My friends and neighbors all are descended from a person who at one time looked around his homeland and said, “fuck this shit”.
Of course, I don’t know any African Americans.
Why?
Who decided that they “deserved” it?
What criteria were used?
I don’t understand that they “deserve” anything. It might be a nice award in the context of an athletic event, where they must out-lift their opponent. I know of no sanctioning organization that awards land to whoever possesses the biggest army. Nor do I understand how his gold medal would be inherently “deserved” outside the narrow and specific context of an athletic competition.
A land that’s so crappy nobody else wants it. I’m sure there’s plenty of unclaimed Antarctica real estate but damned if I’m going to be the one claiming that wasteland
Don’t forget the flip side of this coin: a person born in a locale being deported from it as “undesirable”.
I was born within the current borders of the U.S.
I would like to think I have a “right” to be allowed to remain here.
To godwinize some more, there were many “natural born” Jews that were forcibly evicted from their homelands.
Edit: Sorry. I see this is not actually different in nature from the OP. :smack:
OK we don’t have a definition of a “homeland” so the argument is a little fragmented. Lets assume a homeland is a geographical piece of land which is invaded and the inherent culture oppressed by the invader. In very recent times the Allies removed the Germans invaders from France, Holland, Belgium, Greece etc etc and that effort was celebrated around the world. Why shouldn’t the Germans (who had a deep cultural history - Bach, Beethoven, Nietzsche, Wagner et al) keep what they won?
I don’t think the concept of a homeland lies in antiquity. For example, lets follow up JFK’s leadership and occupy Cuba, throwing out the malcontents. Is that a fine compassionate act? Is Cuba properly now a US possession?
Well, it’s a minor part of Antarctica, but still a hefty chunk of land:
You can’t make a claim without convincing the countries in the Antarctic treaty to abandon said treaty though. Article four says “The treaty does not recognize, dispute, nor establish territorial sovereignty claims; no new claims shall be asserted while the treaty is in force” and article ten is “All treaty states will discourage activities by any country in Antarctica that are contrary to the treaty”
Yeah, lets see them try to enforce it. I’ve got an army of penguins on my side!
Sorry, who said we needed a sanctioning organization?
Our definitions of “Deserve” must be entirely different. Could you give me your connotation?
I was responding to bldysabba’s example of a weightlifter who “deserves” a gold medal. My point was that they only receive gold medals within the context of an athletic event. A person just walking around on the street lifting random heavy things does not “deserve” a gold medal, because the context is different. Since assigning territory to ethnic groups is not an organized competition, the analogy is flawed.
My definition of “Deserve” is that a person is worthy of or merits what they are being given. DESERVE Definition & Meaning - Merriam-Webster
The problem I have with this discussion is that there are no criteria by which to measure “worthiness” or “merit” with regards to claiming territory.
If someone with a large army conquers a territory, that does not mean they “deserve” to have it. The fact that a certain group occupies a territory may be indisputable, but whether they are “worthy” of it is another matter entirely.
This is a morally depraved notion. If you kill me and take my wallet, I cannot argue that you possess my wallet. You have taken it by force, but you do not “deserve” it. If anything, this is the opposite of “deserving” something. You are saying the ability to perpetrate violence is equates to an inherent worthiness to receive reward; in effect, whoever has power deserves to have power because they are powerful.
I live in Florida and I had an acquaintance who was blathering about Hawaiian sovereignty. I responded that his house was on land that was taken from the Indians at gunpoint and asked him when he was planning on giving it back. He stormed out and ordered his family to never speak to me again.
Effectively, there are a a lot of questions that have to be answered before “homelands” could be assigned:
- What groups constitute an ethnicity that has a right to a homeland? For example, do Native Greenlanders constitute a separate ethnicity from Canadian Inuit? Some might say yes, some might say no.
- Do ethnic groups that have died out as a distinct visible culture but remain in people’s blood, such as the Picts, deserve to be recognized?
- Do dissidents within an ethnicity deserve to form their own breakaway ethnicity? I understand that there are some American Jews who believe that the State of Israel as it exists in the Middle East is an abomination before God. Do they deserve to have their own, separate Jewish homeland elsewhere in the world?
