The act of oppression lacks positive moral value, in my opinion. Therefore an oppressor lacks positive moral value. I do not reject that and do not attempt to justify rejecting it.
I’m confused with the whole line of questioning, so please do retain the initiative.
No. There is a subtle difference between who they identify with/what they identify as and their identity. The former construction specifies that it is up to the person. The latter construction does not.
A person can identify themself as a Martian and be wrong about their identity. If I say that person is wrong about their identity, I can still say they identify themself as a Martian without contradicting myself.
Well, if you had a map of tribes from 10000 BC and one from 1776, the tribes would be radically different. Tribes warred, came, went, disappeared, interbred, joined together, were wiped out and etc.
Because it seems to me that you’re claiming that the subject of the exhibit is ‘everybody who matters to the history and/or identity of the USA’. And if that’s the subject: then you need a whole lot of additional people in there.
If the subject is ‘men of European descent who were important to the history of the USA’, then your exhibit seems pretty accurate, though we could certainly argue about the prominence of Columbus in relation to Cabot and a batch of fishermen whose names may not have been recorded.
If a sense of identity is based solely on othering somebody else, I think that’s a pretty poor sense of identity, and probably indicates a weak one.
The purpose of a group sense of identity is to hold that group together. Most, maybe all, human groups occasionally bring in people who were, and may in some senses continue to be, members of other groups. We are an out-crossing species, and need such exchanges.
Part of the essential identity of the United States is exactly that it has brought in members of many other groups.
Inside your own head? Sure, nobody can stop you. But don’t expect anybody else, let alone members of that group, to agree with you.
The British were a foreign adversary during the war for independence in 1776.
Where? Circular reasoning involves the conclusion being a premise in its own argument, but I haven’t done that here.
You must think ‘a Black who doesn’t identify with slaveowner descendants’ is the same as ‘a descendant of slaves who doesn’t share the same national identity as a slave-owner descendant’. They are different, to me.
I don’t mean Black vs descendant of slaves. I mean, ‘doesn’t identify with X’ is different from ‘doesn’t share the same identity as X’. See the second half of post #397 and the last paragraph of post #390.
Foreign meaning not part of the United States, the nation. If the Cherokee were not a foreign nation, it follows then that they were part of the United States at the time when the same Cherokee fought a war against the United States.
This is revisionism but I have not yet heard a relevant (let alone persuasive) reason for the reinterpretation.
Your entire thesis revolves around your definition of National Identity, which appears to be unique to you. The history of people who are currently part of the USA (Native Americans, descendants of slaves) is part of their sense of who they are and where they came from. If that’s not included in your definition of National Identity then your definition is worthless.
It sounds like it is logically consistent, based on a few simple principles, and totally useless for any legitimate purpose. Literally no one uses your definition, because it needlessly excludes the history that forms the identity of people in the USA.
What is the purpose of your definition? How would you go about using it?
Blacks are not Martians. Do you have any idea how insulting that kind of analogy is?
People can’t be wrong about their own identity. They can lie about it (see Doleanz, Rachel) but they won’t be mistaken about the one they do have. You may disagree that they should identify that way. That doesn’t make them wrong, it just means there are multiple identities in play.
That’s not how identity works. You’re just assigning a label, not an actual identity. Identity - national identity - comes from within.
Yes, you are confused. My question was " how do you justify rejecting that one not having a positive moral value" as a follow-on from you saying “I don’t see the self-evident moral value”
MY question is - if oppressors have negative moral value, what is not self-evident in rejecting them? Hence my question as to what moral framework you’re using, since it’s clearly one where rejecting negative moral traits is not axiomatically good.
