so that a truly racially diverse organization can unnecessarily construct an image of racial diversity that it already possesses without contrivance -- but the very idea that that could ever happen in the first place is a result of postmodern leftist garbage! Why would anyone think they need a "token" minority in the first place? Oh, right, because if all the soldiers from their town happen to be white, the only explanation is that it's obviously a den of crypto-Nazis and skinheads perpetuating centuries of oppression. On the other hand, if one or more ethnic minorities are represented, it's tokenism, which again means that it's a den of crypto-Nazis and skinheads perpetuating centuries of oppression.
Give me a ****ing break. Honestly.
Secondly, this whole notion is predicated on the idea that race matters more than anything else. People who are willing to put their lives on the line, for better or worse, are being reduced to a mere skin color. Forget what the Fourth of July actually celebrates, which is in part the bravery of each soldier, and instead start counting up the demographics. I am continually baffled by the fact that the side that has as its ostensible goal a post-racial society invents a theory that is expressly predicated on and utterly inseparable from racial division, segregation, and separation.
Thirdly, unwinding all the way to the level of basic premises for a moment: by what criteria does one determine the racial nature or label of a holiday? What makes a holiday a "white" or "black" holiday in the first place?
Fourth, your assertions about what white Americans think and feel on certain holidays are the merest straw men, and your overly broad generalization of that straw man makes you a racist. I'm white, and I can tell you that when I see a black soldier, or a Hispanic fireman, or an Asian police officer (as I do see all three, the latter two quite regularly, even though I live in a "white" area of the country), the nature of their job, their willingness to serve, and my gladness that people like them exist occupies a drastically higher level in my consciousness than my notions about what race they are. So next time you make a racist generalization of this kind, be sure to realize that at least one person (and probably a lot more than one) falls into the "Senori has no idea what the **** he or she is talking about" category, which I'm sorry to say is not being sufficiently accounted for in your present analysis.
Well, in fairness, I don't understand your point either -- or rather, if I do understand it correctly it amounts to overtly racist twaddle and so I am assuming that I mustn't understand it correctly. For instance, this:
Alright, cool, let's work on this.
Quote from Crashing00 »
...is actually offensive to me, and that's saying something. In fact, this notion is racist in at least four different ways, which is extraordinary to me:
Racist? I'd like to see this.
Quote from Crashing00 »
First of all, as has been pointed out a number of times, our armed forces have ethnic minority representation that meets if not exceeds that of the prior population distribution -- it is more ethnically diverse than the population itself. This means that if you choose a random Fourth of July parade weighted by population density, there are likely to be more soldiers of a particular ethnic minority there than members of that minority in the population at large. the And even if there is only one individual of ethnic minority present, he's there because that's where he happens to be at the time.
And as I've responded a number of times, that is beside the point.
Quote from Crashing00 »
Not only is it a monumentally ignorant and contradictory presumption
Quote from Crashing00 »
to suggest that soldiers of ethnic minority are being carted around and shown off so that a truly racially diverse organization can unnecessarily construct an image of racial diversity that it already possesses without contrivance -- but the very idea that that could ever happen in the first place is a result of postmodern leftist garbage! Why would anyone think they need a "token" minority in the first place? Oh, right, because if all the soldiers from their town happen to be white, the only explanation is that it's obviously a den of crypto-Nazis and skinheads perpetuating centuries of oppression. On the other hand, if one or more ethnic minorities are represented, it's tokenism, which again means that it's a den of crypto-Nazis and skinheads perpetuating centuries of oppression.
Give me a ****ing break. Honestly.
So if an all-white town--and these are very common, because our nation still has de facto segregation in terms of housing--has an all-white Veteran's Day parade, and no-one thinks that's strange, that's normal?
Quote from Crashing00 »
Secondly, this whole notion is predicated on the idea that race matters more than anything else. People who are willing to put their lives on the line, for better or worse, are being reduced to a mere skin color. Forget what the Fourth of July actually celebrates, which is in part the bravery of each soldier, and instead start counting up the demographics. I am continually baffled by the fact that the side that has as its ostensible goal a post-racial society invents a theory that is expressly predicated on and utterly inseparable from racial division, segregation, and separation.
Issues of race, class, and social structure are inextricably tied up in American society, and have been since its founding. This isn't to say that race is the only factor in American life, but it is immensely important, and to pretend otherwise is to ignore the single factor which is most highly correlated with poverty and lack of educational attainment in America. This isn't a coincidence; it's a result of systemic discrimination which is still only beginning to be addressed.
