Equality in the United States?

[Inari]

I live in an incredible un-diverse part of the United States. The other day in my US History class, my teacher posed the question:

Which of the following statements should appear in an American history textbook if the Civil Rights Movement were to be called a success?

1. Ralph Bunch helped to negotiate a peace settlement to end a war between the Arabs and the Israelis in 1948.

2. Ralph Bunch, [B]an American[/B], helped to negotiate a peace settlement to end a war between the Arabs and the Israelis in 1948.

3. Ralph Bunch, [B]an African-American[/B], helped to negotiate a peace settlement to end a war between the Arabs and the Israelis in 1948.

4. Ralph Bunch, [B]a black American[/B], helped to negotiate a peace settlement to end a war between the Arabs and the Israelis in 1948.

I just wanted some outside impute. In an equal society, should race even be mentioned? Would it be wrong to deny African-American community recognition for a triumph like this? Is the United States an equal society now? When, if ever, should race be identified?

[wrist cutter]

The one with African-American seems most appropriate to me. Though I guess it depends on context - is the passage highlighting the fact that the conflict was resolved, or the person who resolved it? Because skin color doesn't really matter in the former unless they plan on bringing up some sort of point on it.

The only reason I chose "African-American" over "black American" is because it sounds more professional, or at least more textbook-ish.

[Guest Midnight Rush]

Well my friend, this is my take on it:

When a history book refers to an [i]American[/i], no disrespect to anyone else cause humans kick *** in general, they should be remembered as an American. All Americans are equal: Europeans, Asians, Africans, Hispanics, ect.

Tihs guy did a historic thing: negotiated a treaty recognized by international type people.... And thus as an American he should be remembered!

[AzureWolf]

[font=Georgia][color=blue]Not to sound boring and off-topic, but Ralph Bunch's historical background (and therefore ethnic bg) is best left to a biography and not to a history book. I remember reading about Herbert Hoover in both: the details were completely different. In a history book, it's always about the impact or significance of the person, not details.[/color][/font]

[font=Georgia][color=blue]In fact, in properly-written history books, only a person's actions are talked about, unless their background or a fact about them explained/influenced their action so you can understand the "why." In a biography, you get all the little details about a person that will impress others at social gatherings.[/color][/font]

[Semjaza]

I don't really see why vague notions of equality have to include ignoring someone's race and background. Does a person automatically look down at this man's contributions because he was African American? I'd assume no, but you never know with some people. The only reason I'd think that would even bring up the issue of equality would be thanks to someone who had a problem with the man being black in the first place. Why would it matter otherwise? It really shouldn't have any negative or positive connotations simply based on the person's color. For me, I don't really see what the big deal is with any of them, although there's obviously some things that look better in a text book and are more proper and PC.

However, in this case specifically, I think it is an important point mainly because it happened in the 40s. Civil rights were nowhere near as developed in this country as they are now and I think it's important to mention such things when it involves overcoming the odds.

[Inari]

Please continue to answer the above question, but here is an addition:

While we're on the subject, what to do think about racial profiling? We see it all the time with the FBI and CIA arresting people of Middle Eastern descent due to their possible connections with terrorism. Even local law enforcement agencies use racial profiling based on arrest percentages. How can this be equality? Where is the line between protecting individual liberties and providing security for a unified society? Do we need to arrest all Arabs to prevent another 9/11, or is there another way?

~The Gadfly

[Godelsensei]

[COLOR=Gray][FONT=Courier New]A classmate of mine and his parents were turned away from a museum or something somewhere in America because his parents have Indian accents, were from Canada, travelling with Australian passports. (Or something to that degree. : / )

This kind of thing isn't acceptable in highly developed societies like the United States and Canada.

In response to your last question: What the hell kind of question is this? I am going to give you the benefite of the doubt by imagining that this was worded incorrectly.
Sorry for sounding rude, but "NO."

That would be like saying "We need to arrest all Asians to stop kidnappings."

