From July 12th to 22nd 2019 I got nearly all my news from Tucker Carlson on the far-right-wing Fox News in the US. It was worse than I expected:
- I have never been so poorly informed since I was eight. I say eight because at age nine I started reading MAD magazine.
- I learned more about those ten days from ten minutes of Democracy Now! (or two pages of The Economist) than from the ten days of Tucker Carlson.
- When I went on a Breitbart News diet for a week in 2017, I said it was like hearing 60% of the conversation. This was like hearing 30%.
Hatred: He misrepresents the Democrats, the main left-leaning party in the US. There is no attempt to properly report their positions, much less understand them. Just an attempt to make them look bad, look evil, look threatening, look like people you cannot even reason with. If Democrats were truly that way, then that would just be the news. But he is making it up. He is lying to get people to hate Democrats (or confirm their hatred).
Fear: He also fearmongers against immigrants.
Talking points: The two main points Tucker Carlson was hammering home during these ten days:
- Immigrants are lawbreakers who threaten the nation.
- President Trump is not racist. Democrats just call him that because they hate him.
Those are also two common positions held by Trump supporters. Their image of themselves as good people requires them to hold #2. Carlson tells them what they want to hear.
The Squad: During the Ten Days of Tucker the big news story in the US was President Trump’s racist tweets against The Squad, four freshman Democratic Congresswomen: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib and Ayanna Pressley. All four are US citizens, three are US-born, but none are White.
Trump tweeted on July 14th:
“So interesting to see ‘Progressive’ Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world (if they even have a functioning government at all), now loudly……
“…and viciously telling the people of the United States, the greatest and most powerful Nation on earth, how our government is to be run. Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came. Then come back and show us how….
“….it is done. These places need your help badly, you can’t leave fast enough. I’m sure that Nancy Pelosi would be very happy to quickly work out free travel arrangements!”
It was not till the 23rd that I even saw those tweets. Carlson would never show them or repeat them, even though they were at the heart of his biggest story.
And it was also not till the 23rd that I found out that there were Republicans who condemned what Trump said. Presumably Carlson did not point that out because it would have undermined Talking Point #2.
– Abagond, 2019.
See also:
- Programming note #39 – when I started the news diet
- Tucker Carlson
- Fox News
- Donald Trump
- The perpetual foreigner stereotype
- The Squad
- Ilhan Omar
- Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
- Ayanna Pressley
- Rashida Tlaib
- media diet:
- Democracy Now!
- The Economist
572
I am not sure how to comment. it has been known for years that a wing of Fox News is dedicated to this kind of garbage!
Why be shocked?
Selective reading and listening get a person to one side of any subject matter.
On the non-Fox side many reporters have some of the anti-Trump words.
We have to be alert and make certain we stay alert.
Look to the older wiser leaders, with proven records for advice!
Thanks for this article and i hope your physician-psychologist can assist you in some manner of getting over ten days of “tucker”!
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abagond:
I found an error in this paragraph:
“The Squad: During the Ten Days of Tucker the big news story in the US was President Trump’s racist tweets again The Squad, four freshman Democratic Congresswomen”
( Trump’s racist tweets again ) I think you meant to insert, “against” The Squad”
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Trump is going to win in 2020 because Trump isn’t the problem. America is the problem.
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I. Can’t. Even. Imagine!
Seriously, I try to force myself to listen to 10-15 minutes of Rush Limbaugh each week just to learn the extreme-right’s talking points for the week and that’s literally all it takes. As you saw with Tucker… 10 days and he repeatedly hammered on two basic points. It’s all like a moron’s term paper with an unsupportable thesis statement and pages upon pages of filler and fluff that adds nothing but repetition.
I don’t know how you did it.
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@Abagond
Technically speaking, AOC is of European heritage mostly, so that does make her indeed a member of the white race. Her ancestors came mainly from Spain, and she has a Spanish name. Most Puerto Ricans are of Spanish origin, and Latin people are white biologically speaking. White doesn’t just mean persons of Anglo-Celtic origin, you know. Spain is European, as is England.
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@ Sondis
Thanks!
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To what a poor diet you were subjecting yourself!
Please move quickly to a normal one, before you become sick!
Jesus!
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Seriously, this would make me mentally and spiritually and probably physically ill.