Quote from Crashing00 »
Thirdly, unwinding all the way to the level of basic premises for a moment: by what criteria does one determine the racial nature or label of a holiday? What makes a holiday a "white" or "black" holiday in the first place?
Who it celebrates, not just on a theoretical level but on a practical, day-to-day level. The theory of a holiday doesn't mean **** if no-one honors the theory in practice.
Quote from Crashing00 »
Fourth, your assertions about what white Americans think and feel on certain holidays are the merest straw men, and your overly broad generalization of that straw man makes you a racist. I'm white, and I can tell you that when I see a black soldier, or a Hispanic fireman, or an Asian police officer (as I do see all three, the latter two quite regularly, even though I live in a "white" area of the country), the nature of their job, their willingness to serve, and my gladness that people like them exist occupies a drastically higher level in my consciousness than my notions about what race they are. So next time you make a racist generalization of this kind, be sure to realize that at least one person (and probably a lot more than one) falls into the "Senori has no idea what the **** he or she is talking about" category, which I'm sorry to say is not being sufficiently accounted for in your present analysis.
I'm glad you do. But the fact that you (or I, hi!) am white doesn't mean that we are necessarily ideal representations of our compatriots. That's not an argument, that's extrapolating your particular feelings on the rest of the population when you can't demonstrate that the rest of the population feels the same way (and when it is in fact remarkably easy to demonstrate that significant portions of white America see the world very different from you).
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Sing lustily and with good courage.
Be aware of singing as if you were half dead,
or half asleep:
but lift your voice with strength.
Be no more afraid of your voice now,
nor more ashamed of its being heard,
than when you sang the songs of Satan.
So if an all-white town--and these are very common, because our nation still has de facto segregation in terms of housing--has an all-white Veteran's Day parade, and no-one thinks that's strange, that's normal?
A charitable interpretation says that Veteran's Day celebrations would include the veterans of that particular locality, so if the population is entirely (or almost entirely) one ethnicity, you would expect only that ethnicity represented among its veterans. If a local parade or whatever doesn't represent the national reality, no big deal, as long as everyone knows it.
So it's just a symptom, not a cause.
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And as I've responded a number of times, that is beside the point.
How can it possibly be beside the point? If the assertion is that the presence of minority soldiers is tokenism, but the facts show that the armed forces are at least as if not more racially diverse than the underlying population itself, then the assertion is directly contradicted by the facts. Or in other words, it is:
Quote from Crashing00 »
a monumentally ignorant and contradictory presumption to suggest that soldiers of ethnic minority are being carted around and shown off so that a truly racially diverse organization can unnecessarily construct an image of racial diversity that it already possesses without contrivance
So if an all-white town--and these are very common, because our nation still has de facto segregation in terms of housing--has an all-white Veteran's Day parade, and no-one thinks that's strange, that's normal?
No less normal than the prior hypothesis of the all-white town was to begin with. If the Veterans' Day parade is meant to honor soldiers from that town, and it's an all-white town, then the soldiers are obviously going to be all white. If there's any racism here, you've injected it by hypothesis -- it didn't appear as a result of anything else.
Issues of race, class, and social structure are inextricably tied up in American society, and have been since its founding. This isn't to say that race is the only factor in American life, but it is immensely important, and to pretend otherwise is to ignore the single factor which is most highly correlated with poverty and lack of educational attainment in America. This isn't a coincidence; it's a result of systemic discrimination which is still only beginning to be addressed.
The problem with this kind of discrimination is precisely that it's not systemic anymore -- racism isn't a "top-down" problem anymore, it's a "bottom-up" one. Which makes it all the more important, in my view, that the posture of someone who is trying to contribute positively to solving this problem should be one of erasing racial differences, not reinforcing the ones that exist and certainly not creating new ones.
Who have you helped by introducing this fatuous distinction between "white" and "non-white" holidays? Not a soul, says I. You've only created an entirely new kind of racial division where there really is absolutely no reason for there to be any whatsoever.
Who it celebrates, not just on a theoretical level but on a practical, day-to-day level. The theory of a holiday doesn't mean **** if no-one honors the theory in practice.
- To the extent that holidays celebrate people at all, are they being celebrated for their merits, or for their race? If Martin Luther King had been Latino (yet still made the same principled stand on civil rights with the same ultimate benefits for all ethnic minorities as well) would MLK day then be a "Latino holiday"? I think that to say so would be the height of absurdity.
