Wow, Stanford alumni
Oct. 15th, 2012 08:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pastwatcherThis is pretty damn shameful.
And right around Columbus Day, too. Because you know how the "discovery of the New World" was just awesome.
Note: I'm actually very "patriotic" about the USA. I think there's a lot of good or at least hopeful things about this country, and I would rather use my places within American culture to influence it than any other--even though I want a world where resources are shared well enough that we don't need nation-borders, or something like that. But, if we celebrate Columbus for his representation of European exploration of the New World, then we celebrate genocide, and we continue to ignore many of its survivors' descendants.
And right around Columbus Day, too. Because you know how the "discovery of the New World" was just awesome.
Note: I'm actually very "patriotic" about the USA. I think there's a lot of good or at least hopeful things about this country, and I would rather use my places within American culture to influence it than any other--even though I want a world where resources are shared well enough that we don't need nation-borders, or something like that. But, if we celebrate Columbus for his representation of European exploration of the New World, then we celebrate genocide, and we continue to ignore many of its survivors' descendants.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-10-17 10:32 pm (UTC)And I am definitely on board with the "maybe we will be able to celebrate each other's cultures respectfully" thing. I think it's kinda circular, though: particularly offensive cultural distortion tends to happen when there is already a high level of casual disrespect and/or ignorance of that culture in the mainstream. But, what the effects are, and where the lines are drawn, and what can actually help or not, is definitely something I don't understand well despite some amount of trying to.