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RE: The Hyphen - 5/30/2007 8:26:22 AM   
pahunkboy


Posts: 33061
Joined: 2/26/2006
From: Central Pennsylvania
Status: offline 		ok- i happen to be gay. i happen to be an American.  i tend to stay away from gay american to define me. i display no gay emlems on my person or possesssions. it is irrelevent.

I AM HUMAN.   ppl. get a grip.

living in hicksville- i can say that blacks have a hard time. it is easier to be gay then black here.  but only because the diffeence is easily discernaable.

if i was black and left Chicago for a small town- ild run into all kinds of walls. but since one cant easily say-ahah roger is gay=- i have had it easier.

tho- lemme say this. small towns thinsg are subtle. my Chicago bold attitude was NOT welcomed here. it is perceived as rude. this is where some ehtnic groups coming in have  friction from the locals.  things are low key and suble.  you have to take on the local ways to fit in.

a week or 2 back- im glad i did not play the gay card. some minorties do such sonner then need be and it back fires.

if i offended anyone im sorry. small towns are--- a world of their own making.  fit in or move on. thats the reality.

some have come from Philly and found a better life. others end up in trouble with the law by bringing their city ways here.

the cops play for real here,. jail space is available- and irregardless of color we have law and order.

ya cant have it both ways.

i purposefully am reaching out to neighbors- so when gangs try to go wild we will be ready.

treat others as you wish to be treated. how hard is that>?

(in reply to IrishMist)
Profile   Post #: 21
RE: The Hyphen - 5/30/2007 8:34:01 AM   
puella


Posts: 2457
Joined: 12/2/2004
Status: offline 		There is this too...

My mother was born and grew up as a young girl in Italy.  All of the traditions of her region  have been carefully and reverently passed to me and my siblings and it is a very special part of our family.  We love our traditions and all the meaning they hold for us. 

Saying that, though, there is a difference.  I have travelled and lived in many places outside of the US.  I have lived in Italy.  The same 'traditions' become a bit different when practiced in a different environment.. and there is a definate difference between the Italian and the Italian-American (I would bet it is the same for many other cultural groups as well, and not just isolated to Italians).  So what happens is that the way we celebrate and participate in tradition actually does change from Italian, to Italian-American.  I can not say that much of these traditions are at all American... most Americans I know do not practice them.... they are not intrinsic to our nation's heritage.

I think it is completely legitimate to refer to various cultures within the American melting pot... actually I think it is really beautiful.

_____________________________

We must move forward, not backward, upward, not forward, and always twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom...... The Simpsons

War is God's way of teaching Americans geography." ...Ambrose Bierce

"Don't you oppress me!"....Stan/Loretta

(in reply to NavyDDG54)
Profile   Post #: 22
RE: The Hyphen - 5/30/2007 8:47:34 AM   
NavyDDG54


Posts: 203
Joined: 1/10/2005
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: juliaoceania

If you feel that it is divisive to be proud of one's ethic past, that is because you resent that other people are on some level.

And I am sure that if you were in a room full of Polish Americans, you would indeed claim it and name it for yourself as a source of pride and connection to those around you..



I am not saying dont be proud of you backround. But when you let it isolate you from the rest of the country then you have a problem. Yes there is oppression in our country, but if people didnt take race or ethnicity into account when dealing with people, oppression would be drastically reduced.

and as for your 'hypothetical scenario' I was in that situation at the my great uncle's funeral when the family from Poland came. and they wanted to know why he was being buried in the US and not Poland. In his will he specifically stated that he was American, despite being born in Poland, he worked hard in the US, served in the US Army, and lived his life in the US. He used to tell my brother and I that being in America is a gift, it is a privilage, one that did not exist in this world prior to the revolution. Even today, the fact that America has always been a melting pot of culture has shaped who and what we are.  The reason that has happened is because cultures were willing to mix. That is becoming less and less evident. Cultures was to be isolated. They dont tolerate mixture. I'm not saying we should all be blond hair/blue eyes. But we cant be a country full of isolated cultures and peoples, America cannot survive like that. I will borrow Abe Lincoln's quote, from a different time about a different issue "I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free."
The concept is still true today. the more divided we become, the more isolationist groups appear and grow inside America, the less likely this great country of ours has of suriviving.

(in reply to juliaoceania)
Profile   Post #: 23
RE: The Hyphen - 5/30/2007 8:53:10 AM   
Lordandmaster


Posts: 10943
Joined: 6/22/2004
Status: offline 		Oh, don't be so puzzeled.  Maybe it's because Americans have heard all this before and are tired of responding?  For a post that pretends to object to all the cleavages and divisiveness in American life, what you have to say is as divisive as anything I've read.  Let people be whatever they want to be.  Nobody ever asked you to approve how they identify themselves.

quote:

ORIGINAL: NavyDDG54

However I am puzzeled as to why, despite the fact this post was directed at Americans, the only replies have been from foreigners?

