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The Untold Story of Latinos in America “We are all Americans of the New World, and our most dangerous enemies are not each other, but the great wall of ignorance between us.”
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Showing posts with label native-american. Show all posts
Showing posts with label native-american. Show all posts
Monday, November 21, 2011
When Worlds Collide
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| Photo credit: The New Yorker |
I'm European American and I've been trying to unpack what it means to be living on the land of First Nation Peoples / Indigenous Native American land.
Every sane individual would agree that people are not supposed to steal, and yet, Non-Native Americans live on stolen land every day.
If Europeans didn't steal the land, then another group would have sailed over and stolen the land, some might argue. That does not justify the first theft and there is no guarantee that Native Americans would have allowed the other group to steal their land. And actually, Native American's did not allow Europeans to steal their land. Amerindians did not believe in owning land. They believed in sharing the land. They believed they were sharing the land with Europeans. And actually, the French did share the land and traded goods peacefully with Amerindians for 100 years before the British arrived.
For those who believe in liberty and freedom, we would have to admit that the liberty and freedom of Amerindians was ignored in favor of the greed of Europeans.
History repeats itself. The modern corollary is that European Americans want to disposes Hispanic Latino Mexicas of their freedom and liberty to work an honest job harvesting crops that feed the nation. Ironically the nation that is being fed is mostly European American 79.96% in 2010. The other corollary is that the U.S. military is inviting itself into Oil Rich countries to help themselves to their resources.
But I digress. What I wanted to ask is: When worlds collide, who's interests should win? The group with the bigger guns?
Glenn is a European-American married to a Mexican-American. They have two children. Glenn is interested in progressive immigration reform, and desegregation within schools and communities. He is a life long learner with interests in sociology, anthropology, psychology, history and politics.
Connect to Glenn at CommunityVillage.us
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Connect to Glenn at CommunityVillage.us
Monday, September 26, 2011
Replace the "White" ethnic label in the U.S.
Why are European-American's called 'White'?
Many ethnic labels have changed through the course of U.S. history. The next one that needs to change is "White".
Modern politically correct terms for every ethnic group have a tie to the regional heritage of that group -- except for White.
Vague and disrespectful labels of the past have changed to respectful modern descriptions:
Oriental changed to Asian-American
Negro changed to African-American
Native Savage changed to Native-American
European-American changed to White.
Using color labels verbally is acceptable. It's conversational and prevents guessing wrong about nation of origin. Writing should be more precise. Color labels should not be the first choice. When official paperwork is involved, especially government forms, what would this color label imply? The term "White" in the U.S. was originally used as a way to group all Europeans (regardless of color) together as a team because it was the "whites" against the people of color. The early days of the U.S. was not primarily about fitting into your group of national origin, it was an actual 'race' war (for what was understood at the time), due to the sudden collision of different phenotypes brought together by the new larger and faster sailing ships of the day. Everyone had to make sense of each other, and phenotypes of a feather flocked together.
Using the word European-American makes European-American's sound like foreigners. (Which they are - but European-Americans don't want to have a foreign sounding label. Another issue is that using the word "White" is perpetuating a false brand of purity, goodness, and cleanness.
I don't expect my European-American brothers and sisters to stop using the label of "White" for themselves, nor the government to stop using the term "White". I think they like the positive branding.
However, all my non-European-American brothers and sisters should be happy to label European-Americans what they really are: European-Americans.
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Glenn is a European-American married to a Mexican-American. They have two children. Glenn is interested in progressive immigration reform, and desegregation within schools and communities. He is a life long learner with interests in sociology, anthropology, psychology, history and politics.
Connect to Glenn at CommunityVillage.us
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