I agree with you that there are many distressing aspects to our current national practice of identity politics by hyphenating our nationality.
It began with African American, which grew out of two centuries' at least distortion of the very humanity of the people who were constantly referred to as an undiffentiated mass, with the forbidden n-word. This, in combination with Jewish-American.
Various groups who had even fairly recently become white, such as Irish resented that, because there were both African American and Women's Studies as separate departments in colleges and universities, as these two groups, African American and women, declared their dissatisfication with status quo as to how they were treated across the institutional and social spectrums -- and then suddenly it was war on white people and war on white men, at least from the perspective of some 'white' groups and 'white' men.
Along then with African American and Women's and even American Studies, we rapidly reached colonial, post-colonial and imperialist studies. Particularly because now we were having the largest waves of immigrants since the late and early 20th century. This -- because we needed cheap labor again, since the Civil Rights and Voting Rights movements gave African Americans and women a more level playing field for professions, pay and benefits.
So now we have all these new immigrants who haven't assimilated or aren't yet allowed to, in combination with post-colonial consciousness -- so there ya go: hyphenated Americans.
You don't find this is in the Caribbean or South America, and they also see what we consider the issue of cultural appropriation in very different manner too.
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It began with African American, which grew out of two centuries' at least distortion of the very humanity of the people who were constantly referred to as an undiffentiated mass, with the forbidden n-word. This, in combination with Jewish-American.
Various groups who had even fairly recently become white, such as Irish resented that, because there were both African American and Women's Studies as separate departments in colleges and universities, as these two groups, African American and women, declared their dissatisfication with status quo as to how they were treated across the institutional and social spectrums -- and then suddenly it was war on white people and war on white men, at least from the perspective of some 'white' groups and 'white' men.
Along then with African American and Women's and even American Studies, we rapidly reached colonial, post-colonial and imperialist studies. Particularly because now we were having the largest waves of immigrants since the late and early 20th century. This -- because we needed cheap labor again, since the Civil Rights and Voting Rights movements gave African Americans and women a more level playing field for professions, pay and benefits.
So now we have all these new immigrants who haven't assimilated or aren't yet allowed to, in combination with post-colonial consciousness -- so there ya go: hyphenated Americans.
You don't find this is in the Caribbean or South America, and they also see what we consider the issue of cultural appropriation in very different manner too.
Love, C.