No, I'm kidding. I never really understood the importance of learning about your own race... so you can feel proud of the accomplishments you didn't work for? Idk, I've just never understood that sorta stuff.

When you care about your culture and the accomplishments of people who think and live like you, and realize that what you accomplish is miniscule without others having similarly important or even more important accomplishments, you begin to realize the importance of the accomplishments of others that think, act, etc. like you. As for race, that is a human construction, but when an entire set of people who are grouped together and branded a "race" only to be enslaved and discriminated for hundreds of years, someone studying the history of their struggle is very important. It let's people understand why things are the way they are for them and what they can do to further the change that started to unravel in the past.

my new theme song



erikboyd60@hotmail.com

"True poetry can communicate before it is understood"

-T.S. Eliot

battle record:

7-0-0

I just always thought it's silly to be proud of your race. All black people don't think alike, they are individuals. All black people don't act the same, they are individuals. If your trying to say it lets people know that teamwork is effective then I think there are betters ways of learning that then being proud of ur race. Racism pretty much comes from people being proud of their race and thinking that their better than other races.

Another fucked up thing that I hate is when I talk with latinos and they're talking about "my people". "My people suffered a lot", "My people accomplished a lot".... No... Individuals suffered a lot, YOU HAVE NO CLUE how much pain they went thru. And no.. you didn't accomplish nothin, a person who just so happens to be the same race as u accomplished whatever. By you sayin "my people" did whatever, you are taking the credit for shit that happend probably before you were born (by you I'm not talkin about you, erik, lol). I just feel like that's fucked up.

Then you got white people talkin about why can't they be proud of their race and blah blah blah. Lol, okay you can be like "yeah, my people enslaved the african race. My people also wiped out another race". Or you can help end racism and just eliminating the idea of racism. When I see latinos experiencing racism they go ahead and try to identify themselves with brown pride in order to feel security but that only helps divide us as people. I had to talk to some cops friday night and he called me a latino and wrote it down I couldn't but feel a lil frustration just because our whole system is so fukn racist. damn... why do I have to be a latino? Why can't I just be a human being? Why am I forced to conform with "my people" only to be called out for "my people's" stereotypes? Shits fucked up man!

You got it right with the first interpretation of what I was saying. However, I do feel that for a culture to know that their teamwork is effective it is important to be proud of their culture. I also think that we created black and white cultures in America through slavery and segregation, and our racist movements effected the rest of the world, effectively creating a white culture and a black culture. I do feel it should be our prerogative to defeat this idea of race, however, it doesn't just work like that. Cultural anthropologists have been working to try to instill this idea in society for decades but no one can seem to come to realize it. I mean, seriously, how easy is it to simply act like you can't see an obvious difference between your skin color and someone else's, especially if theirs is vastly different from yours?

See, but here's the thing, and I would expect you, as a Latino, to know this just because most people with Native American ancestry (at least that I know) are aware of this because it is a part of their culture. Your ancestors were very much about solidarity. An individual accomplishment was an accomplishment shared by the entire tribe and if the accomplishment had a lasting effect beyond that person's natural life, it would be attributed to the tribe, even including relatives that the individual never met. As a matter of fact, as it was considered rude to speak of the dead in Native American tribes, the person who accomplished something in the first place is usually not even considered while his or her accomplishment lives on as a mutual accomplishment of the entire tribe. And again, people were unnecessarily grouped together into what we call "races" only creating struggles between one race and another and so these people felt forced together into groups and these two factors are a reason why people feel that they share in such struggles with "their people". They have this feeling that they are a part of that group and it wasn't an individual that suffered, it was an entire group of people who shared equally in their misery, no matter how bad an individual actually suffered. All those that fit in your group suffered everything that you suffered as well. That is how they thought.

my new theme song



erikboyd60@hotmail.com

"True poetry can communicate before it is understood"

-T.S. Eliot

battle record:

7-0-0

btw isn't this month black history month?

here's my point. if you were traveling in Africa and had never seen or heard about a black person before and suddenly you saw this being that looks like you but is black, would you not be in shock? that's hard to answer because you will never be put in such a situation, but you probably get what i mean. here's an even better situation: what if you traveled to some new, unexplored land and found people with purple skin? would that not be a shock to you?

that, in my opinion, is the problem with your perspective. you see being proud of the accomplishments of your community and your culture as being proud of something that you didn't do. in reality, a person who is proud of the accomplishments of their culture and community are simply realizing something that you are not: we are a unit. progress, unity, brotherhood, solidarity, equality, love, care, freedom, progress, etc. are great values to achieve, but they cannot be achieved by individuals. we must become one in order to strive for these common goals. acknowledging and being proud of your culture and community's achievements, and being saddened by their failures and striving to help fix them, is the only way to accomplish these ideals. does this go to say individuality needs to be eliminated? of course not. individuality drives progress toward these goals. when there is an obstacle that cannot be hurdled, it takes an individual to help lead the group over it.

a good example is football. take Jim Brown as probably the best example that teamwork is key to success. Jim Brown was arguably the greatest football player to walk the earth. he did what took Walter Payton and Emmit Smith did later (broke the NFL rushing record) that took them 13 seasons, 16 games each in 8 seasons that only spanned 12 games, and yet he never made it to a playoff game. why? because he played for the Browns and, just like today, the Browns sucked back then. it didn't matter what the most dazzling running back that the NFL had ever seen had to say about it. the Browns were terrible. on the same token, a few years back the Raiders and Buccaneers played in the superbowl. the Raiders had arguably the most dazzling offense in the league that year while the Bucs had a mediocre offense, but a defense that knew how to work together. who won the game? Tampa Bay had no problem walking right past the Raiders for the victory. were the Bucs proud of Trent Dilfer for throwing TD passes? probably. were they proud of their coach for calling the right calls? sure. were they proud of specific defensive players for making plays? undoubtedly. but the main thing they were proud of had nothing to do with individuals on the team. they were proud that they had just won the superbowl. fans that had supported the team all year were proud as well. people involved in the program even if they didn't play, coach, or invest money into the team were proud as well.

