Quote:
Originally Posted by rhadin
Want to know what bothers me? (Probably not, but I'm going to tell you anyway.) It's not the flag burning, the flag loathing, or Sean Hannity spouting idiocy. It's hyphens -- yup, hyphens as in Polish-American, African-American, Italian-American, Mexican-American, etc.
I was born and raised in the USA; I've never lived in the land from which relatives of years past emigrated to the USA. I have no desire to live anywhere but the USA. I am an American -- no hyphens needed to say that or describe me -- for all its good and all its bad. If I don't like something, I protest in accordance with the liberties afforded me as an American and I take my protest to the ballot box; I don't pick up an assault rifle and start shooting up the neighborhood.
It really bugs me when someone who is a third-generation American calls them self xyz-American and flies the xyz flag. If it is so bad to be an American and if xyz is so much better, emigrate. Unlike many countries, America won't stop you from leaving.
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Well, A.) recognizing difference by more fully describing yourself is not the same thing as stating it is bad to be an American and B.) the argument that you must fully agree with what America does or has done or leave is clearly fallacious, committing the fallacy of the false dichotomy.
And yes, I understand why an African American will call him/her self that: so that they and others do not forget how they got here, so that they and others don't forget that the US has a history that it has come to terms with and has failed to do so. I mean, you oppress someone, whether it be the Indigenous population or enslaved people from Africa or Irish people forced to labor in horrendous conditions (which make Foxconn look like a Summer Camp) and locked out of jobs that could improve their lot, for four hundred years, at times denying their very humanity, doing everything to exclude them, and only then get angry that they may want to differentiate themselves from the people who have been doing the oppressing? And if you say "that's not my fault, my ancestors weren't here in this country, a part of that" then are you not doing the same exact thing that you are criticizing in others: hyphenating your American identity, implicitly if not explicity?
Many other countries have come to terms with multiple identities within one national community; I don't see why the US can't do this. It will simply have to get over its historical amnesia first. A nice first start would be getting rid of that hideous law in Arizona. I mean the territory was frikkin'
conquered from Mexico in an grossly immoral war that pillars of American culture such as Thoreau and Lincoln recognized as such, and you are going to get on a high horse about 'respecting the law' and the like in order to justify excluding the descendants of those from whom your ancestors (physical or spiritual) pilfered the land? The nerve.
Luqman