BS: Your cultural heritage- is it important?

Subject: RE: BS: Your cultural heritage- is it important?
From: Azizi
Date: 18 Dec 08 - 09:02 PM

Thanks for your responses to my question about whether White people describe other White people by skin complexion. I've never heard any White person use such descriptors.

Subject: RE: BS: Your cultural heritage- is it important?
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 18 Dec 08 - 11:40 PM

From: GUEST,lox
Date: 18 Dec 08 - 08:08 PM

Ruth,
'..... you will find on the bottom left of the screen a photo of a young innocent happy Indian lad wearing a red shirt with a white circle on the front containing a black swastika - just like the Nazi flag.
Go to the page and you will find the comment "he can't wear that"

My response to this comment was - why not? - it's his really and he should be allowed to wear it if he wants to promote its true meaning.'

FYI:    Long before Hitler used the 'broken cross' swastika, it was a
native American symbol. However, it faced the other way, than the Nazi one. It had absolutely nothing to do with the one used by the Germans, and had a completely different meaning.

Subject: RE: BS: Your cultural heritage- is it important?
From: meself
Date: 19 Dec 08 - 12:07 AM

"I've never heard any White person use such descriptors."

And, as a white person, I've pretty much only encountered such descriptors in books (e.g., "her creamy bosom was thrusting from its" - oh, never mind). Maybe it's an English/Irish(etc.) thing. Among white North Americans, in my experience, the hue of other white skins is usually mentioned only when it's one extreme or the other - you might hear "dark complected" (or "dark complexion)" or "really, really white skin". That's all I've ever heard.

Subject: RE: BS: Your cultural heritage- is it important?
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 19 Dec 08 - 12:11 AM

What's the whole thing about white, black, brown,yellow, red?? After God created man, he looked at it it and said 'It is Good'..what's the problem???

(Oh, I forgot....liberals don't like the idea of God....not sorry!

Subject: RE: BS: Your cultural heritage- is it important?
From: Ebbie
Date: 19 Dec 08 - 01:28 AM

As meself said: "...mentioned only when it's one extreme or the other - you might hear "dark complected" (or "dark complexion)" or "really, really white skin..."

I think it is probably because the shade of a white person's skin is not important to another white person- historically as long as the person is clearly identifiable to the other person's mind as 'white'.

I can only imagine the state of mind of a person whose color or shade of skin is crucial in establishing his or her role in mainstream society.

As it happens, in my family there are quite a few African-American members- I just realized that in all cases they are male, I wonder if the reception would be different toward a female? I hope not - and they range in shade from mellow tan to very dark indeed. The children's shades also vary widely; in one case the brother is pale, the girl is dark. Both are gorgeous.

The next generations are the ones that give me hope. Their culture will inevitably be different from ours but we are the ones who set it in motion.

Subject: RE: BS: Your cultural heritage- is it important?
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 19 Dec 08 - 05:00 AM

"My main point is that using physical clues such as skin color to determine a person's race can get real complicated and does create difficulties for those people in part because of internal and external racial assumptions and racial prejudice."

Until relatively recently, if you wanted to assess the ethnicity of an audience at an arts event, it was considered appropriate to do a "head count", identifying all of the non-white attenders and possibly trying to categorise them in a very broad way. This was considered necessary because there were usually not that many of them, to be honest, and doing surveys, where the audience can choose (or not) to take part, might not reveal the true proportions of ethnically diverse attenders.

However, nowadays this is no longer considered acceptable, because there are too many assumptions that can be made by the person doing the counting, and because ethnicity is so complex - so the only credible method at the moment is self-identification.

Subject: RE: BS: Your cultural heritage- is it important?
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 19 Dec 08 - 05:07 AM

I thought liberals were above the race thing. Apparently not. Is that why so many were taken in by Obama??...just to appear 'hip', and launder their guilt???

Subject: RE: BS: Your cultural heritage- is it important?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 19 Dec 08 - 05:11 AM

GFS, shame you got off onthe God thing, becase you are right about the swastika.

I'm not sure that the US really understands "class" as used in Europe. As I understand the USA, "class" is determined solely by wealth. In the UK it is much more closely linked to speech, manners, and parentage (and grandparentage etc) - and "U" "non-U" things.

In France a ci-devant "de" (the "particule de nobilite") goes a long way - but again speech and behaviour patterns seem to be important.

Germany I find less easy to understand.

Spain and Italy seem largely to have regard to lineage, and also are unlikely to regard premiership footballers as anything other than rich louts - or indeed "Posh" Spice as anything but "vulgar, vulgar, vulgar".