There is no specific race associated with being Canadian or American (as two examples), and that should mean more to people.
People should be arrested because there is reason to believe they are connected to, or have committed, crimes. People like my classmate and his family should not be turned away from borders or museums because of their accents.[/FONT][/COLOR]

[Guest ScirosDarkblade]

Well, on the subject of racial profiling... does it work? It seems to me like it might (that is, if you are doing random searches at an airport it makes more sense to search someone who is Arabic than someone who looks like a Southern country hick, right?). It's not necessarily fair to the Arab who is searched (so long as he's not the right guy), but unfortunately that's the price you have to pay when people that look like you do really bad stuff.

If it were folks like me who were committing various terrorist acts and such, and I was frequently suspect of malicious intent as a result, it would be freaking annoying. I would always be worried about being wrongfully detained or something. But if that meant that terrorists were more likely to be captured and lives saved, I'd put up with it.

[DeathBug]

[color=indigo][size=1][font=comic sans ms]I agree with Semjaza and his reasoning towards the first question. Had the event happened after the Civil Rights movement, I wouldn't consider his race all that much, but because it happened prior to that, it is an even greater accomplishment.

Something to consider when it comes to minority communities is that much of our information regarding their status comes from those whose best interests it is to continually have racial disharmony. Jesse Jackson, for example, would be out of a very lucrative job if there was not a sense of racial tension in parts of the united states.

An excellant book to read is "The Death oif Right and Wrong", by former President of the LA chapter of NOW, Tammy Bruce. Bruce, a lesbian and gay/feminist rights activist, believes that the children of the civil rights movemement have lost their way. She makes an excellant case against many organizations, including NOW, for victemizing rather than empowering their constituencies, in order to sustain themselves and their political clout.

Logically, a successful civils rights advocacy group should become less and less active over time, because as greater equality is achieved, instances of injustice against minorites should become fewer and fewer. So, either most major CRA groups are inept and discrimination is widespread, or these groups no longer have the best interests of their constituency at heart.

Perhaps I just live in an incredibly enlighted area, but I've never seen real social, and only rarely seen rascism, homophobia or sexism. And, if you look at American pop culture, you'll see most walks of life well represented, and crossing social boundaries.

As for the second question, that's a bit trickier. While all people are equal regardless of race, there are times when a case can be made to take race into account.

Consider: All organized airplane hijackings within the past ten years were carried out by young middle-easter males. All of them. Ann Coulter once said, "If you have a record of %100, that ceases to be a profile; it becomes a discription of the suspect."

The people who have to make racial profiles are usually those involved in life-or-death scenarios: police officers, airport security, etc. If you work at an airport, and a young middle eastern male looks suspicious, are you going to let him get on a plane without investigating, first? Or, by making that judegement, are you violating the 14th Amendment?

It's a tricky issue, and I don't believe there's a clear-cut solution.[/color][/size][/font]

[Harry]

He should be known for what he did, not for what he did while being black. I honestly don't remember much about the circumstances of the meeting, but if he was there as an ambassador of the US, it should be pointed out he's American.

[ChibiHorsewoman]

[color=darkviolet]Race sex, and nationality should be inconsequential when talking about a person's accomplishments. However that's not how the world seems to work.

As for the whole racial profiling thing that the FBI and CIA are doing to these people it's called the Patriot act.

I think it's a stupid idea. If the governemnt is going to start doing things like this to protect the country why don't we just do what we did to the JApanese americans during the US involvement in WW2 and put all these Arab Americans in internment camps and deny them their basic civil rights as well as the rights under geneva conventions like Donald Rumsfeld did to the detanies in Guantanamo bay?

We do this and in another five or so years we can appologize for our behavior. Whatever. [/color]

[Aanallein]

Well, as to pose my resonse to the original post, I would have to go with the first option. Does it matter who resolved it? I mean this in the context of his heritage, race, and country background? I doubt it does.

As of equality? What is equality? You can't have it. It is an idealistic idea that falls quite short of success. The civil rights movement did what it wanted, except now, I feel that the movement has gone so far as to need to be worked in reverse to even the playing field in other directions.

