Ot: Language Police Text Books

So long as we recognise and welcome differences and learn the why of the differences, they give us a broader range of responses to choose from.

And where we find similarities, such as love, joy, truth, and compassion, we should work all the harder to achieve them toward others without, and toward our innermost souls.
 
The Havamal.

"Repay gift with gift, repay guile with guile."
A man should be loyal through life to friends,
And return gift for gift, Laugh when they laugh,
but with lies repay A false friend who lies.

With a good man it is good to talk,
Make him your fast friend:
But waste no words on a witless oaf,
Nor sit with a senseless ape.

An evil man, if you make him your friend,
Will give you evil for good:
A good man, if you make him your friend"
Will praise you in every place,

Affection is mutual when men can open
All their heart to each other:
He whose words are always fair
Is untrue and not to be trusted.


Havamal goes on to mention that one should not consider people who are different than them a target for ridicule or discrimination (They're not saying all are created equal, just that no one is useless or incapable, thus are deserving of respect)

Not all sick men are utterly wretched:
Some are blessed with sons,
Some with friends,
some with riches,
Some with worthy works.

71.

The halt can manage a horse,
the handless a flock,
The deaf be a doughty fighter,
To be blind is better than to burn on a pyre:
There is nothing the dead can do.
It is always better to be alive,
The living can keep a cow.

And against passing judgements on another:
Never reproach the plight of another,
For it happens to many men:
Strong desire may stupefy heroes,
Dull the wits of the wise


Well, there you have it. The Havamal is an Ancient document that was passed on by word of mouth for a thousand or more years b4 being written down. Kind of a viking age Emily Post etiquette lesson (kind of a surprise, eh? Ndns weren't the only folk to be demonized and marginalised by the operating systems of the day.)

Keith
 
Personally I think the differences in us ndn peoples should be taught, after all there were over 500 sovereign nations at the advent of this country being discovered.

Ah, some sense, though it's to be expected from Yvsa.

Probably can't teach about all of them, so provide an overview and pick a few different nations for examples and say that they are examples, and go into enough depth that something gets learned. But there must be some ways of classifying or grouping nations by common culture, lifestyle, or geography that is acceptable. There isn't enough time to cover every fiefdom, culture, or fluxonal nation-state in modern, let alone historic Europe either. Not to mention Asia, and the rest of the world.

And it is surely BS to ignore/rewrite facts because they have been over-generalized and mistakenly applied to all North American Indians (of whoever else) by some. Should a kid come home from school and think that NONE of the tribes lived in tipis or had long braids? "I learned in school that's wrong, that's a sterotype." Maybe these folks need to look up "stereotype" in the dictionary.

No question that a tipi shouldn't be depicted next to a totem pole and a Seminole with the label "Indian". Nor should a guy in Lederhosen be depicted next to the Eiffel tower drinking from a bota bag with the label "European". Surely supplying the same objects/dress in proper context is preferable to banning them from text books. Providing the actual history and facts must be a better way to transform stereotypes than merely wishing them away.

Hmmm, an interesting collection of stuff on the Fox site there...kinda shows what a spectrum of behavior this "PC stuff" encompases. I think that the term has become basically meaningless. Circumstances depending, it's either an epithet or tool to harass someone.

-Teacher's aid (presumably, observant Christian) suspended for wearing cross... Are the various head/hair coverings of other religions forbidden too? Catholic Ash-wednesday observance? Personal observance is not proselytization.

-Hindus point out that they find it offensive for an American teen-fashion company to put images of Hindu gods on a pair of flip-flops. This is a surprise? How would the wearing of a bikini imprinted with images of the Virgin Mary be thought of?

What's fundamentally similar bout these two cases except stupidity or lack of thinking?

Would it be OK for a non-Hindu to wear Hindu icons like on the flip-flops in school because they aren't treating them with respect as an observant Hindu?

What about the numerous depictions of Pacific Nothwest Indian totems used by many in the Puget Sound area? Is this bad because it promotes religion? Or bad because it doesn't respect the religion?

I enjoy heretical, basphemous humor when there is a point to it, like political cartoons have. Somehow I think that the Ganesha flip-flops aren't in the this category, like say, a pope-shaped condom would be. I think that was pure ignorance or thoughtlessness. It's not unreasonable to point that out. Doesn't seem to be a case of excessive PC to me. But I'm not familiar enough with Hinduism to know. I worked with an observant vegetarian Hindu who thought those toy boxes that made a moo sound when inverted were hysterically funny. Maybe his older relatives would be scandalized. Dunno.

A little common sense and flexability are needed, not a bunch of puportedly omniscient rules concocted by bureaucrats. Seems to me those are an insult to most anybody's religion. And most anybody as well.

If skins get much thinner, everybody's guts are gonna leak out.
 
Ferrous Wheel, I like that "Teutonic-American" line. A fellow in a bar once asked me what tribe I was from. I was heavily tanned at the time from working 12 hour shifts in the summer sun. I told him my tribe was called the Saxons, blew his poor mind. He was fixated on Indian tribes and had no idea what I meant.
Cheers, Mark
 
Heehe! Good one, MM. People tend to forget:

White folx wuz wild once, too!
roman-belt03.jpg

Keith
 
Like George Carlin says "When the Blue-eyes come down from the North, Look out!" I like that picture you posted, while I was looking for the group on the net, I found a band by that name. They sound pretty good. Isn't the Internet wonderful?
Have you seen the book "Blood of the Vikings" by Julian Richards? He mentions a genetic study they did in Britain to see if they could track the contribution the Vikings made to the British gene pool. They found the Norwegian Y chromosome mostly in the Orkney and Shetland Isles and the Isle of Man. Wales and Ireland mainly had the Celtic Y and so did the Basques in Spain. They couldn't distinguish between the Angles, the Saxons and the Danish Vikings(hardly surprising, since they all came from the same area) and to the dismay of Scotsmen everywhere they found no more Celtic Y chromosomes in Scotland than they did in Southern England.
Cheers, Mark
 
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