Well. It’d probably depend if the culture was any good to begin with.</p>
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Seems like you’re confusing this. Taking people away from their nation doesn’t make the ripe for enslavement. Having less guns makes them ripe for enslavement.</p>
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Huh? Umm - there genetic ancestors most likely came from the nations inhabiting West Africa. It’s not like these nations are unknown. I don’t really know where my ancestors came from. Some from Germany, England, Ireland, etc. How is that different than saying Nigeria, Ghana, Ivory Coast, etc?</p>
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Western ideals: Liberty, democracy, private property. You know, those things that have made the Western world more successful than anywhere else?</p>
<p>Mr. Payne- Well. It’d probably depend if the culture was any good to begin with.</p>
<p>Are you implying that African culture was not any good? Seeing that some Western scholars went to Timbucktu to get knowledge, and that the ancient Egyptions made many discorveries in science, nation building, and astronomy…Interesting </p>
<p>Mr. Payne- Seems like you’re confusing this. Taking people away from their nation doesn’t make the ripe for enslavement. Having less guns makes them ripe for enslavement.</p>
<p>What I meant was by stripping blacks over generations of their ancestry, it was easier to control them as slaves since by the late 1700’s most slaves had never even seen Africa. </p>
<p>Mr. Payne- Western ideals: Liberty, democracy, private property. You know, those things that have made the Western world more successful than anywhere else?</p>
<p>Mr. Payne you seem to be idealistic in your view of the Western World</p>
<p>Life, democracy, and private property have just recently been granted to blacks in America. And what has made Western culture more successful than anyone elses? Stealing the cultural advancements of other cultures ( such as the Chinese with the gun) , the appeal of Christianity in guise of imperialism, and the explotation of the cultural values of trust bred in the indigenious places where Western Powers have pillaged. You can’t believe that Western ideals of Life, democracy and private property have made them successful- No BLOOD AND LAND thirst has made the Western World more powerful.</p>
Yeah, pretty much. Don’t think I’m singling African culture out though. Arab culture is pretty vile as well. As is a laundry list of other cultures that haven’t gotten with the times.</p>
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Seriously, do you want me to name the amount of Western cities which have “created knowledge”? The list would be impossibly long.</p>
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And what has happened there in the past 500 years? <em>crickets</em></p>
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Ok.</p>
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I just went with the common definition.</p>
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Yes.</p>
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Many things.</p>
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Yeah. What about the 600 years of continual improvement afterwards? Innovation means you improve upon things.</p>
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Yeah, Imperialism helped the Western world. First though, there are a couple things required to be imperial. One must have the technology. In order to have the technology one likely has a capitalist knowledge based economy. This most commonly occurs in a stable nation state with relatively strong individual rights.</p>
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Are you kidding me? They came there to conquer. I’ll make no excuses. However, coming to conquer is largely an unprofitable enterprise. However, the implication that a cultural value of trust was a staple in many cultures is hilarious. Do you think the Aztecs had this great value of trust? The Zulus? You act like these places were a Utopia before the Europeans. They were every bit as savage as the conquerers.</p>
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You are mixing up cause and effect. Blood and land thirst is an effect of being powerful. It does not make a country powerful. Having a thirst for knowledge makes a country powerful. How else did a country like the Netherlands have the ability to project power across the globe? They had better technology. But why did they have better technology? A country has to have the intellectual infrastructure and knowledge capital to continually generate good ideas.</p>
<p>Mr. Tubbz: Why argue with this guy? He’s obviously a racist idiot. </p>
<p>trackstar23: You can’t “get over” slavery. It was an institution that influenced a lot of things in modern-day America, worth going back to and making arguments based off of. Your statement was ignorant.</p>
<p>I hate threads like this. So many anti-affirmative action kids coming off as extremely racist because of their bitterness.
