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And it reinforces a maginally harmful misunderstanding of racism/the world in general. Such as Americans who can't really twig how modern Europe can have race wars far bloodier than anything that happened in the States when everyone is white. It kind of matters if they're, say, running the peacekeepers.
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Oct 12, 2016 17:14
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Cyrano4747 posted:You don't have to be a dick about it, but it does no one any good to have people believing in what are essentially comforting myths at the expense of understanding the reality of the area. If african americans (or afro-whatevers living somewhere else) want to be proud of a history that isn't just getting kidnapped by assholes there are things you can legitimately point them to. While the archaeology is sparse due to a combination of academic neglect and the political difficulties of the region, there are bona fide medieval kingdoms you can point to in W. Africa. Barring that we know significantly more (although still depressingly little) about groups on the E. African coast. I mean, poo poo, Mali/Ghana repeatedly produced major powers that were ridonkulously, unbelievably rich, up until European naval technology crippled their trade monopoly (and eventually devaluing their gold and salt probably didn't help). The most famous story is of course King Musa personally and single-handedly crashing the Mediterranean economy by spending ludicrous bucketloads of gold on his pilgrimage to Mecca. 
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Oct 12, 2016 17:20
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Strategic Tea posted:And it reinforces a maginally harmful misunderstanding of racism/the world in general. Which race wars are these?
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Oct 12, 2016 17:27
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Hogge Wild posted:Which race wars are these? Balkan conflicts in the 90s would be my guess.
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Oct 12, 2016 17:31
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Hogge Wild posted:Which race wars are these? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism_in_association_football
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Oct 12, 2016 17:32
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VanSandman posted:Balkan conflicts in the 90s would be my guess. Yes.
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Oct 12, 2016 17:41
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Are these race wars? Are Serbs a different race from Croatians? Do more people die from racist football related crimes in Europe or from from racial violence in USA?
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Oct 12, 2016 17:47
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The idea that "white people" or "black people" are these two monolithic groups instead of collections of dozens of ethnic and cultural groups that happen to have the same skin colour is kind of silly. That whole line of thinking is basically a direct result of colonialism which is why the definition of what exactly constitutes "white people" is so different from place to place and usually happens to only include those groups that are well interated and have some measure of socio-economic power. Like how the Irish and the Italians after them were not white when they first came over to America but became white as soon as they had established themselves. Hispanic immigrants are in a very similar situation today.Hogge Wild posted:Are these race wars? Are Serbs a different race from Croatians? Do more people die from racist football related crimes in Europe or from from racial violence in USA? Race is a social construct. The Serbs technically speak the exact same language as the Croatians and are drat near indistinguishable to an outsider but cultural and religious differences have lead to them defining themselves by their differences when they really should be the same people. Then you have Bosniaks who are also basically the same ethnically and linguistically but due to them being predominantly Muslim and a lot of baggage from the days of Ottoman rule they are seen as alien by many other Yugoslavs. This is of course heavily simplifying a lot of really complicated political poo poo that has been going on in Yugoslavia for decades. FreudianSlippers fucked around with this message at 17:57 on Oct 12, 2016 |
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Oct 12, 2016 17:52
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Basically what FS said. If people widely agree that they're different races they basically are. And if they're willing to kill for it they clearly feel more strongly than we do. People in the thick of it won't stop to think about the biology of it all (which I know absolutely nothing about). I was joking about the football
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Oct 12, 2016 19:28
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Strategic Tea posted:And it reinforces a maginally harmful misunderstanding of racism/the world in general. Don't get me started about Americans who think everything they perceive as American is a self-evident good. Other world views? What are those?
