Well if it's a secret you wouldn't know now would ya?
I don't think, though, that in the cases of Middle Eastern relations between the different cultures can be boiled down to just racism. Racism seems to small a word and concept for it. I'm not specifically speaking about Helen Thomas, but about the generations of people that are living a life that I, personally, can not fathom. I know that there are attitudes I have that would be considered racist and I try like hell to change those when they crop up. I can't imagine what anyone living in that region on either side could be as simple as racism.
And mind, I'm not excusing Helen Thomas' comments. When I heard the first part of the interview when she said, "Get the hell out of Palestine!" I honestly thought she was pulling this dude's leg and having one off on him. Then I heard the rest and put my face in my hands. I don't, however, think that her entire life should end up being about this one statement, which it absolutely will end up being. When she dies, this incident is going to define her - not her decades of being a forerunner for women in journalism or her accomplishments - and that makes me sad. Both at her for saying such asinine shit and society for jumping up and down and having a party when someone says asinine shit.
I can't imagine what anyone living in that region on either side could be as simple as racism.
Fair enough, but Helen Thomas was born in Kentucky. Her parents were immigrants, but she did not grow up in the Middle East.
Oh I know. And she was raised in Michigan and went to Wayne State. Like I said, I'm not trying to excuse her comments because they were totally wrong like wrong things, but if her parents were in that region for a very long time,and she heard them as a child, their racist attitudes probably still ingrained in there, despite her personal experiences in the 90+ years since. It's not right and it's not what I expected from her, but I get why it might be there and how it cold have come to pop out of her mouth. Understnding where it comes from is not the same as excusing or condoning it.
And your grandparents are totally racist. Against Aimee's what aren't their kin. I get no Hannukah presents, do I? NO I DO NOT.
Helen Thomas is a legend. Speaking her mind didn't change that for me. I'm looking forward to being a bat-shit crazy senile old broad.
I'm not looking forward to saying anything that hurtful to anybody.
I just wanted to address another issue here which seems to be necklaced by short public memory: Europe and the Americas for themselves weren't that stable, national and geographical speaking, until recently. Go back 20 years, 60 years, 100 years, 120 years, 300 years, 600 years and 1000 years, with the Norman conquest - the map and the thought of what the "right" nationality is and the states which everyone think have always existed (FTR, there were hundreds of years on which Poland was deleted off the map) simply weren't there. I'm not saying we should go back to it, but trying to make history "more simple" isn't the smart thing to do here. People killed, kill and will continue to kill each other over land, religion, gender, ethnicity and color. Submitting every tiny fact , including the situation as it was 60, 120 or 600 years ago to the current national-political-global thought is just going to lead mostly to a dead end, IMHO.
ION, I know it's still early, but I still haven't heard back from my non-virtual friends about help with the site, or any word of support at all (even though it's on my Gmail status, my twitter, an email was sent, etc..). And this really sucks.
And your grandparents are totally racist. Against Aimee's what aren't their kin. I get no Hannukah presents, do I? NO I DO NOT.
I think I need to step away from this conversation for a while.
FTR, there were hundreds of years on which Poland was deleted off the map
I've found in my genealogy research, that quite a few of my ancestors had at least three different countries of birth listed on various documents, since on each one, they'd list whatever country that city happened to be in at the time they were filling out that form.
I've also seen that "country of origin" and "nationality" were not at all synonyms in the early twentieth century. I remember finding one passenger manifest for a ship that a relative was on (where he was listed as Austria for country of origin and Hebrew for nationality), where almost nobody on the page had a matching country and nationality. There were Germans from Russia, Magyars from Poland, Slovakians from Hungary, and so on. I once saw a map of Eastern Europe from before WWI, showing which languages were spoken where, and it totally did not correspond to current borders -- German was spoken much further east than it is now, and there were pockets of the minority languages like Czech and Serbian all over the place, before those people got resettled when the ethnic groups that spoke those all languages got their own countries.
I've found in my genealogy research, that quite a few of my ancestors had at least three different countries of birth listed on various documents, since on each one, they'd list whatever country that city happened to be in at the time they were filling out that form.
I've also seen that "country of origin" and "nationality" were not at all synonyms in the early twentieth century. I remember finding one passenger manifest for a ship that a relative was on (where he was listed as Austria for country of origin and Hebrew for nationality), where almost nobody on the page had a matching country and nationality. There were Germans from Russia, Magyars from Poland, Slovakians from Hungary, and so on. I once saw a map of Eastern Europe from before WWI, showing which languages were spoken where, and it totally did not correspond to current borders -- German was spoken much further east than it is now, and there were pockets of the minority languages like Czech and Serbian all over the place, before those people got resettled when the ethnic groups that spoke those all languages got their own countries.
Indeed. My parents grew up with at least 6 languages around them.
In much happier news: a friend just called me and said she's willing to admin Hollaback Israel with me! Whoo-hoo!
Hil, that's interesting to me. In immigration stuff, I often start out whatever I'm writing with "X is a citizen and national of [country]" and I can only think of one or two cases where they are different. I'm not 100% sure this is still the same but I *think* Samoans (from American Samoa) were/are US nationals but not citizens. Whereas Puerto Ricans are US citizens but they can't vote in the general election.
