Text 10814, 60 rader
Skriven 2007-01-27 00:04:48 av Jeffrey MacHott (14251.babylon5)
  Kommentar till text 10807 av rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated (14244.babylon5)
Ärende: Re: Shades of offensive language WAS Re: Shades of "12 Angry Men (1957)
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Josh Hill wrote:
> On 25 Jan 2007 20:24:37 -0800, "Soundy" <soundy106@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>>
>> On Jan 25, 6:07 pm, Josh Hill <userepl...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> As I recall, the idea behind the term was that it /wasn't/ supposed to
>>> be descriptive of race, but rather of ancestral geographical origin,
>>> like Scottish-American. So it was an attempt to put things on an equal
>>> footing. Needless to say, since in practice it's applied only to those
>>> who are of sub-Saharan African descent, the distinction is superficial
>>> at best.
>> Problem with that whole idea is, you have to have some basic knowledge
>> of a person to even attempt to choose the right "description".  Without
>> KNOWING their "ancestral geographical region", it's impossible to use
>> the "proper" term.
>>
>> For that matter, the second half of the hyphenation is supposed to
>> indicate their CURRENT location/nationality-of-choice/whatever... so
>> what's a black person living in Zimbabwe?  African-African?  Would a
>> white person in Zaire be an American-African?  What if he's actually
>>from Sweden?  How do you know?
>> The whole concept is just plain STUPID.  Beyond silly, beyond
>> ridiculous... just STUPID.
> 
> I gather the continental appellation is a matter of practicality,
> since many or most Americans of African descent don't know the
> countries or tribes of their origin, and are probably descended from
> many groups anyway (as are we all).

Also, "European-American" probably never caught on cause many of the 
European divisions followed into the US.  Your typical "Anglo-American" 
tends to be of Northern or Western European descent, while 
Southern/Eastern Europeans and Irishmen have at various points in 
history been regarded as a separate group.

Mostly it's a religious thing, with Protestants not liking Catholics 
(though even the worse of the anti-Catholic stuff I ever dealt with in 
my life, while living in Oklahoma, was rather mild and limited to 
correcting people on various minor points, such as that we don't worship 
false idols of the Virgin Mary, we don't practice canibalism, and we're 
not Pagans (?!).

Something that amused the heck out of me when I worked in the Biology 
department at Texas A&M (in a mail-delivery and phone-answering 
capacity) was how much of the faculty and senior staff of the department 
were Catholic, including, I think, the department head, Dr. Cassone, who 
debated a Creationist guy under the table in a series of debates on 
Evolution vs. Creationism.

On that note, fun fact that I only recently learned; Catholicism is 
Evolution-Compatible(TM).  We don't say you HAVE to believe it, but 
we're saying you CAN believe it as it doesn't contradict anything the 
Church believes.

-- 
--Jeffrey MacHott

"Sola bona lingua est mortua lingua"
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