Liar, liar, pants on fire.

Uh, Lance.... lucky you!

For some of us, though, its 45 minutes and a dozen retries of watching loading bars and then having it return to the login screen with 'despite our best efforts...' or 'check your clock...' or 'cant locate user server...'

Which, as you can imagine, is a fscking pain in the ass.

<<a bias you unintentionally illustrated, selador... >>

Um - in what way, Jauani?

i will now take what i highlighted and highlight it further:





you are presenting these two large reasons as monoliths that can be objectively compared and contrasted. this is the problem created by dialectical thought and language. africa and the caribbean are diverse enough culturally to be as dissimilar internally as they are to each other.

would you similarly lump together texans and quebecers as north americans? brazilians and columbians as south americans? spaniards and poles? tibetians and cantonese?

lets be honest, african-american is not a cultural term, but a racial one, and like many terms, if used indiscriminately, can bias peoples thinking. there is the hyphenated african-american, asian-american, latin-american. they are the other, the periphery, the outside. there is the unhyphenated american. the white man. the centre, the inside, the man.

Jauani,

Well, I think you are making very big assumptions about what I am posting without reading the previous posting to understand the context.

Of course Africa is a continent. Of course it has its own nations and cultures. But in terms of my own personal context, there is a far greater difference between someone from any African country and someone from the West Indies. In the same way that Americans are generally unable to distinguish different British accents, so cultural differences between different African nations are not so obvious to me. Although I am aware of them. For example, the music of Mali, which has always interested me.

But in the context of describing someone in terms of their cultural background I would tend to make the - to me obvious - distinction between people from the African continent and people from the West Indies, unless I was being specific about some particular cultural issue.

You can accuse me of ignorance, which you are quite entitled to do, although I will probably accuse you of the same thing unless you can distinguish a Berkshire and a Wiltshire accent. Because after all, cultural differences resolve to the minuscule. But please don't accuse me of prejudice, which I personally find very offensive.

*uhem* So is SL UP or not? I can't get in...

selador, i made no assumptions about your post or accuse you of prejudice. i am talking about your statements on political correctness and your lack understanding of the bias implicit in language which also happens to be repeatedly evident in your post. your statements suggest you also don't know the usage of african american either.

african american is a racial term used to describe black americans many of whom have been in america since their ancestors came over in slave ships. these people have little to no cultural ties with the "great african nation." secondly, you are way off base comparing the association of two neighbouring villages in britain with two nations that may be seperated by 1000s of kilometres, speak entirely different languages, practice entirely different religions, live under an entirely different government, have entirely different music, and eat entirely different food. and may infact be at war! morocco is about as similar to the west indies or britain as it is to south africa.

anyone who thinks african american a reference to culture and not in fact a reference to race needs to reassess their perception of the world.

My attempt to hyjack this thread failed

It might just work if you try it again

Jauani,

I cannot answer your posting without repeating what I have already said, so I will say no more. Except, of course, that your comment about Wiltshire and Berkshire being villages validates the point I was making.