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darklight-owl · 1 year ago

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so it’s mostly actually just lore for their family but,,

new victor lore! he and louanne (twin sister who died in 1905) also had a half brother named jesse from a previous marriage of their father’s. jesse was four or five years older than victor and victor is also really jealous of jesse but he keeps it on the down low. mostly, the jealousy is due to the fact that jesse was always much more well liked by their father and then later on, their peers. victor was also jealous of jesse because jesse was much more athletic and he would win sports competitions left and right at the institution, jesse also had a *chef’s kiss* ability to pull literally anyone (and by anyone i mean anyone bc jesse was a raging bisexual, it’s just that no one knew 😭 so he did actually end up dating a few guys and gals ykyk! i love jesse a lot actually… you can probably tell.)

also new 013 lore!! the new 013 lore is mostly that i just mapped out all the major health conditions she has i think. and almost all of them are genetic which is a :( move for wren. like after she had wren and realized how messed up wren’s health would be, 013 actually felt guilty for procreating so. oh yeah 013 kinda has shitty mental health and she always has, probably just all the shame that she brought upon herself when she lived her life thinking she was some useless defective person yk?? but she wasn’t, she just didn’t know yk?? anyway. oh and i think i told you all about 013’s main interests but wait!!

did i tell you about joey? joey is the 20-lb formerly stray maine coon that 013 found one winter morning. he was lying in their front yard, in the snow, sick and on death’s door. unfortunately, the concept of rabies does not scare 013 so she just… BROUGHT JOEY INSIDE?? and fixed him up. and then she got too attached to him and gave him a name and started setting out food for him…. and then she ended up begging victor to let her adopt joey, which he reluctantly agreed to, so now they have a maine coon. they just have to be careful whenever joey is around wren since joey is sort of aggressive with little kids.

anyway the new wren lore is that wren is still a little sweetie pie actually. she’s so cute i love her. anyway victor still lets her use power tools he just uses more safety precautions. “what could go wrong? i mean, all i’m doing is giving a six-year-old a chainsaw with no safety on!” —victor andrea cirelli, 1927, probably. as for wren’s design, i can just imagine her having dark skin like her father, her mother’s soft-looking facial features, and her mother’s short stature. i imagine her having poofy but straight black hair, poofy like her father’s curly hair but straight like her mother’s hair yk. wren would probably also be sickly af like her mother but i dont think she’d give a shit like “mom what on god’s green earth is haemophilia, i’m gonna live my truth and actually no, i’m as healthy as a horse thanks bye mom i have to leave to go play with daddy’s power tools in the basement”. also i feel like she would be really close with her uncle jesse! they would have a cute relationship for real-! jesse would probably do all the babysitting when victor and 013 need a night to themselves too.

also, i found 013’s real name now! i couldn’t decide on it b4 but now i made her a real name. her real first name is minji (민 지) and her real last name i’m a little conflicted about but i think i’ll settle for loe… MAYBE IDK. all i know is that i love the name minji for her so much!! anyway did i say about her ethnicities at all? idk if i did. anyway.

victor was born in italy, his mother and the majority of her side of the family were born in spain, his father and the majority of his side of the family were born in italy there. there’s also a little bit of influence of french culture that victor and jesse had as well bc mr. morreno, the nice, watari-esque old man who raised them after their parents died was half-italian half-french. did i explain that timeline? prolly not.

so, victor and his family (louanne, jesse, their parents, and victor) lived in this little village in italy right?? so after louanne and their parents died, jesse and victor went to go live with the town shopkeeper mr. morreno bc mr. morreno was the only person that would take them in probably anyway mr. morreno was pretty nice and he cared for them alot during the almost two years that they lived with him. after a while he couldn’t care for them anymore so he sent victor and jesse off to an institution in england for gifted children where they lived for the next few years.

so anyway now that that’s explained, anyway.. as for 013, she was born in korea, her dad and the majority of his side of the family is korean, her mom and the majority of her side of the family is japanese. 013 didn’t know her family though, as she was abandoned when she was a few weeks old.

anyway thats the end, i might add more later tho!! thanks for letting me infodump.

I AM SO SORRY FOR TAKING THIS LONG TO ANSWER i am very sick coff coff 😔

Poor babiess💔 wanna give them a hug fr

I have questions though do they have a RABID DOG??? Wild. They probably shouldn't let him in the house 💀

I read the whole thing they cute :] does Wren ever meet her uncle Jesse?

#mutuals #sage / buffporcupine #mutual's oc

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bonmonjour · 11 months ago

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Borders and Variation within a Language

[ I wrote this paper for an anthropology class and submitted it over a month ago. ]

Introduction

Language is one of the most basic elements of all human cultures. It is used by every person every day and is slightly different person-to-person and place-to-place. For the vast majority of human history, the distribution of languages had little to do with national borders. It is striking then that in the modern age, there is an overwhelming tendency to equate language with nation. This can be seen, for instance, on social media or on platforms such as Duolingo, where national flags are frequently used to represent languages. There is a commonly held belief about countries in the European sphere, where the modern notions of nationalism first emerged, that the population of a country mainly speaks one language and has one shared cultural heritage. However, this view is not necessarily true in places outside the European sphere, or even within Europe itself. Given that language is so important to human societies, its intriguing relationship with nationalism and borders is a fertile ground for research.

Literature Review

The body of work around this topic is large, spans decades, and draws from many fields. Some authors focus more on the side of nationalism and treat language as a part of the model (Anderson, 2006). Other writers give more attention to questions of citizenship (Berdichevsky, 2004) or national identity (Aneesh, 2010; Oakes, 2001). Many others still delve into the processes of language and corpus planning, both in general as well as in specific instances (Millar, 2005; Twine, 1991). Lee & Hubbard (2010) also look at language planning, but their perspective looks at the ideology of planning and spreading language, rather than the particular methodologies involved. Interestingly, the majority of authors agree that the relationship between a nation and the languages within it, or at its borders, never comes about entirely organically.

However, there are some aspects that are lacking in the literature. It should be noted that much of the work around this topic is not quite up to date, often being more than a decade old, or sometimes two or even three. More importantly, however, descriptions of the tie between nationalism and language in the European context abound. The situations in former Yugoslavia, Italy, Germany, France, Scotland, and the Nordic countries are frequently brought up (Berdichevsky, 2004; Millar, 2005; Oakes, 2001). In comparison, much less has been written about places outside of Europe and non-European languages. Furthermore, the frames of language planning and related notions such as the importance of the press and literati in developing national languages are used to the extent that perhaps other ways of approaching the topic get ignored (Anderson, 2006; Berdichevsky, 2004).

With this paper, I intend to consider the connection between language and nationalism by looking at how variation within a language is treated in service of nationalistic ends. Specifically, how it can be downplayed or overemphasized in order to create the impression of cohesion or separation. I will first discuss some definitions and characteristics of what is meant by nationalism and language. After this, I will look at Japan and northern South Asia, two places in the world outside of Europe that do not speak a European language, in order to show the different ways variation can be treated.

Definitions

To start with, it would be useful to discuss how terms like ‘nation’ or ‘nationalism’ are used and how they are related to language. An understandable enough definition is that a nation is essentially a state whose raison d’être is based on the values or desires of the population; these values can be about religion, shared history, forms of government, language, and literature (Berdichevsky, 2004, p.5). Oakes (2001), on the other hand, links the concept of nation more with ethnicity (p. 11). The most popular theory of what a nation is and how the concept emerged is likely that of Benedict Anderson. Several authors emphasize the nation’s imaginary nature consisting of an imagined community of fellow citizens one will never meet, its boundedness in geography, and its emergence in Europe due to a number of factors such as the advent of print capitalism, the various religious reforms, and industrialization. This approach does not take the emergence of nations as an organic or inevitable process; rather, nations were created (Anderson, 2006, pp. 6-7; Berdichevsky, 2004, p. 4; Lee & Hubbard, 2010, pp. 1-2; Millar, 2005, p. 14; Oakes, 2001, p. 16).

Nationalism, then, can be thought of as both a strong belief in the existence of a nation and also as a theory of what underlies nations. For example, Serbian nationalism during the Balkan Wars was the idea that there existed a distinct Serbian nation. As an example of the other definition, ethnic nationalism is the idea that ethnicity and ethnic divisions are what nations are founded on (Oakes, 2001, p. 11). More relevant here is the idea of linguistic nationalism, which considers language to be what holds the imagined community together (Lee & Hubbard, 2010, p. 1). This is, in fact, one of the older ideas behind nationalism, suggested in the late 1700s by German writers such as Fichte and Herder (Millar, 2005, p. 17). Herder said that “in [a nationality’s] speech resides its whole thought domain, its traditions, history, religion and basis of life, all its heart and soul… With language, the heart of a people is created” (Berdichevsky, 2004, p. 3). This idea, that language is essentially the soul of the nation, has been a popular one for centuries and persists even to this day. Many nationalist movements across the world have clung to the importance of language, it being quite an important question in periods of nationalization. However, the sheer importance Herder puts on language does not match the real, observed reality. Of Berdichevsky’s (2004) 26 case studies, the role of language in national identity did not fit with Herder’s ideas for half of them (pp. 250-55). Nevertheless, even though it is not the end all and be all of a nation, due to the importance placed on it by many thinkers, language is still a key part.

While on the topic, the very word “language” presents a thorny issue. Although the distinction between language and dialect is commonly made and arguably useful, there has not been a single set of accepted criteria for what makes a style of speech one or the other (Masica, 1991, p. 23). One group of definitions care about linguistic similarity, lexical overlap and mutual intelligibility, while others care about status: varieties deemed ‘dialect’ might lack the official status, widespread recognition, written standard, and literary history a ‘language’ has (Berdichevsky, 2005, pp. 153-54; Masica, 1991, pp. 23-24). In the vein of Anderson, Berdichevsky (2004, p. 155) and Twine (1991) note how factors such as where the press was— usually the capital—impacted what became recognized as a language. Despite the more linguistic definition being more consistent, the political definition is the one that has lodged itself into the popular consciousness.

Japan

Having explored some important terminology, let us now turn to the Japanese archipelago. Japan is a landmass formed of a string of four large and fairly mountainous islands, from Hokkaidō to Kyūshū. In addition to these, there are hundreds of small islands and islets, including a smaller island chain south of Kyūshū called the Ryūkyūan Islands. For the majority of its history, the Japanese state was essentially feudal, with an Emperor at the top and local lords under him. It was not until the rapid modernization and centralization of the country, during the Meiji Restoration, that the power of local lords diminished in comparison to the central government. Furthermore, for hundreds of years, the state did not extend into the far north or south, allowing these regions to develop distinct cultures and customs. It was in these regions that languages besides Japanese persisted. The most well-known example is likely that of Ainu, which was spoken on the northern side of the island before the advent of Japonic-speaking Yayoi peoples. Less well-known, however, are the Ryūkyūan languages, spoken on the island chain. These languages are related to Japanese, being part of the larger Japonic family, but they are distinctly not Japanese according to modern linguistics.

