I thought we didn’t have to dog-whistle anymore now that Trump has been elected. Guess some people didn’t get the memo.
The same reasons that students in Japan, Korea, China, the Arab world, India, and Russia do the same thing. At 69, you should know there’s a lot more to the world than what you learned in fourth grade social studies and freshman year in college.
This was always an interesting construct to me, considering how you have to draw that longitude line. I’ve tried to replicate it here, though the Hicksville shading is quite imprecise since I don’t quite know where all the Western Hicksvilles are.
Yes. It’s not a stable concept, for sure. What constitutes “the west” has been redefined over time (it used to not include Eastern Europe, for example). If we were Edward Said, we’d say that it is generally defined by what it is NOT the mysterious and historically moribund “east” which is itself a construct.
I’m gonna assume sarcasm here… But of course, we know because we do have a variety of sources on what the trail of tears was like, including various accounts at the time and from oral histories later…
"how did that language become offensive?”
It didn’t become offensive; wite nationalist and white supremacist was always offensive. We’ve just finally reached a point where insulated, white supremacist, idiots like Mr. King every once in a while are reminded that it is offensive to humanity.
I never quite understood those white supremacists who argue that they as white people are somehow personally entwined with the advances of “western civilization”.
For instance, I’ve got European ancestors and I’ve got Native American ancestors. On the Native American side of my family I’ve got poets, musicians, scientists, technologists, soldiers, diplomats, statesmen etc. Non-white folks who contributed to the founding and furtherance of this civilization.
I point blank ask these white supremacists what have they or their families ever personally contributed to the civilization. And it’s the sound of crickets.
I’m proud of my history, where we banded together as a nation to defeat the Nazis, proved to the British that we are capable of running our own country, and being a shining beacon of Democracy and Freedom to the world. What’s wrong with that?
But then someone with a different view of history sees that as:
I’m proud of living off of the backs of enslaved Africans and perpetrating genocide on the native population as well as waging bloody wars for no good reason in foreign countries. What’s wrong with that?
The people are arguing from two entirely different sets of principles and both of them rightfully think the other side is being a jackass. You can’t argue the points until you agree on the details, but there is no time for that in a tweet.
Example of how framing works: Racist Steve Kings mentions 2 offensive and 1 neutral thing as if they are equal, and all anybody can talk about is the 1 neutral thing.
In Australia this continues to be the subject of active debate between not just academic historians but politicians, pitting the so-called “black armband’ view of indigenous history against one of British paternalistic benevolence, much loved by conservatives. The story of Europeans arriving in an “empty” continent (“terra nullus”) and bringing civilisation to a primitive people has hard to shake, and it’s really only been since the 1980’s that there’s been any taught recognition of the other 40,000 years of civilisation. What’s been most depressing is that there’s been such a backlash by conservatives to stop teaching “black armband” history, arguing that white Australian history is the only history that matters, and that anything else is “political correctness gone mad.”