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@Everett F. Pomare
The French have a saying: “Europe ends at the Pyrenees”. As far as many Europeans are concerned, the Spanish are a blended people. They have European ancestry from the original Iberians, Celts, Goths and Visigoths. They have African ancestry from the Phonecians and the Moorish period. They also have South Asian ancestry from the Roma (aka Gypsies) who thrived in Spain during the Moorish period.
As far as the Puerto Ricans are concerned, they are also heavily blended with Indigenous (Taino) ancestry, Africans and the already blended Spanish.
In speaking about herself, AOC has been clear to identify herself as a member of the Latinx and brown communities.
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Another missed opportunity at parody. Abagond, if you had gone 2 more days you could have written this post as a parody of the 12 days of Christmas. “On the first day of Carlson…”
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“Technically speaking, AOC is of European heritage mostly, so that does make her indeed a member of the white race.”
Hmmm, you know that how and based on what standard?
“The French have a saying: “Europe ends at the Pyrenees”. ”
People say all kinds of things. It didn’t stop them from a murderous rage to keep Algeria and other African lands ‘French’.
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“People say all kinds of things. It didn’t stop them from a murderous rage to keep Algeria and other African lands ‘French.’”
French colonies. French cash cows. Not French citizens.
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@Afrofem: I didn’t know the Phonecians were black. Now I will have to do some reading on this.
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@All
Sorry, but Latin people (Spanish, Italian, etc.) are members of the white race biologically speaking, and even most Puerto Ricans are white per the census. Many pf AOC’s ancestors were white Europeans, folks. By your logic, I guess that Julius Caesar was not white either. Also by your logic, neither was Cicero. They were Latin, too. I don’t doubt that she has some colored ancestry, but she is mainly European.
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Afrofem, some of these Africans were French citizens.
“Adolphe Sylvestre Félix Éboué (1 January 1884 – 17 May 1944) was a French colonial administrator and Free French leader. He was the first black French man appointed to a high post in the French colonies, when appointed as Governor of Guadeloupe in 1936. As governor of Chad (part of French Equatorial Africa) during most of World War II, he helped build support for Charles de Gaulle’s Free French in 1940, leading to broad electoral support for the Gaullists faction after the war. He supported educated Africans and placed more in the colonial administration, as well as supporting preservation of African culture. He was the first black person to have his ashes placed at the Pantheon in Paris after his death in 1944.”
Haitians were French citizens before they became Haitians. A number of Black Africans were members of French governments.
You might find the following of interest.
“Évolué (French: [evɔlɥe], lit. “evolved” or “developed”) is a French label used during the colonial era to refer to a native African or Asian who had “evolved” by becoming Europeanised through education or assimilation and had accepted European values and patterns of behavior. It is most commonly used to refer to individuals within the Belgian and French colonial empires. Évolués spoke French, followed European (rather than customary) laws, usually held white-collar jobs (although rarely higher than clerks), and lived primarily in urban areas of the colony.”
“Jump to search
Assimilation was one ideological basis of French colonial policy in the 19th and 20th centuries. In contrast with British imperial policy, the French taught their subjects that, by adopting French language and culture, they could eventually become French. The famous ‘Four Communes’ in Senegal were seen as proof of this. Here Africans were afforded all the rights of French citizens.”
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Everett F. Pomare
You failed to state the percentage of AOC’s white ancestry and the standard you used to declare her white. Latin people being white is irrelevant since she is of more than Latin ancestry.
Sorry, but you haven’t made your case.
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@Gro Jo
I don’t know what AOC’s European percentages are, but you are right in saying that she’s not solely of European descent, though I WILL say that she may have some Middle Eastern (Jewish, perhaps) in her. Many Spanish folks have some Jewish in them because they descend from Jews who fled Spain for the colonies during the Inquisition. An old teacher of mine, Dr. Edward Cornejo, had his family flee to what is now Ecuador due to the persecution of Jews back in Spain by the Catholic leadership there. Either way, she could still be mainly of European ancestry. Looks can be deceiving, after all. I mean, if we want to all be logical, her roots are Southern European, not Northern. There are Italians out there who look like her, you know.
