BoganGod wrote:I reside in the nation that leads the world in hobbit related scenery. I call myself a kiwi or a New Zealander. American media is pretty much world wide, and have noticed that there is no such thing as an american. There are native american, african americans, hispanic americans, asian americans, and the list goes on. Is been american not good enough, do you all have to make reference to your skin color or eye shape as well. I know people from a lot of different racial backgrounds living here in New Zealand and they all refer to themselves as kiwis, they are proud of been kiwis and their nationality supersedes their race. A nation is divided if it is broken down into special interest groups, and races that are for themselves first, and nation second.
Just on a side note I'm part maori, jewish, german, scottish, irish, english, welsh, spanish and dutch.
Please explain!
Essentially, it comes from the anti-discrimination movements of the 60's and 70's. Blacks took the name "African American" or "black" as opposed to the other, less flattering termst hat had previously been applied. This became tied to funding.
It was not long before other groups decided they, too had been discriminated against. You can dispute my timeline, but I would say Italien Americans and Asians were sort of the first, wiht hispanics not too far after. Note that each of these groups truly has been seriously discriminated against at one point.
Then, suddenly none of the designations were enough. I can remember counting 17 different categories on a State of California application ... "hispanic from Mexico", "Hispanic from XYZ latin American countries" .. "other hispanic" ... Japananese, Chinese, Korean, etc... etc. etc....
and then seeing "white" and "black" and thinking "WAIT... if you are going to distinguish a Mexican from an ElSalvadoran, then I am not simply 'white', I am xyz(european country)-American!"
While I do think discrimination was real, needed correction and so forth, I also believe that its time to mostly set those things aside. You cannot have equity for everyone on earth.. it just does not happen. You cannot even ensure that every person in a country really has equal "opportunity". My father was a farm worker all my life. He made enough, but mostly we got by because my parents were very, very frugal, we grew our own food and were pretty careful about extras. Also, we were lucky enough to have health care (a biggie!!!). Yet, when I went to college, I found that my classmate, who happened to have been black, but who was adopted by a fairly well-off (white) family was eligible for all sorts of special programs for which I did not qualify. His parents each went to College. My mother dropped out after a year and my father never went. We grew up in the same area, went to the same basic school system (except that he had a couple of years in a private school), even attended the same church, our parents were part of many of the same organizations. Yet, he was qualified for assistance and I was not.
Ironically, BOTH of us were far better off than many people of all colors, simply because we were lucky enough to live where we did.
One of the most telling comments comes from EEO cases ... basically, it is not illegal to be a jerk to an employee/coworker. It is only illegal to be a jerk to them because of their ethnic identify, race, gender, etc. On the one hand, none of us really want to live in a country where people get fired for calling a co-worker a "jerk-off" or such. On the other hand, none of us wants to have to listen to someone constantly berating us, calling us names, cheating us, etc. Why should it matter so much more than you call someone an N@@#$ as opposed to $$#@% [insert any slur without a racial or gender connotation].
Posted: Fri Sep 25, 2009 8:00 am
