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| quote: | Originally posted by DrummeRaver86
Unofrtunately, MANY Americans are completely oblivious to the rest of the world |
I have a problem with that statement. Here's why. Americans, for some reason, are expected to know everything about the rest of the world.
The fact is that most students around the world learn about America in school. I have friends in Hong Kong, the UK, and Holland, and all of them have a great deal of knowledge about the US because after learning about their own nations, they learn about America.
Do Americans, in turn, learn everything about every single other nation in the world? No, they don't. But most Americans know a great deal about one or two countries, at least. This puts them on the same level as the rest of the world.
For example, my family is of German and Italian heritage, and we are quite knowledgable about what goes on in those nations. But when someone from, say, Austria comes up to me and automatically expects me to know all about their government, that's unreasonable.
Now, about racism. It exists everywhere, just to what degree. Americans, if you can say it this way, are "polite" racists. Things are said behind other people's backs, but true hate crimes (white on black, black on white, etc.) are actually very rare. The highest rate of violent crime in the US is black-on-black, followed by white-on-white. Things only flare up when you have something like Rodney King, or OJ on trial.
I would take this relationship over what I have seen across much of Europe any day. Muslim immigrants have poured into the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, et al., and have formed communities that don't assimilate into European culture. 10 years ago, no one in Europe had heard of "honor killings," but nowadays they are commonplace. If native Europeans want to be "racist," I think they have some grounds for it, because their culture is at stake. Pim Fortuyn tried to raise the issue in the Netherlands, and lost his life over it.
People all too often call defending one's own culture racist or intolerant, but at some point you need to defend your history, your government, and your common culture. Or it begins to turn into the same sewer of a culture that the immigrants were trying to escape.
Last edited by imokruok on Nov-23-2003 at 04:18
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