One's cultural heritage includes, IMHO, lineage, and teh habits of ones ancestors, and also the habits of those forming part of one's ancestors' societies and thier habits (and the same factors of the present day. Not all should be embraced - for example dog and cock fighting, and bear and bull-baiting (not often to be accepted as song topics). Pre-Queensbury Prize fighting is at present at an ambivalent stage, as are hunting with hounds and whaling - but still valid song topics in some cases.

In this wider context, football riots of the 70s are part of the UK's heritage, now to be condemned - like witch trials and the forced marriage of rape victim to rapist.

We need to know who we are, and that includes where we came from. By and large we need,to be confident in our identities, to be proud of where we came from (as far as possible). Some aspects of our past need to be rememberd only as history, not as matters of celebration, but if we do not remember what we did wrong as well as what we did right, then we do not truly know who we are.

Subject: RE: BS: Your cultural heritage- is it important?
From: Stu
Date: 19 Dec 08 - 07:15 AM

"Thanks for your responses to my question about whether White people describe other White people by skin complexion. I've never heard any White person use such descriptors."

There are multi-million pound industries built on the whiteness of white people's skin; every town in the UK has tanning booths and Boots is stacked with all sorts of gunk that turns people who think their skin is too white all hues.

I've been doing my family history and this has turned up one or two surprises that are making me reassess my own cultural identity. I had always considered myself a person of the Isles 100%. Although born and raised in England my mum is Welsh and there was a strong sense of 'Welshness' from the maternal side of the family. The Welshness was a stronger identity than the Englishness because it had more . . . substance. This is probably due to the personalities of my parents in part, but also because I think ordinary English people define their national identity in different ways; there is not a cohesive society-encompassing identifier of 'Englishness'.

During the course of my research I contacted a great Uncle on the paternal (or English) side I had never spoken to before: the last of my Nan's generation and a repository of family knowledge and rumour. He confirmed the possibility of French, Irish and Gypsy in the family which my Nan had told me years ago before she died. Interestingly, it turns out they were all musicians: singers, piano players, accordion players and in the case of my great-granddad, a mighty bones player (I have his set of cow ribs on my desk as I write this). Apparently they all loved to play music, sing and have an ale or six, so I know where I get that from . . .

Armed with some info on great-grandfathers and great-grandmothers I set about researching the census and BMD records. I traced one branch of the family back to the East End in the 1800's - real Billy Sykes types (they were pretty rum by all accounts). Turns out my great-great-great grandmother was a Huguenot, and the family has been traced back to Nimes in the south of France. They fled persecution in their homeland firstly to Prussia and ended up in the East End, probably following relatives and they all worked in the textile and wallpaper industries.

This came as a bit of a shock - the idea there was French in the family wasn't new but no-one realised just how close it was. Obviously my great-great grandfather felt this influence as he talked about it a fair bit.

I have discovered I am considerably less English than I thought I was. Indeed, a sizeable chuck of my make up isn't even from the Isles, but the south of France. I have no idea where the rest of my research will take me, but it is affecting my notions of who I am, and of my cultural inheritance, which is far wider than I could ever have imagined.

Subject: RE: BS: Your cultural heritage- is it important?
From: Folk Form # 1
Date: 19 Dec 08 - 07:41 AM

Stigweard. YOu say that your family research is affecting your notons of who you are, but why? You are still the same person as you were before. Neithr do you say why it is so important to you - interesting, maybe- but important? How?

Subject: RE: BS: Your cultural heritage- is it important?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 19 Dec 08 - 08:29 AM

Take on Penguin's Egg. Have it incubated by a hen. Does that make the outcome a chicken?

Subject: RE: BS: Your cultural heritage- is it important?
From: Folk Form # 1
Date: 19 Dec 08 - 08:34 AM

Take on Richard Bridge. Would you cross a Bridge?

Subject: RE: BS: Your cultural heritage- is it important?
From: Stu
Date: 19 Dec 08 - 08:40 AM

Good question Penguin Egg.

I think it's because of events that have happened in my past that have made question my personal identity closely, and I always find the way people latch on to aspects of their heritage and identify them with themselves personally quite fascinating.

For my part, this whole new aspect of my family history answers some questions that come from having a not-too-cohesive family. I never knew we were musicians, artisans or even proper cockneys, let alone associated with one of the biggest migrations of people due to religious persecution in Europe. If you knew me, you would understand why this makes a sort of sense to me.

