Samurai Goomba said:
Therumancer said:
All sarcasm aside, I've felt there should actually be a "thank you white people" week as part of things like "Black History Month" as a reminder of tolerance and to limit all the "Black Powah" stuff (hopefully), by making it very clear that a lot of what blacks have happened because whites decided it was right to give it to them. Slavery would never had ended if whites never changed their mind about it. The Civil Liberties movement would never had succeeded if whites didn't decide it was right. We aren't the bad guys, and were ultimatly crucial to all of this.
This same logic can apply in a similar way to those other points. Like it or not America is not only the dominant world power, but pretty much what defined modern civilization. While various nations try and take credit for inventions of people that were born there, the truth is a lot of these people had to come to the US for the enviroment to create their inventions. We're also the ones who were largely responsible for the proliferation and further development of things that were not invented here. Like everything, there are exceptions, but we didn't just gradually become central to the world in some tragic cosmic fluke.
In the words of Chris Rock when asked if racism has decreased, "Well, I think white people have gotten less crazy." White people helping end slavery isn't something they deserve credit for, when the decision to start, continue and legitimize the slavery in America was made by white people. It's like a thief who decided to stop stealing. Good for him not stealing anymore, but screw that guy if he thinks he deserves anything for it.
As for the second point, LOL. Sure, the US made a lot of great inventions, but our civilization and "modernity" largely came from the earlier European Industrial age (which happened a bit before our own), combined with artistic/intellectual developments which arose from the Renaissance era. We can trace the beginnings of "western" modes of thought and societal constructs (like sewers and rational examination to arrive at the logical *logos* conclusion) back to the Greeks and Romans. It could be argued America wasn't a world power until WW1 at the earliest, but maybe as recently as WW2. America definitely had reasons why it became so powerful, but it wasn't all because "we are awesome." Not that I think you're saying that. New inventions and industry combined with terrible working conditions and the poverty in Europe as a result of WW1 are all probably factors which contributed.
I just realized something. "Modern" is one of those buzzwords we have to define. If you mean "modernity" as a mode of thought or philosophy, we could argue there's little difference between this and westernization. If you just mean "modern" as a method of time-keeping, then every society is modern if it still exists.
Well of course Chris Rock sort of makes his living off of those perceptions. If he can't sell the idea of being crazy to bigoted white people who deserve it and need to be "educated" he sort of needs to find a new schtick since he'd go from being a comedic hero with a message, to just a jerk.
When it comes to slavery, it's important to understand that it started with the fertile crescent region where human civilization began, the first societies were those of dark skinned peoples throughout the middle east and down through Africa. For the longest time the victims of the slave trade were white people as "we" were the barbarians until the fall of Rome.
Through human history all people were slavers, and white people were not exempted from that to be fair, but it WAS white people who abolished the institution and has been striving to do away with it throughout the world. The white abolition of slavery is a far bigger deal than our practice of it, given that everyone did until we wound up pretty much running the world.
Most of the arguements made in favor of "blame whitey" boil down to "well, your great grandfather owned my great grandfather", yet we didn't practice slavery very long overall. If you want to get technical using that logic whites could point fingers right back and talk about the oppression of our ancestors under far less humane conditions for a much longer period of time. In the overall scope of history I could say turnabout is fair play, but I'm still glad slavery was abolished. The situation is such where I don't feel any paticular guilt over what my forefathers might have done to someone else's especially when his ancestors were even worse to mine.
As far as the overall sweep of history and technology goes, the US was insturmental in the creation and distribution of most modern technology, especially the latter point about distribution. We wound up becoming the world's biggest market for a reason.
The US didn't become the dominant world power until after "World War II" due to our largely isolationist sentiment. We probably could have been a big deal a lot sooner, but we chose not to. During "World War I" we demonstrated our abillity to be a massive power by ending the deadlock between the European powers of the time, and ending the war almost single handedly. We had very little in the way of a war machine or materials due to our isolationist and anti-war policies, but we had tons of people, and we dropped close to a million men on Europe where they almost literally picked up the guns of the cowering/demoralized french forces and carried them to war against the Germans. This is one of the big reasons the US talked about France being "surrender monkeys" there is more to it than just their behavior during World War II.
The US however build up a war machine AFTER World War I though continued it's isolationist policies, figuring it had better have more of a standing military in case it was ever needed again. The staggering display of power during World War I, combined with Japanese dislike of the US due to guys like Commodore Perry forcing their trade open to the rest of the world at one point was what motivated the pre-emptive strike (Pearl Habour) that arguably brought the US into the war.
AFTER World War II the attitudes of Russia combined with the failure of isolationism which we kind of realized at this point caused the US to enter the world more readily, and in the process it became the dominant world power. Not just due to our massive markets, and military strength, but due to our morality, and things like our massive abillity to produce wheat and beef.
None of this really matters so much as the point that we're talking about movies, and Bob is in his own way commenting on how America tends to be involved in pretty much every movie out there... and the point is that's because we're the dominant power in this era, we are a factor in pretty much everything for good or ill. It's sort of like a movie during the reign of The British Empire where it doesn't come up, even if covered only in the backround.
It's a case where Bob's politics are sort of overriding his common sense, I think he has a bad case of white American guilt, where I've long such come to grips with such things. In a world where everyone is a bastard I make no apologies for "my people" having been there ourselves, the differance is we at least try and do better by ending things like slavery, and I guess the very existance of guys like Bob makes my point about the US and our morality, as he's one of those guys who simply takes it too far... deeply into the realm of self depreciation.
