#uscentric

[alatismeni-theitsa]

Modern greek polithetists that obsess with the gods but hate greek people remind me of 19th century british colonialists. They love the ancient Greek aesthetics but wish we were all dead so they could have full rights to our culture actually :)

They worship the Greek gods, use the Greek language to refer to them, use some ancient Greek practices to communicate with them and yet they deny Greece is a state with its own social problems and ways of solving them. They know shit about how we feel when our culture is misrepresented for centuries because they think they own it.

And when we speak about it? They don't even get out of their US centric bubble to understand what we mean. Not everything we do is about American politics ffs. We shouldn’t have to speak while thinking “how will an sjw US American take this?” What about what... the majority of Greeks think of this? I had an American recently tell me “that sounds like X we say in my country to achieve Y thing” BUT I AM NOT TALKING TO YOUR F-ING COUNTRY AM I?

What you think I mean based on your own experience, doesn’t mean it’s the Greek experience

The entitlement of those people, I swear...

[alatismeni-theitsa]

On the American-centric views of race applied globally... These guys ace it!

[alatismeni-theitsa]

There's a video from the channel 'The Take' called "The Model Minority, Explained" and someone commented on that, that "We should start calling white people European-Americans" and I haven't agree more with something that regards race from USA's point of view

Also, many South African and Middle Eastern people who live in their native lands don’t see themselves as “Brown”. And there are also the people around Caucasos who are Asian, as well (correct me if I am wrong) and they don't call themselves “POC” while they live there. This identification might change after they move to an Anglophone country, but Americans are not talking about the people who live in their motherlands. So, even this model, even though it’s closer to the truth and the recognition of cultural diversity of a “race”, it’s still lacking. Not to mention... US Americans will call any light-skinned person “POC” as long as they are from a country they can’t locate on the map or they find exotic (exotic as “exo” = very different from the culture they know). Once they attempted to call Albanians POC, for example

[alatismeni-theitsa]

Greek-grammar-blog again and yes, from the US. "Fun" story, back when I was in high school some friends of mine wanted to start a cultural club. We had someone with German heritage and Scottish heritage asking me if I wanted to bring in as much Greek heritage as I could muster to the club for diversity. We proposed it to the school administration who told us "And what culture do any of you have?" and rejected our proposal, at a school allowing various Asian and "directly Middle Eastern clubs.

My god, what malakes...German, Scottish and Greek heritages are not the average American culture. But yes, I forgot, “white people have no (significant) culture” 😤 And this is probably the same school that taught Greek mythology to students! (But, I forgot, Americans never saw “Greek mythology” as part of a culture). I had Americans straight up telling me “Greeks have no culture” while being fans of Greek mythology. Like... where do you think this collection of myths sprouted from?? And don’t you think this culture is still alive and well???

Seriously, what godawful people! "And what culture do any of you have?"  SERIOUSLY????? What harm could it bring if children from European countries studied their heritage? Or do Americans think they know European culture and that American culture is the same as the ones of Europe and therefore those cultures are not worth studying?

It’s worth noting you didn’t take space from other cultures in the school! The only problem is that you didn’t LOOK diverse enough for the Americans to accept you have a different background. Americans and North Europeans spent so many years belittling us and oppressing us and then came around and said “You are white, you don’t know what oppression means”.

Plus, Greeks and middle easterners have a lot in common. Imagine allowing a middle eastern club but rejecting the heritage of a Greek, whose country was close to and under middle eastern Empires for centuries. I bet those people don’t have enough knowledge to even compare the Greek culture to the middle eastern ones but they will still decide what cultures are worth having clubs.

Just YIKES

[alatismeni-theitsa]

I am greek and anyway i don’t really mind the race bends but i hate when people attack me when i say there is no case i will ever see the gods anything rather greek-mediterranean like looking people. No i wont see them as black,mixed race,asian or looking like nordic european. It isn’t anything personal it’s just how i imagined them since i was a child and i don’t get if I don’t offend anyone why do they get offended?

Hello! I understand that you and I disagree on some matters but maybe we can find some common ground, as I believe our problems have the same root.

The reason they get offended is probably the same reason they do the race bending in the first place. They may think you are racist because you don't "expand your horizons" and see them as other races too. The same way I am supposedly a white supremacist for wanting the Greek gods to express the Greek people (aka looking like the overwhelming majority of Greek people and be depicted like they our ancestors chose to depict them in antiquity). In reality, our concerns don't come from a place of superiority, but from the personal connection we have with our culture.

Also a lot of foreigners think "how dare you seeing them as only white! That's boring because it has no diversity and white people are evil cause they colonized a lot of places and I don't want the Greek gods to be white!"

This way of thinking reeks of foreign entitlement. If you were an Indian and imagined Vishnu as an Indian man, would they tell you the same? If you were a Nigerian and imagined one of the Nigerian Orishas Black, would they accuse you? Of course not, because those races face some discrimination *in the West* and that, in the eyes of foreigners, makes them sacred in a way. ((Let me note that only westerners usually do this, because they only care of what happens in the West. If you ask a Chinese or a Ugandan how the Greek gods should be depicted, they will have the same opinion as most of Greeks.))

It's good that westerners have lots of respect for the aforementioned cultures. I am not saying those cultures don't deserve the respect of not race bending their native gods. I mean that woke Westerners don't extend that courtesy to our own culture cause our skin is light. They accept a homogeneous pantheon when it's full Brown or full Black because then this homogeny seems like diversity to them. (While it isn't because you only have one race in the pantheon. But it is like that for Americans because of their political situation).

I haven't heard any person in this site saying "the Nigerian Orishas are spirits so you can depict them in whatever race you want!" or "The old Mexican gods can be whatever race you like because they don't have an actual human body and everyone can worship them!". The offense they take when they see the Greek gods as only north Mediterranean comes from a purely American-centric point of view. Foreigners who have this pov shouldn't influence how we see our heritage figures or how our heritage figures are shown in the world. When it comes to other cultures they stay in their lane but when it comes to ours "it's free real estate!"

I took some time to explain my position, too, because some new followers may not have seen it. If you want to discuss or add something, feel free to send another ask.

[alatismeni-theitsa]

The Americans who want to regulate how the world sees the Greek culture: all the first ones

The Americans who support us (because they are aware we don’t have to cater to their culture and we are a country on our own): the last kid

[alatismeni-theitsa]

It's so easy for me to understand who of the people asking me things is a (non-Greek) US citizen because they usually have that natural entitlement and act like our culture revolves around them and their politics and we are bigots if we don't want that. At the same time they have no idea about the actual culture and the people. Fascinating!

(that being said, US allies of the blog you are awesome and appreciated!)

[animalrights101]

When we want to eat a steak, but a cow wants not to suffer and die, what’s the basis for resolving that conflict? [...] [W]e wind up choosing the trivial (and patently unnecessary) interest of the human in having a steak over the essential interest of the cow in living and not suffering only because one is a human and the other is an "animal." Such a choice would at least make sense, Francione argues, in a society that admittedly considered animals to be things. But we don’t, he says. Your Child or the Dog? opens with stats from various opinion polls showing that by and large we do recognize that animals are not objects. For example, two-thirds of Americans polled by the Associated Press in 1996 agreed with the statement, "an animal’s right to live free of suffering should be just as important as a person’s right to live free of suffering."

(x)