Why should there be a Black history month? We don't have a White history, a Red history, a Brown history, or a Yellow history month. Why a Black history month? We're all Americans and all part of American history. To single them out for a Black history month just makes them Others.
I'm just repeating what a Black man posted elsewhere.
Agree, be glad they at least picked the shortest month and not one with 31 days, I am kind of over it, actually I was over it somewhere in late January when they started talking about it.
Slammr (imported) wrote: Mon Feb 27, 2012 12:30 am
Why should there be a Black history month? We don't have a White history, a Red history, a Brown history, or a Yellow history month. Why a Black history month? We're all Americans and all part of American history. To single them out for a Black history month just makes them Others.
I'm just repeating what a Black man posted elsewhere.
Because in many places, history of black people is not discussed in school or anywhere else. Sometimes out of bigotry other times out of ignorance. Unfortunately, here in the USA there seems to be this idea that the world only consists of Europe and the Americas. All inventions, discoveries, or history is ignored as if it didn't happen in the US or Europe. There are many discoveries that have been attributed to Europeans that were actually discovered hundreds if not thousands of years before in China, India, and South America.
So it's an attempt to educate people about a history that is real but not really talked about. And the fact that you need to ask why we need black history month, is exactly the reason we need it.
The average person knows little history of any kind. There's no special ignorance of non-American or non-European history. Most people know little beyond what they've personally experienced plus a garbled version of the fictions they've seen on TV or the movies. It's easy to create "history" by placing a fiction in a TV show or movie. Then most people will say they know it. I've met few Americans with any knowledge of American history beyond a few popular myths, and fewer still who know anything at all about contemporary Europe, let alone European history.
The idea that there's a selective ignorance of the history of "people of color," and also women, flies in the face of US academic history for the past 40 years. There are few colleges today, at least among those considered prestigious, that do not have large departments studying all the supposedly suppressed histories, languages, and cultures. Departments of Black and Women's Studies are both mandatory. Literature about Asia, Africa, Latin America, et al., is required for most freshmen. In fact, many high schools now include this material in their curricula, not wanting to be left behind when it comes to academic fashion and political indoctrination. (These curricula are predictably anti-American and anti-white, by implication, if not openly.)
Yet we continue to be told about the poor "marginalized" peoples of the world. Examine the course catalog of any major university today, and you'll find more classes and more faculty concerned with these subjects in total than with American and European history. Majoring in Chinese is "cool" today. Majoring in French is not. Ask any students you know at a major university.
So why do we still hear about the supposed invisibility of non-white people? Because it serves the ends of those whose profession is non-white cultures - it guarantees jobs, grants, publications, etc.
Now let me ask: go to China or Japan or anywhere in Latin America or Africa and tell me if the people there scorn their own histories and languages as we do ours. Do they scant their own histories as we do, or is it considered an obvious necessity for people to be well versed in their own culture, supplemented with knowledge of others? I understand that all Chinese students are taught English. Does this mean they don't spend more time with Chinese language, history, and culture?
Every nation has a history whose passage from one generation to the next is essential to the very survival of that nation as a nation. Every nation determined to endure is careful to teach its children what it means to belong to that nation.
Perhaps it's no surprise that the anti-American left is determined to minimize the teaching of American history. When I went to school I studied US history every year from 1st grade through high school. The need was considered obvious. Today, I understand that "world history," in which US history plays but a small part often supplants US history entirely. Again, let me ask about the curricula in other countries. Do they not consider it essential to pass on their own history?
But Slammr is right that US history is a tapestry woven of many separate peoples, all of whom became American despite where they came from. The history of all these peoples needs to be told in the context of the history of which it was a part. Atomizing and Balkanizing the US may be an objective of the left (divide and conquer), but we should pay it no mind. Rather, we should strive to undo the harm that has already been done to generations of America's young in the name of long-outdated agendas from the 1960s.
Riverwind (imported) wrote: Sat Jan 28, 2012 10:17 am
I wonder if Ron Paul actually got in and was actually able to change some things, what would the country look like.
He is big on doing away with all sorts of agencies, so I decided to pick one.
THE IRS
First we kill off all the income tax codes, capital gains, death tax, (you republicans happy so far?) we eliminate everything and start over.
First thing we eliminate all the deductions for everything under the sun, NO deductions for anything. Next we set a new progressive tax system that effects every income level. The poor making under say 20k a year would pay 1.5% they cant afford much but everybody should pay something. The 1% would pay 90%. NO DEDUCTIONS. not for interest payments on your home, not for kids, not because your single and filing joint, or any other such nonsense. As a matter of fact your taxes could be done on one sheet of paper and if filled in with black ink could be scanned so that the computer operator at the IRS would be able to handle all 500 million returns in a few days. The IRS would be reduced in size to 5 people, you need a boss so one of them, a computer programmer, a computer operator, a person in the mail room and a Secretary. I think that would about cover it.
Result, you cut spending by several millions a year by firing all the people who now work for the IRS, you could then sell off the buildings for even more cash, applying it all to the national debt, as the new IRS would only need a back room off the capital building.
Now you fix this new law and make it so it can not be changed for any reason until the national debt is under 1980 levels. (that was just under a trillion). This should make all republicans so happy, it will do two things they have been screaming about, cutting spending and lowering the national debt. Everybody is involved from the poorest of the poor to the richest of the rich in this effort. What could be more American??? Now the one tax that would remain in tact is the Social Security tax, 50/50. We must maintain that for retirement past, present and future.
The last part of this law would be that congress can not pass any bill unless its paid for in advance. At the same time we eliminate all charities living off the dole. They too would need to pay tax on what they take in, after all everybody is in on this no exceptions.
So Moi, the only question I have is do you like it?
How many years do you think it would take to pay off the national debt?
OK so I am sitting here having a pipe dream.
River
You honestly believe that someone should have to pay 90% of their income in taxes?
bobover3 (imported) wrote: Mon Feb 27, 2012 5:30 am
Perhaps it's no surprise that the anti-American left is determined to minimize the teaching of American history. When I went to school I studied US history every year from 1st grade through high school. The need was considered obvious. Today, I understand that "world history," in which US history plays but a small part often supplants US history entirely. Again, let me ask about the curricula in other countries. Do they not consider it essential to pass on their own history?
But Slammr is right that US history is a tapestry woven of many separate peoples, all of whom became American despite where they came from. The history of all these peoples needs to be told in the context of the history of which it was a part. Atomizing and Balkanizing the US may be an objective of the left (divide and conquer), but we should pay it no mind. Rather, we should strive to undo the harm that has already been done to generations of America's young in the name of long-outdated agendas from the 1960s.
I have great respect for bob's intelligence - until every one of his responses becomes about some Left-wing conspiracy that's about to destroy America. Is this all the Republicans have going for them - fear? It's not the Left that want Intelligent Design or Creationism taught in public schools. It's not the Left that's trying to keep teachers from discussing Gay in school. It's not the Left trying to rewrite history.
frisbee queen (imported) wrote: Mon Feb 27, 2012 6:02 pm
The bible thumpers want a theocracy and Corporate America wants a oligarchy. Is there any hope for our democracy?
We actually, here in US, live in a republic, not a democracy. Ideally we protect the rights of the minority from the tyranny of the majority. Any hope for that?
Moi