a more relative and direct example would be my community. in the past several years what is called the Sunland-Tujunga Neighborhood Council (my community is made up of two small towns, Sunland and Tujunga) has been on a rampant crusade against the administrators at the local schools, the school board, and the school district. we've been fighting to turn the local middle school and high school, and eventually the elementary schools as well, into community run charter schools. i went to a meeting last night after not having been involved for months. while the principals of each school, as well as select administrators, have been falsely claiming that their schools are doing magnificent in every aspect, turning to the lack of violence on campus (while an increase in drug abuse has arisen in it's place and off campus violence has increased as well) and increased test scores (while art and creative and critical thinking based programs are being cut and teachers in those subjects are losing their jobs en masse) as evidence, the STNC, a parent driven organization that encourages community involvement on every front has backed the administration of both schools into a corner and forced them to choose serious reform in one form or another. the meeting i went to housed a feud between 6 teachers trying to open an art pilot school within the school itself (which is strongly opposed by the principal and silently backed by the other teachers as well) and the principal of that school (the high school i went to) and her staff who were working on a plan to reform the school into what she described as a pilot-like school. basically, a pilot school is a small school that is public, costs no more than any other public school, is a part of the school district, but rather than following orders from the school district on their curriculum, how many people they need in each department, what books they will use, etc., the teachers, students and parents are granted autonomy over each of those aspects and the school is given a lump sum based on student enrollment. the administrators are still staunchly against any notion that their school isn't already great (even though the evidence is all there to contradict their insinuations), yet they are making this change, not because an individual said "we need change" and fought tooth and nail to achieve it, but because multiple individuals working together for a common goal said "we need change" and fought tooth and nail to achieve it and are still fighting tooth and nail and are making leaps and bounds by the day. did i personally accomplish anything? my personal involvement up until this point, due to me being preoccupied with my education and sports, has been minimal. should i be proud of their accomplishments? absolutely. why wouldn't i? my community, which i pride myself in being a member of, accomplished these things, and their accomplishments make me want to get more involved and to work harder to help them accomplish their goals which, by extension, though we may differ in our ideologies a bit, are also my goals.

this is what you fail to see. being proud of an achievement of a group that you are a part of, even if you weren't involved to help with achieving it, is a wonderful thing and it is what brings people together for a common cause and it is exactly why i believe in what i believe.

my new theme song



erikboyd60@hotmail.com

"True poetry can communicate before it is understood"

-T.S. Eliot

battle record:

7-0-0

hundreds of years ago, if you simply came across someone that looked so vastly different you wouldn't know what to do, but many people would think of themselves as different, even in light of vast similarities, because that is just how the human mind works. differences have a more vast effect on memory than similarities do.

"patriotism - devoted love, support, and defense of one's country; national loyalty."

patriotism perpetuates being proud of your community's accomplishments and ignoring it's failures and, in the case of America, atrocities. i recognize, for example, as a Hungarian that people within my same culture were partly responsible for the atrocities of the Holocaust, and that i have many family members who share this guilt, but i look at it as an entire picture, rather than narrowing in on the good or the bad. i am proud of my community, for example, for the great things we've accomplished, but i condemn my community for the mild white supremacy and gang violence that can be found in specific areas. and of course i blame the individuals responsible, but realize that there are things the community can do to make things better as well. it's like a point that was brought up last night. the state of California bases how much money will go into the prison system off of third grade reading levels. that is sick in my opinion and the thinking behind that is mind boggling. instead of working on education reform, their reaction is to create more cells in prisons for these kids to rot in when they get older and society has already brushed them aside; ignore the underlying problem and focus on punishing first and foremost (if not only). this is the same school of thought that your ideology is coming from.

i am a part of the group. i get none of the benefits that i didn't achieve, but i am still a part of the group that achieved these things. i understand what you mean, and i agree, don't take individual credit for another person's work, but when people say "my people have reached a certain goal", they aren't necessarily saying "my people and i have reached a certain goal", but rather that they feel a part of a group that collectively achieved a goal, with or without their assistance.

my new theme song



erikboyd60@hotmail.com

"True poetry can communicate before it is understood"

-T.S. Eliot

battle record:

7-0-0

If someone has pride in their race usually they try to ignore the bad things their race has done or even defend it. They also use it as an excuse to use force against people. Kinda like how Christians felt it was justified to persecute the Jews. Or how the nazis would... well persecute the jews also and other races. White power organizations hating blacks. etc. etc. I feel if we have a society that emphasizes individualism then we can possibly prevent most of these atrocities from occurring. Any wrong committed in the name of religion, race, etc. has been because a group of people were so proud of their group that they felt it was necessary to use force against another group of people.

"Freeman notes there is no "white history month," and says the only way to get rid of racism is to "stop talking about it."

The actor says he believes the labels "black" and "white" are an obstacle to beating racism.

"I am going to stop calling you a white man and I'm going to ask you to stop calling me a black man," Freeman says."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10482634

If Morgan Freeman would agree with me then I don't think you can argue this. I mean, he did play God in Bruce Almighty.