(in reply to NavyDDG54)
Profile   Post #: 24
RE: The Hyphen - 5/30/2007 8:54:36 AM   
NavyDDG54


Posts: 203
Joined: 1/10/2005
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: puella
I think it is completely legitimate to refer to various cultures within the American melting pot... actually I think it is really beautiful.


In the OP the 'hyphen' is not to be taken so literally. call yourselves what you want. but dont let that 'hyphen' turn you into isolationists. Which is what is happening in many communities.

(in reply to puella)
Profile   Post #: 25
RE: The Hyphen - 5/30/2007 8:55:30 AM   
meatcleaver


Posts: 9030
Joined: 3/13/2006
Status: offline 		I have to admit to not being able to understand why so many Americans identitfy themselves with their cultural roots when their culture is clearly American. As for ethnicity being Irish, Italian or German, that is pretty laughable because there is no genetic difference between most Europeans worth discussing. There is a variation and one can apparently map some migrations through Europe genetically. But let us take the Irish as an example or English or Scottish, the mix of ethnic groups on these islands is such that to claim to be truely one or the other is often a joke. Celtic culture is in fact an invention of the 19th century for nationalist reasons, before that there were just variatiants of north-west European culture. Then isolate oneself from the original culture that is geographically based and to carry on identifying oneself with that culture is merely sentimental. I was discussing this with an Irish friend once and pointed out when the English leave England, they leave and take on the identity of where they migrate to, hence no Anglo-Americans, or whatever. Dhould those Americans return to the country of their ancestors I'm sure they will feel they are American and probably will be told they are American too.

But I guess identity is shifting sands. My brother says he feels American because he has lived there so long despite him still having a British passport. I have a sentimental attachment to Britain and have a British passport but I don't feel at home when I visit Britain. My daughter has four different European national passports and calls herself European rather than identifying herself with one.

I guess it all comes down to whether you can rely on your fellow nationals when you need to. My guess in modern nations you can't, nation states appear to be breaking down. That might be a good thing or a bad thing.

_____________________________

There are fascists who consider themselves humanitarians, like cannibals on a health kick, eating only vegetarians.

(in reply to NavyDDG54)
Profile   Post #: 26
RE: The Hyphen - 5/30/2007 8:57:35 AM   
puella


Posts: 2457
Joined: 12/2/2004
Status: offline 		Strange... I have not noticed that at all. 

_____________________________

We must move forward, not backward, upward, not forward, and always twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom...... The Simpsons

War is God's way of teaching Americans geography." ...Ambrose Bierce

"Don't you oppress me!"....Stan/Loretta

(in reply to NavyDDG54)
Profile   Post #: 27
RE: The Hyphen - 5/30/2007 9:38:43 AM   
juliaoceania


Posts: 21383
Joined: 4/19/2006
From: Somewhere Over the Rainbow
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: NavyDDG54

quote:

ORIGINAL: puella
I think it is completely legitimate to refer to various cultures within the American melting pot... actually I think it is really beautiful.


In the OP the 'hyphen' is not to be taken so literally. call yourselves what you want. but dont let that 'hyphen' turn you into isolationists. Which is what is happening in many communities.


It seems you are the isolationist, resenting hyphens and insisting that we label ourselves what you think we should instead of embracing what it means to be from different places. I am well aware of the John Wayne thing... we studied the hyphen in my ethnic difference class too... what i am saying is that the only people that have trouble with it seem to be white people.. and these are the first people to insist that we are a Western Civilization descendent with Euro-Christian roots... strange to me.

_____________________________

Once you label me, you negate me ~ Soren Kierkegaard

Reality has a well known Liberal Bias ~ Stephen Colbert

Great minds discuss ideas; Average minds discuss events; Small minds discuss people. Eleanor Roosevelt

(in reply to NavyDDG54)
Profile   Post #: 28
RE: The Hyphen - 5/30/2007 12:06:13 PM   
StellaByStarlite


Posts: 790
Joined: 2/10/2007
Status: offline 		Navy, it's not like America itself is one big cultural conglomerate, either. There are pretty distinct differences between, say.. somebody from southern Mississippi and somebody from upstate New York. Is an American who identifies as a "Southerner" ok, with you, then? Or is just when a person identifies culturally with a foreign country?

My area is just chock-full of Old World European flavor. We have our Italian-American festivals, a Hispanic festival, homemade peiroghie shops, a great authentic Jewish deli...so far, nobody has "isolated" themselves from everybody else. They work, pay taxes, vote, watch TV and just basically live their lives. what exactly do you mean when you say " isolating", anyway? Are they forming communes?