As with [...] any region, Japan features tremendous diversity in its speech varieties. Perhaps because of the terrain and historical political situation, every region has its own distinct dialects. These differ not only in pronunciation, but also stress patterns, conjugations, and commonly used words. So great is the variation even within Japanese that sixty years ago, Hattori Shirō noted that the dialects of Sendai—in Miyagi Prefecture in the northeast of the mainland—and Kagoshima—on the southern end of Kyūshū—were unintelligible to each other (Twine, 1991, p. 208). This stark lack of mutual intelligibility is one of the reasons why a monolingual ideology developed in Japan. As the country had to modernize, a need for a standard language, hyōjungo, or national language, kokugo, came up (Lee & Hubbard, 2010; Twine, 1991). Many reformers of the period sought to wipe dialects out completely through the use of the standard language in education (Twine, 1991, p. 209, 213). For some, there was “the notion that dialects were a social evil, which should be rooted out rather than allowed to exist with hyōjungo” (Twine, 1991, p. 220). Even today, there is widespread belief in the homogeneity of the national language, even though language by its nature can never be completely homogenous (Lee & Hubbard, 2010, p. 3). Nevertheless, dialects persisted in a situation of diglossia with hyōjungo (Millar, 2005). Of course, some dialects fared better than others.

Among the varieties hit hardest by the monolingual efforts were the Ryūkyūan languages. For example, during the Meiji Restoration, in order to promote the use of hyōjungo, Okinawan was banned in schools. Students who spoke it were made to wear hōgenfuda [dialect cards], signs they wore on their neck showing that they spoke a dialect, as punishment. It is no doubt because of these efforts that the number of fluent speakers of Okinawan has been decreasing, with most speakers being elderly. Recently, however, the attitude has changed somewhat, and there are now efforts to preserve the Okinawan variety (Okinawa Prefecture, 2015).

Note the wording of “dialect cards.” This is because the Ryūkyūan languages were, and are, thought of merely as dialects of the one national language of Japanese. Even though it is known in academic sources that the Ryūkyūan languages are only related to Japanese, having diverged before even our oldest records of Old Japanese, in common thought and colloquial speech, they are said to be dialects. Okinawa Prefecture’s webpage is titled “okinawa no hōgen [Dialect of Okinawa],” but the page itself, quite intentionally, never uses that word, opting instead for “kotoba [speech].” As another example of the label dialect being applied here, when looking for lists of Japanese dialects, the Ryūkyūan languages are often grouped in with other dialects like that of Kinki, which is the area around the old capitals of Nara and Kyoto. In the article entitled “Explanation of 16 Japanese Dialects!”, the map labels every regional variety as hōgen. Further, the main divisions of the Ryūkyūan languages come in at numbers 14, 15, and 16 on the list. The whole language family and its many members—Amami, Okinawan, Miyako, Yaeyama, and Yonaguni—are all explicitly called hōgen (Itou, 2022). Even the Centre for the Study of Language used to refer to these varieties as hōgen. In their article looking at how many dialects there are in Japanese they first list many dialects that are indeed dialects, like those of Tokyo or Kinki. After this, the article states “mata, ryūkyūhōgen wa, amamihōgen, okinawahōgen, sakishimahōgen ni kaibunrui saremasu [Also, Ryūkyūan dialects are subclassified into Amami, Okinawa, and Sakishima dialects]” (Onishi, 2021).

It is apparent that one clear way existing variation in a language is treated by nationalism is to be ignored or suppressed. The linguistic nationalistic ideology of kokugo “can exist only if all those who live in this political and social space called Japan believe that they are speaking the same Japanese language” (Lee & Hubbard, 2010, p. 3). A clear part of the Japanese national identity rests on believing that all the members in this imagined community of the nation, despite their differences, speak one and the same language. In service of this end, the differences that do exist are suppressed, leveled, and ignored. All the varieties spoken within the borders of the imagined community, no matter how unintelligible to each other, are lumped together into one entity.

South Asia

Let us now look at a very different situation in South Asia. Unlike Europe, full of peninsulas and islands, and Japan, mountainous and isolated from the mainland, northern India features a vast plain that stretches across the breadth of the country and over into Pakistan. To the north stand the Himalayas. In such a landscape, ideas, customs, and people can move far and wide. Furthermore, because of the corridor between the sea and the Himalayas, northern India was the first place to be in contact with Persia, the Middle East, and beyond. It was up to northwestern India that various Persian, Greek, and Arab empires extended, and it was where Islam was introduced to the subcontinent. The Indian region is an incredibly diverse place in many respects; it is replete with cultures, religions, and languages. In the south are the Dravidian languages, while at the northern and eastern fringes Tibeto-Burman can be found. In the middle are the Indo-Aryan languages, descended from Sanskrit (Masica, 1991, p. 10). In fact, because of the prevalence of Hinduism, Sanskrit was an influential language all across the subcontinent and beyond as well, into Southeast Asia. Under the Mughals, the influence of Arabic and Persian reached further into the mainland. Many commonly used words, and sometimes even grammatical structures, in many Indo-Aryan languages can trace their origin back to Arabic or Persian (Masica, 1991, p. 71).

Given the abundance of markedly different languages, during the time of nationalistic movements, there never was any suggestion of a ‘national language’—no equivalent of the Japanese kokugo. However, there was still the question of standard languages. In that region, there is one language, or perhaps two, that stands above the rest in terms of status. In India, Hindi is the co-official language together with English, even if a minority of the population speaks it natively. Although the Constitution lists 22 languages with some level of status, usually for local government, Hindi stands as the language of national government, law, and media. It is practically required that one know Hindi to navigate daily life. For speakers of other languages, this creates a kind of diglossia, where, for example, one might use Hindi in the bank and Marathi in the shop across the street. Over in Pakistan, the official language is Urdu, and it is used in all the places one might expect an official language to be used.

Despite the different names of Hindi and Urdu, there is, all in all, very little difference between the two supposed languages. At the level of everyday use, the two are virtually identical in terms of vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation. There might be some unique usages, but this is no different from instances like “elevator” versus “lift” in American and British English. Even at the semi-formal level of publications or addresses, the two are hard to tell apart. It is only at the level of extremely formal or highly technical vocabulary that the differences emerge: Hindi prefers to use words of Sanskrit stock whereas Urdu prefers those of Persian or Arabic origin. The choice of script reflects this, as Hindi is written with the Devanagari script and Urdu uses the Nastaliq hand of the Perso-Arabic script. Because of this, Masica (1991) states that “Urdu and Modern Standard Hindi are not even different dialects or subdialects… They are different literary styles based on the same linguistically defined subdialect" (p. 27). Aneesh (2010, p. 94) and Berdichevsky (2004, p. 127) concur with this view.

If these two are really just different literary styles, why are they sometimes thought of as separate languages? On top of the obvious difference in script and preferred stock for more complicated words, Hindi and Urdu receive separate entries in Schedule 8 of India’s constitution. However, the real history lies in colonialism and religion. The language of prestige under the Mughals was the subdialect of Khari Boli, at times called Urdu and at times called Hindi or Hindavi (Masica, 1991, 29). Aneesh (2010) goes into great detail about the history of the Indian nationalist movements, their emphasis on a Hindu identity, and how Hindi was adopted as the official language. Suffice it to say, in the wake of partition, British India was carved up into a nominally Muslim Pakistan and Hindu India. Khari Boli, under the name of Urdu was adopted as the official language of Pakistan. Popular slogans uniting language, religion, and nationality emerged, such as “Hindi, Hindu, Hindustan” and “Urdu, Muslim, Pakistan” (Aneesh, 2010, p. 101). This sentiment can also be seen in MP Ayyangar’s declaration, “Many Muslims have separated and have created their own Pakistan, declaring Urdu as its national language. In this context, there is no reason to maintain Urdu in India as well. Therefore, we should return to our real national language Hindi” (Aneesh, 2010, p. 99). All this to say that when borders were erected, approximately, on lines of religion, nations emerged, and the idea of boundedness had to be applied to the language as well.

This case in South Asia presents another clear way variation within a language is treated by nationalism. Namely, even the smallest differences can be overexaggerated in service of the nation’s raison d’être. Because the partition split British India into two supposedly separate communities on the basis of religion, the newly born nations leaned into these aspects that distinguished them. The common language which was spoken by both Hindus and Muslims was also divided on these sorts of nationalistic lines, creating two separate entities whose main difference is what kind of person speaks which.

Conclusion

From the examples of Japanese and Hindi-Urdu, it is apparent that in many cases, language is subject to the whims of nationalism. Herder’s ideas might have made sense in Germany, but he had it backwards for many other places across the world. The ideas of what a language should be like can group or split, suppress or promote, standardize or colloquialize language. The variation in vocabulary, use, and structure that is naturally inherent to all languages spoken across the planet can be ignored or explicitly highlighted in order to create nations. The Ryūkyūan languages are in some ways similar to Japanese. They are also spoken within the borders of the Japanese nation. Because of this, their use was discouraged and the very real differences between the two tongues was downplayed. What, by a scientific or linguistic definition, should be distinct languages were, and for many, still are, thought of as merely dialects of Japanese—local versions of the selfsame language. In contrast, Khari Boli was in use across the north Indian plain, having been a preferred way of speaking and writing under the Mughals. But when a border was put down in the middle of Khari Boli’s territory, nations sprang up on either side and out of these came Hindi and Urdu. Ultimately, the interplay between nation and language is a complicated one. Many people in the modern day, especially in the West, conceive of the two as being perfectly associated with each other. However, languages and linguistic identity can give birth to nations, and at the same time, language can be bent and shaped by nationalism and national identity. In the end, speech, and its extension, writing, are core parts of every human culture. Language may be just one of many ways to imagine a community of citizens one will never meet, but it is a powerful one.

References

Anderson, B. R. O. (2006 [1983]). Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism (Revis ed.). Verso.

Aneesh, A. (2010). Bloody language: Clashes and constructions of linguistic nationalism in India. Sociological Forum, 25(1), 86-109. doi.org/10.1111/j.1573-7861.2009.01158.x.

Berdichevsky, N. (2004). Nations, language, and citizenship. McFarland.

Itou, E. (2022, April 29). Nihongo no hougen 16 shurui wo kaisetsu! Kakuhougen no tokuchou ya namari to no chigai wa? [Explanation of 16 Japanese dialects! What are the characteristics of each dialect and how do they differ from accents?]. Japanese Language Teacher Career Magazine. https://japanese-bank.com/nihongo-how-to-teach/japanese-dialect/.

Lee, Y., & Hubbard, M. H. (2010). The Ideology of Kokugo: Nationalizing Language in Modern Japan. University of Hawai’i Press.

Masica, C. P. (1991). The Indo-Aryan languages. Cambridge University Press.

Millar, R. M. (2005). Language, nation and power: An introduction. Palgrave Macmillan.

Oakes, L. (2001). Language and national identity: Comparing France and Sweden. John Benjamins Pub. Co.

Okinawa Prefecture (2015, September 1). Okinawa no hougen [Dialects of Okinawa]. Okinawa Prefecture. https://www.pref.okinawa.jp/site/kodomo/sumai/hogen/index.html.

Onishi, T. (2021, September 30). Nihongo ni wa hougen ga ikutsu arimasu ka [How many dialects are there in Japanese?]. Centre for the Study of Language. https://kotobaken.jp/qa/yokuaru/qa-139.

Twine, N. (1991). Language and the modern state: The reform of written Japanese. Routledge

#own post #linguistics #nationalism

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lightdancer1 · 11 months ago

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There are few wars marked so heavily by horror and with so little break from the horrors as this one:

One of my relative quirks as a military historian is believing that the stalemates and failures, which are much more typical of real warfare than the decisive Gaugamelas, offer much more realistic views of what war and the waging of war is than the Gaugamela-Cannae obsession (and indeed where Gaugamela remade the world Cannae was a victory that did less damage to Rome than the Arausio against the Cimbri and Teutoni did).

