h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

...and, since you have not yet replied, I'd like to suggest that you stop this tireless harping on a line taken completely out of context, which seems to keep nobody but yourself awake at night.

Do have a nice life, Trin.

Perhaps it would be more productive if you bothered to get out of bed.

>>They dont practice African culture, speak Swahili, or do anything particularly African<<

Oh my word. *Please* read a book on Africa. Anything. Really - anything at all. There is no such thing as 'African culture': there are thousands of different cultures within Africa. In some of those cultures, they speak Swahili, in many they speak some of the hundreds and hundreds of other African languages. As to what constitutes 'particularly African' behaviour ... no, I'm sorry, I can't go on. Please read something.

As for your kidnapped merchant, the heart sinks further and along similar lines. A medieval merchant wouldn't feel the same way about national identity as you do. Nor would his captors. Why do you assume that the way *you* think about national identity is the right way and all other ways, not merely those in other parts of the world and other parts even of your own society, but those stretching back through history as well, are somehow flawed? The terms you are arguing about in relation to contemporary American society are those of contemporary American society, they don't tap into some transhistorical 'truth' about nationhood.

Well we have people in the UK that call themselves Pakistani. Not even British-South Asian let alone British. They hate Britain almost as much as they hate the USA, and yet there culture is a mish mash of US gangsta rap, Islam and theories of the racial Supremacist.

bit of a generalisation there
I known people who call themselves Pakistani but certainly don't talk like that

I hardly implied these people comprised the entire asian community...

*we have people here in the UK that call themselves Pakistani*

Just those that call themselves Pakistani
still a pretty large community

The more moderate of the community tend to call themselves British-Asian though, rather than thinking of themselves as a Pakistani that just happened to be born in Britain.

also possibly an age thing
the people I know who call themselves Pakistani are collegues
either born in Pakistan or East Africa or 1st generation British but not youths or students

Trin: what the guy was saying was just that there seemed to be nothing african about these african americans. He just used Swahili and such as examples. I´d agree with him, if there is nothing african about someone and the only difference between them and other americans is the color of their skin, using the word african american is strange. Then just Black would seem better.

>>if there is nothing african about someone<<

According to what standard of 'African'? The man living the traditional Masai life, or his brother who's a computer programmer in Nairobi? The Coptic Christian from Ethiopia or the Muslim from Morocco? The sheep herder in Senegal or the brain surgeon in Lesotho?

I mean, just imagine how this would work the other way round - am I to take it that if Leo doesn't own a ranch, wear a stetson and shout 'Yee-Haw!' all the time, there's nothing really American about him?

If a black American chooses to identify with an African heritage, no matter how constructed the 'Africa' that's involved or how imaginative the connexion to it, the real question is what is it about traditional American culture that doesn't make him or her want to identify with that? How many of America's thousand wealthiest people are black? How many black presidents has America had exactly? In certain parts of the south you only have to go back one or two generations to find people for whom attempting to vote was potentially lethal and often practically impossible and I imagine those people do talk to their children and grandchildren. This is hardly ancient history.

So what I'm saying is that if you belong to that part of America whose aspirations have always been reflected in and encouraged by the dominant culture, turning round to those who've always been on the crappy end of the same deal and saying 'Why all the fuss?' is not only a tad insensitive, but derives from the same lack of imagination that chooses to take its ideas of Africa from 1930s Tarzan films than any genuine knowledge.

Just my two cents from a Canadian perspective:

In certain contexts it strikes me as appropriate to talk about "European Canadians", "Asian-Canadians", "South-Asian Canadians", or "First Nations", each of which groups contains a vast amount of diversity. Within each of these groups on sometimes needs to be more specific and talk of "Ukrainian Canadians", "Ugandan Canadians", "Indo-Canadians" or "Cree". And at the other end we very often just talk of "Canadians". Context is everything.

That's my two cents.

I don't really want to get into this conversation, but I just wanted to comment on the irony of African-Americans treating Swahili as the generic African language when it was brought in by non-African Arabs who, among other things, were slave traders.

The vast majority USians of African Slave decent really don't have anything apart from the colour of their skin and romantic notions to conect with the continent of Africa.

lol I cannot believe you are arguing about what some people choose to call THEMSELVES. Let them call themselves whatever they want to, who are you to choose what they call themselves.

Unless you are decended from a relatively small population from around the Caucus Mountains in Eastern Europe it is unlikely that you are actually Caucasian, but if you have white skin that, apparently, is what you are in the US. Is that not a similar situation?
BCNU - Crescent

>>real question is what is it about traditional American culture that doesn't make him or her want to identify with that? How many of America's thousand wealthiest people are black? How many black presidents has America had exactly?<

YOu so completely have the wrong handle on the situation, that it is hardly worth arguing with you. It has nothing to do with hating American culture. But I give up. Apparently others understand the paradox involved, you are simply incapable.

>>Unless you are decended from a relatively small population from around the Caucus Mountains in Eastern Europe it is unlikely that you are actually Caucasian, but if you have white skin that, apparently, is what you are in the US. Is that not a similar situation?
<<

I didn't say it had to do with hating American culture, I said it had to do with not finding an adequate reflection of yourself within it (thus the point about America's richest, the insufficiency of political representation, etc.) and so looking for alternative forms of cultural identity.

Sorry if it was a bit tricky for you.

Stealth - the point about 'romantic notions': I take the point, but don't most forms of national and cultural identity work in this way, to some extent?

Woah! Thought there was something different - just noticed the de-yikesed posting! I wondered what that was.

But it's so comfy in here! *Brushes some crumbs off the duvet*

Howl, please! Be the kind Howl I know!





As for the connection to africa for african-americans. I'm afraid my country's slaveships in the 17th century are the only connection to Afrika. However I think that because of the strong african-american (slave) society there is an idea of "pan-Afrikanism", and that it's romanticised over the years.


I can of course be comepletely wrong!

<>

Actually, that's the result of some 19th century (I think) anthropologist/ethnologist who decided that everyone in the world fell into 5 catagories: negroid (most Africans), australoid (australian aborigenees and melanesians), mongoloid (east asians and Native Americans), caucasiod (European or Indian), and khoesoid (san/bushmen/khoesian)--that's where the term caucasion to mean white people (and often Indians) came from. Apparently the guy thought that all speakers of indo-european langauges came from the Caucus Mountains and thus Europeans and Indians must be "caucasion".

Crescent: yes, perhaps I have no real relation to the Caucasus but the "technical" name for my race is still caucasian. But in average day terms I would just say White. What I have a problem with is that Black by some is seen as a racist term, when it is really the best description. Since as someone mentioned, a lot of Black Americans have no real connection to Africa. My family comes from Holland a few generations back, but I still see myself as a Dane and would use that. A colleague was born in Korea, but adopted as a child by Danish parents. I would also not be calling him an asian dane. There´s some people where I live, who I think seems to be first generation immigrants from Africa. They dress in typical colorful african(Nigerian I think) clothes, and shop sometimes in a store with African foodstuff. Now if those used the term African-Irish I could understand it because, well they live up to my probably stereotype idea of Africans.