I think you're just being paranoid. =) Now, go out and get yourself a nice fresh canolli, it's all good

(in reply to juliaoceania)
Profile   Post #: 29
RE: The Hyphen - 5/30/2007 12:17:38 PM   
swtnsparkling


Posts: 1738
Joined: 1/1/2004
Status: offline 		 Bloodlines,English- Scottish-German-Irish-French

I'm an American

_____________________________

Never make anyone a priority who treats you as an option 2003

Walk in Peace
A "No" uttered from deepest conviction is better than a "Yes" uttered merely to please



(in reply to StellaByStarlite)
Profile   Post #: 30
RE: The Hyphen - 5/30/2007 2:55:17 PM   
peepeegirl5


Posts: 214
Joined: 3/12/2007
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: NavyDDG54

One of America's biggest problems today is the fact we are so divided to the point where we refuse to agree with anything that 'the other side' or 'those people' say....

I am a 3rd generation American, my family came from Poland, but I dont call myself a Polish-American, I am not Polish, I have never been to Poland, I feel no loyalty to Poland. So what right do I have to call myself Polish?

This sums it all up perfectly:

WE'RE AMERICANS...and that says it all.




***

Actually that doesn't even begin to say it all Borat.

YOU are Polish by tribal DNA markers.

Actually, this adds something important, it's in the blood... like racehorses:

The 15th century Polish historian Jan Długosz was the first to wrote about Sarmatism in Poland, and it was confirmed by other historians and chroniclers such as Marcin Bielski, Marcin Kromer and Maciej Miechowita. Other Europeans quote it up from Miechowita's Tractatus de Duabus Sarmatiis, a work which in western Europe was considered to be a substantial source of information about the territories and peoples of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The name came from alleged ancestors of the szlachta, the Sarmatians, a confederacy of mostly Iranian tribes north of the Black Sea, displaced by the Goths in the 2nd century AD, described by Herodotus in the 5th century BC as descendants of Scythians and Amazons. After many permutations, this produced the legend that Poles were the descendants of the ancient Sarmates, a warlike tribe originating in Asia who later resettled in northeastern Europe. [1] Recent undisputable light shedded on ancestry has been provided by Y-DNA research. (see R1a1 and G)

In his 1970 publication "The Sarmatians (Ancient peoples and places)" the renowned Tadeusz Sulimirski (1898–1983), a Polish/British historian, archaeologist, and researcher on the ancient tribes of Sarmatians, listed a number of ethnological traits that szlachta (pronounced "shlyakhta") shared with Sarmatians, including traditions, weaponry and military practices, tamgas, and relict burial customs, giving an archaeological credence to their legendary origins, and furthering the evidence that Sarmatian aristocracy was assimilated and remained a ruling class integrated with sedentary indigens.


In human genetics, Haplogroup R1a1 (M17) is a Y-chromosome haplogroup that is spread across Eurasia.

In Europe, the highest frequencies are found in Central and Eastern Europe. Today it is found at its highest levels in Poland, Hungary, (56%-60%), Ukraine (54%[1] or 44%), and Russia, where one out of two men has this haplogroup. In Hungary contradicting frequencies are reported 60% or 20%. High haplotype diversity was detected in nothern Poland where for 508 males Pawlowski et al[2] found 328 diferent and 264 unique haplotypes, he wrote "Model for a Polish population haplotype ..is almost 15 times more frequent in our population than in a cumulative European one"

In human genetics, Haplogroup G (M201) is a Y-chromosome haplogroup. It is a branch of Haplogroup F (M89), and is theorized to have originated, according to the latest thinking, in the Near East, and began to spread with the Neolithic Agricultural Revolution, perhaps with the appearance of the early horse nomads of the Eurasian steppe. The initial distribution of haplogroup G in Europe may reflect a migration of agriculture-bringing Anatolian people into the Mediterranean Basin. The haplogroup may also have been brought by invading Sarmatians, Alans and Jasz (all descendant groups of the 'Iranian' Scythians), which is a good fit with the historically attested spread of these peoples across the Central Asian steppe, from Xinjiang in the east to Iberia and Tunisia in the west, with a branch (the Sakas) entering nortwest Indian sub-Continent at the start of the first millenium.

_____________________________

"If we value so highly the dignity of life, how can we not also value the dignity of death? No death may be called futile." - Yukio Mishima

(in reply to swtnsparkling)
Profile   Post #: 31
RE: The Hyphen - 5/30/2007 3:06:20 PM   
peepeegirl5


Posts: 214
Joined: 3/12/2007
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: puella

There is this too...

