This is topic Is it so bad... in forum Books, Films, Food and Culture at Hatrack River Forum.


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Posted by Synesthesia (Member # 4774) on :
 
That I dislike aspects of American history and culture? And in fact find some of it depressing?
The thing is, all countries have their negative aspects of history (Japan-Rape of Nanking, Comfort women, China-Pretty much a huge chunk of history, Tibet, Russian, tons of bad stuff happened there, don't even get me started on England and their oppression of the Irish, the Indians of India, ect.) but American history depressed me so much growing up as a child.
I didn't even start to like it until I read Johnny Tremain. It was just so miserable. There's already people here and they get swept aside, then Africans get dragged here in chains and in school it seems like they distored it. They made it so much more innoculous in places than it actually was. I never even learned about that 3/5ths of a human being thing until high school and I had to learn Lincoln's true views on the slaves from a Ken Burns documentary!
Plus from my limited view of things it seems like some of the best aspects of American culture came from other cultures!
I think of it as a sort of bland soup at first given flavour by the painful beautiful music of the African American people which gave birth to jazz, blues, rock and roll and so many other excellent artforms. There's Asian culture and the other cultures of European immigrants such as the Irish and the Italians.
Plus America gave birth to quite a few branches of Christianity, the Baptists, Seventh Day Adventists, Mormons, (Who were oppressed and tormented among other things.)
I guess I mainly keep hoping for America to evolve and to live up to its ideals of truth, justice and equality. It's getting better, but it makes me so miserable that it took so long and was such a hard struggle!
Perhaps I just get brothered when conservatives paint too idealistic a picture. It's as bad as being too negative. From the pain and suffering of many people can music, poetry, art, just like in so many places. It adds to an excellent tapestry of sorts.
 
Posted by Tara (Member # 10030) on :
 
Well, we kept an entire race in slavery, as well as ruthlessly murdered our indiginous population. We have a very, very bad history...It just may be hard for some Americans to accept that, since we're so proud of our history of creating democracy and so on.
 
Posted by Phanto (Member # 5897) on :
 
The Romans slaughtered a great deal of people. The Native-Americans are no cohesive whole; the Aztec empire was bloody to the extreme. The Bablyonian empire in 586 BC uprooted the Israelis and dispersed them to slave labor and mass struggle. The Armenians were slaughtered in mass numbers in the 1910s. The Russians killed countless of their own people, only to be outdone by stars such as China.

Blood can be found in any grassy patch.
 
Posted by erosomniac (Member # 6834) on :
 
quote:
Plus from my limited view of things it seems like some of the best aspects of American culture came from other cultures!
Well, ALL aspects of it, really.
 
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
 
quote:
Well, we kept an entire race in slavery, as well as ruthlessly murdered our indiginous population. We have a very, very bad history...It just may be hard for some Americans to accept that, since we're so proud of our history of creating democracy and so on.
No, not the entire race. And the murder of our indiginous population was largely decided when European diseases were brought to the New World.

This is not to excuse slavery, or to excuse the hundreds of thousands of indiginous peoples who suffered and died under American auspices, but I don't think hyperbole is helpful either.
 
Posted by ketchupqueen (Member # 6877) on :
 
quote:
And the murder of our indiginous population was largely decided when European diseases were brought to the New World.

Largely, but not wholly. An important distinction.
 
Posted by porcelain girl (Member # 1080) on :
 
I think our determination to change for the better and revolutionary spirit makes us great, though. i realize that isn't a feeling that runs across the board, but to me it is a major part of being american. For me "American" embraces all cultural backgrounds and points of origin, and brings them together with an enthusiastic sense of sharing. Again, idealistic, but that is the way I, and most of my social circle, feel.

Synth - I am from Virginia and I don't think it would be an exaggeration to say that 50% of my social studies/history education focused on slavery, black history, and the oppression of peoples in america.
I was shocked to find out that this intensity of study of slavery in america was not ubiquitious. Then again, I learned even more when I took subject specific courses in college (for example the fallout of severely decreased population in different regions in africa as a result of the slave trade), so I guess at a certain point you gotta go after what you want to learn about.

Also, when you say WE killed, WE opressed - remember that WE stood up for, WE embraced, WE explored, and WE loved.