I do believe in a degree of folk memory or whatever you want to call it. All the DNA of my ancestors is carried in me, and where they came from is important. Wherever they were, I am too and where I am, they are now. I never doubted the Celt in me; it was always there and it felt it was deep within, but the fact my ancestors turned out to be persecuted immigrants has some relevance in modern England, seeing as many who decry immigration in this day and age had their equivalents back in the day.

This doesn't affect certain aspects of who I feel I am, as those were settled back in my childhood, and it doesn't alter my personality (for better or worse) although it might shed some light on my likes and dislikes, but it does make me think about my identity from a nationalistic and ethnic point of view.

Subject: RE: BS: Your cultural heritage- is it important?
From: number 6
Date: 19 Dec 08 - 09:21 AM

Here is something interesting from the actor Morgan Freeman (taken from Wikepedia) ... I must say I cannot diasagree with him ... food for thought ...

"Freeman has publicly criticized the celebration of Black History Month and does not participate in any related events, saying, "I don't want a black history month. Black history is American history."[10] He says the only way to end racism is to stop talking about it, and he notes that there is no "white history month". Freeman once said on an interview with 60 Minutes' Mike Wallace: "I am going to stop calling you a white man and I'm going to ask you to stop calling me a black man."[10] Freeman supported the defeated proposal to change the Mississippi state flag, which contains the Confederate battle flag[11][12]."

biLL

Subject: RE: BS: Your cultural heritage- is it important?
From: WFDU - Ron Olesko
Date: 19 Dec 08 - 09:31 AM

"I'm not sure that the US really understands "class" as used in Europe"

Yes, we got lucky on that one!

Subject: RE: BS: Your cultural heritage- is it important?
From: Stu
Date: 19 Dec 08 - 10:07 AM

"Yes, we got lucky on that one!"

You'e not kidding - a thousand years under the Norman Yoke and we still live in a society where class matters in many ways, especially with regards to the establishment.

Subject: RE: BS: Your cultural heritage- is it important?
From: Folk Form # 1
Date: 19 Dec 08 - 10:08 AM

I must say, I am delighted at the responses that have been posted on this thread even when I dont agree with them.

My own view is that cultural heritage is over-rated and if it is actively encouraged, it can lead to people actively retreating into a cultural ghetto. Although I found Stigweard's postings very interesting, I have to say I profoundly disagree with them. For me, my past is not important.The past is a foreign country where I do not belong. If I was to meet my ancestors, we would have nothing in common with each other. The only thing we would have in common is our gene pool. The DNA in us is biological. I do not agree that there is also a cultural DNA in us. Our ancestors were foreigners (to us, at least). What they belived in, went through, expereienced is not what I believe in, went through, and experienced. Much more important to me is the society that I live in - our attitudes, our immediate history - the Zeitgeist, if you will.

I judge a man by his character. His cultural background is totally un-important.

Subject: RE: BS: Your cultural heritage- is it important?
From: Folk Form # 1
Date: 19 Dec 08 - 10:10 AM

Stigweard. you family history should be turned into an epic blockbuster novel.

Subject: RE: BS: Your cultural heritage- is it important?
From: WFDU - Ron Olesko
Date: 19 Dec 08 - 10:26 AM

"My own view is that cultural heritage is over-rated and if it is actively encouraged, it can lead to people actively retreating into a cultural ghetto. "

From reading these posts, it seems that in the UK there is a cultural trait to go overboard on aspects of heritage that creates some sort of belief that one has to rigidly follow a stereotype.

Why does ones ancestry need to govern a life? A "persecuted immigrant" in someones background could give cause to understand what others are going through in modern times, but there is no DNA that will change your life because of it anymore than anyone else.   Understanding the past is an important aspect that guides us to the future, but our past should not limit us to what we perceive as stereotypes.   This whole "class" idea is something that remains in a psyche of people in the UK where it has a different viewpoint in the U.S.    I would hope that we are free-thinkers and not governed by stereotypes of our own creation - we can easily go beyond that if we recognize the boundaries that we have created.

Subject: RE: BS: Your cultural heritage- is it important?
From: Stu
Date: 19 Dec 08 - 10:46 AM



This is absolutely correct, and I agree 100%, but what makes a man's character? A myriad of influences ranging from his genetic make, his upbringing, the country he lives in etc

I think it's impossible to avoid your cultural heritage as it's a part of your make-up. I can't see my essential character changing because of what I've discovered with my family history (I'll be a Villa fan until the day I die and I love Irish music) but it is helping me understand my world a little better.

