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Originally posted by square_peg
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This logic is incoherent. I'm not sure how you read the post to mean "whites only live in America." Of course they live in other nations. Within this one, whiteness is considered the default.
That doesn't even make sense. I am not the one believing that minorities are inferior to white people, nor am I accusing you of believing that. I'm simply pointing out what the common implicit attitude is. It's something that's become internalized to such an extent that many people who have good intentions can still overlook it. But occasionally it gets brought to light and exposed in all its ugliness. You might've heard that there was much outrage when FOX aired a Super Bowl ad that featured "America the Beautiful" being sung in multiple languages by people of multiple races. It serves to illustrate that many people are apparently threatened by the idea of whiteness not being the default in America.
In name, yes. But in reality, hardly so. Many places are diverse; not that many places feature people of multiple races truly mingling together. Instead, many of them live or work in what's essentially a segregated environment. America's improving, but in many places it's still more like a warehouse with many separate compartments rather than a true melting pot.
And on that note, now that you mention it...one of the most popular uses of the phrase "American melting pot" comes from this classic Schoolhouse Rock video that's shown to seemingly every elementary school kid. But there's a line at 1:17 that slips unnoticed past most people.
Hear that? "America was the new world, and Europe was the old..." It essentially calls America the new extension of the European world. And since Europe is predominantly white and the source of where most white ancestral lines ultimately came from, it's identifying whiteness as the basic default of America. They claim that America's a melting pot, but they tie that in with Europe being the main, overpowering ingredient.
This is true. But it's irrelevant to what I was saying. That America is racially diverse doesn't mean that whiteness isn't still usually considered the default.
That doesn't even make sense. I am not the one believing that minorities are inferior to white people, nor am I accusing you of believing that. I'm simply pointing out what the common implicit attitude is. It's something that's become internalized to such an extent that many people who have good intentions can still overlook it. But occasionally it gets brought to light and exposed in all its ugliness. You might've heard that there was much outrage when FOX aired a Super Bowl ad that featured "America the Beautiful" being sung in multiple languages by people of multiple races. It serves to illustrate that many people are apparently threatened by the idea of whiteness not being the default in America.
In name, yes. But in reality, hardly so. Many places are diverse; not that many places feature people of multiple races truly mingling together. Instead, many of them live or work in what's essentially a segregated environment. America's improving, but in many places it's still more like a warehouse with many separate compartments rather than a true melting pot.
And on that note, now that you mention it...one of the most popular uses of the phrase "American melting pot" comes from this classic Schoolhouse Rock video that's shown to seemingly every elementary school kid. But there's a line at 1:17 that slips unnoticed past most people.
Hear that? "America was the new world, and Europe was the old..." It essentially calls America the new extension of the European world. And since Europe is predominantly white and the source of where most white ancestral lines ultimately came from, it's identifying whiteness as the basic default of America. They claim that America's a melting pot, but they tie that in with Europe being the main, overpowering ingredient.
This is true. But it's irrelevant to what I was saying. That America is racially diverse doesn't mean that whiteness isn't still usually considered the default.
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She looks like she's on crack or something. 
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