ANYWHERE you have human beings and diversity, you are going to find ignorance and oppression. I seriously doubt there has ever been a society at the level of State that hasn't had these problems. However, you will also find heroes, idealists, and revolutionaries that are trying to change everything for the better.

Think positive, Synth. Learn about yesterday's bad, so you can make today better.
 
Posted by porcelain girl (Member # 1080) on :
 
I want to second the aforementioned comment that most ALL aspects of American culture come from elsewhere. Of course it all comes from somewhere else! We are so relatively new. Other than the aspects of the widely various indigenous cultures that were already dwelling here, everything else was imported. Even that ango-white mc white white culture some people take for granted! That came from somewhere else, and with it came some good things and some bad. The Dutch brought new flavor, the Koreans added even more, and my Caribbean friends came from African and India, were influenced by the French, and then came up here and showed me what it was all about. Hot damn we live in a cool place.

We share a centralized government and economy, but there is a lot of room for expression within those parameters... and even then we can have a say in the way those even go.
 
Posted by ClaudiaTherese (Member # 923) on :
 
Of note, the federal government of Canada has a dark history with the population indigenous to its land -- dark and dire, over and over again.

----

Edited to add: One of the particularly cool things about where I live now in Canada is that already 1/4 of the population is "visible minorities." Within about 10 years, the "visible minorities" are expected to be in the majority.

I am finally at the point that when I hear the word "person," I don't necessarily picture first someone who looks just like me and my family. How cool is that?
 
Posted by erosomniac (Member # 6834) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by ClaudiaTherese:
I am finally at the point that when I hear the word "person," I don't necessarily picture first someone who looks just like me and my family. How cool is that?

That's pretty cool.

I'm Japanese, and I grew up in Hawaii where 75% of the population is non-white, but when I think of "person," I think of a white male.

[Dont Know]
 
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
 
quote:
Largely, but not wholly. An important distinction.
Sure it is. And it was a distinction that was not made, which is why I brought it up.
 
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
 
quote:
Well, we kept an entire race in slavery, as well as ruthlessly murdered our indiginous population. We have a very, very bad history...It just may be hard for some Americans to accept that, since we're so proud of our history of creating democracy and so on.
I guess my ultimate point is that just as some Americans do not wish to examine the numerous uglier aspects of our history, so too do many Americans not wish to examine aspects of our history that aren't ugly.

That is, for me, a distressing thing, and not just because you can't swing a dead cat on this planet without hitting a society that in its past has been ruthlessly murderous and exploitative to someone else in their history--and quite a few who have been so much more recently than we have.

No, that does not excuse our uglier skeletons in our frequently unpleasant closet. But there's more than just nasty skeletons in there.
 
Posted by Carrie (Member # 394) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Tara:
It just may be hard for some Americans to accept that, since we're so proud of our history of creating democracy and so on.

Wow, I missed that day in World History. America created democracy?
 
Posted by Telperion the Silver (Member # 6074) on :
 
I think the reason people get depressed about America is because they were raised to think of the USA as an ideal utopia. When we grow up and see the bad in America we get disapointed. But we also fail to see greater history, that the world throughout time was a horrible place. It all needs to be taken in context. Compared to the whole of human history American errors are FAR outweighed by what we have done right.
 
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Carrie:
quote:
Originally posted by Tara:
It just may be hard for some Americans to accept that, since we're so proud of our history of creating democracy and so on.

Wow, I missed that day in World History. America created democracy?
Modern democracy, sure. So far we seem to be doing better than the Romans or Greeks did. We'll check it again in a century. The Roman Republic didn't last much longer than the US has lasted thus far. And it took 2000 years of dictatorial rule to get to the US. We didn't create the idea of rule by the people via elected officials, but we should certainly get a lot of credit for creating the modern version of it, and for making an experiment the world thought doomed to failure in fact flourish.

And though I think it was already said, it deserves to be said again. Though it's true that the best of what we are comes from other cultures, the worst of what we are comes from other cultures as well. We're a product of centuries of European thought, rule, and misrule. And that includes the best and the worst parts.
 
