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I Used to Write for Sports Illustrated. Now I Deliver Packages for Amazon (2018)

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Re: I Used to Write for Sports Illustrated. Now I Deliver Packages for Amazon (2018)

#41

Post by barry-cotter »

WhompingWindows wrote: post #28
barry-cotter wrote: post #2

> It’s been healthy for me, a fair-haired Anglo-Saxon with a Roman numeral in my name (John Austin Murphy III) This is what assimilation looks like. Someone with an Irish name calling themselves Anglo-Saxon. It’s like a Hispanic person calling themselves Latinx, proof that they have lost all organic connection to the culture of their ancestors.

How do you "lose all organic connection to the culture of your ancestors" simply by calling yourself Latinx? You're surely not suggesting they abandon the traditions, holidays, food, music, clothing, dancing, and all of the rest of their cultural connection, simply because of one label? I am an Irish-American who plays the music, hates the food, but if I wanted to call myself of "European" ancestry, that wouldn't aba…

He didn’t call himself European, or white, utterly anodyne words. He called his name Anglo-Saxon. That you didn’t immediately understand the difference shows that you don’t get it. Which is fine. If you’re not Irish and don’t claim to be that’s cool. You do you. Americans do their American thing, Irish people do their Irish thing and we all happily exchange cultures and products and talk shit about each other as humans are wont to do.

Re: I Used to Write for Sports Illustrated. Now I Deliver Packages for Amazon (2018)

#42

Post by Swizec »

ipaddr wrote: post #23
Swizec wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are fighting words in Europe. We are very serious about our ethnicism. Akin to saying that someone from Philly might as well be from LA, it’s all just a city. Or that the Warriors might as well be the New York Yankees, it’s just sports. PS; this is why Italians, Irish, Polish etc weren’t considered white until pretty late into the 1900’s in USA – not anglo-saxon

That is nationalism. Northern French genes look like anglo-saxon or viking while southern France genes looks Ibarian or Italian. The generic pool in europe doesn't map to one country one set of genes usually. Some do better than others. At what point does someone become French considering it has been a melting pot for a long time?

In my experience the typical perception is that you’re X when your parents and grandparents are all X, hopefully also great grandparents.

There is a lot more melting recently. Europe historically has been pretty big on cultural identity because everyone had/has a grudge with their neighbors for trying to assimilate them at the edges.

Slavs for example (I’m from Slovenia) can trace or Slavic lineage all the way back to the 600’s and the fact we haven’t been assimilated into German or Italian despite being part of their countries for centuries is a point of pride.

There is still a recognized small German minority in Slovenia from back in the 1300’s when they tried to deal with the slavic problem by encouraging people to go settle in our area, which was part of the Holy Roman Empire but we of course wanted to keep it Slavic.

To be fair, as late as the 1940’s the germans were trying to germanize the slavs.

Some of these grudges are very fresh and ongoing. Look at how the Catalonians are fighting against being called Spanish

Re: I Used to Write for Sports Illustrated. Now I Deliver Packages for Amazon (2018)

#43

Post by pessimizer »

seibelj wrote: post #33
ipaddr wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People get forced to work in jobs they don't want to all of the time. The array of possible jobs could be one or none. If a basic income existed your point could be true. That's not reality today.

I believe that in the USA you would have a much harder time finding an able-bodied person who cannot find an available job vs. someone with multiple options. My news this week is full of stories of employers who cannot find enough labor. We are very far away from a jobs crisis.

You can take a job that pays a penny an hour, but you can't live on a job that pays a penny an hour.

Re: I Used to Write for Sports Illustrated. Now I Deliver Packages for Amazon (2018)

#44

Post by tweetle_beetle »

barry-cotter wrote: post #24
isomorph wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please can you explain more? I’m interested

Murphy is the Anglicized form of an Irish name, Ó Murchú. One of the author’s paternal line ancestors came from Ireland, a land conquered and colonized by the English, i.e. the Anglo-Saxons. It would be one thing to say he had a honky ass white name, a cracker name, that would be in the American says American thing, who cares category. But to identify as Anglo-Saxon, an ethnic category!?! Not terribly surprising give…

I feel you shouldn't punish people for the name they were given by their parents. Changing your name is a big existential act, which I don't think it's reasonable to expect. If you've had it drummed into you from birth that you are III then it's hard to escape. That person's views about what their name represents are their own though and can be challenged.