Stupids.</p>
<p>When is it over? When is it enough? Should we start handing African Americans, I’m Sorry for Slavery Checks? Or even better they should be exempt from Income tax and still reap the benefits of everyone else! Why not? The US did horrible things to their kind, like being imprisoned in concentration camps during WWII , or being sent to some secret camp in who knows where because they might be terrorist, or completely ban immigration from their county of origin? When are the mistakes of the past fully compensated? Why isn’t Japan, UK, France, Russia, USA paying China for its ruthless imperialism? Or India from the French and British rule? They did horrible things to them why not? Years of oppressive colonialism can’t just be forgotten! It influences the modern world! The very nature of how nations treat each! OMG! </p>
<p>Why is it that racism towards blacks,e.g. Imus, Kramer, is so much more offensive then racism towards Asians, e.g. Roosie O Donald, or Jewish, e.g. Mel Gibson? Could it be that they have huge organizations, e.g. NAACP, who want to propagate that Whitie is keeping them and that this is why? How can two organizations propagating the advancement of their race be treated so differently (I’m looking at you NAACP…and NeoNazis)?</p>
<p>Colonized countries are still seeking reparations for the acts of imperialist countries during the second World War. African-Americans never got reparations and the damage is visible today. I’m not defending or criticizing affirmative action; I’m just saying that people, specifically bitter CCers, shouldn’t slam a whole race and its history because of their feelings about it.</p>
<p>I really don’t believe you’re asking the difference between the NAACP and the Neo Nazis. Consider the purpose of each: one was to advance the chances of a certain group of people while the other was specifically designed to advance one race by degrading other ones not like it. False analogy. Try again. </p>
<p>But I do understand what you’re saying about people’s take on racism towards African-Americans v. racism towards Jewish people or Asians. Racism is racism especially when propagated in pop culture and should be taken as such.</p>
<p>I was merely responding to “by degrading other ones not like it” … I’m pretty sure NAACP was part of Affirmative action being passed. So my analogy while extremely in some points is still valid since they’ve both have the same ideology.</p>
<p>No, but the post in which you said that African culture was “vile” was pretty much rank idiocy.</p>
<p>Have you ever been to Africa? Have you ever actually experienced the culture firsthand? Or are you just commenting based on the fact that the continent is in pretty *****ty shape right now? Has it ever occurred to you that Africa’s problems may be equally the result of centuries of exploitation by colonial powers as results of some kind of deficiency in African culture? I suspect not.</p>
<p>While you may not be racist, the fact that you make the kind of unbelievably judgmental (and arbitrary) comments about various cultures that you have makes me think you’re probably pretty ignorant of the essential facets of those cultures.</p>
<p>(But prove me wrong. Tell me what exactly it is, in depth and detail, that you find so vile about African culture - and how about Arabic culture too, while you’re at it. Then justify why those things are so bad, using an argument that doesn’t involve trying to link them to their respective areas’ problems - which have many other causes - or by comparing them with American - “Western” - culture and making sweeping generalizations.)</p>
Why not? Do you think all cultures are equally good? That is rank idiocy. Over the past couple thousand years it’s pretty obvious that certain traits in cultures are advantageous. One can’t make a judgment about what is good or not? Or do you believe that nothing can be good or bad? </p>
<p>Personally, I find that cultures that value liberty are superior to those that do not. A solid academic tradition. The concept of private property. There are many hundreds of traits which define cultures.</p>
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Nope. But then again, one doesn’t need to go there in order to know what the cultural institutions are.</p>
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Nope. But then again, one doesn’t need to go there in order to know what the cultural institutions are.</p>
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Sub-Saharan Africa has been in pretty *</em></strong>ty shape for over 2000 years.</p>
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I thought about that. I dismissed it because, uhh, I can open up a history book. What exactly do they say before 1700 AD? The simple fact of the matter is that their is not many records of the era. Another pointer to the incredibly poor academic tradition. Hell, the amount of writing of the Battle of Thermopylae was filled volumes. </p>
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You’d be wrong.</p>
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Oh, I’m probably a bit more well read than you pegged me at.</p>
[/quote]
Women’s rights (or the lack of them). Poor democratic tradition. Atrocious academic tradition (as compared to China or India or Western Europe). Arab culture used to have this, circa ~1000? The level of violence is pretty high. Johannesburg has the highest murder rate in the world? The level of literacy is among the lowest in the world. Some are economic effects - but then again, South Korea was poorer than many African countries 50 years ago and virtually all South American countries. It’s 1st world now.</p>
<p>I mean, I think “culture” is pretty bad in the US sometimes - why else do the Asian mega cities of Seoul, Tokyo and Taipei have absurdly low crime rates when compared to even the safest cities in the US? It has to be because of culture.</p>
<p>Certain traits in cultures are advantageous? OK, that might be a valid point. But how do you tell which ones are advantageous? Do you judge by the endurance of the civilizations? Was Roman culture good, in spite of the fact that Rome was eventually torn asunder by Visigoths and then Eastern Rome conquered by Muslims?</p>
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</p>
<p>Stop generalizing. What are the cultural institutions in Africa that you take issue with?</p>
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</p>
<p>Has it really? Back that up. Around say 100 CE, how is it that sub-Saharan Africa was in ****ty shape?</p>
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</p>
