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Why do I as a black American continue to love and defend a country that treats me like an unwanted child? |
| Abuse and supplication | by RedSevenOne | 0 votes | 
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| it is up to you | by Tommy Atkins | 0 votes |
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| Only you can know the true answer | by indie_young | 0 votes |
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| Choice? | by Arian Hakim | 0 votes |
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Antoschka - Ekaterina Moshaeva: It’s because the place where we are living is not determining. What does home mean? Is it a place where you were born: a house, a town, a village, a country, or is it the Earth? Of course, everybody needs to feel himself belonging to something, to have some support. I think, that a man, who asked this question, was born in that country, had may be a good family, good friends in the school or in the place, where he studied. It means people. Every human being, as I said before, is a particular huge system, a microcosm, and he feels a responsibility for that social group, organization, for his family. And it’s excellent, it’s beautiful, because if in a family some conflicts happen or if someone treats you unfairly, it doesn’t mean that you have to reject him, to drive him out, to isolate yourself from him, to say “no, I don’t belong to you”. May be you should do something about the situation in order that this family member and your neighbours understand your point of view, feel your energy, your good will, your wish to change the world. And then people around you, your family, the community, your town, and the world would be kinder. I think, it is right so. We are growing, we are going forward. And of course we can remember that America or Holland or England had colonies and exploited, and it was terrible unfair. But we… |
Abbas Beydoun: To know when we should contend against the law is a complex issue. Personally, I tend to follow the law because if we did not respect laws we will lose them. Of course I can think of reforming or changing the law, however, I would feel that laws are not holy. We should talk about laws if these laws in the country were respected, because in dictator regimes there are laws but they are not applied and the government itself does not apply them. The revolution or maybe the war would be legal in such a case. |
Alvaro Restrepo: Well, this question is of great importance. In my country Afro-Colombian and native communities suffer discrimnation and are excluded from the rest of society. At this point we return to the subject of worldwide cultural and ethnical diversity, a big treasure that remains unrecognized in this diversity. The kaleidoscope, the wonder of language diversity is represented today, I think, in this event. We are all here, in this Babel-place, answering questions in various languages. I think, Afro-American people or simply African descendants that came to America suffer discrimination. I say this because I live in a city, in Colombia, where this sort of discrimination is present. Colombia has many Afro-Colombian inhabitants and mestizos and is a most racist city in the world. In Cartagena of the Indies racism is even worse than in South Africa. In Cartagena of the Indies things are not to change. In my opinion this question is very important because we live in societies that do not recognize the treasure, the beauty of diversity. We should pay more attention to this subject. |
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by Ana Lucy Bengochea | 0 votes |
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Andries Botha: There’s a correlation, you know, in abusive relationships where the abused grasps or holds on to the abuser. As a sense, they are the way which they can indicate or measure their own humanity; their own sense of vulnerability is proportionate by that entity which abuses you so. And I see that it is a kind of, anyone who lives in an abusive environment develops a kind of attachment to the abuser. I also think that your sense of location and sense of your love for that place called home, to defend it at all costs is observed and completely understandable even if it is the only point of location because if you dislocate yourself from the point of origin, you float obviously. You float without anchor. So it is understandable that you would love it at all costs because it is the way of locating your own identity. |
Angaangaq Lyberth: Interesting. And you are absolutely right. You and I we have no understood the significance of our equality. As a Native American we say that in the east the yellow people where the sun rises. But when you look at every time the sun rises it’s supposed to be yellow. But because of the pollution it’s always pink now. So that means that the yellow people are not living to their spiritual responsibility. In the south when the sun shine highest upon us, she’s always white and there is no shadow amongst us. So white people are supposed to be removing all the differences we all have. But they have no lived up to their spiritual responsibility. Then in the west where the sun sets, she’s always red. And in the west where the harvests happen you and I we’re supposed to have a feast. And after the feast we shall grow to be comfortably visiting one another. But we’re bickering amongst ourselves. So the red man has not lived up to his spiritual responsibility either. And at night, where everything is black, black man, he is supposed to ensure safety for all at night. But did you know that everywhere, including in Berlin, and in Philadelphia, every home is locked up. So we’ve become the prisoners in our own homes every single day. And thus we don’t have that freedom. The black man is not living up to his spiritual responsibility either. So unless you and I, we all learn to live up to our spiritual responsibility, yes, we will always have a difference. Always. And it needs to be removed. You and I we need to recognize that we are all equal, no matter what race we carry. Did you hear my answer? I pray so. |
Anthony Arnove: Really, I think the question from Jason is a question that Jason can answer far better than me. And in particular, I have problem with the notion of loving or defending a country when love of one’s country and defense of one’s country today is defined in terms of militarism or nationalism of an ideology. There’s something unique or special or exceptional, in particular, about the country that Jason is from, and I am from the United States. I reject that idea, I reject the premise of nationalism, which ultimately is a form or racism or chauvinism, which is used to sell war, to prop up the idea that the United States is superior to other countries, which is an idea I reject. We have to find ways of crossing these national boundaries and finding what unites us internationally, what unites us globally, because the problems we confront can’t be defined in terms of nations. And every nation has an ideology of exceptionalism, of patriotism, of nationalism, and historically, we’ve seen not only how those were used to drive countries to war, but are used to oppress minorities or oppress people at home on the basis of those ideologies, to oppress people who don’t fit into the national – the nationalist framework, whether they are ethnic groups or otherwise. So, I don’t feel a connection with that feeling of love or defense of my country. I feel quite the opposite. I feel that Malcolm X really speaks to the question when he said that what he saw in the United States was not an American dream, but an American nightmare, and I think that that approach, that understanding really speaks the experience of so many people, not only in the United States, but around the world, who don’t feel that connection with their own state. |