My mother was born and grew up as a young girl in Italy.  All of the traditions of her region  have been carefully and reverently passed to me and my siblings and it is a very special part of our family.  We love our traditions and all the meaning they hold for us. 

Saying that, though, there is a difference.  I have travelled and lived in many places outside of the US.  I have lived in Italy.  The same 'traditions' become a bit different when practiced in a different environment.. and there is a definate difference between the Italian and the Italian-American (I would bet it is the same for many other cultural groups as well, and not just isolated to Italians).  So what happens is that the way we celebrate and participate in tradition actually does change from Italian, to Italian-American.  I can not say that much of these traditions are at all American... most Americans I know do not practice them.... they are not intrinsic to our nation's heritage.

I think it is completely legitimate to refer to various cultures within the American melting pot... actually I think it is really beautiful.


You said that so beautifully...


_____________________________

"If we value so highly the dignity of life, how can we not also value the dignity of death? No death may be called futile." - Yukio Mishima

(in reply to puella)
Profile   Post #: 32
RE: The Hyphen - 5/30/2007 4:02:56 PM   
caitlyn


Posts: 3473
Joined: 12/22/2004
Status: offline 		You have done a pretty good job of dividing, by hammering anyone that doesn't agree with you, and insinuating that only military people have a say.

(in reply to NavyDDG54)
Profile   Post #: 33
RE: The Hyphen - 5/30/2007 4:18:50 PM   
Real0ne


Posts: 21189
Joined: 10/25/2004
Status: offline 		Altho you have apoint there i disagree that the hyphen is the root of the problem.

The root of the problem is unfair laws, corruption, biased laws, laws with no sunset clause, and finally the desire for more tax payers.

Womens lib pitted man against woman, slavery was black against white and while all this is going on our government is being reduced to ashes by corruption in politics.  It keeps our eyes off the ball, the ball being the politicians.

Its the few speaking for the many.  i do agree with you that culturalism is a problem and at a very minimum english should be required here.   On the other hand we do have rich cultureal hertage throught this country which i frankly think is kool.

i think we all agree when we have to such as elections etc.

One thing this country needs is a citizwns government watch, and i mean one with clout and shit loads of money that can kick politicians asses the very second they get out of line.  The would stop this continuous falling behind where we the people always come out the loser.

_____________________________

"We the Borg" of the us imperialists....resistance is futile

Democracy; The 'People' voted on 'which' amendment?

Yesterdays tinfoil is today's reality!

"No man's life, liberty, or property is safe while the legislature is in session

(in reply to NavyDDG54)
Profile   Post #: 34
RE: The Hyphen - 5/30/2007 4:31:31 PM   
Sinergy


Posts: 9383
Joined: 4/26/2004
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: Lordandmaster

Nobody ever asked you to approve how they identify themselves.



Exactly.

Sinergy

p.s.  I would have added "...despite what you seem to believe."


_____________________________

"There is a fine line between clever and stupid"
David St. Hubbins "This Is Spinal Tap"

"Every so often you let a word or phrase out and you want to catch it and bring it back. You cant do that, it is gone, gone forever." J. Danforth Quayle


(in reply to Lordandmaster)
Profile   Post #: 35
RE: The Hyphen - 5/30/2007 4:37:44 PM   
pahunkboy


Posts: 33061
Joined: 2/26/2006
From: Central Pennsylvania
Status: offline 		the elephant in the room- is classism.

$ is eveyrthing i some corners

have nots are villied.....

either way "the MAN" pulls the string and we do the dance.  anything to distract the mases from real issues.

(in reply to Sinergy)
Profile   Post #: 36
RE: The Hyphen - 5/30/2007 5:08:09 PM   
chellekitty


Posts: 3923
Joined: 3/27/2005
Status: offline 		when i am asked what my race is i say mutt...half all american mutt and half singhalease (the native people of Sri Lanka)
when i am asked what my nationality is i say American
when i am asked where i am from i say the great nation of texas
when i am asked what i am i say human

and if you asked me to come up with every label that could apply to me i could be here for hours and not remember everything...
i have respect for every single human being out there until they give me a reason not to....because they are human...i also respect everything living....because they are a live...(i will never forget my driving instructor yelling at me for slamming the breaks for some birds in the road...he said, do you see any dead birds? i said..no...he said they will move!! but i couldn't live with myself if i killed something not out to harm me or loved ones and not being used for food [i tried to be a vegatarian but i like steak too much])
anywho...time for a cigarette break
ty tobacco plant for giving up your leave so that i may have nicotine
chelle


_____________________________

One thing I know: the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who will have sought and found how to serve. ~Albert Schweitzer

(in reply to pahunkboy)
Profile   Post #: 37
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