Change, backwards and forewards

[thereisnomagic]

As many of you are not Americans, and most of you are even younger than I am, you may learn even more from "The Meaning of Box 722" than I have. The post has something I have never seen published before: copies of the letters people mailed to their congressman, in this case in the mid-1960's. It's what people had to do before blogs and e-mail.

We

Comments

[chaos_monkey]

Just read the Washington Post article.

Not surprised so much by the suggestion that other nations have deep and entrenched problems with racism too (we/ they do - no word of a lie) as by the enormous arrogance about the importance of America that this article displays...
"Millions of Africans would surely treat an American president of African descent as "their" president, just for a start.."
Really??? Its not as if they fought for decades against colonialism and oppression in order to get to elect their own presidents - they'll just be jolly pleased that America has elected a black President for them. Obviously.

Does all American journalism have that not-so-subtle undertone?
(actual question - please respond).

[thereisnomagic]

Well, the Washington post editorial and opinion columns are only "journalism" in so far as they are printed in a newspaper. There have been cases where the editorial in this paper is on the same subject as - but ignores and contradicts the reality of - an article on the same paper's front page

[deathlyphil]

I can't believe someone could write something like and not realise how offensive they were being.

What I don't understand is why America holds on so tightly to its history of slavery. Britian had slavery, so did France and most of the other major European powers. So why have we moved on and America hasn't?

[thereisnomagic]

I have written a long reply, which ended up as my latest post...