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@Afrofem
Thing is, “Latinx” (which is not even real or even proper Spanish; the term is “Latino,” even when referring to all genders) implies European origin. Latins specifically include the French, Italians, Spanish, Portuguese, and even Roumanians. What these peoples have in common is that they are all of European origin. Maybe the ones in the Americas might not all necessarily be full-blooded whites, but they are still culturally European. Remember, the original “Latinos” were an Italian tribe living near what is now Rome, and there were similar peoples there, too, such as the Etruscans, who were also white people. White does not have to always mean Anglo-Saxon.
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@ Everett F. Pomare
“even most Puerto Ricans are white per the census”
That is self-reporting, not something they have to prove by DNA evidence or a genealogical tree. I could tick off the African American box next census and that’s how it would get reported. No one checks up on it.
At any rate, AOC identifies as a woman of color. She uses that term to describe herself all the time. So if she doesn’t consider herself white, and you don’t have any proof that she is predominately of European descent, then Abagond wasn’t wrong in what he said.
You are correct that Spanish names are European names and that many white people have Spanish names.
But at the same time, AOC is in fact racially mixed and proudly embraces that heritage: “to be Puerto Rican is to be the descendant of: African Moors + slaves, Taino Indians, Spanish colonizers, Jewish refugees, and likely others. We are all of these things and something else all at once—we are Boricua.”
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@Solitaire
I read that article a while ago. Ancestry and genealogy are fascinating things, you’re right. Especially here in the Americas, where racial purity is very rare, even amongst white people. Heck, ethnic purity is even rare amongst the Europeans themselves! The French, for instance, are the result of miscegenation between the native Gauls (who are themselves the result of mixing between British Celts and the earliest inhabitants of the region), Romans, and even Germans. In fact, many Celtic tribes had bases on both the Continent in Gaul as well as in Britain. An example of this are the Parisians, even though scholars aren’t sure whether the Gallic Parisians were the same people as the ones in Britain. In any case, the French are mutts. The same goes for all other peoples all over the world. Another good example: the Greeks, who are the descendants of mixed unions between the Pelasgians, won lived on the continental border with Asia in the Urals in what is now Russia, as well as the native pre-Hellenic peoples who lived there for thousands of years before the Greeks arrived. See what I am meaning? Go back far enough and you’ll see we are all mixed in some way! That is more true in the New World!
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@ Everett F. Pomare
“Maybe the ones in the Americas might not all necessarily be full-blooded whites, but they are still culturally European.”
What about all the Latin Americans who are full or primarily Native? Are they culturally European? If so, does that make them white? Does that make Natives in the U.S. white?
What about all the Filipinos with Spanish names? Are they white?
Is it possible for a people to have two cultures simultaneously? Can Native peoples be Hispanic/Anglo (depending on which part of the Americas they are from) and yet also have their own indigenous culture?
You have a European name; being from the U.S. you have been raised in a European-based society and culture; if I remember correctly, you’ve stated that you have some European blood. Would you be okay with AOC pointing out those things to prove that you are white?
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@ Everett F. Pomare
“The French, for instance, are the result of miscegenation between the native Gauls (who are themselves the result of mixing between British Celts and the earliest inhabitants of the region), Romans, and even Germans.”
True, and the particular group for which the modern French are named — the Franks — were a Germanic tribe.
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Having European blood doesn’t necessarily make one a member of the white race in the same way that having African blood doesn’t necessarily make one a member of the black race. I think it’s good to embrace all of your genealogy.
Also, regarding France, I think the German word for the country literally means “Land of the Franks.”
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@ gro jo
Thank you for your history snippets. While I don’t doubt the veracity of your statements, I still come away thinking of French White Supremacy as just another flavor of Colonial Arrogance Pie—a dish I’ve come to loathe.
“Assimilation was one ideological basis of French colonial policy in the 19th and 20th centuries. In contrast with British imperial policy, the French taught their subjects that, by adopting French language and culture, they could eventually become French.”
So with the British and Germans, Black people are literally ‘beyond the pale’.
With the Spanish and Portuguese, wealth whitens. With the French, if Black people are willing to commit cultural and linguistic suicide, they are grudgingly let in the back door and called French.
Such a deal. Same pie, same crust, different filling.
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@ Everett F. Pomare
“Latinx” (which is not even real or even proper Spanish; the term is “Latino,” even when referring to all genders)”
Latinx is used by contemporary US Latinx community members (an others) as a non-sexist alternative to Latino or Latina.