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by Anuradha Koirala | 0 votes |
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Anuradha Mittal: That’s a brilliant question and I am going to answer it as a woman, as somebody from India. I would say that actually I love my country, and what is a country. Country is in some ways a figment of imagination; in some ways it’s a sense of community; and it is a part of a larger community, the global community. And so, I find myself loving India, loving Asia, loving this world. But at the same time, I think I defend it because I love it as I would love my own mother. And in terms of defense, I would say the way I defend it is by actually pointing out what is wrong with my country because I am a patriot. When my country spends huge amounts of money on defense, -- in fact, India is the third largest spender on defense in the world after U.S. and China -- while at the same time it is home to nearly 380 million people who go to bed hungry or it is a country where 380 million people live on less than a dollar a day, the way I defend my country is to point out what’s wrong with that picture. So, the only way I know how to love and defend my country is a) because I belong there because I am a patriot; but at the same time if I don’t point out what’s wrong with my country, then nobody else will. It’s like, if my mother has a problem, in this case my mother has an addiction to military expenditures, it has to be us as children to point it out. And that’s the relationship I have with my country. |
Ashok Gangadean: I think this is an excellent question. I am from Philadelphia, teaching at Haverford College outside of Philadelphia, so I appreciate the source of this from Jason Robinson about being a black American. And I think this question really can be asked in a much wider sense as Jason suggests. Why someone can say as a women, why as American women who feel oppressed and marginalized in my business or in my work or in my life or in my home still continue to love my country when I am treated this way. Well, it's right to love your country, it’s right to be patriotic in its higher sense even though there is continuing injustice. Because as I’ve been suggesting in my other responses, there are two different cultural spaces, the culture of being an integral awakened human being, living in global consciousness and the values that come with that kind of culture in which one should love oneself and one's community and cultivate it, in contrast to an ego-based culture and ego-based America for example where there is sexism and racism, and all kinds of marginalization and economic injustice and slavery in all kinds of forms still continuing because ego minds are enslaved minds and reflect that kind of enslavement, and hierarchy, and objectification and alienation. That's really what this question is talking about. So, in a more generic sense when one is living in an ego-oppressive culture, we are all marginalized and all oppressed and we oppress ourselves most ironically. So, the question is, do I continue to affirm the higher way of being a human? So, an African America, a women and a citizen, an everyday citizen, seeing herself as a more awakened integral citizen, a global citizen, living in a culture that is still dominated by the old dysfunctional ego-mental patterns that repress and fragment and violate us all. That is really what this question is about. So, they will always be minorities and alienated repressed factors in such a culture. And, I would just say, it's right and proper to continue to live the high culture so that this transformation. |
Audrey Kitagawa: Well, I think that as a black American, if you're a black American framing this question, I think you can answer it better for yourself as to why you would love and defend a country that you in turn may feel treats you like an unwanted child. But this whole aspect of loving and defending your country really is a matter of national identity and the ways in which we give our lives identification that in ways that are important to us, so love for country and being an American citizen may be more important than being identified as a black American or an Asian-American or being identified according to your race. And to the extent that it gives you a sense of pride to be able to love your country and to have identification with your country and to be able to value loyalty to your country, then those are values that you embrace, and to the extent that it also helps you to love your country and defend your country, then you would feel that this identification of yourself as an American in the totality of things becomes more important than being able to see how your country treats you as a black American. |
Benjamin Fahrer: It is about conditionment that our system has placed upon us in a different habitual patterns in which we have fallin into. What we identify with, we are identifying with our country, is that I am a patriot, I am a countryman, I must defend my country. That is what we identify with. And that’s what we are conditioned to believed, as we are programmed to believe to television and different media. It doesn’t matter how the country treats you, and if you are stuck in that condition and you’re unable to break free from that. And it treat you worse and it treat you like unwanted child, and leave you in the gutter and you still defended it because it’s what you believe in. It’s all about our beliefs story. If we know what we believed in, what we fight for, it doesn’t matter how we’re treated so much. But if we don’t know what it is that we truly identifying worth that is not coming from within, if it’s coming from without. There is a conditionment and a programming on to us that we should be this way and we should defend our country in this way. If that’s coming from the outside and not inside, and it shouldn’t, then we should ask ourselves why do we love our country? Why do we want to defend it? There is so much oppression in other countries and so much oppression in America with the African-Americans, but also many others ethnic groups. This is a very good question as we are in a time of war. And it is usually the groups of the oppressed that go to those wars to defend the countries. And the fathers, those that are being unwanted, -- treating those like unwanted children and not going to war. |
Benson Venegas: It's not a question of pride, as though some of these military system try to show us or indicate us. It's a game with our dignity. The truth is, and a reality that I will see around the world, is that poor people, kids, are being recruited to be soldiers, in wars that they're not supposedly, or interested initially to fight. Because of economic and political power, strong power interest. So we need to change this. People need to see that is not about pride. Is a game of your dignity. So you need to see this as a way where you need to create different solutions. We need to resolve some of the more general question that has to do with global conflicts around the world. We need a system that really can bring peace to humanity. And where innocent people are not being used either as weapons or are victims of these weapons, that in fact it turns out to be a business to have these - to sell these weapons as part of war or conflict. Or to get access to resources that other countries have that can give me economical power in a global economy. So there's a ethic failure, a loss of value, that we need to recover to be able to advance in the solutions, to find the solutions to these problems that has to do with involvement of cultures into global conflicts. |
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