Posted by anti_maven (Member # 9789) on :
 
Judging by history I shouldn't be surrounded by such nice, open minded and level headed people, but I am.

Then again all of the darkest periods in history were driven by people convinced that they were 110% right, and were doing the Right Thing.

It is interesting to wonder what history will make of our current actions. Will we be sanctified or ridiculed?
 
Posted by AvidReader (Member # 6007) on :
 
The government didn't really consider blacks 3/5ths of a person. When it was time to decide how to count the population to decide representatives, the North only wanted to count white people so they'd win. The South wanted to count whites and blacks so they'd win. Counting 3/5ths of the blacks let them have roughly even populations.

It was never a statement of the worth of blacks, though it worked out that way. It was one more power struggle between two areas that anywhere else probably would have decided to be two countries.
 
Posted by Euripides (Member # 9315) on :
 
I think Americans should be proud of the principles espoused by the country's foundation (and at the same time acknowledging the influence of the French Revolution, of Athens, et cetera), and of the instances in which those principles were properly applied.

Otherwise, the history of US foreign policy does seem depressing overall (even considering the Zeitgeist of the day), at least in modern times; I'm not as well acquainted with US history that far back, outside of the War of Independence and the Civil War. There are exceptions.
 
Posted by PrometheusBound (Member # 10020) on :
 
"Modern democracy, sure"

um, not quite. The U.S. was the first democratic republic, but the U.K. was already a parlimentary democracy. Neither allowed anyone except property-owning males to vote, so neither was exactly perfect.

[[edited to add: Iceland has had the same parliment (the Althing) for over a thousand years, as have the Isle of Man (Tynwal) and the Faroes (Føroya løgting) . All of these were, however, subject to colonial authority throughout most or all of the modern period.]]
 
Posted by Christine (Member # 8594) on :
 
I, too, am largely frustrated with the teaching of history to American school children. It does put a rather positive spin on things and glosses over the uglier things that we have done. I have often heard that those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it. I don't see how it helps if we do study history, but fail to really call into question the blemishes in our past.

That said, we really have done some good things here in the United States. That we have made mistakes makes us human, not monsters.

quote:
I guess I mainly keep hoping for America to evolve and to live up to its ideals of truth, justice and equality.
One of my biggest problems with the teaching of history is the implication that we have "evolved" into a great society without the problems of our more-primitive and less-understanding forebears. That we are incapable of enslaving or otherwise mistreating other human beings, that the Salem Witch Trials could never happen today (McCarthy), or that we would never judge an entire people on race or ethnicity.

In fact, I'm not sure I believe that we will ever evolve into this or that it is possible. I think the effort to improve is commendable and that seeking enlightenment is great, but humanity is made up of individuals, not a collective hive mind. Besides, in the end it's the journey that is important.

To use a science fiction analogy -- I find Babylon 5 much more believable than Star Trek.
 
Posted by Occasional (Member # 5860) on :
 
"We didn't create the idea of rule by the people via elected officials, but we should certainly get a lot of credit for creating the modern version of it, and for making an experiment the world thought doomed to failure in fact flourish."

I question if it has flourished or succeeded. As much as there has been good in its history, there is too much bad that has happened to give it positive reviews. At best it is mixed results. Not to mention I question that it has gone in a positive direction as of today. Then again, I question Democracy (direct or Republic) as a good government institution.
 
Posted by porcelain girl (Member # 1080) on :
 
quote:
It was never a statement of the worth of blacks, though it worked out that way. It was one more power struggle between two areas that anywhere else probably would have decided to be two countries.
Actually, it _was_ a statement of the worth of blacks. If blacks had been recognized as complete human beings and citizens it never would have been an issue. The 3/5ths rule was one of the ultimate illustrations of racism and inequality.

You might as well say the Civil War wasn't about slavery. Sure, there were economic and states rights issues - but they all came back to slavery and tug of war over a belief system that allowed human beings to be treated as property - based on skin tone.
Doesn't that sound RIDICULOUS? It is ridiculous, but it's only easy and acceptable for me to say so because so many people have worked to make it so.
 
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
 
I think it's not without merit to say that without the 3/5ths compromise, America never would have gotten off the ground.

