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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? |
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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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by Beverly Schwartz | 0 votes | 
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Currently video only.
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by Bianca Jagger | 0 votes |
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Bianca Jagger: Answertext will be available soon. |
Bill Joy: That’s a very troubling question. And it’s very frustrating. I feel I think what Jason’s talking about when you can just feel the energy in the United States and the attitude towards black Americans is different than say if you’re in London or some other place and you’re with a black person in England or a black person in France. It seems like starting from the history of slavery so long ago and the cultural attitudes in certain parts of the United States. And Jason, I hope you continue to struggle against this and it’s not something that I personally find tolerable. So it’s just very troubling that this exists after so long. by Bill Joy |
Bora Cosic: Regardless to your skin color, you have to slowly emancipate your self in the country you are living in. Then living somewhere is often coincidence, especially if the person is born there. However, not even father country has all rights on the people that grow up there. My Serbs and Croatians suffer from the same disease as you. Often they are resent on the birth clod and often their lives on it are hard, but still they fall in enthusiasm by home lands name being mentioned or the sight of its flag. This is a sign that those people are immature. However, the fact that you asked this question yourself, I rely on the fact that you will achieve this mature sooner or later. by Bora Cosic |
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Currently video only.
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by Brian J. Weller | 0 votes |
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Brian J. Weller: Answertext will be available soon. |
Catherine David: As I’m not really concerned what means I’m not objectively part of a particularly repressed, outcasted group, I could imagine not to answer. It seems to me that this would be a little short-sighted, a bit economic and that I would have my firm opinion. It is evident that every person, who is a citizen or a resident of a country where he or she shares a minimum of the day-to-day life – I do not know if this is a question of values in this case - is unjustifiably outcasted, has to revolt – even if to revolt is a word which is a bit “old fashioned”, I do not know if you prefer to rebel and to protest, to request in a very lively manner, in some cases even they have to regard the violent way so his or her rights are respected. I think that this is not very good, but what else could one say. |
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by China Keitetsi | 0 votes |
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Constantin von Barloewen: National identity and cultural identity often diverge. If we consider, e.g. Brazil, where an ethnic democracy was assumed for a long time, I am thinking of Gilberto Freyre, "Casa grande e senzala" in the thirties. This utopia of an ethnic democracy. Many, I am thinking of North America with its civil wars. National identities are helpful for a conscienceness that often cannot be provided by individual ethnic groups. Many of the black Brazilians consider themselves to be Brazilians, they feel they have possibilities of identification, even if they are not socially privileged or even absolutely under privileged. Is it a contradiction. Minorities have to be integrated into national identities, otherwise they cannot integrate into a global responsibility. But it is obvious that the black population in America rather identifies with Africa than with America, simply because the social circumstances in these black African states correspond more with them than the economic integration allows them to in America. The same applies to Africa, it applies to Asia. If we take India, a state with 150 millions of Muslims, of the 1.1 billion Indians there are not only Hindus, there are 150 millions of Muslims who still think of themselves as Indians. Ethnic identity is not always identical with national identity. This is a conflict. |
Cornel West: Well, I think it is very important that we love justice and freedom as opposed to simply loving flags and symbols. There is no doubt that black people in the United States, 244 years we were enslaved, over 90 years we were Jim Crow dealing with American terrorism, dealing with lynching, dealing with rights denied, liberties violated, dealing with discrimination and segregation. I’ve often had very little reason to want to defend the United States, and yet historically we know millions of black people have decided to fight in U.S. armies anyway, based on the hope of promise that United States would not treat them as unwanted children as it were. And, often times these hopes have been shattered; these promises have been broken. I think in the end we must always put justice and democracy as universal ideals, as global ideals, as international ideals at the center of who we are and what we do and, therefore, patriotism – therefore, all forms of nationalism must be subordinate to quest for justice, quest for democracy. by Cornel West |
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Currently video only.