As for people being turned away from public or private institutions because of their appearance and accents... I say for private they can be turned away as much as they wish. That is the perogitive of the private institution. As for public, I say they can turn them away with resonable cause or threat.

But as I said. Equality is not attainable, even in the most educated and cultured countries of the World. Oh yeah, and in the United States.

[wrist cutter]

[quote name='Aanallein']Equality is not attainable, even in the most educated and cultured countries of the World. Oh yeah, and in the United States.[/quote]

Oh give me a break.

[Aanallein]

Of my kit-kat bar? Hell no. I want on the goodie chocolate for myself!

Anyways, to be on topic, what do you mean by that? In general philosophy, any idea of Equality can be refuted. It is nigh impossible, whether by a higher beigs invention, or just by our own selfs.

You know, it would just be nice if you could have argued my statement instead of giving an exasperated one sentence response.

If it is for the United States comment at the end, it was a comment on American arrogance. For that I do honestly believe exists. I am an American myself, one of which who feels that Bush should win the election, and that the war in Iraq was justified. Yet, I still think that Americans hold an arrogance that puts them above many others. They don't believe they are the owners of the world, but they feel they are high up on the totem pole.

Anyways. Care to elaborate?

[wrist cutter]

[quote name='Aanallein']Care to elaborate?[/quote]

No, but I probably have to.

I really had no problem with the first part about equality. I'm just tired of all this anti-American sentiment going around among many people these days. I see people with upside-down flags on their backpacks with spikes in the middle of them, and it's just ludicrous.

To say we aren't educated or cultured is just wrong. It's not like we're the only country that holds themselves in high regards - it happens everywhere whether or not you like it. Japan, the land of the rising sun? Didn't the Chinese believe they were the center of the earth or something of that nature? The list goes on.

There's nothing wrong with national pride, even though it gets out of hand in some individual cases. But they're just that.

Sorry if your comment was just some joke or something, but I see a lot of this crap and my school and it pisses me off. Some people just don't realize how good they have it here in America.

[Guest ScirosDarkblade]

There's nothing wrong with being dissatisfied with the country you live in, whether or not it is America. The thing is random signs of that dislike (such as upside-down flags and what not) are completey pointless. If someone isn't happy with the U.S., he/she can try to work towards changing it, or leave if possible, or just sit back and whine about it (or just plain not worry about it). Any of those is fine. But there's no good reason to try and communicate something along the lines of "the U.S. sucks" unless you say "the U.S. sucks because of this and this and this." Dissatisfaction has to be justified somehow I believe.

[Harry]

[quote name='ScirosDarkblade']There's nothing wrong with being dissatisfied with the country you live in, whether or not it is America. The thing is random signs of that dislike (such as upside-down flags and what not) are completey pointless. If someone isn't happy with the U.S., he/she can try to work towards changing it, or leave if possible, or just sit back and whine about it (or just plain not worry about it). Any of those is fine. But there's no good reason to try and communicate something along the lines of "the U.S. sucks" unless you say "the U.S. sucks because of this and this and this." Dissatisfaction has to be justified somehow I believe.[/quote]
It'd be better if people didn't develop their political ideology off of a Sex Pistols or Anti-Flag cd.

[Guest ScirosDarkblade]

As long as the political ideology is a sound one, I don't care where it's from. There's nothing inherently better about developing a political ideology based on what one's ultra-stupid parents teach, for instance. If the Sex Pistols have something meaningful and not retarded to say (I never listened to them myself so I don't know) then agreeing with them is just as legitimate as anything else.

Most people don't form any decent or complete political ideologies at all. They just repeat what their friends/parents tell them.

[DeathBug]

[quote name='Aanallein'] Does it matter who resolved it? I mean this in the context of his heritage, race, and country background? [/quote]

The only person who could really say if it matters is ralph Bunch himself. I would grant him the right to determine how hes' remembered, by race, nationality, or what have you.