The North would have been perfectly fine with counting blacks as a whole person if the south had let them be citizens and have a vote. But it never would have gone one way or the other entirely without the country fracturing into two nations, or without a civil war happening in 1789 and not 1865. Pushing off the question was perhaps selfish, it ensured black slavery for another 70 years or so until we finally decided it was crunch time. I suppose the only other nugget they threw out was to outlaw the Atlantic Slave Trade in 1809.

As for the English parliament, Britain held millions of people in thrall as vassals and they had no elected head of state. If you want to call that a midway point, then fine, but that's about as modern a democracy as Iran is today. Afterall, they have an elected president and elected officials, but a ruler who isn't voted in.

Occasional -

We're still young, so we might not know for some time if it's truly a success or not. But we've one of the longest lasting most stable governments in recent history. The world thought we would collapse in on ourselves and fail, but we didn't, we became the strongest nation on earth.
 
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
 
I agree that the 3/5 rule was dehumanizing and a concession to evil. The Constitution would have been far better had it not allowed slavery at all. And, to this day, I don't know if it would have been better for the non-slave states to refuse to join with the slave states in lieu of compromising with slavery as they did (assuming those were the only two options).

If the 3/5 rule had been excluded, but slavery still allowed, then the slave states would have dominated the House of Representatives and had a huge leg up on the Presidency. Did the addition of an explicit 3/5 statement dehumanize slaves more than only allowing slavery would have? I don't know. But the Constitution with the 3/5 rule was "better" than an otherwise identical constitution without it would have been, in the practical sense that it limited the power of the slavery interests.
 
Posted by Lisa (Member # 8384) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Lyrhawn:
quote:
Originally posted by Carrie:
Wow, I missed that day in World History. America created democracy?

Modern democracy, sure.
Um... I think that'd actually be New Zealand. They allowed women to vote before the US did. Without that, it wasn't really all that different from Athenian "democracy".
 
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Dagonee:
I agree that the 3/5 rule was dehumanizing and a concession to evil. The Constitution would have been far better had it not allowed slavery at all. And, to this day, I don't know if it would have been better for the non-slave states to refuse to join with the slave states in lieu of compromising with slavery as they did (assuming those were the only two options).

If the 3/5 rule had been excluded, but slavery still allowed, then the slave states would have dominated the House of Representatives and had a huge leg up on the Presidency. Did the addition of an explicit 3/5 statement dehumanize slaves more than only allowing slavery would have? I don't know. But the Constitution with the 3/5 rule was "better" than an otherwise identical constitution without it would have been, in the practical sense that it limited the power of the slavery interests.

Without the compromise, I can imagine a few different things happening. Either the Constitution never would have happened at all, or there would have been a cap on the number of people allowed in the House of Reps, similar to what we have today. The domination wouldn't have been that bad. Keep in mind the north was still more heavily populated than the south. I don't know the actual numbers off the top of my head, but the south was full of sparsley populated farmland, whereas the north was dense cities full of factories (in general, not the rule).

I really just don't see them going along with it without the compromise. The northern reps at the constitutional convention were largely abolitionists, they wanted no slavery at all, but that would never have passed. It would have, like I said before, either created two separate states, or an early civil war of domination. Considering the idea of a powerful central government was new to them, I think it would have been less civil war and more war of conquest, in context.

It wouldn't have mattered anyway, without any measure of cohesion, they would have been reconquered by Britain in a couple decades anyway most likely (or at least, portions would have been).

Lisa -

Do you have any details on New Zealand's history and democracy? I don't know as much about it.
 
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
 
Even if I accept the perfectly reasonable and likely true premise that tangible worse consequences (more dead in civil war, longer time before slavery ended, etc.) would have occurred without the the slavery opponents willingness to compromise, I'm still not sure that the compromise was better. Beyond the utilitarian analysis is the deontological analysis - did thoe who compromised on slavery commit evil by doing so? It's undeniable that the central hypocrisy of a nation founded on the Declaration and the Constitution bore ill fruit for centuries and morally tainted us at the very birth of our nation.

I think that compromise might still have been evil even if we could know for sure that the consequences would have been worse were it not made.
 
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
 
I don't think it was evil. I think this is wholly a matter of opinion, and part of me agrees with you. Part of me automatically wants to say that anyone who makes a devil's compromise like that is making a choice of evil.

