One of the most unpleasant things at today’s Palestinian talk was how happy everybody in the audience was to hear the phrase “almost everything bad that ever happened in the world came from Europe”. I think this self-hatred is at the heart of every problem here in America.
You say “Native Americans”, and everybody goes googly-eyes because Native Americans are supposed to be creatures of unblemished perfection. But everything that’s their own culture must be evil, horrible, worthless.
So… Genghis Khan. Do they think:
-He’s European?
-They’ve never heard of him.
-He’s actually a hero because only European atrocities count– when non-Europeans do rape and slaughter that’s OK because original sin or something.
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You would enjoy this article:
https://libertiesjournal.com/articles/another-country/
These narcissistic optics are the downside of the perennial Western search for an alternative to itself. It is hard to accept that the system you live in, liberal democracy, is the only game in town — that what you have been given is all there is, or even all there should be. One may feel trapped, claustrophobic even. The restless energies of youth may feel thwarted. Coming from a time and a place where the West represented something ultimately good, something to strive for, I had it easier: growing up in the Soviet Union, in its rotten and disgusting realities, there was quite a clear path from bad to good, a path illuminated by hope. But for those who were already there, in the promised land of liberal democracy? If you accept the fact that you already live on the right side of history, but still see all its flaws and all its wrongs, where is the hope for you? Those deluded Eastern Europeans, naïve as puppies, the ones who revere the democratic West and aspire to belong to it, don’t see how unjust the Western world is, but you, you see. (This is immediately followed by adrenaline shots of Kissinger-like cynicism.) And you need an alternative, a dispensation more exciting than merely fixing the flaws of the existing system. “Truth comes from the north,” as Voltaire put it. You need another country.
This way of thinking has been an inherent feature of Western intellectual history. Remember all those laments, all these books and articles, about “the decline of the West,” the endless stream of dystopias, the guilt about every success? I would even suggest that this mode of thinking defines what it means to be a Westerner. Whatever its conclusions, the questions are all the same: What did we do wrong? What was our mistake? The idea that something in the world may happen without our input, independent of Western influence, is too hard, or too insulting, to digest. Westerners are often criticized for taking credit for all the good in the world, but they also tend to take credit for all the evil. This habit of mind is exactly what made Western countries safe, rich, and preferable for living: the restless anxiety and the race for self-improvement. Yet it is also what makes them largely incapable of understanding evil beyond the Western realm. This stubborn dodging may be confused with political correctness, but it is hard to draw the line between actual PC and the inability to recognize the agency of others at their worst.
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Something for you to consider although the term “Native American” seems to be the Woke preference.
Many people prefer the term “Native American,” although when I tried to use that with an Apache interview subject named Gregory Gomez, he pointed out that the term properly refers to people of any ethnicity born in the United States. He insisted that I use “American Indian” instead, and so I have. – Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging Hardcover by Sebastian Junger
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“although the term “Native American” seems to be the Woke preference”
I dunno…. IINM it goes back at least to the 1970s… Often indigenous peoples of the Americas (awkard enough?) tend to just use “Indians” or the name of their tribe more or less interchangeably. Culturally different groups have very little (or nothing) in common. I like Amerindian but some people don’t for some reason that I forget….
It’s even harder in Spanish, the word indio is fine in some countries and a slur in others (where the terms indígena or autóctono are preferred).
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It’s hard enough explaining to American students that “un negro” is a perfectly normal way of referring to a black person and not a slur.
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Our first taste of “oh, culture here is a bit different” on arriving in Lima… was the Manos Morenas restaurant in the food court. This was after Aunt Jemima had had to be “updated” here. Her younger sister still serves creole food in Peru, and this apparently doesn’t bother anybody…
https://www.facebook.com/people/Manos-Morenas/100069495369849/
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A conservative literary critic and college professor
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