However, I'd also grant everyone else the right to decide for themselves how to remember Mr. Bunch.

[quote name='Aanallein']As of equality? What is equality? You can't have it.[/quote]

Depends; do you mean equality of opportunity, or equlity of result?

[quote name='Aanallein']The civil rights movement did what it wanted, except now, I feel that the movement has gone so far as to need to be worked in reverse to even the playing field in other directions. [/quote]

Explain, please.

[quote name='Aanallein'] I say for private they can be turned away as much as they wish. That is the perogitive of the private institution. As for public, I say they can turn them away with resonable cause or threat.[/quote]

Nice call; that's already what the law says.

[quote name='Aanallein']Yet, I still think that Americans hold an arrogance that puts them above many others.[/quote]

I've lived in Europe, and I will say this: pride in your country is not an American-specific trait. The french, British, Spanish, german, believe themselves to be the best, and take pride in (most parts) of their long history.

If that is defined as arrogance, then just about every country is.

[Semjaza]

Reading this gives me the impression that some people thinking referring to race or color at all automatically implies some form of racism. People are different colors and come from different backgrounds and they are important things in many ways. Heritage is important to a lot of people.

In that same text book, I guarantee you if a white guy did something and his background was important it would name it. They always do and I'm sure if any of you looked in a decent history textbook, you'd find it to be true. Italian American. Irish American. Chinese American. Yet, strangely, none of these are ever mentioned as a problem. Why shoud this be different?

Right now we live in a society that's so PC that even mentioning the obvious puts you in a bad situation. If I have a negative thing to say about someone that's another color I'm racist. Doesn't matter if the person was just a genuine jerk or not.

I sit in classrooms in college where we have random middle aged people learning along with us. One time there was this 30 year old guy named Anthony who seriously blamed every last thing that happened to him on anyone else he could. White people do this to me, white people do that to me. Yet he had no specific examples of this ever happening. It was just the vague idea that all white people were "The Man" and they were subconciously always trying to keep him down. Never mind the fact that the guy was a moron and had no work ethic. It [i]had[/i] to be his skin color.

This man's color is only a big deal because people make it a big deal. I feel that his race is important in context of this story because of the time period it took place in. Just like any text book will name off the heritage of a white, hispanic or asian person in US history when they were having issues here. It's not biased in that sense. I read that sentence and I'm like "It's interesting that a black man was able to do something that important in a time when the civil rights for his race were so poor in this country. I think that's pretty impressive." Is that racist? I don't think so, but whatever. If you approach this with a mindset where you feel that just mentioning his race in any sense for whatever reason is somehow wrong than I think that's just weird.

It's as if many people wish were were all grey with no hair and there'd be no differences between us. I personally like the differences because I feel they add to the uniqueness and amazing qualities of the human race in general, not because they allow me to look down at and cateogrize people. I think they can be important things. Acknowledging them does not mean you look at them in a negative light. People used to respect that this place was a "melting pot" of different cultures and now we just have a bunch of people who are so obsessed with "equality" that it has turned into more of an idea of assimilation than anything else.

Good luck finding a country that doesn't have these issues, by the way. Every major country has pride. These are not American-centric problems and that's that. American people just make a far bigger deal out of all of it because they want to feel righteous in their actions.

[Dagger]

[quote name='wrist cutter']Didn't the Chinese believe they were the center of the earth or something of that nature?[/quote]

Back in the heyday of ancient China, its citizens were convinced that they were the only educated, cultured people in the entire world. Granted, their civilization was more advanced than that of neighboring countries like Japan and Korea, but it took them a while to learn about the existence of non-barbaric European nations.

I don't think totally ignoring race is the right way to go about establishing true equality or whatever. I mean, I'm sure my grandmother would find it irritating if people just completely overlooked the fact that she's Korean. It's a huge part of who she is, and she's really proud of her national/cultural/ethnic identity--especially because she grew up during the Japanese occupation, when people weren't allowed to speak Korean or use their Korean names.