In the annals of the various theaters of WWI this is why I find the Eastern Front to be more of a set of lessons learned from the war than the Western, because all the combatants failed and were consumed by the war they started, even the ones that looked like they won. More broadly Salonika and the Italian campaign, the subject of this one, embody the 'Blackadder Thesis' of WWI in the closest it ever came to reality.

From 1915-8 the Italians were plunged into twelve Battles of the Isonzo, an Austrian drive on the Trentino, the Battle of the Piave, and the Battle of Vittorio-Venetto in conditions of freezing horror at high altitude where the war's two worst generals, Cadorna and Conrad, had unfettered power over the campaign. Austria owed its successes equally ironically to a general that modern ethnic ideas would consider Croatian who considered himself a subject of the House of Habsburg and beyond nationality like a good Habsburg subject would.

The soldiers of Italy displayed an uncommon valor through eleven Battles of the Isonzo where only the sixth, which saw the capture of the town of Gorizia, marked a major advance and most of them fit solidly into the pictures of the worst WWI generalship in troops being sent into headlong charges into the teeth of prepared positions by generals detached from the reality of the front and utterly unsympathetic to it. The price for the eleven battles, plus the technical victory in the Trentino Offensive, was the twelfth, usually known as Caporetto, or in the German name for it, Karfreit.

Eleven futile battles produced a near-collapse of the Kingdom of Italy that was redeemed not least by allied aid the Italians proved distinctly ungrateful for, and the ultimate price of the combination of vainglorious incompetence personified by the duel of Cadorna and Conrad was the disintegration of Austria-Hungary and the transformation of the rotting fabric of the Kingdom of Italy by Mussolini's March on Rome into the world's first fascist state.

In many ways the scars of the First World War linger even more thoroughly in Italy than in the UK, affecting both the resonance of fascism and the poor performance of the Italians of the Second World War, much less willing to die for Il Duce than they were for Cadorna and Diaz in the previous war. Such is the price Italy paid for what was one of history's most ill-starred concepts and the most grimly wretched in execution.

I believe that people who want to understand the nature, too, of what humanity can endure and the realities of how utterly sordid real wars are could stand to read this from cover to cover and to see that oftentimes authority does not deserve respect because it exists, and the dangers of creating echo chambers detached from any remote contact with reality.

10/10.

#lightdancer comments on history #book reviews #world war i #italian history #italian campaign of wwi #cadorna vs conrad: battle of the dumbfucks

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sierraheipp · 1 year ago

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Tumblr Post #1: Diversity and Multiculturalism in Jane the Virgin

Jane the Virgin, a hit Netflix TV series following the life of Jane Gloriana Villanueva, a 23-year-old Latina who finds herself pregnant after an accidental artificial insemination by her doctor. The episodes show Jane and the baby’s father Rafael Solano as their lives change with drama and heartbreak. The telenovela is narrated by a seemingly unknown narrator, however is later revealed to be Jane and Rafael’s son, Mateo. Directed by Justin Baldoni and starring Gina Rodriguez, Justin Baldoni, and Yael Grobglas, this TV series strikes the heart of many and shows the struggles of parenthood, as well as the importance of their Hispanic culture.

Jane the Virgin directly displays many of the course topics in ART 150, including the idea of multiculturalism and application of White perspective on a non-white family. For example, in “What is Multiculturalism” written by Gregory Jay, he states, “The concept of ‘multiculturalism’ also has a history rooted in theories of human rights, democracy, human equality, and social justice” (Jay 2011). This is extremely applicable to Jane the Virgin as one of the show’s most important themes is the importance of heritage, maintaining one’s culture, and being proud of where they came from. Jane’s grandmother, Alba Villanueva, was an immigrant who came to America to follow her dream, and she constantly is expressing their Hispanic culture, as well as speaks in Spanish to help remind her daughter and granddaughter who they are and where they came from. Additionally, Richard Dyer in “On the Matter of Whiteness” writes, “The media, politics, and education are still in the hands of white people, still speak for whites while calming and sometimes sincerely aiming to speak for humanity” (Dyer 2003). In the TV series, there are many times where Jane or her son Mateo are discriminated against or underestimated because of their race. It is made obvious to the audience that oftentimes white people overgeneralize and stereotype certain races for the entire population, and Jane’s family activity combats this through their careers and writing.

Continuing, Jane the Virgin also displays intersectionality in the two main characters- Rafael and Jane. In a later season, Rafael discovers his biological parents are from Italy and are not Hispanic, changing his entire identity. Similarly, in the article “Black? White? Asian? …” by Susan Saulny, she explains, “Multiracial and multiethnic Americans… are one of the country’s fastest-growing demographic groups” (Saulny 2011). The struggles and highs of having an identity in more than one race is shown as Rafael learns to accept and redefine himself as an Italian and Latino, a concept recently discussed in ART 150.

Another way intersectionality is displayed is through Jane, who struggles with balancing her identity as a Latino woman, mother, writer, and daughter. Rather than dismiss some of her identities and prove others to be more important, this TV series allows Jane to realistically and sustainability balance her life in a way where she can be proud and active in her culture, as well as succeed in a career and as a mother. This is very important because there are many stereotypes displayed in popular visual culture, such as feminism dismissing maternal roles, or Latina stereotypes within immigration, religion, low income, criminal activity, etc. Jane the Virgin shows that Jane is an active and brilliant Latina whose grandmother is an immigrant, but has been able to provide for her family. This series disrupts the ideas closely related between ethnicity and negative assumptions, specifically assuming that migrants will be involved with criminal activity or will have a low income. There is a great importance in displaying the beauty and power of a Latina woman who has access to just as many opportunities as anyone of any other race (specifically white).

Furthermore, many discussions held in ART 150 are applicable to Jane the Virgin, specifically in the diversity that the TV series intertwines effortlessly into the plot. From having the main character be a Latina woman, to breaking stereotypes about Latina motherhood, Jane the Virgin displays multiculturalism and intersectionality in popular visual culture in a unique way. Rather than using humor to gloss over cultural struggles and discriminations, or having colored characters “not fit in” to ease the awkwardness, the series uses empowerment and raw emotions to convey its characters in all dimensions- identity, culture, age, and history.

Work Cited:

Dyer, Richard. “On the Matter of Whiteness” International Center of Photography, New York. December 2003.

Jay, Gregory. “What is Multiculturalism?” University of Wisconsin- Milwaukee. July 2011.

Martinez, Diana. “‘Jane the Virgin’ Proves Diversity Is More Than Skin Deep” The Atlantic, October 19, 2015, https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2015/10/jane-the-virgin-telenovelas/409696/. Accessed 12/2/23

Perez, Lluvia. “Jane the Virgin’s Impact On American Viewers and Latinx Storytelling” Teenvogue, August 1, 2019, https://www.teenvogue.com/story/jane-the-virgin-impact. Accessed 12/2/23

Rose, Lisa. “‘Jane the Virgin;” The CW.

Saulny, Susan. “Black? White? Asian? More Young Americans Choose All of the Above” The New York Times. 29 January 2011

Torres, Rae. “‘Jane the Virgin’ Cast Guide”. Collider, October 2, 2021, https://collider.com/jane-the-virgin-cast-now-where/. Accessed 12/2/23

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leroibobo · 11 months ago

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a super abridged sequel about european jews (mostly ashkenazim)

to preface: the only reason i mention dna is because the origins of european jews is a /lot/ less straightforward and easy to explain than mena jewish history is. and also because z-onists mention it a lot. i think z-onists use dna as an argument that -srael isn't a settler-colonial project because:

they think dna is a valid "claim" to a piece of land, which misunderstands both the concept of indigeneity and that anyone can do/benefit from settler-colonialism despite their actual origins (see: latin american countries generally not having great relationship to indigenous communities, also see this article from decolonize palestine), and also that not everyone who's a victim of -sraeli settler-colonialism is "ethnically palestinian" (see: jerusalemite armenians)

influence from ethnic nationalism in europe which, despite what the most "enlightened europeans" will tell you, still heavily depends on how someone looks/ethnicity, and neither the grisly outcome of wwii nor anything any european countries did after ever really "solved" it (literally just ask any north caucasian their experience being a russian citizen. not to mention the treatment of romani)

there is a completely-unrelated-to-z-onism history of people denying that jewish people are the "real jews" (remember, judaism isn't a "universal religion" like christianity or islam) because the "real jews" would've converted to (insert relevant abrahamic religion here), which to z-onists ties back to their z-onism in that they see mentions of the very real settler-colonialism as this sort of thing (even if they don't tie it to religion), see point 1

most jews (overwhelmingly ashkenazi) nowadays who aren't in palestine live in america or other european settler-colonies that aren't occupied palestine where the general attitude was "judaism is a religion, not an ethnicity" because particularly ashkenazi jews in europe were very much seen as a different "race"/"ethnicity" and discriminated against for it. (europeans can tell different types of white people apart by the distance between their eyesockets.) it being seen as "just a religion" in the us was more or less a way to be safe. z-onists today don't like this because of reason 1, and to a more subconscious extent reason 3.

people who come from cultures based in "universal" religions/beliefs where anyone can convert and be a true believer (christianity and islam, for example) generally approach the topic of judaism from their own pov.

genetics can very easily slip into eugenics if you approach it from a political point of view. z-onists ultimately misuse facts for nationalist purposes, which causes people to be reactionary and use facts against them, and it becomes a whole mess of bullshit. both ashkenazi jewish and romani genetics have a history of being used, abused, and put under a microscope by europeans for a bunch of bullshit purposes (and z-onists continue this longstanding tradition today by doing it to palestinians) and i don't intend to do that here, only to clear things up.

so with that out of the way: the story in the torah of jewish origins is as much of an origin story as any other ethnic groups' at the end of the day, but that doesn't change that there is actual evidence that all "ethnic" european jews (ashkenazim, sephardim, italkim, and romaniote) descend from people who came from the middle east and converted/intermarried with locals in greek colonies/roman italy. the oldest jewish groups in europe are romaniotes (greek) and italkim (italian) - they largely stayed in the general area, though romaniotes also expanded to to the balkans and even up to what's today poland, ukraine, and western russia.

from there it gets murky. a ton of jews moved west into areas of former andalusia and the frankish empire. from there we get the "separation" between ashkenazi (german) jews and sephardic (spanish) jews. both of them eventually became "centers" of judaism on their own right and many jewish people moved back-and-forth between the middle east and europe, and between "ashkenaz" and "sepharad", and this movement between jewish populations would continue up to the 19th century. (for example: a lot of sephardim have the surname "ashkenazi" because their ancestors moved to andalusia from germany.) there were most likely other, much smaller jewish populations who moved to other parts of the continent not mentioned and eventually became ashkenazified or sephardicized (like the ones who might've spoken knaanic).

and yes, there were absolutely converts, even if eventually not that many later on (who would wanna willingly become a member of a persecuted group). according to dna testing, most of these converts were back in antiquity in italy, greece, and even north africa (see study i linked previously) with only a minimal amount were outside of that. jewish communities in both places were endogamous and - in the case of ashkenazis - eventually bottlenecked to a point where they became more or less not very genetically diverse. they sort of became their own ethnicity in a way. this phenomenon follows a common pattern of history - pretty much everyone in the world is "mixed", some more recently than others.