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by Dedi Baron | 0 votes |
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Dedi Baron: Answertext will be available soon. by Dedi Baron |
Donato Bayu Bay Bumacas: The issue of apartheid and discrimination is a centuries old issue, and in fact majority of us local and indigenous people still experience similar things, feel that this issue is against our human rights. This is a basic issue where we local and indigenous peoples especially black are brothers and that they should really face squarely. But, if you ask me an advice being on the same situation, I would like to encourage you by saying, show your worth, serve others, and be a responsible citizen. And on doing those you will make a difference because it's only by making difference that we can contribute to the world in spite of this widely apartheid discrimination that is going on in the world. Let's make ourself productive and offer ourself to be of service to others even if we do not feel serving those countries who are practicing apartheid and discrimination. Let's do – let’s show our worth and have that commitment to serve others, and we will make a difference. |
Dritëro Kasapi: Hello, Mr. Jason. I come from a minority group in Macedonia, which felt oppressed but certainly not as oppressed as--I cannot imagine the oppression the African-American had in U.S.A. and the continuance of discrimination that one experiences in U.S.A. But I come from a minority that has felt oppressed for many years in Macedonia, Moldavian myself in Macedonia and Yugoslavia. I don’t immediately recognize your love for your country and defending your country because I felt only hatred for my country, and I couldn’t defend it. Both for Yugoslavia as a whole, I though it was shit country that needed dismantling, and I felt Macedonia was not a country that I can respect. But later, when I realized that there is something, there is a responsibility that I have to take to make my situation better, then I decided that that responsibility demands from me to be participant in this country and not live in my hatred and my feeling of exclusion. Then I started participating, and my participation was by trying to create opportunities for people like me, to feel participant and to make their voice heard, and to create bridges between the minority communities that I belong to and the majority communities that basically set the rules of the game and try to change those rules, and then I felt like I don’t have to hate that country but I, I have--[AUDIO ENDS]. |
Eliane Potiguara: Black Americans are undesirable in the United States just as the indigenous are undesirable in the Americas, just as oppressed, poor people are wherever undesirable. One just have to be poor, excluded or a person of color to that. The skin, the race… Until this discrimination of skin or race exist we will always be discriminated wherever on planet Earth. There’s no color hegemony, we are all equal, let’s stop it. Come on, it’s time, that’s enough, I beg it, I’m asking as an indigenous woman from Brazil, from planet Earth, daughter of creator, I beg you all in the world to stop the racial discrimination. I ask you, do you want me to ask on my knees? I can ask you on my knees to stop the racial discrimination against blacks, indigenous, Jewishes, people of color or people who don’t have white skin and blue eyes. It’s so beautiful to be white and have blue eyes. We indigenous, blacks, people of color, find beautiful white people with blue eyes. Why can’t you, white people with blue eyes, find us beautiful? Let’s finish this! You are roses and we are carnations, we are equal. Start realizing where beauty is. See the beauty in a black African child or in a black American child. Start observing a line, start realizing a different design, a shape of hair, a way of being. Stop with this hegemony. This is racism, there’s no more time for this. |
Eliot Weinberger: I think there is a tendency to love one's community, love one's own men, love one's wherever one is, despite all of the terrible things that’s happening. And certainly as an African-American, one is living in a society that has treated African-Americans abysmally. And yet, on the other hand, it seems to me, and obviously I’m not an African-American, but it seems me that one is also living inside a community of tremendous vitality and with tremendous tradition. So that there is a kind of joy and strangeness within the community of being an African-American even if the society at large is oppressive. So, it doesn’t seem to me quite a contradiction in that sense to as you say love and defend a country because I think that what one is defending is one's community within that country. And after all there are many things to love about the United States and about American culture, despite what the government is doing. One can hate the American government and still love America in that sense. |
Elisabet Sahtouris: It’s a very interesting question you ask, Jason, because you are asking why do you behave as you do. I think what you really want to know is if black America is being treated as unwanted children why do they volunteer to go and defend their country? Well, among other things, I am one of the 60’s kids who are -- actually I was a grown-up and a mother already in the 60’s, but I was a 60’s activist fighting for civil rights for Black Americans for any discriminated against minority. And, we were so successful in the 60’s that among other things we ended the draft and we thought that young man would no longer go to war. Hurray! Hurray! However, we have an economy in which people who are not treated as equals don’t make as much money and it's harder for a young black man to get a decent job in most cases even than a young white man. And so, many more of them are going to volunteer to go to war for their country for the very simple reason that it's an economically disadvantaged group trying to make a living. And, I think that the mood of the whole world now is that people don’t want war any more. And, I think that armies could not be raised if there weren’t an economic opportunity. So, what we really have to work at is the basic economics of equality. We have to develop an economy in the future that’s a win-win that truly gives people equal opportunity, so that no one will have to go fight wars for higher-ups if they don’t truly believe in the cause. And I hope that there will no longer be causes that anybody kills each other over. I hope that the young generation will make friends around the world through the internet and will make a pact with each other that no differences shall be worth killing each other for, so that there will be no more wars. And if anybody attacks anyone else that there will be international peace keeping forces that will immediately see that as something that has to be stopped. |
Ervin Laszlo: We are all citizens and members of communities. We develop some level of identification and solidarity with our communities. It is natural that we continue to love and support our own country, hopefully not only our own country, but also the entire human family. The problem is that some countries treat the minorities in an unfair and repressive way. That needs to be reformed. Not a lot needs to be corrected, but the treatment needs to be corrected. by Ervin Laszlo |
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