The Great Devaluation: the value of labor?

[Kinser79]

(01-09-2018, 12:12 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(01-06-2018, 02:05 PM)Kinser79 Wrote: Generally speaking culture has a genetic, and even racial component.  Living in a multiracial household (myself being black along with my mother, and my husband and son being white) I know that persons of different races have different modes of being.  Not all of this is cultural.  Culturally speaking I'm often accused by other blacks (outside my family--my family is probably used to my way of being) of "acting white".  Neither my son nor my husband have ever been accused of "acting black" (except both may have picked up a liking for collard greens and incorrect conjugation of the verb 'be' when in an emotional state).

Not quite. Caribbean blacks, descendants of enslaved Africans in America, and African-born blacks in  England are very different.

Having been to the Caribbean (and meeting the population there--which not surprisingly has a large number of blacks) and having been to England (which has a large West Indian population--their term for blacks not from Africa itself but from other former colonies) I can tell you that all three groups have a distinct state of being that is related to being part of the Sub-Saharan African Diaspora. Cultural differences are mostly on the surface as all three groups experienced enslavement for about the same period of time and relatively recently.

Quote:In my case, I probably better fit norms of Japanese-Americans than many white groups in America. Coincidence.

Occasionally eating sushi at a restaurant does not make you Nisei.

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Quote:Considering that the Irish and Italians (as my husband is of Italian extraction) are both white assimilation into the broader Anglo-Germanic culture of the US was far easier than it ever has been for blacks who have in many cases been in the territory occupied by the US far, far longer.  My husband's family are relative new comers to this country, his great-great-great grandparents arriving in the 1870s.  My forebears were here no later than 1808 and probably before then even!

Without question. Irish needed drop the brogue, and German-Americans needed to heed the advice "never wear Lederhosen in public". Blacks descended from slaves may have found assimilation difficult, but largely because white people refused to accept their attempts to assimilate. White womanhood was to be protected, and any wite man interested in a black woman was 'whoring'.

Kinser, you are as American as I am.

I don't see where our argument is here, other than the fact that the racial component prevented larger assimilation into the white society and resulted in the formation of a black proto-nation within the US. It would be a nation, but it lacks a specific territory and a territory is vital for any social group to be considered a nation.

See Marxism and the National Question by J.V. Stalin. Which is still the best work I've ever found defining what constitutes a nation.

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Quote:I will agree that Latino cultures are not terribly different from US culture in that they have a Greco-Roman background and that the influences on Spain and Portugal are and were largely Roman in character, a trait shared with the Anglo part of the Anglo-Germanic backdrop of broader US culture.  However, Latinos, like blacks have far greater difficulty in assimilating with white culture.  Further, in many places where Latinos make up the majority of the population (South Florida for instance, also parts of Texas and Commiefornia) there is greater resistance to assimilation than the Irish or Italians ever provided.

It is worth noting that Latino culture is adept at assimilating non-Latino peoples. That may be more common in Texas, Florida, and California than in Indiana...

In places where Latinos make up the majority in Texas, Florida and California their culture has completely replaced the American one. One sees billboards in Miami for example advertising lawyers where they put the phrase "we speak English" in the parentheses, and I've even used an ATM there where I had to press 2 for English (my preferred language) though I am equally adept at banking in Spanish.

Quote:When it comes to music -- the Czechs and Finns have it over us Americans. Popular music? Poland is best!

If you mean Popular Music as in what many call "Classical" (never mind that was a relatively brief period in Western Music) the I would agree with the caviat that the Germans are a close second. As for Pop music it is almost universally terrible but I have a strong liking for Reggaeton.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reggaeton

I don't have much love for polka music though. It simply does nothing for me, while it isn't objectively terrible.