like every jewish diaspora, european jews assimilated to a good degree and spoke ethnolects (ladino, yevanic, etc) of the regions they stayed in, and their "ethnic" stuff was very much also tied to religion (considering how most of their european neighbors saw them, more on that later) with a "local" twist. yiddish kind of an exception to the ethnolects in a way - for one, it only developed around 1300 ce, it has a romance substrate, and it eventually gained a lot of eastern european influences as it went further east (ashkenazi culture is similarly mixed, remember, it's sort of a fusion between two jewish groups, like many mena jews becoming "sephardicized" those jews became "ashkenazified" eventually.) it was easier to keep one language and not continuously change it if you had to move from place to place.

eventually stuff like the expulsions from spain pushed sephardim out of the iberian peninsula and to other places, and the first crusades pushed ashkenazim further east. sephardim for the most part managed to stay comparatively stable in their new places of residence (not that discrimination didn't happen, or that it never happened that they had to leave for somewhere else bc of antisemitism. i detail this more in the op).

ashkenazim, on the other hand, followed a historical pattern of exiled from place > go to place that offered refuge > new antisemitic leader rose up > exiled from place. (sephardim were also in spain a lot longer than ashkenazim were in germany - large-scale jewish settlement on the rhine only began in about 800, from then to the crusades is a meager 200 years.) yes, there were times of prosperity, but there were also a lot of bad times - and ashkenazi jews had it a lot worse - probably the worst - for most of history. many of those countries didn't really see them as much citizens as the other residents, or didn't see them as citizens at all. (immigrants in europe are still a lot of the time not seen as "real" citizens even if they've been there for generations, for example turks in germany.) most were made to live separately, forced into certain jobs (jews were mostly relegated to jobs regarding money, which was seen as jobs not befitting christians, hence the merchant/greed/rich stereotype), severely restricted in movement, and forced to assimilate until and even after the jewish emancipation. (sound familiar?) antisemitism was still very much continuing after that though, at this point (since we're past the enlightenment and religion isn't as big of a thing as it once was) because of "race science".

(a good example of the forcible assimilation is ashkenazi last names - ashkenazim were some of the last europeans to get them, before which they largely used the "x, son/daughter of y" format. the germanic/slavic last names were for the most part given out by governments because a. austria-hungarian empire imposed german names bc they were german elitists and b. russian empire gave out german names just bc they were easier to give out, but also slavic bc of the assimilation, different areas generally had different attitudes about which last names they gave. this isn't unique to ashkenazim, some other jewish populations have similar last names without the ties - for example some "kurdish" jews have last names relating to kurdish tribes because they were literally from the town the tribe's name originated from, not because they were a part of the tribe.)

as a consequence, most ashkenazim did not have as much of a "tie" to their "home countries", because most not only deeply antisemitic ("semitic" to refer to jewish people originates with 18th century german "race scientists" btw), but didn't consider them citizens for a very long time. "ties" were by an large seen as a way to keep themselves safe, even if they were "genuine" ties. a good overview of this phenomenon can be seen in hannah arendt's (an antizionist in her own right) essay we refugees. this is why a vast majority also moved to the us (and other european colonies, like south africa) when they had the opportunity, and where the assimilation with whiteness/"just a religion" attitude came from. not that there wasn't antisemitism over there, but they had an opportunity to "start over" in a place where antisemitism wasn't systemic there like it more or less was/is in europe. (and, ofc, "white" ultimately ended up applying to them.)

this is also why z-onism is super duper ashkenazi. because of [ashkenazi] history, they saw any attempt at "assimilation" as futile because it'd just happen again, and being a "jew" and another "nationality" were mutually exclusive because they were always just jews at the end of the day according to european governments throughout history. the diaspora/diasporic cultures were also something they saw as inherently tied to oppression. (and not palestinian/sephardic/mizrahi ones, which combined with orientalism led to appropriation. nothing wrong with wanting to abandon elements of your culture, or maybe your culture altogether - i think we all do to different points - but the contradictions and power here are pretty obvious.) the initial z-onists likely saw colonialism as a way to "liberate" themselves, and thought the problem was having "left" in the first place, similar to what happened with liberia.

ofc though, like liberia, they'd been living in europe for 1,000 years and were approaching it from a very eurocentric/essentialist and eventually "terra nullis" pov. (and the contemporaneous, reactionary yiddishist movements were largely the same (except without the third one) and never (and still don't, sorry to any yiddishists reading this) addressed the real problem.) many european jews initially disagreed with z-onism (it was europe who was wrong after all, as arendt stated in we refugees) but eventually because of a bunch of historical circumstances, here we are today.

so, ironically, the very thing that managed to keep ashkenazim safe in european colonies (and white-er sephardim too, ftr, the first jews in the americas were sephardic and there was even a few in the confederate government) ended up oppressing palestinians. from a jewish (as in generally jewish, this spread to jews of all stripes nowadays) z-onist's pov, "indigenous people" were who considered their ancestors alien and exiled them over and over, so why should they care about another "indigenous people" saying the same? or, more recently (and in a huge bout of cognitive dissonance), they're also "indigenous" to palestine, and rulers of other places throughout history didn't think they were "indigenous" to whatever countries they ended up in, see the list of reasons i gave at the beginning of this post...

of course, this is combined with the whole colonizer-fear-of-retribution thing and can't be seen standing on its own. (not so much for people repeating this rhetoric from, like, the us but that's another thing.) but liberating palestine and fighting against antisemitism are not mutually exclusive. we can't go back to the social relations of the past at this point, which is why imo we need one democratic state.

some notes on specifically "middle eastern" (mashriqi + iran, caucuses, and turkey) jewish communities/history:

something to keep in mind: judaism isn't "universalist" like christianity or islam - it's easier to marry into it than to convert on your own. conversions historically happened, but not in the same way they did for european and caucasian christians/non-arab muslims.

that being said, a majority of middle eastern jews descend from jewish population who remained in palestine or immigrated/were forced (as is the case with "kurdish" jews) from palestine to other areas and mixed with locals/others who came later (which at some point stopped). pretty much everywhere in the middle east and north africa (me/na) has/had a jewish population like this.

with european jews (as in all of them), the "mixing" was almost entirely during roman times with romans/greeks, and much less later if they left modern-day greece/italy.

(none of this means jewish people are or aren't "indigenous" to palestine, because that's not what that word means.)

like with every other jewish diaspora, middle eastern jewish cultures were heavily influenced by wherever they ended up. on a surface level you can see this in things like food and music.

after the expulsion of jews from spain and portugal, sephardim moved to several places around the world; many across me/na, mostly to the latter. most of the ones who ended up in the former went to present-day egypt, palestine, lebanon, syria, and turkey. a minority ended up in iraq (such as the sassoons' ancestors). like with all formerly-ottoman territories, there was some degree of back and forth between countries and continents.

some sephardim intermarried with local communities, some didn't. some still spoke ladino, some didn't. there was sometimes a wealth gap between musta'arabim and sephardim, and/or they mostly didn't even live in the same places, like in palestine and tunisia. it really depends on the area you're looking at.

regardless, almost all the jewish populations in the area went through "sephardic blending" - a blending of local and sephardic customs - to varying degrees. it's sort of like the cultural blending that came with spanish/portugese colonization in central and south america (except without the colonization).

how they were treated also really depends where/when you're looking. some were consistently dealt a raw hand (like "kurdish" and yemenite jews) while some managed to do fairly well, all things considered (like baghdadi and georgian jews). most where somewhere in between. the big difference between me/na + some balkan and non-byzantine european treatment of jews is due to geography - attitudes in law regarding jews in those areas tended to fall into different patterns.

long story short: most european governments didn't consider anyone who wasn't "christian" a citizen (sometimes even if they'd converted, like roma; it was a cultural/ethnic thing as well), and persecuted them accordingly; justifying this using "race science" when religion became less important there after the enlightenment.

most me/na and the byzantine governments considered jews (and later, christians) citizens, but allowed them certain legal/social opportunities while limiting/banning/imposing others. the extent of both depend on where/when you're looking but it was never universally "equal".

in specifically turkey, egypt, palestine, and the caucuses, there were also ashkenazi communities, who came mainly because living as a jew in non-ottoman europe at the time sucked more than in those places. ottoman territories in the balkans were also a common destination for this sort of migration.

in the case of palestine, there were often religious motivations to go as well, as there were for some other jews who immigrated. several hasidic dynasites more or less came in their entirety, such as the lithuanian/polish/hungarian ones which precede today's neutrei karta.

ashkenazi migration didn't really happen until jewish emancipation in europe for obvious reasons. it also predates zionism - an initially secular movement based on contemporaneous european nationalist ideologies - by some centuries.

most ashkenazi jews today reside in the us, while most sephardic or "mizrahi" jews are in occupied palestine. there, the latter outnumber the former. you're more likely to find certain groups (like "kurds" and yemenites) in occupied palestine than others (like persians and algerians) - usually ones without a western power that backed them from reactionary antisemitic persecution and/or who came from poorer communities. (and no, this doesn't "justify" the occupation).

(not to say there were none who immigrated willingly/"wanted" to go, or that none/all are zionist/anti-zionist. (ben-gvir is of "kuridsh" descent, for example.) i'm not here to parse motivations.)

this, along with a history of racism/chauvinism from the largely-ashkenazi "left", are why many mizrahim vote farther "right".

(in some places, significant numbers of the jewish community stayed, like turkey, tunisia, and iran. in some others, there's evidence of double/single-digit and sometimes crypto-jewish communities.)

worldwide, the former outnumber the latter. this is thought to be because of either a medieval ashkenazi population boom due to decreased population density (not talking about the "khazar theory", which has been proven to be bullshit, btw) or a later, general european one in the 18th/19th centuries due to increased quality of life.

the term "mizrahi" ("oriental", though it doesn't have the same connotation as in english) in its current form comes from the zionist movement in the 1940s/50s to describe me/na jewish settlers/refugees.

(i personally don't find it useful outside of israeli jewish socio-politics and use it on my blog only because it's a term everyone's familiar with.)

about specifically palestinian jews:

the israeli term for palestinian jews is "old yishuv". yishuv means settlement. this is in contrast to the "new yishuv", or settlers from the initial zionist settlement period in 1881-1948. these terms are usually used in the sense of describing historical groups of people (similar to how you would describe "south yemenis" or "czechoslovaks").

palestinian jews were absorbed into the israeli jewish population and have "settler privilege" on account of their being jewish.

they usually got to keep their property unless it was in an "arab area". there's none living in gaza/the west bank right now unless they're settlers.

their individual views on zionism vary as much as any general population's views vary on anything.

(my "palestinian jews" series isn't intended to posit that they all think the same way i do, but to show a side of history not many people know about. any "bias" only comes from the fact that i have a "bias" too. this is a tumblr blog, not an encyclopedia.)

during the initial zionist settlement period, there were palestinian/"old yishuv" jews who were both for zionism and against it. the former have been a part of the occupation and its government for pretty much its entire history.

some immigrated abroad before 1948 and may refer to themselves as "syrian jews". ("syria" was the name given to syria/lebanon/palestine/some parts of iraq during ottoman times.)

ones who stayed or immigrated after for whatever reason mostly refer to themselves as "israeli".

in israeli jewish society, "palestinian" usually implies muslims and christians who are considered "arab" under israeli law. you may get differing degrees of revulsion/understanding of what exactly "palestine"/"palestinians" means but the apartheid means that palestinian =/= jewish.

because of this, usage of "palestinian" as a self-descriptor varies. your likelihood of finding someone descendent from/with ancestry from the "old yishuv" calling themselves a "palestinian jew" in the same way an israeli jew with ancestry in morocco would call themselves a "moroccan jew" is low.