- What are the rules for determining whether or not any specific person is a “member” of the ethnicity? For example, does having a single ancestor that can be identified as from the group count, do you need a specific blood quantum to “qualify”, or is it going to be strictly patrilineal or matrilineal? Many people identify with the culture of one parent or the other and it’s unfair to force them into mom’s culture and deport them to her homeland when they’ve been steeped in dad’s practices and identity.
4a) What happens if someone has a little bit of every ancestry but not enough to qualify for membership in any ethnicity (e.g. 1/8 Scottish, 1/8 Pennsylvania Dutch, 1/8 Sami, 1/8 African-American, 1/8 Cherokee, 1/8 Gypsy, 1/8 Fiji Islander and 1/8 Palestinian where a minimum ancestry of 1/4 is required for recognition as a true ‘ethnic’)? Do they have to go through a special “ethnic adoption” process where an ethnicity formally accepts them after an application process (with a chance for rejection) or are they stuck without a homeland?
4b) If a person is multi-ethnic (like American mutts…) do they have to pick a specific ethnicity and its associated homeland and forfeit all others or do they get multiple citizenship? I can easily see families being torn apart by this because John so culturally identifies with his mother’s father’s mother’s journey from Cornwall that he starts waving the flag of the new Independent Celtic Cornish Nation while his full sister Ann identifies with their father’s mother’s Cajun origin and requests settlement in the Combined French-Culture State? - Where are the homelands going to be and who gets first dibs on a specific parcel? This is a big biggie.
- Will resettlement be required? Will people be rounded up and told, “You’re genealogy says that you’re African-American. You’ve been stripped of your US citizenship and are being shipped out with all the rest of your family on the next plane to Kingston. Jamaica is your homeland now. Good luck.”, or will they be given the opportunity to choose whether to stay put or to emigrate to their ‘ethnic homeland’?
- Do adoptees belong to the ethnicity of their biological parents or their adoptive parents? Can they choose which one they want? There’s a real difference in acculturation between an ethnically-German person adopted into an ethnically-Irish family than an ethnically-Japanese person adopted into an ethnically-Ethiopian family.
- Can a person be expelled from an ethnicity or ethnic homeland for adhering to the ‘wrong’ religion or engaging in unacceptable cultural practices, even though they have the right blood? For example, can you be kicked out of the Scottish Homeland for being Muslim or for refusing to wear a kilt?
- What about people who simply don’t know their heritage? Do they have to seek formal adoption into an ethnicity or go without?
Whew. And think that many of these questions are not only cultural, but are also political.
Excellent questions Robert and I won’t attempt to answer them.
What I suggest is missing from the discussion is the value to humanity of recognising and protecting the myriad small cultures which just barely exist today. These cultures are the bright gems in what is becoming an homogeneous global mix. I honestly believe that we enrich society by preserving small groups who wish to retain their ancient ways. Not at any cost though - cannibalism, mutilation of infants etc is not acceptable.
There are agronomists who strive to keep centuries old strains of plants alive for genetic diversity. Why shouldn’t we similarly cherish cultural diversity?
Thanks. The point of the questions isn’t to get a quick answer - the questions raise so many “what ifs” that such a simple idea can get really complex when you get down to administering it.
Also, to extend my question list, do multi-ethnic descendants of people who have elected one specific ethnicity and homeland have a right to raise their hand and request resettlement in the homeland of one of their other ancestries? For example, if a half-Cornish half-Gypsy person elects settlement in the Gypsy Homeland and then marries a half-Gypsy half-Pennsylvania Dutch person and has children, can his quarter-Cornish son demand resettlement in the Cornish homeland or is he “stuck”?
Why focus on ethnicity? Do you have to be the right ethnicity to be able to call a certain patch of turf your homeland?
Because without ethnicity, the OP’s question is meaningless. It’s true that ethnicity is not solely determined by genes - a person can sometimes be accepted into an ethnicity despite not having the DNA through adoption into an “ethnic” family or by converting to the religion that is traditionally associated with that ethnicity.
I was born in Massachusetts. Care to guess where most folks would say my homeland was?
Also: If all I told you was that I was “white” (non-hispanic), where would you say my homeland was based on that ethnicity?