I find it really depressing the disparity in history education between the US and the entire rest of the developed world.
In my education, we went over US history numerous times, from the American Revolution forward, and also did a little European history. There’s a lot of whitewashing in American primary and secondary education, and it’s quite frankly bad for us as a country. Patting ourselves on the back while glossing over what we did to the Native Americans, and how we meddled in many other country’s affairs.
I had to learn for myself about US imperialism in South America. That was never taught in school.
But then I talk to Canadians, and they have a good understanding of Canadian, US, Mexican, and South American history, as well as European history. They’re taught a lot more about their first nations, I talk to people from Holland, they know much more world history than Americans do.
I talk to people from the UK, and they know both European and American history.
It makes me almost guilty. Everyone else knows American history because we export our culture so heavily, but Americans are very selective about the culture they import from other places.
As much of a melting pot as we are, the US is very good at enforcing integration.
The key thing to know about NZ is that the indigenous population (the Maori) basically reisisted and fought the colonising europeans/English to a standstill. The outcome of that was a treaty that guaranteed Maori a whole bunch of rights that are all-but unique in the history of euro-native colonial interactions.
Of course … it took over a century for those obligations to actually be honoured, but the basis was, and remains, there for a ‘forward together’ approach which has staved off a lot of injustice and angst. Not all of it. But a lot of it.
If you work at Yahoo, that same event means the people you care about
and work with have gone home to tell their children that they’re
changing schools because they can’t afford the mortgage anymore and the
family is relocating somewhere cheaper. They’ve moved their aging, frail
parents out of their nice nursing homes and into cheaper, more ghastly
ones.
The ones I really shed a tear for are all those telephone switchboard operators. Not to mention cable car grip men and those fellows with their red flag in front of horseless carriages.
There’s always at least one species traitor who allows themselves to play host to the corporation. The corporation doesn’t need specific people to survive. Just someone to get excited about it. Since in the end it’s a meme.
One of my favourite bullshit terms was introduced to me when my missus was having issue with her mobile phone company, she was getting distressed so I took over the call for her and the fella on the other end must have just been reading from a screen because he just kept saying “I cannot escalate this call”. I was like “That’s totally fine, I don’t need for you to change how far you are from the ground floor, I just would like for you to resolve the issue from where you are please”. The problem was not resolved that day.
As for the Yahoo staff, it’s certainly a raw deal but the “remix” remark is just the acid laced salt crystals smushed into the wound, served with a punchably insincere grin.
It means that when you do have to lay off staff, treat it as the major issue it is for those affected. Don’t be glib and don’t sugarcoat it with cutesy neologisms usually applied to creative works.
Well it is a pretty typical thing for Marissa thing to do and say. Remember the time she tired to re-define the word ‘bossy’ because some lady called Hillary Clinton that?
Off the main topic, but just quickly: you’ll probably need Australian college/university level books rather than high school level. Our treatment of Indigenous people has been mostly white-washed. I recall barely any mention of aboriginal people throughout my high school history studies. Ended up doing Asian history in years 11 and 12 though, so that could have something to do with not remembering being taught anything about Kooris and other Indigenous…