(i use it on here because i'm assuming everyone knows what i mean.)

samaritans aren't 'jewish', they're their own thing, though they count as jewish under israeli law.

#jewish #info

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anghraine · 2 years ago

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woodelf68 replied to this post:

I was a book fan first, but I honestly never form much of a visual image of characters when I read a book, so it didn't matter to me.

Cool, but that doesn't mean it can't matter to other people.

There's a very weird assumption in a lot of Tolkien fandom discourse that caring about actors actually looking like their characters is trivial and shallow, they cast for talent not appearance etc etc, so casting Anglo actors in non-Anglo roles is totally okay—unless, of course, casting for talent and not appearance results in heroic roles going to people other than pale, mostly light-haired, mostly Anglo white actors, at which point the fandom has screaming meltdowns.

And frankly, film fans always show up to make this about their personal preferences whenever anyone tries to discuss the problems with the films' casting. Yeah, it's a personal gripe in this particular case, but for those of us who do care about both this instance and the more problematic wider trend in the casting of the films, it's deeply frustrating that we still can't criticize it without fans of the movies rushing in after 20 years.

I thought it was great casting because they LOOK like they could be brothers,

They do, as do many other actors.

and I can't picture the characters any other way anymore.

Yeah, that's actually a major reason that some of us care a lot about this. For one, it can simply be irritating that we rarely see depictions of our favorite characters that look remotely like them, but more importantly, these sorts of choices shape the popular conception of what Middle-earth's heroes are allowed to look like.

And as a neighbouring realm to Rohan, I wouldn't expect them to look much different as far as ethnicity?

Uh ... if you're talking about what's visually effective on film, I think sharing a border on the opposite end of the country from where Boromir and Faramir live and where their families are from matters much less than differentiating the peoples in a clear way. The movies honestly seem largely disinterested in the ways in which Gondorians and Rohirrim are contrasting foils for each other even as they draw nearer in culture, and particularly clear foils in the ruling families—but that would require caring about Gondor to anything like the extent that they care about Rohan, which they evidently don't.

If you're talking about Tolkien's version, meanwhile, Gondor is a vastly more ancient nation than Rohan, and includes multiple ethnic groups that long predate the arrival of the Rohirrim from the North, and mostly look nothing like them. According to Tolkien, the Dúnedain of southern Gondor are very different from any of the Northern-inspired peoples of Middle-earth. He indignantly wrote that, while the Shire was indeed meant to represent England, Minas Tirith is 600 miles south (at around the latitude of Florence, Italy) while the great Gondorian port of Pelargir is at about the latitude of Troy (now in Turkey), and he insisted that his vision for Gondor was therefore not remotely Nordic.

Elsewhere, he repeatedly compared the Gondor of LOTR to the Byzantine Empire, and also said that the Dúnedain of Gondor were best envisioned as ancient Egyptians. Tolkien's depiction of the Gondorian peoples had lots of influences to be sure—but blond English people are not among them, and they are clearly meant to contrast visually with the Rohirrim in particular.

The movies' indifference to all this in terms of casting is one debate, but the matter of whether the casting for Gondor is accurate to Tolkien's descriptions in or out of LOTR is very straightforward. It's not.

#adaptations overwriting people's capacity to imagine anything differently is like ninety percent of why it matters #but seriously this fandom is like ... throwing screaming tantrums bc tar míriel might be implied to be pale if you squint #but nobody is allowed to criticize the aggressively and non-canonically anglo casting of the movies ever #so there's a lot of accumulated annoyance for those of us who don't like it #woodelf68 #respuestas #legendarium blogging #legendarium fanwank #ondonórë blogging #pj critical #long post #anghraine rants

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olderthannetfic · 3 years ago

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Confused European here again, thanks for explaining Italians are white, still a bit confused though. Do the people using it think Italian Americans and Italians are the same? The term 'Italian' seems to be used interchangeably, and I'm not sure if that is out of the sort of short-hand Americans use with each other to describe their ethnicities (which, fine, but using that short-hand in an international context like the internet is just confusing) or if they genuinely think there is no difference between Americans of Italian ethnicity and people in Italy who are raised there and speak Italian and have Italian citizenship etc.

Americans (well, general American culture, #notallamericans yadda yada) think that "race" is something that has inherent reality. Like, objectively you can be White or Not White.

In reality, of course, 'race' meant something like 'family line' in English until the English were justifying colonialism in Ireland, and then all the 'dark savages who aren't really human' language starts popping up. That same kind of talk very quickly gets exported to dehumanize Africans to justify slavery, and some time thereafter, "race" starts being used more like it is in the modern day.

Early European settlers in what is now the US referred to themselves by where they were from. The concept of "whiteness" only really took off a couple of generations in when they started getting nervous about being outnumbered by slaves and about mixed-race babies and they needed to assert some kind of collective identity for solidarity as the oppressor class or something.

Anyway, in a world where whiteness is real and objective rather than a moldy social construct designed to excuse slavery, everyone who is ethnically Italian is the same. Sure, they're not the same culturally, but race is inherent, so people who have the same ethnic background should have the same one.

But of course, in practice, how people see race has a lot to do with what language you speak, what religion you practice, and how tan you are.

In the modern day, in many parts of the US, being Italian- or Irish- or Polish-American or whatever doesn't really matter. A particular type or racist likes to pretend they're the most oppressed by referring back to anti-immigrant prejudices of the past. Other people are suspicious of this and tend to be very "Shut up! You're white!" about it...

Unfortunately, they bring that suspicion to other contexts where it works poorly.

You see it in Captive Prince discourse where US-centric wankers are absolutely unwilling to believe there's any legitimate category difference between more Anglo Australians and more Mediterranean ones. (And thus the two guys in that book get reduced to "white master" and "black slave" instead of fantasy French and fantasy Greek playing out the author's feelings about being othered in Australia.)

You see it in asinine discourse about the Balkans and Europe in general where some ethnic conflict is going on, but specific countries or ethnic groups are the relevant divisions, not whiteness. "Bellydance is cultural appropriation" and all that.

It's made all the worse by the US being fucking obsessed with people who are "secretly" whatever. This is, again, a holdover from slavery where lines did get blurry and people were trying to litigate them back into non-blurriness. In most places, if you're 15/16ths ethnic Italian, you're Italian. Seems pretty obvious. Here, you could be ~secretly black~. That one drop rule bullshit informs a lot of the unconscious thinking about who's what "race" today.

It's all a product of people genuinely not understanding how fake and made up whiteness is. It's like if you told them sex and gender were suddenly irrelevant. It's a total mindfuck.

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manyeyedgirl · 5 months ago

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Ok the idea that ethnostates are the resolution to colonialism is patently a ridiculous use of the term but I'll engage with this post by scaling it back to "The nation state was the resolution to colonialism" (Any statement I can make of this is biased to the existence of states but this is purely a rhetorical argument even though im principlally opposed to any such ideas) i.e. that each group should have their own state to return to or rally around which was largely popularized through the revolutions of 1848.

Well let's examine some of your examples

The Ottoman Empire

This is a funny one since it involves the exact blunders from the British that lead to auch a major conflict in the first place. During WW1 the British promised the Arab people they would be "liberating the Arab nation and of establishing a free and independent Arab State" later this premise just turned out to be a false statement to justify their colonial intent but proves that the nation state did not resolve the problem of Ottoman colonialism but actually extended it. If anything discussions of such ideas as Arab and Jewish states in the Levant only served as bargaining chips for the Entene during the war.

Decolonization of Africa from Britian and France

Even though you did not necessarily claim.iy I feel the need to state thar the reason the colonial powers exited Africa is not because there was a conspicuously large nationalist movement in any area specifically but that the concept of colonialism started to deeply unsettle Europeans who were becoming conscious of the atrocities it entailed. In their aftermath though the concept of the nation state still plays a tricky role. Although ideas of nation states were attempted in Africa there is ironically no good example of all nationalities actually acquiring a state in Africa because of its complex history, local religion tarnished due to Arabic and Western influences, the borders left by the imperal powers had many overlapping ethnic groups, and their was no real unifying culture besides a resistance to European powers so upon their departure old sentiments were allowed to rein. Of course their are exceptions but even in places like Zimbabwe where the colonial government had to be forcibly expelled by natives it was carried onward mostly by an idea of resisting white oppression rather than any stratified nationality that conceded with an ethnic background.

Pan-Africanism and pan-arabism are the adoption of this European concept of a nationality needing a state in the macro scale (similarto the pressures that formed Italy and Germany), but in those cases the micro concept (Hungary, dissolution of Yugoslavia, Galicia, Czachia, Slovakia, etc.) were much more popular applications so instead of being the answer to colonialism it only caused many previously opressed ethnicities and other minorities to attempt to carve their own state thus quickly dissipating the solidarity they had when the European threat was imminent.

India and Pakistan

Whilst both nations are most definitely nation states they also show how it was an imminently European idea imported to them whilst the idea of ruling all of India was popular with empires originating from within modern Iran and India if one managed to do this they usually failed to hold the whole thing because of how diverse it is. But during colonization Inidan monarchies had been so thoroughly dismantled by the British and the resistance movement against them so for a unified that they managed to form a macro nation state with the exception of a contingent of Muslim majority areas that would become Pakistan and later Bangladesh. Relations between West and East Pakistan quickly broke down due to a lack of a contiguous border and thus Bangladesh fought to separate which ironically formed a micro nation state out of this as they are both majority Bengali and Muslim. So although in the case of the Indian Subcontient the nation state did resolve colonialism it was a resolution only needed due to the effects of colonialism and only really possible through the spread of European ideas of nations.

Minority ethnicities in Middle East

I will not be overly litigious over the north African and Levant examples you chose as I'm not an expert on all sections of post colonial history and even the areas I do know it's not a scholarly level most of my classes are European and American history. But I will pick out the Kurds because they present one of the micro nationalist movements that failed to take hold. Nestled between many major powers interests proposed Kurdish nations were very against regining powers of the region both colonial and post colonial most notably Ottoman/Turkish, British, Iranian, Russian, Iraqi. They were thusly suppressed but unlike some other nationalist movements in the Middle East Kurdish identity was strong enough to not only resist repression but take advantage of the instability in the region to form a government of sorts now weather this remains against outside pressure is to be seen but it is actually counter to the trend of minority ethnicities being put under regimes nationalist or not of stratified ethnic or religious societies.

On colonialism pre European colonalism of the Americas, Africa, Asia, most attempts at colonialism in this period were constrained by technology meaning they were mostly small scale operations. Imperalism definitely existed in this age Rome, China, many Levant and empires formed in modern Iran contend to this fact. But few were able to settle the land they conquered and set up puppet regimes of their own ethnic group at best they managed to convert large swarms to their religion (the caliphates of Arabia) or colonalize small areas (Norse conquests in Europe and pre inquisition pockets of north African colonial Spain). So they settled for military governments or local collaborators. Also Russian and Ottoman colonialism fit the bill as following largely European tradition even if neither are strictly European themselves (both modern Turkey and Russia seem to claim Europeanness though). China is a more sticky situation and one which I'm not at liberty to handle my grasp on Chinese history is very limited but id say that the by the Qing Dynasty their was definitely colonial aspects to the Chinese Empire and during the Han Dyansty the colonaliztion of Tawian began but the scale and centralization of China long rivaled any European counterpart for a long time so without someone more versed in Chinese history I can really properly apply my historogrsphy of nation states or colonlaism to them.

