US, not africans, responsible for slavery

[Sikander]

Originally posted by Nickiow

You cant regulate how people *think*, but you can regulate to alrge degree how they ineract. US has had a problem with multi culturlism for a considerable period, and from what i see is unlikly to solve it.

What do you mean by your last sentence?

[Nickiow]

Originally posted by Sikander


What do you mean by your last sentence?

I mean that the US is unlikly to integrate all its component ethnic/cultural mixes into a single entity, rather there will always be pressure and seperation from those who consider themselves marginlised, be it because of ethnicity or culture, and the same is true for any other nation with similar problems.

The problem is that we are not all equal, and the more free we are in society, the more we show how unequal we all are, the only place i see us all free and equal is in the Communist schema, and that only works on paper....

[Sikander]

Originally posted by Nickiow


I mean that the US is unlikly to integrate all its component ethnic/cultural mixes into a single entity, rather there will always be pressure and seperation from those who consider themselves marginlised, be it because of ethnicity or culture, and the same is true for any other nation with similar problems.

The problem is that we are not all equal, and the more free we are in society, the more we show how unequal we all are, the only place i see us all free and equal is in the Communist schema, and that only works on paper....

It doesn't even work on paper, how can you have freedom without the freedom to be better / worse / different than others?

Mixing everyone in the U.S. into one ethnic / cultural entity is our traditional government policy more or less, certainly moreso than multiculturalism. But it has never been an all inclusive push. By the time we decided as a nation to actually live up to the constitution in the 1950s and 1960s ethnic movements of various sorts were becoming more popular amongst the traditionally dispossessed / abused ethnicities in the U.S. From those movements an umbrella idea emerged of multiculturalism as government policy, which has made inroads into the traditional American policy of encouraging assimilation while balancing that idea with the freedom to nevertheless live in an ethnic ghetto and never learn english if you so choose. The rise of multiculturalism as policy, typically in small jurisdictions like schools, universities or cities rather than entire states or national institutions has somewhat retarded government efforts to keep pushing assimilation, but neither position has enough political power to force the issue beyond reasonably mild government support for assimilation at this time.

[The Mad Viking]

Originally posted by Nickiow

I mean that the US is unlikly to integrate all its component ethnic/cultural mixes into a single entity, rather there will always be pressure and seperation from those who consider themselves marginlised, be it because of ethnicity or culture, and the same is true for any other nation with similar problems.

The problem is that we are not all equal, and the more free we are in society, the more we show how unequal we all are, the only place i see us all free and equal is in the Communist schema, and that only works on paper....

I can accept the premise "we are not all equal" + "more freedom" giving rise to "we show how unequal we are". What does this have to do with ethnic/cultural mixes?

Also, your sentence does not make clear whether you believe they are marginalized because of ethnicity or culture, or whether they simply feel marginalized because of ethnicity or culture. Which is it?

*

(And since you read the entire Toynbee, why are you asking ignorant little me about the context of the "black race" (sic) not making any contributions to a civilization? I would presume you know the context...)

Thanks for quoting all the Ben Isaac information. Since it supports my arguments and refutes yours.

Did not the American establishment, until quite recent times, exhibit racism against the Irish and Italians? This was not based on skin pigment. Aristotle and many leading Greek thinkers and leaders either believed that the Greeks were superior (and hence the Barbaros (foreigners) were inferior.

Many Classical historians tend towards being apologists for the Greeks and Romans, defending or ignoring the unpleasant aspects. This, to me, is not good scholarship.

Did you know that when Pompeii was excavated, a multitude of sexually explicit artifacts were hidden away from view in storage rooms in the Milan museum, as they offended current sensibilities?

If you want to complaing about applying anachronistic approaches to the study of antiquity, I would suggest that the approach of exclusion is far worse than the use of a term or concept that may not have been invented in antiquity to describe the behaviour of classical cultures.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by The Mad Viking
On Aristotle, I fail to see how his antagonism to those who are overly pale somehow voids his antagonism against those who are black. If anything, it offers further support of his xenophobic racism.

Except you haven't proved that Aristotle even had the same notion or concept of 'race' that exists today, or in the 18th, 19th and 20th Century.

Aristotle was tremendously gifted (and hugely influential- more so than any other Classical thinker or scientist) but even he couldn't anticipate the distortions of Linnaean categorization and 'scientific' pseudo-Darwinian racism.

His comments about peoples being too pale or too dark seem hardly to support a thesis of his support for a creed of 'white superiority', but rather to indicate an idealised philosophical belief in the Hellenic post-Classical Greek view of nothing in excess, and not a rigid investigation into genetic mapping of 'racial' origins and supposed 'racial' traits.

I should also point out too that from about the 13th Century onwards (as knowledge of the gold and civilization of Mali and other sub-Saharan states filtered through to Europe) black Africans were depicted more and more in Western European art, and not as slaves or exotics, but as equals.

As Felipe Fernandez-Armesto points out in his 'Millenium', Majorcan cartographers and the artist of the Catalan Atlas (circa 1375-85) portrayed the ruler of Mali as a Latin/Western monarch, with the iconography and paraphernalia that would be common to European rulers of the time, and found in court portraits and royal propaganda such as the 'Wilton Diptych' or later Tudor portraits: he has a beard, is crowned, enthroned and holds orb and sceptre, so is visually not a primitive but the counterpart to any prince of Christendom.

"This Black lord is called Massa Melly (sic) lord of the Blacks of Guinea. This lord is the richest and most noble lord of all this region owing to the abundance of gold which is gathered in his land."

Cresques Abraham 'The Catalan Atlas' .

http://www.henry-davis.com/MAPS/LMwebpages/235B.html

'Massa Melly'- or Mansa Musa as he is better known- is shown in the bottom right hand corner of the map on the left:

http://www.georgeglazer.com/maps/world/catalanenane.html