By way of an analogy, I was doing a degree in Geology some years ago (I didn't finish it much to my lasting regret) and after the first year I realised I was seeing the world in a different way. As we drove through the countryside I became more aware I was travelling through a landscape which told a story; this hill over here was a carboniferous reef standing off the sea bed 345 million years ago, this scarp was the result of folding due to tectonic forces far to the east as a continental plate subducts beneath another continent-sized piece of crust bobbing on a sea of magma. The timeless hills and mountains of my homeland became transient characters making a fleeting appearance in the vastness of our planet's geological timescale, rising and falling over the eons.

In a way this is what my family history does; it changes the way I look at the history not only of myself, my family, not even of just Wales and England, but now Europe and events that changed the world. Whilst one branch were farming the Welsh Hills for centuries, others were being hounded out of their homes and forced to flee.

Somewhere along the line, all of this added a little more to my understanding of who I am.

Subject: RE: BS: Your cultural heritage- is it important?
From: Stu
Date: 19 Dec 08 - 11:05 AM

"Why does ones ancestry need to govern a life?"

It doesn't govern my life - do we all appear that stupid to you? I'm not doing my family history because I need some sort of guidance of how to live my life, but because I want to understand where I came from, where my family fitted into the great scheme of things.

"From reading these posts, it seems that in the UK there is a cultural trait to go overboard on aspects of heritage that creates some sort of belief that one has to rigidly follow a stereotype."

I think you're misunderstanding this Ron.Many people in the UK are very interested in their family history, as are people in the states - I don't hear you criticising Big Mick or Azizi for their interest in their family history or heritage, and I can't see what the difference is between them and me. In fact, they are more defined by their history than I am, as I'm in the process of discovering mine.

"This whole "class" idea is something that remains in a psyche of people in the UK where it has a different viewpoint in the U.S.    I would hope that we are free-thinkers and not governed by stereotypes of our own creation - we can easily go beyond that if we recognize the boundaries that we have created."

Don't confuse the class thing with what I'm talking about here, they're not the same thing. The class system in the UK is a despicable hangover from the old feudal system that unfortunately is proving difficult to get rid of. You'd not believe how many people define themselves by class in the UK, and wear it like a badge. Read Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw for a witty and insightful view of how class works in the UK.

Subject: RE: BS: Your cultural heritage- is it important?
From: Amos
Date: 19 Dec 08 - 11:07 AM



All cultural heritage is optional, IMHO; as an indivvidual you are no more bund by your grandfather's nationality than you are obligated to be a criminal because your great-great-grandfather was shipped to Botany Bay for picking pockets, or to accept a scarred and useless briar pipe to keep in a drawer somewhere because it belonged to a deceased forefather. It's a choice you make as to what beliefs and images to use in constructing your own worldview.

There are thousands of people who are the heirs to a culture of feud and revenge over dozens of generations--"fighting the British" or the damn Yankees, defending some pocket-version of Muslimism, Palestinian pathos, or some tribal battle whose roots are lost in the mists of past conflict--who walk away and choose not to forward such hatreds.

To my mind the obligation one has to one's cultural heritage is to choose from it those ideas, feelings, and passions which reflect the best and highest accomplishments of the culture. If I were born Irish, which I was not, I would embrace language, song, poetry, and a love of freedom as cultural values; I would spin tales of magic and love and celebration. But I would not become a poteen addict, a highwayman, or a promulgator of hatred against the British; those are cultural fragments I would drop by the wayside no matter how emotionally compelling they were to my parents.

DNA, now, is another matter, and it is likely there are cultural bents that are carried in the genes, but I think they are secondary when talking about cultural heritage. My genes include the strongpossibility of alcoholism, but I am not an alcoholic (Getaways notwithstanding).

A

Subject: RE: BS: Your cultural heritage- is it important?
From: Stu
Date: 19 Dec 08 - 12:20 PM

Spot on Amos!

Subject: RE: BS: Your cultural heritage- is it important?
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 19 Dec 08 - 12:38 PM