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Oct 12, 2016 19:36
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feedmegin posted:Also, Nubia was a thing, and there were actual, verifiable Nubian Pharaohs. That's kind of the tiny kernel of truth at the core of the Black Aphrodite thing. The Egyptians certainly weren't black, but there were periods towards the end of ancient Egypt where they were in fact, as far as we can tell, ruled by black people. This is absolutely true, and someone who's interested in the whole "Black Egypt" thing should absolutely be told about it. My point is that rather than make up bullshit for people to be proud of from a heritage angle it's a lot better to point them to actual, real things. FreudianSlippers posted:
Yes, it is, but social constructs are very powerful things despite having no "innate truth" behind them. Our societies are organized around them, our cultures draw heavily upon them, and they inform a huge amount of the historical events that built the world we live in. I only mention that because when someone identifies with one of those constructs and wants to learn about how people that look like him (or her - you can apply this to gender as well) were influential in history it's a legitimate desire. A huge chunk of mainstream American culture is built around an understanding of the past that centers on the accomplishments of primarily men from a very specific racial and class background. If you're a white student in an American school it's not too hard to imagine yourself as the most recent iteration of a cultural tradition that goes back through American history, on out to European pre-colonial history, etc. If you're an african american student that kind of dead ends at the slave trade. The desire to know that there were people doing important things where your ancestors were taken from is natural, as otherwise they're just another natural resource stripped from the continent. Ynglaur posted:Don't get me started about Americans who think everything they perceive as American is a self-evident good. Other world views? What are those? Just about every nationality does this. I've met plenty of Europeans who though everything positive in the world emanated from them and took delight in pointing out how backwards Americans are in various ways. Same deal with Koreans, actually, and an assumption that everything good in the world has emanated from their peninsula. Those are just my personal experiences, I'm sure just any group of people you choose to name has those elements.
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Oct 12, 2016 21:42
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Ynglaur posted:Don't get me started about Americans who think everything they perceive as American is a self-evident good. Other world views? What are those? Stupid people: a uniquely American problem 
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Oct 12, 2016 21:52
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FreudianSlippers posted:The Serbs technically speak the exact same language as the Croatians and are drat near indistinguishable to an outsider but cultural and religious differences have lead to them defining themselves by their differences when they really should be the same people. Well, that's certainly the Serbian position.
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Oct 12, 2016 22:29
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Cyrano4747 posted:Just about every nationality does this. I've met plenty of Europeans who though everything positive in the world emanated from them and took delight in pointing out how backwards Americans are in various ways. Same deal with Koreans, actually, and an assumption that everything good in the world has emanated from their peninsula. Those are just my personal experiences, I'm sure just any group of people you choose to name has those elements. I once got into a very drunken argument with a Frenchmen at a wine bar who claimed that America had never created any art forms. Blues and jazz didn't count because they were mainly created by African-Americans? TV didn't count because the Farnsworths were recent immigrants or something, whelp. And on and on. It was in Arles where there's Roman stuff and that is how it relates to this thread.
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Oct 12, 2016 22:34
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Chichevache posted:Stupid people: a uniquely American problem You have to admit we do it particularly well from time to time.
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Oct 12, 2016 23:28
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The way I've always seen it is that in the US, we care about race, and to us, race is a very defined thing that has to do with skin color, a certain few facial characteristics, and a vague pretense of where some of your ancestry came from that nobody actually investigates. It's a defined thing because people have done a lot of work defining it, and academics have done a lot of work defining it in papers and such, and I'm sure that plenty of universities still have those papers in their files next to the phrenology books and studies on criminal brains, but just because it's a social construct with a tenuous basis in the physical world doesn't make it any less real in the society that constructed. If you wanted to discard all social constructs, you'd be living alone in the wilderness. And then in these other places where they don't give a single gently caress for the concepts of race as defined by us in America, they care about other things that seem strange to us because it is profoundly hard to care about another society's particulars with anything near the intensity that they do. And then when they feel the need to communicate their particulars to the english-speaking world, they use the word race, even though it's not what we over here have in our mental dictionaries define race as, because it's a similar concept and the word ethnicity is big and clumsy and lacks the punch of race.