In conclusion I find your historography flawed at best and ill informed at worst which is ironic since you felt the need to belittle my understanding of history.

-- an aside response to a poster I consider bad faith "spot the antisemitism"

I never said Land Back was violent or European (nation states are) land back was a reaction to colonialism

Tw zionism is for anyone who doesn't want to participate in discussions revolving around the conflict or the concept of zionism --

Just because your sentiment is targeted towards jews zionists does not mean that its not repackaged right wing talking points and bigotry.

Putting a cut off date for jews indigenousness at its core is still anti indigenous folk and putting a cut off date for an indigenous group regardless if it's targeted towards jews.

Calling jews colonizers for trying to rebuild their nation on land that was stolen from them is at its core anti land back movements.

Claiming that openly queer jews are "pink washing" is at its core queerphobic as you want queers you don't like to be silent or hidden away.

Claiming that jews are inherently white is at its core erasing and invalidating poc who do not fit your idea of what poc should be/look like.

#historography #ottoman empire #decolonization #nation state #nationalism #pakistan #india #Bangladesh #Zimbabwe #kurdistan

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gemsofgreece · 3 years ago

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How many Greeks are in turkey and how many turks are in Greece?

Aieee that’s a tough question and one answer is horrible while the other is horribl-er. I can’t just give you a number because this would lack SO much context.

Turks in Greece

Before the Greek Independence War, Greeks and Turks obviously lived together although, contrary to popular belief, rarely mated because Greeks were practicing Christianity and of course they weren’t allowed to get married with Turks unless one (almost always the Christian subject) conceded to convert to Islam. That generally didn’t happen unless they gave a Greek girl to a rich Turk, so they put her well-being higher than the religion. But a Greek man would hardly convert for a Turkish woman, and Turkish families would never allow their daughters to convert for a Christian subordinate, unless he was, I don’t know, a billionaire or something.

When the Independence war broke out, and later the Balkan Wars, every time Greece was winning another region, that would lead to massive Turkish migrating waves back to the Ottoman Empire / Turkey, because Turkish people feared the vengeance of the newly independent Greeks. Some Greek governments even tried to reassure Turks and Muslims they could live here safely but Turkish people didn’t believe this and, yes, they weren’t very wrong.

Despite all that, some regions of Greece had more Turkish presence than others, where Turks and Greeks had higher occurrences of converting and marrying and mixing. These regions were Thrace, Crete and the Dodecanese islands (which were still under Italian occupation). Anyway, in 1922, Turkey put a full stop to Greece’s continuous expansion after the tragic events of the Great Fire of Smyrna. As there were fears that these events would downright lead to slaughter between the two nations, a population exchange was agreed. All Muslims of Greece should move to Turkey and all Christians of Turkey should move to Greece. An exception was made for the Turks of Thrace and the Greeks of Istanbul.

As a result, 500,000 Muslims were forced out of Greece. Make note that the population exchange was based on religion and not ethnicity which means that not only Turks but also many Muslim Greeks were kicked out of the country. Back then, to the Greeks’ eyes, being a Muslim Greek was basically being a Turk. Even today, the concept of being a Muslim Greek is considered a surreal paradox. This was mostly the case with the Muslim Cretans, who are Greek in descent in their majority. They now live in Turkey, Egypt, Libya, Lebanon etc and they comprised about 450,000 people in 1971. But there were Muslim Greeks who had to leave from other parts of the country too.

Nowadays, a small Turkish community remains in the Dodecanese islands because they were part of Italy at the time of the exchange. They are about 5,000 people. The Turks of Thrace that never moved are nowadays about 50,000 (the rest Muslims in Thrace are Pomaks and Roma).

That makes a Turkish minority of about 55,000 - 60,000 people in Greece. They could probably be more but the Greek state did go under a very sly cultural and lingual assimilation process. A few Turkish people converted to Christianity to avoid the discrimination. The Turks there still remain a little alienated from the rest of the nation, which is not only bad, it is also stupid on Greece’s part.

Greeks in Turkey

But there’s always worse. Let’s start this with a reminder that when Turks conquered Asia Minor, Greeks were the most populous and flourishing people there. They comprised many hundreds of thousands, if not millions. Of course, as Anatolia and Asia Minor became the heart of the Ottoman Empire certainly way more of them converted to Islam and mixed with Turks compared to what was happening here with the Greeks in the European part, in the outskirts of the empire. But even so, Christian Greeks with Greek often as their first language - thus Greeks who had not been assimilated - were almost two million before 1922, comprising 16% of the population of Turkey!!!

Now look at this nightmare:

So, the Greek Christians used to be 16% of the country. Imagine what the Greek Muslims must have been.

But how did we get from 1,7 million to the horrendous number of 3,000?

First of all, the population exchange forced 1,5 million Greeks out of Turkey and into Greece. Of course, the used term was Christians but in this case it included mostly Greeks and a few Armenians (because why on earth would Turks convert to Christianity inside their own heavily Islamic empire). So after 1922, the Greek count dropped to around 250,000.

What happened to them? A lot of things. The lands that Greece had been acquiring at the expense of Turkey plus the higher living standard of the Greeks of Turkey (who were mostly merchants and lived in the coasts and Istanbul) ignited a lot of hatred to the Turks (most of who were deeper in the deserts of Anatolia at the time). Turks had already started a genocide against Pontic Greeks and Armenians (they deny it). 300,000-900,000 Greeks were lost there depending on who you ask. These of course aren’t included in the 1,7 million count.

But as for the remaining 250,000 after the genocide and the population exchange, they went through forceful assimilation processes, they were heavily discriminated and, at times when Turkey was at odds with Greece again, they were unsafe. After the Turkish invasion of Cyprus and the new conflict between Turks and Greeks, many of the remaining Greeks of Istanbul were “encouraged” to convert once again. And many Greek families eventually converted on their own and took Turkish names wishing for this fear of uncertainty to eventually cease. Many families also kept and still keep the ir identity a secret, even from the younger members of the family. Many talks rise lately about Crypto-Christians or Crypto-Greeks in Turkey. Many people have been asking for asylum in Greece to escape Erdogan and it is known that many search their genealogical trees for Greek ancestry to convince the Greek authorities to accept them.

So to answer your question. There are 3,000 Christian Greeks registered in the massive country of Turkey. As for the unregistered or the Muslim Greeks…… who the heck knows.

#history #Greece #greco turkish relations #Greek history #anon #ask #the great fire of smyrna #minor asian catastrophe

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writingwithcolor · 4 years ago

Text

Patrilineal Jewish girl, Sephardic culture

@feminismandsunflowers said:

hi! my character is a patrilineal Jewish girl in the usa, she didn't convert but still considers herself Jewish. her mom is Christian. her g-grandmother/father were undocumented refugees from Europe (antisemitism) and her g-grandmother was v closed off abt her origins but my character's dad thinks she said something abt being Sephardic. her fam has a fair amount of Sephardic culture. but could she claim Sephardic culture to any extent if they don't know? trynna get a handle on how to present her.

"My character's dad thinks she said something about being Sephardic"

and

"her fam has a fair amount of Sephardic culture"

are inconsistent statements.

The first statement sounds like the only indication Dad has of which Jewish culture they are is a statement he's not even sure about ("thinks"?) and the second statement sounds like Dad considers himself Sephardic and practices Sephardic traditions.

So, to me personally, this would depend on the level of Sephardic cultural practice she grew up with. If she grew up with those traditions and Dad sharing them with her, then yes, that's who she is. If Dad isn't even sure he's Sephardic and what she practiced in her upbringing wasn't distinctively Sephardic in any way, I have a hard time seeing why she should claim the culture if she's not even sure if her ancestors were Sephardic.

Disclaimer that the Reform position is to 'count' patrilineal Jewish people as long as they were raised in the traditions. This is not the Orthodox position but I am Reform.

--Shira

I'm also a bit confused about this situation. I think it would be helpful if you start by specifying where in Europe the family comes from and what anti-Semitism they were fleeing from. I'm Ashkenazi and not the most knowledgeable about Sephardi history, but as far as I know it wouldn't make sense for a Sephardi family to be seeking asylum from the pogroms in Russia or Poland, for example. I guess it could make sense if they were from Spain, France or Italy, but we would have to know more, and I'm wondering if this isn't a 'trace your logic' situation. Why do you want them to come from Europe? *Quickly cracks open a Claudia Roden book* Sephardi Jews have origins in many North African and Middle Eastern countries, such as Morocco, Algeria, Libya, Syria, Iran and Iraq just to give a few examples. If you want Sephardi characters, why not represent those cultures instead of re-hashing the same Euro-centric Jewish stories?

In terms of whether she could claim Sephardi heritage of any sort if they don't know, I'm interested in what Sephardi followers think. Religion-wise, I don't think there would be too much of a problem with it. Yes, Sephardim are more lenient on some things and stricter on others, so by picking the wrong one she may be following some of the rules wrong, but that's just a matter of tradition really. If someone was a ba'al teshuva and had no way of finding out which population their family came from, I imagine a rabbi would advise to choose one and stick to it without worrying too much about which one. I don't know 100%, though.

Culture-wise, I don't know if this is what Shira was getting at but I wonder if it would be cultural appropriation due to Ashkenazi Jews being more likely to be white-passing and getting more media representation. Is Jewish lineage enough to claim Sephardi traditions and culture, or do you need to know for sure that you're Sephardi - that will be for Sephardi followers to decide.

To build on Shira's disclaimer:

I'm Modern Orthodox and I would describe your character as someone who is not halachically Jewish, i.e. not in Jewish law. In most situations, this would be a technicality for me and I wouldn't hesitate to treat her as Jewish if she identifies as such. In particular, with her family history it makes sense that she considers herself ethnically Jewish and the legacy of discrimination is part of her identity - that's not something we can erase or overlook. It would be different if my kid wanted to marry her, I think (not that I ever plan to be one of those parents who would disown their kid or something for marrying out but I'm not going to pretend I completely wouldn't care, either). Then I might be hopeful that she may formally convert, especially if she had always lived as Jewish anyways.

Other things she may experience if she hangs out in Orthodox circles: a few people might act like jerks and be iffy around her like she's 'not really Jewish', probably the same people who are pro-Trump and mansplain why women's exclusion from parts of Orthodox worship is actually protecting us. On the subject of women's exclusion, if you have any male characters with a similar parental background, they can't get an aliyah in shul or count towards a minyan - the character you're describing couldn't anyway, though.

Hopefully if your other Jewish characters are nice people, they take to heart the teaching that you should rather throw yourself into a fire than humiliate someone else in public. When I was a student, there was a patrilineal man in our community who once entered the shul just in time to be the tenth man, making a minyan. A Chasidic man in the congregation quickly stood up and said "Oh no, I left the gas on!" and left. That way no one had to make a whole song and dance about the other guy not being allowed to count. Patrilineal Jewish followers, feel free to add more!

-Shoshi

I'm going to add some things here, about the terms Sephardi and Ashkenazi, that I think might be partially tripping the author up.

Sephardi and Ashkenazi are terms used to describe the traditions that a person follows. Those traditions are heavily linked to the land where they rose up, and to parentage, as people are typically encouraged to follow the traditions they grew up with. However! Converts exist, and converts are usually encouraged to join in on the traditions in their community. So, as an example, a person can be from anywhere in the world, of any racial or ethnic background, convert in a Conservative synagogue, and follow Ashkenazi traditions. A person can be from a place that is usually seen as very Ashkenazi-heavy, like Germany, and then end up converting in an esnoga (synagogue) in Spain, and practice Sephardic traditions. Either of those converts might have children, and those children will take on their minhagim (traditions), and will be a part of the culture their parents joined just like their parents were.