This may be presumptuous of me, but going by the content of his public speeches, I'd surmise that MLK would be as incensed as anyone about getting his own holiday only to find that it was being called a "black holiday," reinforcing the very divisions he seemed to want to erase.
- More generally, how do we decide who it celebrates on what you are calling a practical level? It seems that you have been maintaining that because there exist some people that, in their innermost thoughts if not by their words, are only celebrating white veterans on Veterans Day (incidentally, congratulations on completing Cerebro, Professor X) -- that it is a white holiday. But what are the desiderata here? Would the same reasoning apply if it turned out that a sufficient quantity of skinheads were mentally celebrating, say, Jefferson Davis on MLK day?
I'm glad you do. But the fact that you (or I, hi!) am white doesn't mean that we are necessarily ideal representations of our compatriots. That's not an argument, that's extrapolating your particular feelings on the rest of the population when you can't demonstrate that the rest of the population feels the same way (and when it is in fact remarkably easy to demonstrate that significant portions of white America see the world very different from you).
The claim isn't that everyone thinks the way you or I do -- the claim is that because there are people who think the way you or I do, this overly simplistic and general kind of analysis that describes things in impossibly broad strokes using phrases like "systemic racism" and "most Americans" and "the ideals of large segments of the country" simply will not do.
The biggest reasons why your argument is flawed (it still is, by the way) is because you just keep chirping "It's racist because it's racist" or "It's racist because America has been racist since it's inception" which really is just a wordy way of repeating the first quote.
You're not backing up your claims that American Holidays are systemically and irreversibly racist because of racism so ingrained in our society that we just can't "see" it.
Points have been made against your argument showing the flawed presentation of your claims, and you just continue to reply with essentially "That's besides the point, the holiday is still racist". Which isn't doing a thing to convince anybody, or to even help anyone understand your point of view.
If you hate American holidays so much because all you see is "White America" everytime Veteran's Day comes around than don't celebrate it. But don't expect the majority of rational people to agree that they are all celebrating racism every time they fly an American flag in tribute.
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"Aryan" was also originally a linguistic category, now called Indo-European. Actually, Max Müller, father of the hypothesis, compared anthropologists who spoke of an Aryan race to "a linguist who speaks of a dolichocephalic vocabulary or brachycephalic grammar", saying this confusion was "worse than a Babylonian confusion of tongues".
The Nazis went into the stupidity of basically offering "Ehrenarier" status to whoever they liked, because they were apparently in on the secret that race was bull****.
Oddly, finding the most insane thing about Nazi ideology leads to only one conclusion: "But there are so many!"
On phasing:
There are some interesting private statements of Hitler's that imply this, certainly. He definitely thought that all the neo-Nordic mysticism and the Spear of Destiny stuff, so popular in modern depictions of Nazism, were a crock of fecal matter.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
You're making the mistake of thinking that because these holidays aren't explicitly celebrated for white people, they aren't at all. But there's a vast difference between the ideals that large segments of the country celebrates and the practical reality of it. When a white man goes to a Fourth of July celebration and sees ten white soldiers and a black soldier who was especially brought there, that isn't multiculturalism, that's tokenism. It's still perpetuating the inherent racism of the project while pretending that the racism doesn't exist any more.
Be aware of singing as if you were half dead,
or half asleep:
but lift your voice with strength.
Be no more afraid of your voice now,
nor more ashamed of its being heard,
than when you sang the songs of Satan.
you are making the exact opposite mistake. you are making an huge assumption that they are strictly celebrated as white holiday's and they aren't.
this whole thing of "The Great White Guilt Trip" gets extremely old. to the point that it is obnoxious. fortuantly for me it doesn't work. I have no guilt.
4th of july celebrates the birth of our country.
memorial day celebrates the men and women of all races that died fighting for our country.
to say that they are explicitly white celebrations is logically flawed. it is also a bit of a my-optic point of view.
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Myopic. Myopic is the word you're looking for. My-optic doesn't mean anything. Myopic.
Anyways, I disagree with this sentient largely because it ignores the history of the founding of our nation. Celebrating the "birth of our nation" is in large part a white celebration because the only people that were citizens in said founding were white male landowners. Do you really think the 4th of July celebrates indigenous persons in America?
You presume that just because something is not de jure white it cannot be de facto white.
