Music Banter - View Single Post - Thanksgiving- Racist Holiday

DontRunMeOver · 11-03-2005, 04:52 AM

To start off with, I'm not from the US, so my knowledge of this will be pretty patchy.

The whole genocide issue is both sensitive and terrible, so I certainly wouldn't argue with people who have problems with celebrations relating to such an event. As far as I know, the genocides took place a long time after the first settlers (whose success Thanksgiving celebrates) arrived and set up camp - so you should be able to make quite a clear historical separation between the two events. Were any of the original settlers personally involved in the genocides? As far as I know, they weren't.

Also, I disagree that using the trees, animals and crops which they encountered constituted stealing on the part of the settlers. The natives believed that you couldn't own land or animals, while the settlers believed that you could. Use of the natural resources may have been some kind of insult to the culture of the natives, yet not using them would have been just as much of an insult to the culture of the settlers.

Maybe the celebration is racist, I would expect that the same label could be applied to a lot of celebrations all over the world. That would depend on how you interpret the word 'racist'. Its certainly a good word to use if you want to get people's attention and make them think a bit...

11-03-2005, 04:52 AM	#3 (permalink)
DontRunMeOver They call me Tundra Boy Join Date: Sep 2005 Location: In your linen cupboard. Posts: 1,166	To start off with, I'm not from the US, so my knowledge of this will be pretty patchy. The whole genocide issue is both sensitive and terrible, so I certainly wouldn't argue with people who have problems with celebrations relating to such an event. As far as I know, the genocides took place a long time after the first settlers (whose success Thanksgiving celebrates) arrived and set up camp - so you should be able to make quite a clear historical separation between the two events. Were any of the original settlers personally involved in the genocides? As far as I know, they weren't. Also, I disagree that using the trees, animals and crops which they encountered constituted stealing on the part of the settlers. The natives believed that you couldn't own land or animals, while the settlers believed that you could. Use of the natural resources may have been some kind of insult to the culture of the natives, yet not using them would have been just as much of an insult to the culture of the settlers. Maybe the celebration is racist, I would expect that the same label could be applied to a lot of celebrations all over the world. That would depend on how you interpret the word 'racist'. Its certainly a good word to use if you want to get people's attention and make them think a bit...