It can be confusing for many people because the terms are so often conflated with ethnicity, which is in turn conflated with genetic lineage. The trouble is, the groups they describe are older than the modern, western conception of race, and ethnicity, and we don't completely fit into these categories. Ashkenazi Jews don't all come from Europe, even their ancestors might not. In the US it's been estimated that at least 12-15% of American Jews are Jews of Color, and those JoC are very, very often Ashkenazi. Some converted, some didn't, but they are still following the traditions, and are still Ashkenazi.

So it's fair to say that the traditions of Sephardim grew in the Iberian peninsula, and North Africa, but they also moved along with those Jewish people as they dispersed, and were expelled. Jews from Portugal fled to the Azores, but also to the Netherlands, where there is a large Sephardic presence, right in the middle of a space that is assumed to be all Ashkenazi! Scores of Jewish people from Morocco moved to France. Then too, people marry folks from other groups. Often they will pick one family's traditions to follow, but sometimes they mix and match, and sometimes they end up moving somewhere else and taking on those traditions.

Because so many people have traditions that match their genetic background we've begun using the term Ashkenazi to mean strictly white, European Jewish people. Sephardi we have taken to mean strictly white, Iberian Jewish people (which doesn't even include the massive number of North African Sephardim). We've forgotten entirely to cover Mizrahim (a tradition associated with the Middle East), or the Romaniote, or Cochin Jews, or any number of other groups. Yes, genetic background accounts for a large portion of those people, but it doesn't map completely, and it's important not to forget that.

This complexity is why the statements Shira drew attention to:

"My character's dad thinks she said something about being Sephardic" "her fam has a fair amount of Sephardic culture"

Don't make sense. You would know you are Sephardic, because it's something you do first, and may be, secondarily, directly linked to something in your ancestry.

Finally, since you are showing a patrilineal Jewish person, I really encourage you to show them consistently engaging with their Jewishness, and actively participating in Sephardic culture. I'm the Conservative one here, and my movement, and Sephardi tradition (there are no movements for Sephardim, just varying observance) don't allow patrilineal descent to give a person Jewish status halachically. This is not something I endorse. Patrilineal descendants really struggle outside of Reform communities, to be seen as Jewish, and often to just be treated with respect, so it's important that you give this character every opportunity to participate, and show who they are.

-- Dierdra

#Jewish characters #Jewish culture #Sephardi #Ashkenazi #Jewish #Judaism #terms #asks

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qqueenofhades · 4 years ago

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Do you have an estimation how much racism or xenophobia Yusuf would have encountered traveling with Nicolo across Europe up to the modern ages? This is a very vague ask, forgive me. I wonder how much the concept of racism has changed over time. I have the vague impression that pre-modern European societies were always more diverse than one might assume nowadays, but I have little factual historic knowledge. I also wonder how much xenophobia Nicolo would have encountered.

And you would be correct! Because the “medieval ages were all lily-white and anyone placing POC in them is Wrong” is yet again, surprise surprise, another total lie that is a product of right-wing reactionary revisionism and not based on actual historical evidence. A couple years ago, I wrote a very lengthy post about historical people of color in Europe, starting from the Roman era and going down to about the 19th century (everything prior to the 20th century, basically). Obviously, it only discussed each example briefly, but there’s definitely more than enough there to debunk any idea that medieval Europe was monochromatically white. Iberia, Sicily, and other “crossroad” kingdoms had the most visibly and long-term settled diverse populations, but major cities such as London were ethnically diverse from their founding (which if you know anything about the Romans, truly, is obvious). There is extensive evidence for Africans and Muslims traveling to, if perhaps not settling in, early medieval Ireland and Britain (though sometimes they did do this, as there is a record of at least one African abbot of an English religious house). I also have this list of readings on the golden age of medieval Africa, including the richest king of all time and the various powerful empires that existed particularly in West Africa.

As noted in the Historical People of Color post, the crusades themselves, despite their obvious violence and bloodshed, were vehicles for cross-cultural exchange, which resulted in both Islamic ideas traveling to the west and western ideas traveling to the Islamic world. Medieval Christians were fascinated by “Saracens” as much as they were frightened by them, and there was a flourishing genre of “Saracen romances,” such as Parzival (one of the most popular romances of German medieval literature,which features the half-Muslim hero Feirefiz) and The King of Tars. These romances obviously display complicated attitudes about race and religion; the Saracen heroes are usually depicted as having to forsake their mistaken beliefs (usually some jumbled combination of paganistic polytheism rather than actual Islam) to complete their moral and emotional journey, and in King of Tars specifically, that results in an actual physical transformation for the Muslim sultan, the Christian princess’ husband, from black-skinned to white-skinned as a symbol of his newly gained virtue. Obviously there is an element of colorism at play; I wouldn’t call it racism because racism as a scientific term and “biological” concept was invented in the 19th century when, yet again, the West was busy concocting “impartial” reasons for its colonialism and “civilization” of supposedly inferior people. In the Saracen romances, however, the Saracen characters are not unsympathetic (if misguided), and the star-crossed lovers trope between Christian princesses and gallant Muslim warriors is played pretty much as you would expect it to go (with the implication that we’re supposed to root for him converting to Christianity so they can be together). As long as religious identity is correct, skin color doesn’t really matter or is at least less important, is viewed as mutable and changeable, and not the only marker of a person’s identity.

So in that sense, Yusuf and Nicolo would not be unfamiliar as characters in their very own star-crossed Saracen romance, and since we’ve already discussed the bonds between knights and how deeply romantic and emotional friendships were often the case even between men who WEREN’T lovers, it’s entirely possible that people would have understood them in that context. It also depends on how much time they spent in medieval Europe (as in DVLA, I have them traveling across the Eastern world for several hundred years after the crusades and not getting back to Europe until the Renaissance, when ideas and attitudes toward race and religion were once more undergoing huge transformation). Obviously, yes, there would be an element of xenophobia throughout history, and England (aha, hello Ancestors of Brexit) has in fact pretty much always been known for hating foreigners. But these weren’t necessarily foreigners of color; white Europeans from France, Italy, the Low Countries, Flanders, Bohemia, etc could all be viewed suspiciously by the English, especially post-Henry VIII and the religious break from Rome. (But this was, again, also the case before that happened, because apparently the English just suck like that.) This plays into the fact that as has been pointed out before, racism in Europe is cultured along very different lines from how it is in America, and takes into account geographical, cultural, religious, and other factors, as well as simply skin color. (Though colorism is usually also unfortunately part of it pretty much everywhere, since the ideal medieval woman was often thought to be blonde and blue-eyed, and fair coloring has always been positively correlated with morality -- just look at “Dark Magic” and “Black Magic” and all those other fantasy tropes of the villain being Dark.)

So basically, Yusuf and Nicolo would probably have been equally mistrusted in, say, 16th-century England (such as when they go there in the attempt to rescue Andy and Quynh in DVLA). They’re sodomites, for a start (this is right about when male homosexuality starts to enter the books as a capital crime), and Nicolo is Italian and therefore deeply suspicious as a possible papal agent. Yusuf might have actually made out better in that case, because Elizabethan England had fairly friendly diplomatic relations with the Ottoman and Persian empires (this is written about in the Historical People of Color post) and there was even an idea of Protestant England and Muslim North Africa allying together to attack their mutual enemy, Catholic Spain. Othello is obviously a product of this cultural context, with its dashing but doomed and tragic Moorish captain (see once again: the character himself is not unsympathetic, and is misled by the evil Iago). So many Elizabethan Englishmen settled in Muslim societies that there were attempted royal incentives to lure them back, and Yusuf would probably have been an exotic curiosity more than an existential danger. (As noted, they would almost certainly hate Nicolo more.)

In places such as Constantinople, where I had them live for a while in chapter 4, Nicolo would also be the more obviously mistrusted party. In a Greek Orthodox city that had substantial and long-term populations of Muslims and Jews, a Latin Catholic would be more the Enemy, because... well, sometimes we hate the people who are almost like us more than we hate the people who are obviously very different and therefore cannot be compared. Emperor Alexios Komnenos of Byzantium helped launch the First Crusade, at least in part in hopes of getting formerly Byzantine lands back from the Turks, but very quickly realized that he couldn’t control the crusaders and things went sour long before the trauma of 1204 and the sack of Constantinople; relations between Latin and Greek Christians had been at the brink of outright hostility for most of the crusades (though of course hostility was not the only experience between them). The Byzantine emperors were used to diplomacy and negotiation and trade agreements with their counterparts in the Islamic world, all of which was viewed as “consorting with the enemy” by the West. Besides, the Great Schism in 1054 had already broken the Western and Eastern churches apart after centuries of bitter theological disputes (these arguments may look like the most mind-bogglingly boring and tiny and insignificant details ever, but the battle over defining heresy and orthodoxy RAGED almost from the founding of Christianity in the first century). Edited to add further discussion on the nuances and complexities of the Eastern-Western Christian relationship.

So yes. As ever, the reception that they would have encountered is complicated, and it would not be immediately analogous to modern racism and Islamophobia. It would also be intensely mediated by their cultural, chronological, and geographic location, where sometimes Nicolo would (paradoxically) be MORE mistrusted by other white Christian Europeans. Not to say that Yusuf wouldn’t have encountered prejudice too, because he would, but not quite in the same ways as he would now, or that we would expect.

Thanks for the question!

#history #medieval history #history of racism #joe x nicky #sunrise-on-callisto #ask #the old guard meta