Re: I Used to Write for Sports Illustrated. Now I Deliver Packages for Amazon (2018)

#45

Post by ksm1717 »

This is a great parody of the WASPy romanticization of a hard days work. Plainly stating the classic implication that shitty jobs are actually humbling learning experiences when white. Even more comical because I don’t think it’s satire.

Re: I Used to Write for Sports Illustrated. Now I Deliver Packages for Amazon (2018)

#46

Post by School-Cotton »

deviantfero wrote: post #22
isomorph wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please can you explain more? I’m interested

On the hispanic comment, Spanish is a naturally gendered language, you cannot form a sentence without giving gender to at least the subject, for example "la doctora toma el café por la mañana" would translate to "the (female) doctor drinks (male) coffee by the (female) morning" because English is a mostly gender neutral language you would loose all gender information by literally translating that sentence. Now if we…

This is all true but I don’t think it was the main point GP was making.

Most “Latino” people are of at least part Native American or African ancestry; whereas “Latin” refers originally to speakers of Romance languages. Thus most (of course not all) “Latinos” who call themselves that are identifying with the subset of their ancestors who enslaved and conquered the others.

Re: I Used to Write for Sports Illustrated. Now I Deliver Packages for Amazon (2018)

#47

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

seibelj wrote: post #33
ipaddr wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People get forced to work in jobs they don't want to all of the time. The array of possible jobs could be one or none. If a basic income existed your point could be true. That's not reality today.

I believe that in the USA you would have a much harder time finding an able-bodied person who cannot find an available job vs. someone with multiple options. My news this week is full of stories of employers who cannot find enough labor. We are very far away from a jobs crisis.

> My news this week is full of stories of employers who cannot find enough labor.

If someone said this about employment in software dev there'd be a thousand comments about how there isn't a shortage of labor, just of labor at the price point businesses want to pay.

Re: I Used to Write for Sports Illustrated. Now I Deliver Packages for Amazon (2018)

#48

Post by bluedino »

deviantfero wrote: post #22
isomorph wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please can you explain more? I’m interested

On the hispanic comment, Spanish is a naturally gendered language, you cannot form a sentence without giving gender to at least the subject, for example "la doctora toma el café por la mañana" would translate to "the (female) doctor drinks (male) coffee by the (female) morning" because English is a mostly gender neutral language you would loose all gender information by literally translating that sentence. Now if we…

As a Mexican-American I have had to explain the term ‘Latinx’ to native Mexicans as well as other Hispanics and they all just kind of shake their heads.

Re: I Used to Write for Sports Illustrated. Now I Deliver Packages for Amazon (2018)

#49

Post by Mordisquitos »

deviantfero wrote: post #22
isomorph wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please can you explain more? I’m interested

On the hispanic comment, Spanish is a naturally gendered language, you cannot form a sentence without giving gender to at least the subject, for example "la doctora toma el café por la mañana" would translate to "the (female) doctor drinks (male) coffee by the (female) morning" because English is a mostly gender neutral language you would loose all gender information by literally translating that sentence. Now if we…

> That said, the latinx movement is kind of relevant in Argentina IIRC, but in most other latin american countries the idea will be met with a lot of resistance and rejection.

I would go even further than that. The US-centric idea of Latino as a unified identity (let alone with the x), often based on North-American stereotypes of Mexican and Caribbean cultures, can be off-putting in Latin American countries. As an example, here's the comedy-rock song «No Somos Latinos» («We are not Latinos») from Uruguayan band El Cuarteto de Nos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onQU3sp8_Jk

Re: I Used to Write for Sports Illustrated. Now I Deliver Packages for Amazon (2018)

#50

Post by barry-cotter »

Swizec wrote: post #13
the_lonely_road wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are not all white people Anglo Saxon? I don’t bother to call myself anything other than white, Anglo Saxon, European, Caucasian. It wouldn’t make sense otherwise. I have Irish, English, Italian, and post world war 2 immigrated Polish direct ancestors. I don’t know what else to call myself nor do I particularly care. I don’t have a strong personal sense of identity tied up with any of those things. They are just words…

Those are fighting words in Europe. We are very serious about our ethnicism. Akin to saying that someone from Philly might as well be from LA, it’s all just a city. Or that the Warriors might as well be the New York Yankees, it’s just sports. PS; this is why Italians, Irish, Polish etc weren’t considered white until pretty late into the 1900’s in USA – not anglo-saxon

> this is why Italians, Irish, Polish etc weren’t considered white until pretty late into the 1900’s in USA

This is not true. They were the worst sort of white, the worst sort of people, Catholics, but the US legal system went to great lengths to categorize people by racial category and all of the ethnic groups you named were always considered white.

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