But I've read some of the personal journals of the founding fathers. They didn't like it. Many of them hated not including slaves in the Declaration of Independence, and it stuck with them through the Articles of Confederation and on into the Constitutional convention a decade late. But they had just seen a government collapse, and they'd just fought a long, hard, grueling war against a powerful foe. They didn't want to fail before they even started, and not making that deal very likely would have done just that.

Evil though they might have considered it, the idea of creating a flawed America with virtuous ideals of perfection was a far better choice than creating no America at all. I think I tend to agree with them.
 
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
 
quote:
Evil though they might have considered it, the idea of creating a flawed America with virtuous ideals of perfection was a far better choice than creating no America at all. I think I tend to agree with them.
Well, alright, for the sake of argument let's take that as agreed. That hardly precludes it being a necessary evil, does it?

Any ideology or government which enslaves human beings whose only 'transgression' was an unfortunate* pair of biological parents is, in my opinion, thoroughly and wretchedly evil. We had our graces, it's true. And we were a product of our times, also true. Be that as it may, I still think it's evil. I think it was evil when we did it, I think it was evil when the Romans did it, I think it was evil when the Egyptians did it, and I think it's evil when it happens now.

I do think there's an added layer of foulness when it happens in a government which purports to honor and protect freedom and democracy, of course.

*Unfortunate from a strictly pragmatic sense.
 
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
 
I don't know. Maybe it was evil.

I'm not convinced it was wrong though.
 
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
 
Maybe it was evil?

If slavery isn't evil, nothing is.
 
Posted by aiua (Member # 7825) on :
 
I came in expecting this to be a spin-off of that Yoplait commercial - the women sitting around and saying, "It is soo good... Like, shoe shopping good."
I guess I was a bit off.
 
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Rakeesh:
Maybe it was evil?

If slavery isn't evil, nothing is.

He wasn't saying "maybe slavery was evil."

He was saying "maybe the compromise made by anti-slavery delegates to the constitutional convention was evil."

Big difference.
 
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
 
Ahh, OK. I didn't get that distinction. Perhaps it was due to early morning grouchiness. My mistake, Lyrhawn.

------

That said, I do think that any compromise which endorses and sustains slavery is evil, no matter how necessary.
 
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
 
I don't think it's evil if it's necessary. If something is truly necessary, then I don't think it's evil.

But that's probably based on a somewhat quirky definition of necessary when used in an unqualified sense.

If you say "necessary to do X," then there are many "necessary" evil things.

As I said, I haven't formed an opinion on this particular issue.
 
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
 
No problems Rakeesh.

I think the debate hinges on two things:

1. Was the compromise necessary for the formation of United States and the ratification of the Constitution.

2. How important is the formation of the United States to you?

I think it was necessary for the formation and ratification of the Constitution, and I think the formation of the US was, especially as their ultimate goal and the thing they had just fought a war for, the thing to hold above all else.

Also keeping in mind they didn't have 21st century morality to deal with.

I think no 3/5ths compromise would have meant slavery endured for decades longer regardless. There was no way the north was going to talk them out of it in 1789, and I really don't think they had the stomach for another war, not brother against brother, not after they had just fought Britain together. It probably would have meant a return to something stronger than the Articles of Confederation but far weaker than the Constituion, and slavery would have survived with no force in sight to check it.

Also keep in mind the overwhelming power of states' rights delegates back then. Many of them still viewed individual states as their nations, and creating a law in the Constitution that does away with the very fabric of their lives and devastates their personal economies is not something they were going to give in to lightly.

I don't think the compromise at all endorsed slavery. And I'm not sure it sustained it, because I think without it, slavery would have lasted far longer.
 
Posted by Synesthesia (Member # 4774) on :
 
I'm more likely to believe it was a bit of a cowardly compromise, but what could you do? There are the times to consider.

What I thought of today is how so much beautiful music came from the suffering of millions of slaves. Rock and roll, the blues and jazz came from all of that agony. Though, it's like that for a lot of people, such as the Irish. They had beautiful music and stories and suffered like crazy under the British.
It doesn't justify it though.
 


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