What? I never said they were strictly celebrated as such. I'm saying that they are mostly celebrated as such by white people, who use what amounts to tokenism to dispel criticisms that they are exclusively white holidays when they are inextricably tied up in centuries of discrimination and prejudice.
I don't think you're really trying to understand my point.
Be aware of singing as if you were half dead,
or half asleep:
but lift your voice with strength.
Be no more afraid of your voice now,
nor more ashamed of its being heard,
than when you sang the songs of Satan.
People of all races born of families that sacrificed during the various Wars America has been in celebrate Veteran's Day. It's not limited to Whites, Blacks, Asians, Mexicans or what have you. It's an American celebration.
We don't have predominantly white holidays, and we don't need them. I'd rather we celebrate our holidays like they were meant to be celebrated, and not try to turn them into some sort of white nationalist thing that we should be ashamed of.
Christmas is a Christian thing, and there are more than just white Christians.
4th of July is an American thing, and there are more than just white Americans.
Thanksgiving is a family thing, and there are more than just white families that celebrate it every year.
The ONLY reason somebody could be trying to declare that these kinda of holidays are "white holidays" would be because they want to stand on a pulpit and decry racism when it's not even pertinent to the celebration everyone is trying to have.
It's like the extremist decrying rape culture while everyone's trying to enjoy Father's Day.
It's disrespectful to the heritage of American minority families to try and tell them that the various national holidays are "for White people". Moreover, it's just plain sad when I see people who've lost so much faith in a holiday that all they see is racism every time they get a federally granted day off of work or holiday pay.
America welcomes all of it's citizenry regardless of race to celebrate in our culture. That's just the reality of it.
Well, technically, if you know the truth, you're lying. Bull****ting is when you actually believe what you claim. Gillian McKeith saying eating spinach oxygenates your blood (I'm not making this up.) is bull****ting, but if anyone with a basic knowledge of biochemistry said it, it would be lying.
The difficulty with politicians is knowing when they're bull****ting and when they're just lying. I generally assume, for instance, all religious bull****ting is simply bull****ting, as admitting the truth, even to oneself, would be, to a creationist or abstinence-only advocate at least, tantamount to denouncing his religion. (And also putting him at the back of the unemployment line.)
On phasing:
I can't tell if you're intentionally missing my point, or just being dense, but let me try to go through this again.
The point isn't that white Americans actively say "the Fourth of July is only for white Americans" or "only white veterans should be celebrated on Veterans' Day." But they don't have to. To a huge percentage of this country, "American" implies a lot more than citizenship in the United States of America; it's a statement of shared ancestry, shared culture, shared values, and yes, shared race. No-one calls George Bush a "British American" like they call Obama an "African-American," because to many people the unadorned "American" is the only kind of true American.
When many people celebrate holidays like the Fourth of July, they're celebrating an America which they understand without stating it as a white America. They may pay lip service to the idea of a multicultural country, but that's not how they celebrate the holiday, and that's not how they understand it. And this extends far beyond those who are openly or even aware of their racism; there's a reason shows like Band of Brothers only have relatively small roles given to minorities, and it isn't that Spielberg and the rest of Hollywood is racist.
Thanksgiving is a holiday celebrating the systematic disenfranchisement of Native Americans from their lands. It's a "family thing" in the sense that Christmas is a "family thing"; yes, people come together to eat with their families, but they aren't doing it in a vacuum.
Uh-huh.
Straw man.
I'm not the one saying that they are; I'm saying that they are treated that way by a large class of white Americans. I agree that it's shameful, but I'm saying that it does exist.
What's truly sad is to be so jingoistic as to deny the possibility that not everything is as perfect as you'd hope.
Be aware of singing as if you were half dead,
or half asleep:
but lift your voice with strength.
Be no more afraid of your voice now,
nor more ashamed of its being heard,
than when you sang the songs of Satan.
Well, in fairness, I don't understand your point either -- or rather, if I do understand it correctly it amounts to overtly racist twaddle and so I am assuming that I mustn't understand it correctly. For instance, this:
...is actually offensive to me, and that's saying something. In fact, this notion is racist in at least four different ways, which is extraordinary to me:
Give me a ****ing break. Honestly.
Which if thou dost not use for clearing away the clouds from thy mind
It will go and thou wilt go, never to return.
Alright, cool, let's work on this.
Racist? I'd like to see this.
And as I've responded a number of times, that is beside the point.