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Oct 12, 2016 23:39
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mossyfisk posted:Well, that's certainly the Serbian position. Random anecdote, by my barber is from Bosnia, she says Croats, Bosniaks and Serbs were pretty indistinguishable to insiders too. She moved here before the dissolution I think, and once the wars started all the Serbian, Bosnian, and Croatian youths here in Canada suddenly starting being dicks to each other. Nationalism is ridiculous.
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Oct 13, 2016 00:15
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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Ynglaur posted:You have to admit we do it particularly well from time to time. Yeah, remember that time we engaged in that futile invasion of
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Oct 13, 2016 07:05
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Ynglaur posted:You have to admit we do it particularly well from time to time. Eeeh, it's also that thanks to the US being preeminent on the world stage, the rest of us hear about your idiots a lot more than the other way around.
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Oct 13, 2016 07:25
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Time living abroad quickly disabuses you of any notion that Americans are especially nationalist/self-centered. Americans look like models of world citizenry to me after six years living in Asia. Anyway this is drifting into too modern territory.
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Oct 13, 2016 07:31
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Chichevache posted:Parthia. They sure are friendly though, when Crassus showed up they gave him a central role in a play they were doing!
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Oct 13, 2016 09:07
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Pontius Pilate posted:I once got into a very drunken argument with a Frenchmen at a wine bar who claimed that America had never created any art forms. Blues and jazz didn't count because they were mainly created by African-Americans? TV didn't count because the Farnsworths were recent immigrants or something, whelp. And on and on. TV isn't art, stand up comedy definitely isn't art, video games most certainly are not art.
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Oct 13, 2016 11:17
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Cyrano4747 posted:I only mention that because when someone identifies with one of those constructs and wants to learn about how people that look like him (or her - you can apply this to gender as well) were influential in history it's a legitimate desire. A huge chunk of mainstream American culture is built around an understanding of the past that centers on the accomplishments of primarily men from a very specific racial and class background. If you're a white student in an American school it's not too hard to imagine yourself as the most recent iteration of a cultural tradition that goes back through American history, on out to European pre-colonial history, etc.
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Oct 13, 2016 12:12
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HEY GAL posted:or things slightly more fine-grained than gender--for instance, it was really great when i was a teenager to learn how many masculine women there were in history and the things they did. You go from wondering if there's only one or two people like you to learning about hundreds, and that's powerful, especially for a child. People like you in history can be people to admire, potential role models, potential models of what not to do, etc. More info please, wherever is actually a good place for it. Learning about rad people is rad.
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Oct 13, 2016 14:26
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forkboy84 posted:Vikings did names right. Except when it comes to Harald Halvdansson. He swore to not cut his hair until he was king of whole of Norway, during that period he was known as Harald Tanglehair. After he became king he cut his hair and was known as Harald Fairhair.
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Oct 16, 2016 16:47
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PittTheElder posted:Random anecdote, by my barber is from Bosnia, she says Croats, Bosniaks and Serbs were pretty indistinguishable to insiders too. She moved here before the dissolution I think, and once the wars started all the Serbian, Bosnian, and Croatian youths here in Canada suddenly starting being dicks to each other. Nationalism is ridiculous. You could try to guess someone's nationality by their name and by their religion. You still can. That didn't change - people here are as in/distinguishable now as they were before the wars.
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Oct 16, 2016 23:14
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Kassad posted:Eeeh, it's also that thanks to the US being preeminent on the world stage, the rest of us hear about your idiots a lot more than the other way around. Well it's not like we get a lot of love. The Persians had a great irrigation system that is arguably better than the Roman Irrigation system. But that would require dealing with the Iranian government, and they don't have a great track record of dealing with Americans. Yeah it's a nerdy argument, but gently caress the Iranian government for keeping westerners out. gently caress, I would be all about praising Persian culture if I could do it without having to worry about getting kidnapped by the modern assholes. Props to the Ayatollah's at least they want to preserve their history. The Saudi's just want to turn Mecca into Muslim Vegas. Might as well put Donald Trump in charge of Mecca, he would be slightly more tasteful. thrakkorzog fucked around with this message at 07:24 on Oct 19, 2016 |
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Oct 19, 2016 06:15
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xthetenth posted:More info please, wherever is actually a good place for it. Learning about rad people is rad. https://archives.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3585027&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=681#post451134245 (Frustrated that we don't know anything more about Capt. Hendrich, not even her first name, but when you consider that most human beings have been and will be completely lost to anonymity, a last name and a single paragraph are pretty good.)