In terms of my own cultural heritage,the big thing is probably food :). Because I grew up within an Italian American family, that cultural legacy feels absolutely a part of who I am. People speaking Italian, cooking Italian food, singing me little songs when I was a baby...it's all a very real part of my heritage. Our family, like many immigrant families, defines itself through its history and its stories - whenever I go home, there are always family stories that come out at parties and gatherings: how my great-geandparents met packing lemons in a warehouse in Messina; how my great-grandfather kidnapped my great-grandmother because her family didn't approve of him, and dashed across the hills on horseback with her brothers in hot pursuit; all the particulars of the farm they bought when they got to America; the pajama factory the girls went to work in when they turned 12; the fact that my grandmother's school teacher complimented her on how white her mother's sheets always were when they were hanging on the line, "not like those other dirty Italians"; my grandlother's eldest sister writing down all the sizes of the clothes they needed from town, so that when they arrived my great grandmother would not have to speak and give away that they were Italian; the time my grandmother's sister and brothers drank their father's homemade wine and couldn't turn the tap off, so they let it run into all these dirty bottles, and when their father got home and found out he whipped the boys and tied them to a tree; the time my two uncles dug a "bear trap" with barbed wire in the bottom and lured their sister into it (she still has the scars on her hand)...you get the picture. These stories all happened before I was even born, but they are SO real to me. And they are some of the threads that continue to bind all of these dozens of disparate people that make up my family, even four generations on. They help to tell us who we are.

My dad's family was Irish. While I've always been interested in that culture, it doesn't have the same immediacy for me because I didn't really grow up inside it. I visit it like any other cultural tourist would.

Subject: RE: BS: Your cultural heritage- is it important?
From: WFDU - Ron Olesko
Date: 19 Dec 08 - 12:41 PM

"do we all appear that stupid to you?"

well.....

Subject: RE: BS: Your cultural heritage- is it important?
From: WFDU - Ron Olesko
Date: 19 Dec 08 - 12:44 PM

Just teasing... of course I don't think you are stupid. We are having a discussion after all.

Subject: RE: BS: Your cultural heritage- is it important?
From: Stu
Date: 19 Dec 08 - 12:47 PM

Thanks mate.

Subject: RE: BS: Your cultural heritage- is it important?
From: WFDU - Ron Olesko
Date: 19 Dec 08 - 12:59 PM

You are probably right - I am probably misunderstanding the importance that SEEMS to be placed on "heritage". It is probably no different from what you suggested Big Mick and Aziz has suggested. Perhaps reading the threads, as an American, I am picking up a different sense then what you are actually trying to relate. I would hazard a guess that most of us are probably closer to agreement on the role that "heritage" has on our lives than we realize!

Personally, my ancestors are Hungarian, Polish and Czech. There may be certain family traditions that can be traced to those lands, but I would venture to say that I am not much different from any American who is two or three generations removed from "the old country". Our sense of heritage comes from events that have transpired on this native soil and we expand upon that.

Subject: RE: BS: Your cultural heritage- is it important?
From: Bill D
Date: 19 Dec 08 - 03:52 PM

""I've never heard any White person use such descriptors."

I just remembered...when I was about 12, I was in the local public swimming pool. About 10 ft. away, one boy, (also 'white')pointed at me and said to his friend "Look how white he is!" "Hey, Whitey!"....

I am of Scots/Irish heritage, redheaded...and do NOT tan. I was much whiter than most kids, and it was a 'small' disadvantage. Tanned was good! Since, for those who CAN tan, skin color was to a certain extent adjustable, we heard a lot fewer comments about color. When I entered Jr. High/Intermediate/Middle school...7th grade...we had all colors, shades and cultures, and it never dawned on me to worry about who was what. It 'barely' registered with me that many of the darker kids in my classes lived in highly segregated areas, but within a few years, it made a lot of difference, as the early stirrings of the civil rights movement made the news.
Now skin color was important, as it made you think about who you palled around with...and when.

   Culture was highlighted when a black guy...(a sports star)...was elected Homecoming King at my high school. Everyone liked him...but there was the BIG question!!! Would he follow tradition and kiss the Queen, who was white? He did not...not in 1956.
Then, a girl in my class, who was from India, and fairly dark, was seen...*gasp* ..walking with him and holding hands! SHE was called in by school officials and told that was 'not appropriate'... As she explained it to me later, the walls shook as she told them off! She would durned well walk with whomever she pleased.

   So, as I worked my way thru my teens, color...mine AND others...was thrust upon me. I am aware that it hit some more than others.

Later...maybe 1965 or so, I heard remarks about color BY Blacks about other Blacks during Civil Rights meetings...it saddened me, but it was none of my business...they had to sort it out.

So? What of all this? People are people, and they WILL notice, decide, discriminate and rank...and the lazy will use easy rules....like color. It's better than it was 40 years ago...but wow..........

Subject: RE: BS: Your cultural heritage- is it important?
From: Lizzie Cornish 1
Date: 19 Dec 08 - 04:20 PM

Better, at times, that we were all 'blind' and then, perhaps we'd see only each other, and not these 'things' Close your eyes, just for a little while, close your eyes and get someone you know to talk to you.....and listen. Learn to see with your ears, before you see with your eyes.

"Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn whatever state I am in, therin to be content." Helen Keller

Helen would have judged no man, or woman. She'd not have seen them as one class or another.

And yes, Ron, you Americans and Canadians *are* extremely lucky to have missed out on the English 'class' classification of human beings.

Bonsoir, Stig! ;0)

Subject: RE: BS: Your cultural heritage- is it important?
From: GUEST,Bob Ryszkiewicz
Date: 19 Dec 08 - 05:00 PM

Hi Kids: HO HO HO...Just been to the Mall. How about this. We EXCHANGE heritages until the NEW YEAR! That Christmasy feeling has come upon me, and what better way to let someone know you care than by letting them be POLISH for 2 weeks?!

Ride with me on this one. All you have to do is change your last name to something Slavic, something you have a hard time spelling, and YOU are there...

Complete the trial by eating only pierogies, kielbasa, kishka, cabbage soup, guwompkies(embarrassed to say I can't spell it. Sorry Ma.) for the trial period and you will be INTO IT!

Put on that Bowling shirt, Polka your way to the Mall, you know, get down wid yer own bad self...

When you say your new name, LOOK at the expression on the person you're speaking to...You'll notice they look at you like the RCA Dog, or, a deer in the headlights! Heartwarming isn't it?

You'll get used to it. And think of all the FUN things you can do! Collect mispronunciations of your name. Start scrapbooking the misspellings. I tell you, the FUN just NEVER STOPS!

NOW. I'LL be willing to try out that Brit, stiff upper lip, God Save the Queen, crumpet stuff if you let me. Might take me a while to get used to the bowler & umbrella, but I'm willing to WORK on it.

And, the BEST thing about this is, if you don't like the heritage you got, you can return it on BOXING DAY!

The creativity just never stops over here...Merry Christmas...bob

Subject: RE: BS: Your cultural heritage- is it important?
From: GUEST,lox
Date: 19 Dec 08 - 05:10 PM

I'm lucky - my life experience is drawn from many locations and contexts.

I'm also lucky to have made real deep friendships with black white Indian and other people.

I have learned a lot about honesty and tact from my black friends.

I have friends who are Black British, Black African, White African ... damn ... it goes on ... anyway, I have been exposed to and become familiar with and then incorporated into myself the whole idea of clearly and honestly observing thw hue of someones skin and their racial characeristics without being embarrassed about ot or judgemental.

Like I said, I'm blessed to have had a rich life experience.

Subject: RE: BS: Your cultural heritage- is it important?
From: GUEST,lox
Date: 19 Dec 08 - 05:12 PM

GFS, the swastika comes from India - it is a hindu symbol representing peace.

Subject: RE: BS: Your cultural heritage- is it important?
From: meself
Date: 19 Dec 08 - 06:02 PM

I've always undertood the swastika to be an Aboriginal North American symbol, as well as it being associated with other cultures - don't remember where I got that - but I do remember in the Classics Illustrated rendition of Hiawatha, one of the characters had a (backwards?) swastika on a wristband, and I was already, at whatever tender age I was reading the comic, aware of the Native connection with the symbol.

An auctioneer once hired me to clear out the household goods of an old lady who had died; the house was in rural Ontario, outside Peterborough somewhere. Among the items were a couple of stands for old-fashioned irons to sit on (or were they sits for old-fashioned irons to stand on?); in their ironwork were prominent designs swastikas. I had, and still have, no doubt that these pre-dated the Nazi takeover of the swastika.

Subject: RE: BS: Your cultural heritage- is it important?
From: meself
Date: 19 Dec 08 - 06:04 PM

(designs OF swastikas)

Subject: RE: BS: Your cultural heritage- is it important?
From: Melissa
Date: 19 Dec 08 - 06:09 PM

yes, meself..it's a 'four winds' design.

Subject: RE: BS: Your cultural heritage- is it important?
From: Sleepy Rosie
Date: 19 Dec 08 - 06:09 PM

I've been reading this thread on and off for a while. And seeing IB's post back there really made me consider what the broader implications of my own 'personal cultural heritage' may mean. It is, as he rightly suggested, a cultural heritage - which although quite clearly *embedded within* and *filtered through* the context of my temporal location, country and region, ethnicity, genetics, immediate ancestry, economic and class backdrop, and so-on - is equally one which ranges very broadly away from direct associations to that web of immediate contextual foundations.

