[quote name='bmulligan']
I do have a question for you, though. If American whites started referring to themselves as "the Race," [/quote]
Which a good potion already do. Most of them at political rallies these days I see.
The KKK pretty much already does that, and has done it for a while. They also readily associate themselves with Ein Fuhrer and preach death and destruction to other races and nationalities. They encourage their members to be agents of such wanton evil, convert others to their cause, etc etc etc. So they don't distance themselves - they try to emulate as close as humanly possible, short of...you know, starting another world war. So to those guys, being a dick at a minority customer at the Walmart where they are cashiers is winnin' one for the good side, the right side, the white side.
La Raza showed up before Hitler, as I pointed out earlier in this thread. From a writer philospher. Not some warmongering crazed coot bent on world revenge. Likewise it has no association with Hitler except in the minds of those who fear anything that isn't their own culture. And, again, no one in La Raza claims to want to kill everyone but themselves, take out whitey, etc, but for a few bad apples, which you're going to find in any organized group.
It was a movement most comparable to the rise of beatniks and hippies of the 60s, but with a cultural slant based on racial identity. But let's not let those facts get in the way of comparing it to Nazis and their eugenics, since that's the quickest route toward denouncing an organization none of us have much understanding of to begin with.
In short - your hypothetical is not comparable. At all.
Further, you're saying that the "the" creates a feeling of implied superiority? No. Since you're talking so much about traveling around to these places, then you surely know that differences in languages - both in connotation (how you're percieving it as implied superiority where the actual members might not) and in general syntax and grammar rules (in this case, how every noun in Hispanic languages need a definite article associated with it, masculine or feminine, or else then it wouldn't make any sense to those speakers). I'd say that's a pretty flimsy argument, really, since it's born more out of linguistic construct than anything else, and still doesn't hold water without proof.
I wasn't really sure of the point of your other two paragraphs, beyond the idea that we shouldn't lump everyone together within countries as homogenous, which I shuold probably agree with but I'm waiting for the Gotcha! moment of doing that.
I do have a question for you, though. If American whites started referring to themselves as "the Race," [/quote]
Which a good potion already do. Most of them at political rallies these days I see.
you'd have to make a pretty good argument that it didn't resemble Germany's racial attitudes from last century. Maybe it's the article, "The," that's the most offensive, but the implied superiority can't be denied.
The KKK pretty much already does that, and has done it for a while. They also readily associate themselves with Ein Fuhrer and preach death and destruction to other races and nationalities. They encourage their members to be agents of such wanton evil, convert others to their cause, etc etc etc. So they don't distance themselves - they try to emulate as close as humanly possible, short of...you know, starting another world war. So to those guys, being a dick at a minority customer at the Walmart where they are cashiers is winnin' one for the good side, the right side, the white side.
La Raza showed up before Hitler, as I pointed out earlier in this thread. From a writer philospher. Not some warmongering crazed coot bent on world revenge. Likewise it has no association with Hitler except in the minds of those who fear anything that isn't their own culture. And, again, no one in La Raza claims to want to kill everyone but themselves, take out whitey, etc, but for a few bad apples, which you're going to find in any organized group.
It was a movement most comparable to the rise of beatniks and hippies of the 60s, but with a cultural slant based on racial identity. But let's not let those facts get in the way of comparing it to Nazis and their eugenics, since that's the quickest route toward denouncing an organization none of us have much understanding of to begin with.
In short - your hypothetical is not comparable. At all.
Further, you're saying that the "the" creates a feeling of implied superiority? No. Since you're talking so much about traveling around to these places, then you surely know that differences in languages - both in connotation (how you're percieving it as implied superiority where the actual members might not) and in general syntax and grammar rules (in this case, how every noun in Hispanic languages need a definite article associated with it, masculine or feminine, or else then it wouldn't make any sense to those speakers). I'd say that's a pretty flimsy argument, really, since it's born more out of linguistic construct than anything else, and still doesn't hold water without proof.
I wasn't really sure of the point of your other two paragraphs, beyond the idea that we shouldn't lump everyone together within countries as homogenous, which I shuold probably agree with but I'm waiting for the Gotcha! moment of doing that.