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Oct 19, 2016 11:53
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thrakkorzog posted:Well it's not like we get a lot of love. The Persians had a great irrigation system that is arguably better than the Roman Irrigation system. But that would require dealing with the Iranian government, and they don't have a great track record of dealing with Americans. Yeah it's a nerdy argument, but gently caress the Iranian government for keeping westerners out. i personally know a dude who's had at least two field trips to Iran to study manicheism, and though he is Norwegian and not American he's still indisputably western, so it's not completely closed off by any means
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Oct 19, 2016 16:52
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Doctor Malaver posted:You could try to guess someone's nationality by their name and by their religion. You still can. That didn't change - people here are as in/distinguishable now as they were before the wars. On the "identifying other ethnic group" anecdote, my dad still proudly talks about how growing up in the north of Ireland they could identify a Protestant on sight. This was in the Republic so it's possible there was a slight difference in cloth styles and surnames tended to be a good identifier but he still maintains they just 'walked differently' or something. People are weird when it comes to tribal identity.
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Oct 19, 2016 23:23
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I remember reading that Guelphs and Ghibellines could differentiate each other by how they cut fruit.
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Oct 20, 2016 00:36
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:I remember reading that Guelphs and Ghibellines could differentiate each other by how they cut fruit. loving big-endian scum.
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Oct 20, 2016 01:32
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MrNemo posted:On the "identifying other ethnic group" anecdote, my dad still proudly talks about how growing up in the north of Ireland they could identify a Protestant on sight. This was in the Republic so it's possible there was a slight difference in cloth styles and surnames tended to be a good identifier but he still maintains they just 'walked differently' or something. People are weird when it comes to tribal identity. "Oi, it's Brian O'Neil's older brother's ex-girlfriend's sister's uncle's cousin, and he's a Protestant! Let's gently caress him up!" Alternatively: "Oi, that guy looks incredibly nervous and lost while walking around in a Catholic neighbourhood. Let's gently caress him up!"
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Oct 20, 2016 01:52
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If they are carrying a 24x36 picture of the queen on an orange background and reciting the full text of Martin Luther's On The Jews and Their Lies in a monotone and have a Union Jack carved into their forehead they are very likely to be Protestant. If they are not wearing a condom and have their chin pouches stuffed with potatoes and are clutching a rosary while drunkenly muttering a list of the top 10 best popes based on death tollthey are probably Catholic. FreudianSlippers fucked around with this message at 02:07 on Oct 20, 2016 |
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Oct 20, 2016 02:05
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MrNemo posted:On the "identifying other ethnic group" anecdote, my dad still proudly talks about how growing up in the north of Ireland they could identify a Protestant on sight. It was the horse.
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Oct 20, 2016 02:22
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FreudianSlippers posted:If they are carrying a 24x36 picture of the queen on an orange background and reciting the full text of Martin Luther's On The Jews and Their Lies in a monotone and have a Union Jack carved into their forehead they are very likely to be Protestant. Hmmm, still doesn't narrow it down. Quick! Ask them to pronounce the letter "H"!
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Oct 20, 2016 17:14
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Non-catholics wear at least one condom at all times, just in case
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Oct 20, 2016 17:34
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FreudianSlippers posted:If they are carrying a 24x36 picture of the queen on an orange background and reciting the full text of Martin Luther's On The Jews and Their Lies in a monotone and have a Union Jack carved into their forehead they are very likely to be Protestant. ...Do we adjust Julius 2 up or down for executing Cesare Borgia?
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Oct 21, 2016 02:37
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Oct 21, 2016 17:13
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perfect
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Oct 21, 2016 17:16
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