Some of the influences which I think of as my 'cultural heritage', in no particular order, other than the one my brain-context suggests them to me right now:

Nietzsche, Enid Blyton, Franz Kafka, Marx and Engels, The Brothers Grimm, C.G.Jung, Frued, Seamus Heaney, Morrissey, Chevy Chase, Frank Zappa, Andy Goldsworthy, Louise Bourgiouse, Marie Louise Von Franz, Wainwright, The Mighty Boosh, Joseph Campell, Erikson, Radiohead, Paul Celan, Liz Greene, Cicely M Barker, John Bunyan, John Stuart Mill, Bertrand Russell, Dostoyevsky, William Butler Yeats, Ursula Le Guin, Marc Chagal, Christian Rosenkreutz, Rumi, Olivier Messiaen, Billy Bragg, Gorky, Charles Kingsley, Vic and Bob, John Peel, Meister Eckhart, John Lennon, Max Ernst, Marsillio Ficino, Kandinsky, Andre Gide, William Blake, Christopher Marlowe... And on.

It's a thought provoking exercise, and makes one think. I don't think I've tried it before, but doing it really demonstrates just how magpie like the individual human mind is, in terms of what it seeks out or defines as meaningful and important to it.

Subject: RE: BS: Your cultural heritage- is it important?
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 19 Dec 08 - 06:17 PM

From: Richard Bridge
Date: 19 Dec 08 - 05:11 AM

GFS, shame you got off on the God thing, because you are right about the swastika.

Huh??
Maybe we should take off 'In God We trust' off everything, and replace it with 'In Politicians We Hope'
God is Love...and the origin of life...Not talking about a 'religion'. I believe our founding father had their finger more on the pulse, than ideologies that came since...being as those ideologies never founded a nation or almost anything...they just wanted to take control over the efforts of those who did, with their blood, lives of hard work, and dreams of freedom, and making a better place for their posterity!! ...and not by being psychophants (leeches) of those who did!!!!!!

Lox, The swastika appears in several cultures around the world. 'Meself' is also correct.

Subject: RE: BS: Your cultural heritage- is it important?
From: GUEST,lox
Date: 19 Dec 08 - 06:43 PM

"Aboriginal North American"

As i understand it there was no aboriginal culture in North America.

Aboriginal culture spread upwards through south America from the south pacific, but then encountered migrants from east Asia who, having arrived in the Americas in Alaska and migrated downwards, went on to drive the Aboriginal contingent right out of the Americas with the exception of about twelve old women who are alive today in the Argentinian Town of Ushuaia.

Those East Asian migrants were the ancestors of the Native Americans who were in turn plundered bu the Brits, Spanish, Portuguese etc ....

Subject: RE: BS: Your cultural heritage- is it important?
From: GUEST,lox
Date: 19 Dec 08 - 06:54 PM

To clarify that last post, ... the aboriginal settlement of America went up around as far as New Mexico (so I suppose thats quite far north really) before they encountered the opposing Asian Migration which was possessed of a superior military knowhow and which drove them into the sea.

Subject: RE: BS: Your cultural heritage- is it important?
From: Ebbie
Date: 19 Dec 08 - 09:23 PM

Better, at times, that we were all 'blind' and then, perhaps we'd see only each other, and not these 'things' Liz the Squeak

Serious question: Are there blind racists?

Bob Ryszkiewicz - (my guess is that once a person knows how it goes, your name isn't that hard to pronounce)

Some of us may be more sensitive to nuance than others, Bob. My last name is 'Bontrager' and for some reason instead of being upset about the many, many mispronunciations of it, my family'collected' them.

The most common surrender was 'Trigger', but I've also heard 'Barndragger' and 'Bonedragger'.

The worst example that we laughed about was probably not that funny, being almost certainly from a barely literate deliveryman.

He was delivering supplies to my father and partner's dairy (Bontrager and Kanagy) and when he reached my brothers he consulted the listed address and inquired, Is this Fawza Bawza and Kane?

Subject: RE: BS: Your cultural heritage- is it important?
From: Azizi
Date: 19 Dec 08 - 10:03 PM

Ebbie, maybe it's a Sagittarius thing, but I was going to post a comment about blind people and prejudice.

It seems to me that it's very simplistic to think that just because a person can't see the physical clues that help sighted people categorize people by race, that person could not be prejudiced against or for a particular race or races.

While physical clues are part of how people are socialized to categorize people into racial and ethnic* categories, there are other ideas, attitudes, and stereotypes that people associate with particular racial groups. A person doesn't rise above the stereotypes about race just because he or she can't see skin colors.

* In the context of this sentence, by "ethnic" I mean the USA population group of Latinos.