“By your logic, I guess that Julius Caesar was not white either. Also by your logic, neither was Cicero. They were Latin, too.”
Fascinating.
I point out the blended ancestry of the Spanish and Puerto Ricans and you toss Julius Caesar and Cicero into the hopper? That is quite a reach.
Truth be told, all the people in all Mediterranean societies (Southern Europeans, North Africans and West Asians ) are blended. They have been trading, fighting and sexually mingling across that body of water for millennia.
It matters very little how they (or you) label them, they are basically the same people. There are local variations in appearance, with some paler and some darker. However, they are all mixed to some degree.
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“@ gro jo
Thank you for your history snippets. While I don’t doubt the veracity of your statements, I still come away thinking of French White Supremacy as just another flavor of Colonial Arrogance Pie—a dish I’ve come to loathe.”
My dear Afrofem, my “history snippets.” weren’t meant to sell you on the merits of French imperialism. Your comment seemed to imply that French citizenship was closed to non-Europeans, an inaccurate notion.
Several ersatz French were instrumental in expending and maintaining the French empire, as the life of Mr. Éboué and others similarly situated showed. Hell, even Frantz Fanon was a good Frenchman, so much so, that he volunteered to fight for France in WWII. Most Black American militants learned their ‘Blackness’ at his feet!
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@All
“Latinx” is STILL not a real term; the term is “Latino” when male or speaking of all genders at once, and is “Latina” when speaking of females alone.
When we say “Los Latinos,” for example, we can be referring to all Latin people in general, regardless of their sex. We could, though, also be referring to the males alone. When we say “Las Latinas,” we are using the feminine, and only referring to the feminine.
Examples:
“Los niños están en su casa”
(The children are at home; the children are at their home)
“Las niñas están en su casa”
(The girls are at home; the girls are at their home)
Note, however, that the first example can also be translated to mean “The BOYS are at home,” if our context tells us that we are talking about a group of boys at their abode, and if we want to be a bit informal, we can even call them “los chicos,” and the girls “las chicas.” In Spanish, the words have sexes, though sometimes there is a neuter. One of the great things about Spanish is that it’s a whole lot more accurate, straightforward, and to the point than English is, so you know exactly what you’re talking about right away. I mean, if I say “Dr. Engle” in English, I could be talking about either a guy or a woman, and you’d never know by having it stand alone, unless I include a first name. However, if i say “el Dr. Engle” in Spanish, automatically you’ll know that I’m talking about a guy, and in the same way, “la Dra. Engle” means that it’s a she.
“Latinx” has never been a real term, so if you are writing in English, just say “Latins” if you want.
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@everett i was trying to follow you but then you said ‘miscegnation’
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@ abagond
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jul/25/race-east-jackson-ohio-appalachia-white-black?utm_term=RWRpdG9yaWFsX0d1YXJkaWFuVG9kYXlVUy0xOTA3MjU%3D&utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=GuardianTodayUS&CMP=GTUS_email
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Mr. Shaw, we’ve had our differences, but I want to thank you for this piece of comedy created by racism.
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“Ethnic Purity”? Is that something to strive for? Colonization has made ethnic purity an impossibility – one thing that colonizers didn’t think about before they started taking land and riches from the people who were Natives in their own real estate. I see Tucker Carlson hasn’t fixed his face yet.
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@gro jo
Hey. I really enjoy your “history snippets.”
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Ms. Ocasio-Cortez: “But to be Puerto Rican is to be the descendant of: African Moors + slaves, Taino Indians, Spanish colonizers, Jewish refugees, and likely others. We are all of these things and something else all at once — we are Boricua.” – you educate them girl.
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@Doris
What about Americans? Americans are just as mixed. Most white and other-raced Americans are descended from British colonizers, so what is your point? America is culturally English, with some other things in between.
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@ Abagond
You really need to read the Guardian article Allen Shaw linked to above. What the nearby town has done and is still doing to the people featured in the article is an incredible example of the one-drop rule. This is excellent evidence that racial oppression causes poverty across the board, not some genetic deficit in certain races like the race realists argue.
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@Everett F. Pomare: Ocasio-Cortez is American. America is not culturally English. The Spaniards colonized the Americas first. The English founded the 13 colonies and began evolving the United States from there. My point is that people of color are always have to educate the melanin challenged.
