From: harry@hershele.alf.dec.com (Harry Katz)
Subject: Re: ARF's racist remark was:Re: Treason vs. Espionage
Followup-To: talk.politics.misc,misc.headlines,talk.politics.mideast,alt.conspiracy,alt.censorship
Organization: DEC - Customer Support Center, Alpharetta, GA
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1 PL8]
Date: Mon, 4 Jan 1993 20:14:48 GMT

In article <1992Dec16.172001.18751@oracle.us.oracle.com>,
usenet@oracle.us.oracle.com (Oracle News Poster) takes aim at
article <1g4a63INNbi6@agate.berkeley.edu>,
submitted by dan@jonas.berkeley.edu (dan graves).

Among other things usenet@oracle.us.oracle.com
(Oracle News Poster) writes:

	Unlike other groups in America which are steadily moving
	towards assimmilation, a large fraction of blacks seem to be
	actively seeking to move further away from the common culture.

Assimilation is not a requirement of American citizenship nor of
American culture.  The Pilgrims came to America to avoid religious
assimilation in Europe.  Freedom is measured by society's willingness
to let each individual express his uniqueness, not his conformity!

Moreover, African Americans have contributed heavily to American
culture even during the period of their enforced enslavement, and
calls for them to assimilate to a culture that they helped to shape
are at best ignorant.


Mr. Oracle continues:

	I can't think of any other group that does that.

How about the Amish or Pennsylvania Dutch?


Mr. Graves writes:

	African Americans have been here longer than most groups
	and have made more of a contribution to American culture
	than any other ethnic group i can think of.

To which Mr. Oracle Poster responds:

	What about Whites/European Americans?

Mr. Graves was probably referring to American ethnic minorities, and
even so, he is probably exaggerating.  The contribution of Native
Americans is equally considerable, for example.


Mr. Graves writes:

	They can call themselves anything they like and i for 
	one will respect their contribution to MY culture.

To which Mr. Oracle Poster responds:

	What is your culture?  It wouldn't happen to be the American
	Culture, would it?  So in that case, who is "they"?  After all,
	if "they" are part of the American Culture then how can they be
	contributing new and extraneous elements to it?

Let us put it in terms that even Mr. Poster can understand.  If Mr.
Poster were to publish a book or create a work of art he would be
contributing something new to American culture, in spite of the fact
that he is already American.  A new contribution to culture does not
have to be "extraneous" although American culture is certainly open to
adopting extraneous elements as well.


Mr. Graves writes:

	Yes, Schmidling,...African Americans are just as American
	as you are.


To which Mr. Oracle Poster responds:

	Maybe as Schmidling, but not as American as I am.

Mr. Poster sorely needs a lesson in civics.  Other Americans may
not be as smart as Mr. Poster,  or as talented, but no one is more
or less American than any other citizen.  This is known as equality
before the law.


Mr. Oracle Poster continues:

	You see, I am not a hyphenated American, whether that's
	European-American or Jewish-American or
	British/Romanian-American.

Just for the record, words can be hyphenated, but not people.
Moreover, none of the terms above should be hyphenated.  Moreover,
the switch from hyphens to a slash in "British/Romanian" shows an
inexplicable and unnecessary inconsistency within Mr. Poster's
personal punctuation system.  Apparently he slept through all of
his high school English classes.


Mr. Oracle Poster continues:

	I'm an American.  Any black who considers himself to be an
	American is as American as I am.  If he considers himself to be
	an African-American then he isn't.

Once again, African American is not hyphenated, but Afro-American is.

It is said that you can't tell a book by its cover, and Martin Luther
King dreamed of a day when men would be judged by the content of their
character and not the color of their skin, but Mr. Poster judges men by
a smudge on a piece of paper, a punctuation mark!


Mr. Poster also has comments on article
<1992Dec15.101822.27928@Princeton.EDU> in which
niepornt@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (David Marc Nieporent) writes:

	(1) There is no such thing as "African culture."  Any more
	than there is such a thing as "European culture."  


To which Mr. Oracle Poster responds:

	I agree.

To sum up, Mr Oracle Poster agrees there is no such thing as "African
culture" or "European culture," but there is a "common culture"
in America that contains nothing African in it.


	Interestingly enough, many American blacks do not.  

Likewise, many American whites do not.  But such observations are
neither interesting nor to the point!


Mr. Nieporent continues:

	(2) African-American's are not by definition promoting
	African culture at all. 

As long as we are correcting spelling mistakes, that should be,
"African Americans."

Mr. Oracle Poster responds:

	Then why are they suddenly hyphenating themselves
	instead of calling themselves Americans?

Once again, a person cannot hyphenate himself!  As to the substance of
the question, Mr. Poster will answer that one himself shortly!

But let us take a look at the unhyphenated words that have been used to
designate African Americans in the recent past: Colored, Negro, and
Black.  Notice that no one had a problem with these unhyphenated terms
even though they do not include the word "American" anywhere in them.
For this very reason such terms are unacceptable to African Americans.

Looking around at the examples of other ethnic minorities, African
Americans saw that others refer to themselves as Italian Americans or
Irish Americans whenever it is necessary to identify their ethnic
heritage.  Looking for a term that would emphasize heritage over skin
color and seeking to assimilate to the common practice of other
Americans, they adopted the term African American.

Suddenly, there is an uproar in the mainstream America that African
Americans are "hyphenating themselves" and not assimilating!  All sorts
of pseudo-sociological psycho-babble emerges to explain the significance
of the hyphen as employed by Afro-Americans!  The hyphen supercedes the
upside-down pentangle as the symbol of the devil!

If Mr. Oracle Poster had not fallen asleep during his English classes,
he would know that the hyphen serves not to separate the elements of a
compound word, but to tie them together.  What upsets mainstream
America most about the word Afro-American is not that it separates
Blacks from America, but because it ties the two together!



Mr. Nieporent continues:

	(3) When you say they are "promoting a different culture,"
	what do you mean?  Different than what?  Different than
	non-African-Americans?  Sure.  But Italian-Americans promote a
	different culture than non-Italian-Americans, and you never
	seem to be complaining that Italian-Americans can't sustain
	"our" civilization.

Mr. Oracle Poster responds:

	Well this plain isn't true.  Do you know any Italian Americans?
	After a couple of generations they act just like everyone else,
	except for a deplorable tendency to have names like Luigi, Vinny,
	and Guido.

Can we assume then that the "common culture" that Americans, for the
most part, assimilate does not require  drawing one's name from a
common pool of mainstream names?


	If you ask them what they are they say "American".  If you ask
	them their origin/ethnic group they say Italian.

I have known many Italian Americans and they are just as likely to say
"Italian" when you ask them what they are as when you ask them what
ethnic group they belong to.  Nobody holds it against them.


	The only time they use the word "Italian-American" is in a
	discussion like this.

As I said above, Mr. Poster gets around to answering his own question.
Perhaps Mr. Poster hasn't noticed yet, but we are in the middle of
"a discussion like this!"  And since we are, why is it okay to use the
phrase (not word!) "Italian American" but not the phrase "African
American" or the word "Afro-American" in this discussion?


Harry Katz

Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc,alt.sex,alt.activism