So if an all-white town--and these are very common, because our nation still has de facto segregation in terms of housing--has an all-white Veteran's Day parade, and no-one thinks that's strange, that's normal?
Issues of race, class, and social structure are inextricably tied up in American society, and have been since its founding. This isn't to say that race is the only factor in American life, but it is immensely important, and to pretend otherwise is to ignore the single factor which is most highly correlated with poverty and lack of educational attainment in America. This isn't a coincidence; it's a result of systemic discrimination which is still only beginning to be addressed.
Who it celebrates, not just on a theoretical level but on a practical, day-to-day level. The theory of a holiday doesn't mean **** if no-one honors the theory in practice.
I'm glad you do. But the fact that you (or I, hi!) am white doesn't mean that we are necessarily ideal representations of our compatriots. That's not an argument, that's extrapolating your particular feelings on the rest of the population when you can't demonstrate that the rest of the population feels the same way (and when it is in fact remarkably easy to demonstrate that significant portions of white America see the world very different from you).
Be aware of singing as if you were half dead,
or half asleep:
but lift your voice with strength.
Be no more afraid of your voice now,
nor more ashamed of its being heard,
than when you sang the songs of Satan.
A charitable interpretation says that Veteran's Day celebrations would include the veterans of that particular locality, so if the population is entirely (or almost entirely) one ethnicity, you would expect only that ethnicity represented among its veterans. If a local parade or whatever doesn't represent the national reality, no big deal, as long as everyone knows it.
So it's just a symptom, not a cause.
Very Well Then I Contradict Myself.
How can it possibly be beside the point? If the assertion is that the presence of minority soldiers is tokenism, but the facts show that the armed forces are at least as if not more racially diverse than the underlying population itself, then the assertion is directly contradicted by the facts. Or in other words, it is:
No less normal than the prior hypothesis of the all-white town was to begin with. If the Veterans' Day parade is meant to honor soldiers from that town, and it's an all-white town, then the soldiers are obviously going to be all white. If there's any racism here, you've injected it by hypothesis -- it didn't appear as a result of anything else.
The problem with this kind of discrimination is precisely that it's not systemic anymore -- racism isn't a "top-down" problem anymore, it's a "bottom-up" one. Which makes it all the more important, in my view, that the posture of someone who is trying to contribute positively to solving this problem should be one of erasing racial differences, not reinforcing the ones that exist and certainly not creating new ones.
Who have you helped by introducing this fatuous distinction between "white" and "non-white" holidays? Not a soul, says I. You've only created an entirely new kind of racial division where there really is absolutely no reason for there to be any whatsoever.
- To the extent that holidays celebrate people at all, are they being celebrated for their merits, or for their race? If Martin Luther King had been Latino (yet still made the same principled stand on civil rights with the same ultimate benefits for all ethnic minorities as well) would MLK day then be a "Latino holiday"? I think that to say so would be the height of absurdity.
This may be presumptuous of me, but going by the content of his public speeches, I'd surmise that MLK would be as incensed as anyone about getting his own holiday only to find that it was being called a "black holiday," reinforcing the very divisions he seemed to want to erase.
- More generally, how do we decide who it celebrates on what you are calling a practical level? It seems that you have been maintaining that because there exist some people that, in their innermost thoughts if not by their words, are only celebrating white veterans on Veterans Day (incidentally, congratulations on completing Cerebro, Professor X) -- that it is a white holiday. But what are the desiderata here? Would the same reasoning apply if it turned out that a sufficient quantity of skinheads were mentally celebrating, say, Jefferson Davis on MLK day?
The claim isn't that everyone thinks the way you or I do -- the claim is that because there are people who think the way you or I do, this overly simplistic and general kind of analysis that describes things in impossibly broad strokes using phrases like "systemic racism" and "most Americans" and "the ideals of large segments of the country" simply will not do.
Which if thou dost not use for clearing away the clouds from thy mind
It will go and thou wilt go, never to return.
You're not backing up your claims that American Holidays are systemically and irreversibly racist because of racism so ingrained in our society that we just can't "see" it.
Points have been made against your argument showing the flawed presentation of your claims, and you just continue to reply with essentially "That's besides the point, the holiday is still racist". Which isn't doing a thing to convince anybody, or to even help anyone understand your point of view.
If you hate American holidays so much because all you see is "White America" everytime Veteran's Day comes around than don't celebrate it. But don't expect the majority of rational people to agree that they are all celebrating racism every time they fly an American flag in tribute.