<p>Thank god, you’ve actually posted some reasons, which means we can actually discuss this instead of you just making generalizations and me pointing out that random generalizations mean nothing.</p>
<p>Women’s rights are a real problem, I absolutely agree. They are one of the few things I take real issue with Arab culture over, because many Arab nations are fairly well developed by many indicators, yet have atrocious women’s rights. In Africa, though, the issue is not so clear cut. Many many women are abused in lots of African countries, but I’m not sure the culture relegates women to inferior status in the same way Arabic culture does. I think, rather, that while African culture in the past had terrible women’s rights, so did almost every culture, and the reason such abuses continue today is a result of the ****ty developmental status of most African countries. They share these problems with other developing nations around the world.</p>
<p>Academic tradition has been astounding in the Middle East up until very recently, so that’s not a very good reason; the constant state of conflict in the Middle East recently (which is not entirely due to the culture) has precluded academic advancements in many ways. Africa had a less-developed academic tradition in some ways, true, but much of its academic tradition has been in oral form, which is not conducive to us knowing all the academic advances on the continent.</p>
<p>The South Korea example is true, but it’s extraordinary in many ways. The main one is that it was able to successfully resist pressure from the IMF and World Bank to conform to US development ideas, and hewed to its own strategy, which has worked much better. However, South Korea has also had high levels of aid from the US, mainly due to its proximity to North Korea; this substantial, untied aid has helped a great deal with its development; Africa has not had this advantage.</p>
<p>Your problem is that you seem unable to tell the difference between culture-induced problems and problems induced by other issues. In this case, Africa has been ravaged by the slave trade, the colonial race for power and subsequent domination of the indigenous populations. After colonial governments were removed, Africa’s development was hindered by the international trading regime, which in many ways has been absolutely terrible for its development. Between the agricultural subsidies all over the developed world that have made trading in the agricultural products that Africa specializes in result in worsening terms of trade for African countries, and the IMF’s structural adjustment programs, African countries have been getting screwed a lot in the economic sense over the last 50 years. Before, Africa’s problems are self-evident, and obviously not a result of culture. Well actually, not a result of African culture, but it could credibly be argued that its a result of Western culture, which subjugated and systematically destroyed Africa in many ways.</p>
<p>I’m willing to entertain any reasons as to why African culture is actually crappy, but so far the ones you’ve given have been terrible. Half of them are inaccurate and the other half are a result of economic issues or the systematic exploitation of the continent by Western countries - which is more of an indictment of Western culture.</p>
<p>I’m not going to call you a racist, but given the weakness of the reasons you have provided, the thought is in my mind. Please provide some good reasons for why you think what you do, or it’s really hard for me not to ascribe such racist motives to the flurry of iffy reasons you’ve so far given.</p>
Where exactly was the strawman? I thought it was a pretty direct response.</p>
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It is a valid point.</p>
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One could have a bunch of different metrics. I’m sure you could correlate positive life outcomes with certain cultures. </p>
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There are many different metrics. One might choose historical significance.</p>
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Well, I think most would claim certain aspects of Roman culture are good. And at the time of its existence, it was top tier.</p>
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Seriously, you want to compare Romans & Greeks to Sub-Saharan African culture? Hell, one could probably make a favorable comparison between Romans & Greeks to 19th century Zulus!</p>
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Frankly, I think a lot of it has to do with Islam, of which there is a significant amount in Africa.</p>
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First of all, I said Arab, not Middle East (not a big deal, but lets just keep note of what I said). Second of all, unless you definition of “very recently” spans 500 years, I have to disagree with that statement.</p>
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Frankly, if you aren’t writing stuff down, you don’t have an academic tradition. I highly doubt advanced mathematical concepts can be conveyed via speech (like those being developed in the Arab & Middle Eastern world in the ~500 - ~1500 CE time period).</p>
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Are you seriously disagreeing that culture did not have something to do with their meteoric rise? Taiwan? Singapore? Hell, even the tale of Japan is the same way.</p>
<p>Not only that, I think in 30-40 years many China will likely be considered 1st world, have hugely valuable companies, and be a huge knowledge economy.</p>
<p>Yeah, I’m gonna have to say “culture” might have something to do with it.</p>
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I think you simply don’t view culture as all that important in country development. I think it might be the most important thing.</p>
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Totally agree, how could I not?</p>
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I’m pretty ignorant on this issue, but I’ll follow your lead.</p>
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And what of other countries that get stuff from the IMF? Any of those countries ever do well? Do some do more poorly than others? Are the differences all due to structural issues within the economy?</p>
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I’m not sure I agree with this statement. How were Africa’s problems ‘obviously not a result of culture’ before the Europeans arrived? Do you simply think there was no problems?</p>
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And yet, all these other countries that Western culture came in and subjugated (South America/Middle East/South Asia) seem to be doing so much better (relatively). What’s different?</p>