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Puerto Rico is part of the United States, yet their culture is not English.
Descendants of the early Dutch colonists were also instrumental in forming the Thirteen Colonies.
Really we don’t have an English culture in the United States. We do speak English, but our version isn’t British English by a long shot, and it has lots of loanwords from other languages.
We do have some traditions and institutions that are English in origin, but even those are heavily influenced by other cultures as well — we don’t have them in pure English form.
We’re missing a lot of quintessential English traditions like afternoon tea and cricket. (Some Americans do both, of course, but just in isolated pockets; these things aren’t integral parts of U.S. culture.)
We also have nationwide traditions that are from other places in Europe, like Santa Claus and Christmas trees. And our homegrown forms of music all have African roots.
Just like most people in the United States are racially/ethnically mixed, U.S. culture is racially/ethnically mixed.
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@Doris
AOC is an American. Sorry for the confusion. Anyway, what I meant to say is that yes, American culture is essentially that of an English sort. Look at the food, the dances, the surnames, and everything else. America is English with some mixtures added in. As I said before, most Americans have at least some English in them, and the majority of the white people in this country are descended from white colonists. Yes, there is indeed some mixture, but legitimate American culture is fundamentally English. A good way of finding this out for yourselves if you are out with family is by taking a trip to Dollywood in Tennessee.
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@Everett F. Pomaro “Biologically speaking”, race does not exist. It is foolish and dangerous to speak of race in such terms. White people are people who do not have the social stain of “color” (which only somewhat maps to actual skin color) imposed on them by the white hegemony. Just like the Poles who had German names in World War II, “white” Latin@ people are being forced in the United States to make a devil’s choice–to be white and betray themselves and their ancestors, or to be Latin@ and to lose, forever, any benefits they may have had from being white. The category of “white Latin@” is being defined out of existence because it no longer serves the agenda of the white bourgeoisie. They make the rules of race, and they change the rules at their convenience.
For siding against that white bourgeoisie and their system of domination instead of giving into it and formally declaring herself Volksamerikanische, AOC is POC, not white, just like the farmers named Schneider and Steuer and Böning who, forced to choose a nation, said , “I am a Pole” were then, there, and forevermore Poles, part of the Polish cause, and enemies of Nazi Germany. They resisted, suffered, and died alongside people named Kowalski and Wybuda and Kiewicz. “White” Latin@s who embrace their roots in Spain’s American colonies, whatever their “blood”, will do–will have no choice but to do–the same. And for the same reason, Barack Obama is black, he was always black, and will forever be remembered as the first black President of the United States as long as anyone remembers the United States.
But let’s not fool ourselves about the name “Latin@”. The name is a euphemism, to paper over what the gringos are really scared of–“Indio”. First Nations culture is still alive and celebrated in Mexico, and was allowed to mix into the white culture without its essential indio-ness being denied, and that means Latin@ people are reminders to white Americans that “their country” is stolen property and its original possessors still exist, hence the choice facing European-looking Latin@s to destroy themselves and remake themselves as Anglo–or else, much like the existence of Poles was intolerable to the Germans of Prussia, who had built a colonial outpost of Germany in a Baltic-Slavic land, which led to Nazism, World War II, and Prussia’s dismemberment by Russia and Poland. (I’ve been reading the Black Book of Poland, a detailed and extremely gruesome accounting of Nazi atrocities in Poland, compiled by the exiled Polish government in 1942. The parallels to America are chilling, even more so when you consider that Hitler was deeply influenced by trashy Western novels, explicitly held up the Anglo model of race as a model for Nazi racial “theory”, and likewise treated the genocide of the First Nations as a model for what to do to the rest of humanity.)
And let’s not get started on “miscegenation”. What is this, 1955? Is it somehow bad that Romans, Gauls, and Franks had children with one another instead of, I don’t know, running each other through with swords like they’d been doing for the past five hundred years? Keep the Latin race pure! Snowmen out of Italia! Ban those effeminate, provocative trousers the blond people wear! Make Roma Great Again! What nonsense!
