Quote:
Originally Posted by WanderingKnight
Well, you can't deny racial features. "Black" people, while not as black as Lelouch's suit, have darker skin than "white" people. Perhaps the terms are not objectively correct, but they have a more or less agreed signification and are, in and of themselves, and as long as you don't attach any sort of valuation to them, not discriminative by any means--that is, the fact that a couple of my friends are of Japanese descent and have slanted eyes does not condition my response towards them. Terms like black, white or brown do nothing more than make a general description on the physical features of any given person, and say nothing about the character or the status of the person itself--which is, by and large, what truly matters (which is sort of the point I wanted to make in my prior post--what your ancestors did does not matter, what matters is what you, as an individual, do). However, pseudo-terms like "African American" carry other connotations that are not devoid of a (rather strong, if you ask me) degree of inherent discrimination and segregation.
To be honest, I have a hard time understanding what "being proud" means. There are way too many problems with our country to really "feel proud" about it. But then again, many countries worldwide have such issues--and many of them aren't direct responsibility of the countries themselves. And I would probably feel the same way if I were an US citizen.
And about Kyrgyzstan, I really could not feel more detached from it. I hardly know anything about it other than it's next to Russia and China and it's very cold in winter.
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I would point out that Afro-American are is as much a psudo term as black. Same as German-American, Irish-American when compared with white, cause almost all caucasians have shed identification with German or Irish or British culture.
In reference to your feelings on Kyrg, they are perfectly understandable and actually are similar to my feelings about Africa.
(note; I really appreciate the chance to talk with you on this, but I propose we stop this particular exchange cause it's getting wildly off topic)