**

Another cultural descriptor that hasn't yet been mentioned in this discussion is gender orientation. I'm a heterosexual female who has a few gay and lesbian acquaintances. Perhaps I also have some gay and lesbian friends who I don't know. I certainly have gay family members, but rarely talk about this topic with them {their choice}.

It certainly seems to be little doubt that gender orientation has a powerful influence on a person's self-esteem, and attitudes toward life and attitudes toward other people. While I believe that it would be erroneous to talk about "a gay lifestyle" as if there is only one gay lifestyle, it does seem to me that there are cultural mores that could be considered part of some gay lifestyles. I suppose that some gay sub-sets have their own languages and folk heroes, and music preferences, and dance styles etc etc etc. I just don't know very much about these types of cultural lifestyles.

But from what I've observed, and read, and from what I've been told, although homosexual and transgendered people have some things in common regardless of their race, racial prejudice can still exist in this population.

Comments?

Subject: RE: BS: Your cultural heritage- is it important?
From: number 6
Date: 19 Dec 08 - 10:48 PM

"My ancestors didn't come over on the Mayflower, but they met 'em at the boat." .... Will Rogers


biLL

Subject: RE: BS: Your cultural heritage- is it important?
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 19 Dec 08 - 11:08 PM

'Straining on a gnat, but swallowing a camel'


So Lox, Where did the very first one come from???..Asia?...and where did they come from, to Asia??

Subject: RE: BS: Your cultural heritage- is it important?
From: M.Ted
Date: 19 Dec 08 - 11:13 PM

In High School, we had a teacher who was both blind and a racist. He expressed ideas in class that would get him suspended today, but those were different times. The most galling thing was that he presented his bigoted ideas as fact.

Subject: RE: BS: Your cultural heritage- is it important?
From: meself
Date: 19 Dec 08 - 11:50 PM

Lox: I am sure you will concede that many authorities would dispute your account of the origins of the first human inhabitants of the Americas ... ?

*****************

Someone cue up Dave Chapelle's skit about the blind racist ...

Subject: RE: BS: Your cultural heritage- is it important?
From: GUEST,lox
Date: 20 Dec 08 - 05:07 AM

Meself,

Thank you for your informed response - yes I would.

GfS

No - the south Pacific.

Subject: RE: BS: Your cultural heritage- is it important?
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 20 Dec 08 - 05:36 AM

And how did they get out there??

Subject: RE: BS: Your cultural heritage- is it important?
From: GUEST,lox
Date: 20 Dec 08 - 06:52 AM

On boats.

From australia and polynesia.

They were black and did not have east asian features like todays native Americans, who arrived over the land bridge which connected Asia with what is now Alaska.

The point is GFS, that before we go calling todays Native Americans "Aboriginal", we should be sure that they were the original inhabitants - it is a conveniently enjoyable irony that the race of people whose history places doubt on that claim were in fact Australian Aboriginals.

Subject: RE: BS: Your cultural heritage- is it important?
From: Azizi
Date: 20 Dec 08 - 10:19 AM

meself, and others:

I had heard about Dave Chappelle's "Blind Supremacy" sketch. However, I've never seen it, and had forgotten about it when I wrote my comment to this thread.

Here's an excerpt from a newspaper article that mentions that sketch. Ironically, the article is from the Pittsburgh Post Gazette {my adopted hometown}. Fwiw, the columnist is African American:

"The infamous "Blind Supremacy" sketch from last season comes to mind. No one who saw it will ever forget the conceit of a blind Klansman, played by an obviously black, but hooded Chappelle, rallying his followers with cheers of "White Power."

The faux supremacist has made a minor fortune making speeches at racist gatherings. Still, he doesn't know that he's black because he's never seen himself in the mirror. The childhood buddy who chauffeurs him in a pickup truck won't level with him because he's afraid it could kill the golden goose of fiery anti-black rhetoric. As long as he stays hooded, the suckers who pay to hear him preach aren't the wiser, either.

When the blind Klansman rips the hood from his head in response to the crowd's entreaties to "show his face," all hell breaks loose.

Later, we learn from the skit's narrator that the blind Klansman eventually divorced his white wife because he couldn't tolerate being married to "a n***er lover".*"

The hilariously dangerous world of Dave Chappelle
Tuesday, January 27, 2004; Pittsburgh Post Gazette; Tony Norman

http://www.post-gazette.com/columnists/20040127normanp5.asp

*Yes Tony Norman wrote that entire N word. Yes I cringed when I read it. And yes I took the liberty of refusing to write the entire word.