At the risk of sounding corny, I feel that some differences should be embraced. To me, pretending that race is irrelevant or nonexistent simply implies that you're uncomfortable with discussing it.

~Dagger~

[Godelsensei]

[COLOR=Gray][FONT=Courier New]Turning people away from a private institution because they appear suspicious can be justified. An eleven-year-old boy wearing a polo-shirt, traveling with his Mom and Dad is not suspicious. It shows that they, as a family unit, wish to take part in whatever is going on within the institution. Correct? Give two of them accents, and everything changes.

Just a thought.

[center]***[/center]

But, yes: what Skippedry said. Culture is not something to be ignored or kept hushed-up; it's something that should be celebrated. (Like proper punctuation!!! : D)
Having grown up in a very diverse part of the world, I think I've had it off easy when it comes to any kind of racial stereotyping. There's simply no room for prejiduces when it comes to employment, friendships, etc... because you're cutting yourself off from too many people.

People aren't countries, and they're not history (though they can be proud of them both).
Some older fellow who was visiting some of our neighbors was complaining that there were "Too many foreigners walking around." I often find myself almost offended by attitudes like this, although I'm not of the groups they reffer to. My friends are, though--and most of them were born here, anyway.

Politically, racism has become utterly tabboo, though it is still prevelant (the same is true of sexism in many cases). Give it fifteen years, and most of it ought to be gone.[/FONT][/COLOR]

[Shinmaru]

[quote name='Semjaza Azazel]It was just the vague idea that all white people were "The Man" and they were subconciously always trying to keep him down. Never mind the fact that the guy was a moron and had no work ethic. It [i]had[/i'] to be his skin color.[/quote]

Seriously.

With things like that, it's to the point where people have just taken advantage of this racist attitude that seems to be prevalent [i]everywhere[/i] as an excuse to justify the fact that they can't do anything whatsoever with their lives. Instead of looking at themselves and seeing how much they've screwed themselves over, they'd rather make excuses and blame "The Man" for their troubles. That's just lame.

To answer the original question, I think that it's important to point out the man's race because, yes, this event took place before the Civil Rights Movement and it's a groundbreaking event in history. If a history textbook decided to highlight, say, Jackie Robinson, they'd make sure to mention his race. Why? Because he helped break down the color barrier in major league baseball. I look at this event in the same manner: Ralph Bunch holding the position of an emissary before the Civil Rights Movement is akin to breaking down the color barrier in that field.

And, honestly, I'm getting tired of America bashing, too; while it's true that, yes, I have problems with America, I don't sit around and whine about how America is the source of everyone's troubles or crap like that. As if every other country in the world is run by saints. I have problems wtih America and I'll criticize the way the country is run, decisions that are made, etc. but blaming and scrutinizing America for every little thing that happens is just idiotic, honestly.

[Aanallein]

[quote name='wrist cutter']Sorry if your comment was just some joke or something, but I see a lot of this crap and my school and it pisses me off. Some people just don't realize how good they have it here in America.[/quote]

Oh I agree, I made no such accusation of the fact that people don't realize how good they do have it. The United States is one of the best places to live in the world as far as civil liberties go, but that was not the point in the least. But I do understand your standpoint. There is a lot of Americans who have disrespected their nation and their freedom with many of their actions. As I said before, I support our country and I will be behind them no matter what road we go down. But that does not blind me to some of the things I think we should work on fixing.

[Inari]

Here's another thought for anyone who cares:

Teachers in public school systems are required to look around their classrooms and determine the ethnicities of their students (X number of Hispanic females, Y number of African Americans males, etc.). These teachers are not allowed to inquire about the racial background of any one of their students, but they are asked to speculate. I know that this is their way of insuring that various minority groups get a fair chance. Think about it, every time you take a standardized test (AP, SAT, ACT, etc.) you are asked to fill in race bubble. Should they really care what race you are? Is this a good policy? What should people of mixed ethnicity do? Dose protecting minority groups increase the equality of the United States?

~The Gadfly