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ayearinfaith · 4 years ago

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𝗔 𝗬𝗲𝗮𝗿 𝗶𝗻 𝗙𝗮𝗶𝘁𝗵, 𝗗𝗮𝘆 𝟳𝟬: 𝗛𝗲𝗿𝗺𝗲𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗶𝘀𝗺 "As Above, So Below" -Common paraphrasing of the 𝘌𝘮𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘭𝘥 𝘛𝘢𝘣𝘭𝘦𝘵 Hermeticism is a religious/philosophical tradition from which almost all extant forms of Western Esotericism and Occultism stem, at least in part. It is named after the fusional philosopher/deity Hermes Trismegistus. 𝗘𝘀𝗼𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗰 𝗢𝗿𝗶𝗴𝗶𝗻𝘀 Esoteric tradition are broadly defined by two features: secrecy and magic. The word “esoteric” comes from the Greek word for “inner” as in “inner circle”, and typically include a doctrine of knowledge which must be kept secret and only revealed to the properly initiated. The magical aspect of these traditions, typically what we would call “the occult” is often a result simply of the veneration of knowledge; the allure and power is what you can do with it. In the West, meaning Europe, Western Asia, and North Africa (all connected by the Mediterranean Sea), Esotericism was largely spawned by a newfound multiculturalism as the Roman Empire and other states began to erode in the first century of the Common Era. Before then most Mediterranean peoples would have generally practiced some version of either or both a state religion, like the Roman Imperial cult, and an ethnic one, like the pre-Christian “pagan” religions, both more expressions of nationality and heritage than philosophy. As state powers dwindled, cultural boundaries fuzzed and fusional philosophies began to form, not tethered to any one people or state. Originally, the restricting of esoteric knowledge was likely not due to any sinister conspiracy or defense against the state, but simply the fact that they could not be easily grasped without a basic philosophical education. Hermeticism developed in this period during the collapse of the Ptolemaic Kingdom. The Ptolemies were Greeks who took control of Egypt after the collapse of Alexander the Great’s empire. Though they adopted Pharaonic aesthetics to better appeal to the Egyptian populace, the Ptolemies maintained a sharp divide between the Greek culture of the ruling class and the conquered Egyptians. In the years leading to the collapse these boundaries at last blurred and the Greek and Egyptian traditions began to mutate in earnest. Thoth, the Ibis headed Egyptian god if writing, science, and magic, fused with the Greek god of messengers and medicine, Hermes, to become Hermes Trismegistus i.e. Thrice-Great Hermes. As the tradition grew, it also incorporated many aspects of Judaism and the still-developing Christianity and Hermes Trismegistus became equated with patriarchs like Enoch or even Noah and Moses. Hermeticism generally employs three distinctive practices by which knowledge can be achieved, each one broadly attributable to one of the three major sources of the fusional system. Astrology, i.e. the observation of heavenly bodies as a means to discern the will of heavenly forces. was largely born from the Greek tradition. Alchemy, the investigation and pursuit for control over earthly transformations, stems from Egyptian metallurgy, knowledge of which was passed down through the priesthood. And Theurgy, the direct invocation of supernatural entities, stems from Judaism and other Levantine faiths. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗣𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗻𝗻𝗶𝗮𝗹 𝗙𝗮𝗶𝘁𝗵 Part of the continued influence of Hermeticism in western culture is that it has functioned almost like a time capsule of Western magic and philosophy. After its initial popularity, the rise of European Christianity and North African Islam (both occurring around the 5th-7th centuries CE) drove many esoteric traditions, Hermeticism included, extinct or underground. Almost no original 1st century Hermetic texts remain, and we know of them primarily by means of their being referenced in contemporary sources. However Arabic versions of 3rd-8thcentury Hermetic texts made their way into Europe around the 12thcentury and were translated into Latin. These versions would become popularized in Italy at the start of the European Renaissance. During this time rediscovering ancient knowledge from antiquity was popular and romanticized, and as all the Hermetic texts claimed to be authentic dialogues from an ancient Egyptian scholar (Hermes Trismegistus himself) the audience was very receptive. Another advantage Hermeticism had among the Renaissance was its relationship to the sciences. Hermetic teachings actively promote the use of the scientific method as a means to enlightenment. This is clearest in its use of Alchemy, which in the Egyptian method used religious allegory as a means of notation. This appealed to Renaissance thinkers who built an identity on rejecting the anti-intellectual dogma of their medieval forbears. Through Hermeticism, a scientist could also be faithful. This produced the distinct nature of the Renaissance scientist, wherein the person in the room most likely to be able to produce a chemical poultice or devise a new form of irrigation was also the person most likely to believe they could commune with an angel. Isaac Newton, who was deeply influenced by Hermeticism, is a prime example of this. Interest in Hermeticism died down near the end of the 17th and early 18thcentury, but came back a century later with the popularity of Hermetic derived organizations such as the Freemasons and the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, of which the famous occultists and Thelema founder Aleister Crowley was a member. Almost all modern Neo-Pagan movements have Hermetic ties, Wicca being the most direct. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗔𝗹𝗹 𝗶𝘀 𝗶𝗻 𝗔𝗹𝗹 Hermetic beliefs are centered on the idea that there is a single true theology which was once know to mankind in a far distant age and echoes of which can be seen in all natural philosophies and religion. The use of quasi-scientific methods, like alchemy and astrology (and even theurgy if you count the mathematics used in its numerology) were core to its principles as even the laws of physics should bely this Truth. The most popularly cited Hermetic wisdom is “As above, so below”, which at its most basic level is a belief in the relation of heavenly bodies to earthly events (astrology), but expands to imply that the workings of the most grand and transcendent elements of the universe can be perceived by observing the small and mundane, and vice versa. This fusing of two things, a kind of dualistic concept of unity, is a common Hermetic idea, which can be seen in its frequent use of sacred androgyny (here being used in its most literal sense; a fusion of man and woman). The concept of a supreme god, typically called The All, is explicitly androgynous, and the original humans were as well. The division of parts, in Hermeticism, is the source of strife and ultimately illusory. Similar to South Asian religions, which may have come directly or via West Asian influence like Gnosticism, the physical world is considered to be a kind of illusion and prison in Hermetic cosmology. Our more perfect androgynous forbears had access to the secret knowledge of the universe, but for various reasons (generally some form of hubris) became trapped in physical bodies incapable of realizing the potential of our transcendent souls. Only by pursuing the true wisdom can we again become free. Image Credit: Illustration of Hermes Trismegistus from 𝘝𝘪𝘳𝘪𝘥𝘢𝘳𝘪𝘶𝘮 𝘊𝘩𝘺𝘮𝘪𝘤𝘶𝘮 (“The Alchemical Pleasure-Garden”) by Daniel Stolz von Stolzenberg, 1624

#A Year in Faith #Hermeticism #Hermes Trismegistus #Esotericism #AYIF #Religion #mythology #Day 70

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elistodragonwings · 4 years ago

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Can we please stop with the “that’s not REAL Italian food you eat in the US, people in Italy don’t eat that!”? The Italian-Americans who invented those dishes were still ethnically and culturally Italian living in immigrant communities adapting their food traditions for their own consumption. To suggest that it isn’t “really” Italian because they became US citizens is to uphold the American white supremacist narrative that everyone must “assimilate” to the “dominant” American culture and give up their ethnic identity, thus taking a food tradition with it’s own history and evolution and turning it into cultural appropriation that’s somehow perpetrated by the very people it belongs to. To suggest to an Italian-American that their food is somehow fake because they’re citizens of the United States is incredibly insulting. Food is culture, not geography.

I’m not saying we shouldn’t ever qualify it as specifically “Italian-American food” - It is it’s own thing that should be delineated. But I don’t think this cuisine should always, only be qualified as “Italian-American food” either. We already use the generic label of “Italian food” to group together all the different regional foods of Italy (ex: pastries that originated in Southern Italy/Sicily and thus also with Italian-Americans are still called broadly “Italian”), so why shouldn’t we include Italian foods that were carried and evolved outside of the country’s borders by the same people, especially when those foods still have more in common with each other than with American food culture(s)?

I realize the internet has blurred regional terminology/concepts and favored US American perspectives, which is indeed unfair and presumably very frustrating to everyone else. Americans, including Italian-Americans, talking about “Italian food” often do lack awareness of where those Italian-American foods fit within the broader Italian culinary tradition. I just don’t think the solution to this problem is to deny a cultural subset their food identity.

If you find any of this relatable to your own foods and cultures, please feel free to add your thoughts!

#elisto #food #culture #italian food

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historic-old-guard-lover · 4 years ago

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Hi, I started following you because you provide or reblog historical perspectives that I, as a white midwestern American, was not exposed to. I was thinking recently of the American “ melting pot” of culture, and how that Nile would probably have been taught how “wonderful” it was, but then also been aware of the erasure involved in a “melting pot”, and how that would affect her interactions with TOG (food!) Do you have any thoughts on this, or know of a blog that could discuss the implications?

I’m glad I’ve been widening your horizons, Anon. The American “melting pot” is a tricky concept, even before we add in how immigrants are actually treated in the US. I think the biggest factor that plays into it is that Americans don’t like to acknowledge that there very much is an American mainstream culture and various subcultures. The melting pot is used most often to denote a cultural homogeneity that “immigrants” contribute to...but ignores that this is not true for all immigrant groups, that those who contribute were originally (and may continue to be) rejected and forced into immigrant enclaves, and that the pieces that integrate change as part of the process to the point where they may not be recognizable to the “original” culture. Let’s take an all-American example: pizza.

99 out of 100 Americans will say that pizza is Italian food. 99 out of 100 Italians would look at pizza made in America and call it American food. For something so simple, there’s actually a lot of differences between Italian pizza and American pizza including the crust, sauce, and toppings. So yeah, pretty much the whole thing is different besides being tomatoes on bread. The first pizzeria was opened by an Italian immigrant in the Little Italy neighborhood of NYC in 1905. It was sold by the slice because the Italian immigrants Lombardi was trying to sell to couldn’t afford to buy a whole pie. That’s why so many Italian immigrants lived in Little Italy: they were mostly poor Catholic laborers in a Protestant nation who got called ethnic slurs like “guineas” and “dagoes”. In the South, there were multiple cases of Italian immigrants being lynched and targeted by the KKK. Now that Italians are considered “white,” it’s easy to forget that they weren’t always considered that way.

(Note: this is not me trying to compare the Italian-American and African-American experience or engage in oppression Olympics. While Italians were never grouped in the same category as blacks and some of them contributed to anti-black racism, they were violently attacked in a different way than Northern European whites for not respecting the racial hierarchy. They were also targeted as a religious group, the vast majority being Roman Catholic. If these things were happening in our modern era, we might consider these Italian immigrants “brown” like some white-passing Hispanic sub-populations and likened them to the Muslim-American experience complete with reputations as terrorists. There are major differences with these three experiences, of course, but I mention them to remind us that race is socially constructed and changes over time. I’d be happy to discuss what it means that race is a social construct if people are interested.)

The story of Italian-American immigrants is one of eventual integration into the “melting pot,” but that’s not the case for all immigrant waves as you probably know. The other archetype, at least in my mind, is characterized by the Chinese immigrant experience. In the 1850s, Chinese immigration was encouraged as a cheap and exploitable labor source for unpleasant jobs including the construction of the trans-continental railroad where an estimated 15,000-20,000 Chinese immigrants died (which, you’ll notice is a ridiculous range because they obviously weren’t keeping track). Of course, cheap labor source is a wave of racism waiting to happen and white Americans began HATING the Chinese-Americans. by the 1860s you see state and attempted federal legislation to restrict immigration and segregate Chinese-Americans to second-class citizen status (such as requiring them to have a special license to run a business that white Americans did not need). By 1880, an American diplomat was tasked we renegotiating a treaty with China to allow for the restriction of immigration. When that only kinda-sorta worked, Congress passed a series of laws we now call the Chinese Exclusion Acts, which were not repealed until 1943 because of pressure from WW2. Though some parts of Chinese-American culture have become mainstream (eg. Chinese(-American) take-out food), Chinese-Americans and East Asian-Americans broadly have not been assimilated into whiteness. Kept at a distance from being “just American”, there are often immigrant enclaves (ie. Chinatowns) in major areas. This isn’t even touching the “Model Minority” mythos that Chinese-Americans need to grapple with as well.

I think what you’re referencing in your comment is mostly that being accepted into (white mainstream) American culture means intentionally obscuring those immigrant links. Nile may or may not be aware of the history of immigrant experiences in America, but Chicago does have immigrant enclaves both past and present from pretty much everywhere. I’d like to think of Nile as self-aware enough to have picked up on this. And uh, since you probably were also just looking for something light-hearted, nothing is more American that fusion cuisine! I think it’d be funny to have the Old Guard what Nile put like barbeque sauce on paneer as they all silently scream in horror and Nile is just like “what? don’t hate it till you’ve tried it” and then somehow after millennia on this earth Andy tries food combinations she’s never considered

#asks #lovely anon #the old guard #meta #nile freeman #america #melting pot #italian american #race is socially constructed #white #chinese american #chinese exclusion act #discourse #but lowkey #also some fun headcannons at the end #fusion food: americas legacy #asks so old theyve grown cobwebs #but i really wanted to take my time on this one

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