(the real joke behind those jokes: that’s what the Tucker Carlsons of the Roman Empire actually believed! We have their manuscripts where they said all these things and more)
And this is why friends don’t let friends do essentialism. There is no biological basis to being white, or black, or any other race. It’s all a shell game for white capitalists to keep the colonial gravy train rolling until the last remnants of our biosphere dessicate, turns to dust, and blow away, and justify all the blood on their hands. Rules lawyering with blood quanta is pointless when the rules are whatever rich white folks want them to be at any given time.
@gro jo Perhaps the French told themselves that they treated “evolved” black people as French people, but, since you bring up Frantz Fanon, if they actually did, all the things he talked about in Black Skin, White Masks wouldn’t have happened. Acting French, dressing French, eating French, speaking French, thinking French, no matter how hard Fanon and his patients tried to be the Frenchest Frenchmen who ever Frenched, none of them would ever be French in the eyes of the white French. That’s the whole point of the famous “Look, a negro” passage. In the end, the little white boy will always say “Look, Maman, a negro” and the black man’s body will always return to him mortified. That’s why he wasn’t let into Paris for the V-E Day parade. That’s why he went to Algeria and became a revolutionary.
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@ Everett F. Pomare
“Look at the food, the dances, the surnames, and everything else.”
90% or more of the surnames where I grew up are German. To this day it is typical in the area to have a Kirchenfest (not a “church picnic”) at which much of the food is German, the dances are German, and there’s always a Biergarten. They even hold a Polka Mass, for heaven’s sake!
Consider the quintessential American foods: hot dogs, hamburgers, pizza. None of these are English in origin. American fried chicken is a combination of traditions from West Africa and Scotland (which is not the same as English). Apple pie, that one is English. But pumpkin pie, turkey, cranberry sauce — none of these are English in origin.
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@ Everett F. Pomare
“As I said before, most Americans have at least some English in them”
Nope, more Americans have German, African, Irish, or Mexican ancestry:
https://blogs.voanews.com/all-about-america/2014/12/19/people-of-german-ancestry-dominate-us-melting-pot/
“the majority of the white people in this country are descended from white colonists”
If by “white colonists” you mean people who came here before 1776, that’s also wrong. The majority of white Americans are descended from the European immigrants of the 1800s.
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@ gro jo
“Your comment seemed to imply that French citizenship was closed to non-Europeans, an inaccurate notion.”
Point taken.
Still, citizenship does not equal full social standing as a member of the “in-group”. That seems to be another matter altogether.
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@Afrofem: See open thread. I have a question.
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@ Everett F. Pomare
Latinx is not meant to be real or proper Spanish. It is a modern word that comes from modern Spanish speaking Americans. Spanish and English are living and dynamic languages subject to change over time.
Latin@ is a term used in similar fashion. Thank you Solitaire and tankermottind!
“…legitimate American culture is fundamentally English.”
‘Legitimate’ as defined by whom? The millions of Euro Americans who are of German descent? As Solitaire pointed out upthread, Germany was the number one source of European immigrants to the US. Not the English or the Scots.
Dollywood celebrates an American subculture. Even that is not English. Most White people in Appalachia are descendants of the Ulster Irish aka the Scotch-Irish.
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@ tankermottind
Well said!
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The Ulster Irish are essentially the same as the English, though. As a matter of fact, the peoples of the British Isles are all genetically and culturally very similar, be they English, Scottish, Welsh, or Irish. I stand by my point. Most Americans of the white race are the descendants of colonists from the UK.
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The discourse of this thread led me to go to my personal book stacks and pull out Nell Irvin Painter’s The History of White People.
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@Afrofem
I get that it’s not a real Spanish word, but still, “Latinx” isn’t proper Spanish. If you went to a Spanish nation and said that, they wouldn’t know what you were talking about. Spanish, unlike present English, has grammatical sexuality, something English used to have a long time ago, believe it or not.
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Other then some medical identifiable requirement based on some long proven fact, there is no reason to talk about race.
If one could prove that a female of the species could not mate with the male there would be a problem.Today we are just talking nonsense!
Since there are still individuals who believe the world is just a couple of thousand years old, instead of maybe a couple of billion years old also no one knows when man first appeared, this conversation will continue with the seriousness of great knowledge!
While this conversation is taking place, daily people who some call white are mixing it up with some call “other”.
Reminds me of Louisianian when the attempted to use terms like Mulatto and the many variations that were the result of such crap. My grandfathers were mulattoes, me I am just plain black! My daughter tells me her DNA tells her she has more white background than black! By the way no one has ever said what race my grandmothers were but I believe one may have been mixed.
So for those who hate other races, be careful you may hate yourself!
On a case by case basis I imagine the mental abilities would be equal based on many different circumstances such as a persons surroundings.
It is difficult to keep up with this subject because of the many comments and also trying to keep up with “the Donald and his pirates”!
What group of needy people did the current government attack to day while everyone was discussing race or some other “nothing” subject. O, food stamps for those in need!
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@ Everett F. Pomare
“The Ulster Irish are essentially the same as the English, though. As a matter of fact, the peoples of the British Isles are all genetically and culturally very similar, be they English, Scottish, Welsh, or Irish.”
No, they are not. The Anglo-Saxons were Germanic — even the Norman French were largely of Germanic stock — and the Irish, Scots, and Welsh are Celts. The Celtic language branch of Indo-European is analogous to the Germanic branch or the Romance branch. That means Scots Gaelic is as different from English as English is from French or Italian. I’m talking here about the actual language of the Scots, not the Scottish dialect of English.
I have another reason for maintaining that the U.S. is not culturally English. I lived one summer in England for study abroad. Their food was not my food, their vocabulary was not my vocabulary, their social cues and norms were not the same as mine. I made faux-pas after faux-pas by saying things or doing things that are perfectly correct and acceptable in America. I was appalled to discover their class system was far more intact than I’d been led to believe, and I couldn’t figure out how to navigate it without inadvertently offending people on both sides of the divide. I offended the custodial staff by being “overly familiar” (i.e. friendly and polite) with them! I got a lecture about how that implied they didn’t know their place!
Oh, and I left out peanut butter above, the classic childhood food of Americans — also not English in the slightest.
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https://theculturetrip.com/north-america/usa/new-york/articles/the-rise-of-latinx-in-americas-spanish-speaking-communities/
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“Still, citizenship does not equal full social standing as a member of the “in-group”. That seems to be another matter altogether.”
The Jews have been in Europe for over a thousand years and are considered not part of the “in-group”. Why would you think that Blacks, who look even less than the “in-group”, would be accepted without reservations? Both Jews and Blacks have held high offices in predominantly White societies for over 200 years. From time to time, things breakdown and atavistic crap resurface. That’s just the way it is. The world isn’t built on love, nothing changes faster then that feeling. As Syria and other recent conflicts show, people who lived side by side and got on well enough can turn on each other very fast, if the conditions are right.
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@ Everett F. Pomare
I forgot something important I meant to add to my account of my experiences in England. While I grew up among German Americans, I’m actually from that old colonial stock you’re talking about, and a sizable percentage of my ancestry is English. Even with that backgound, I experienced a huge cultural clash. I have never felt more like a foreigner than when I was in England.
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“Dollywood celebrates an American subculture. Even that is not English.”
Yes! Just try to find cornbread, hush puppies, mustard greens, and black-eyed peas in England.
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@Solitaire
What you’re saying about the Saxons is very true. After the Romans ended their four hundred years-long adventure in Britain, the area once again became vulnerable to attack and invasion from outside. The indigenous Celts were mostly left to their own devices, and this opened the opportunity for large groups of Germans to settle in Britain. Hengist and Horsa are said to have been among the leaders of the German settlers to Britain, and eventually they would mix with the natives (in addition to lots of slaughter), becoming the English of today. The version of German they spoke evolved into English, you know.
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Thinking about this some more, I wanted to point out that just as traditional U.S. cuisine is different from English cuisine, the same is true of Spanish cuisine and Mexican cuisine.
There has of course been a lot of borrowing on both sides through the Columbian Exchange: https://abagond.wordpress.com/2018/10/18/the-columbian-exchange/
But at its core, Mexican cuisine is still based on traditional Indigenous cooking styles and foodstuffs, especially the Three Sisters (maize, squash, beans) but also tomatoes, avocados, etc.
Also, a number of things we tend to think of as traditional Mexican foods were actually invented in the U.S. in relatively recent times. If memory serves, this is especially true of Tex-Mex cooking, but some have been developed in California and other states.
I don’t know much about the cuisine in Puerto Rico or other parts of Latin America, but I expect there is a similar pattern.
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