69 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 6-24-19”

  1. Good morning everyone but Jo
    Good evening Jo.
    We’re up early this morning. No reason to be, we just are.
    Elvera’s TV is not working. I get “NO SIGNAF” and the procedure I usually use to bring it back doesn’t work.

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  2. Morning, Chas and all the rest of you.
    Well I have had a week off and now it is one month until school begins. Still trying to figure out this new math curriculum. I got it put into the term outlines for terms one and two. My aide and I are getting the classroom organized. She works so hard at cleaning and getting it together. I am copying things and organizing things on the computer. Then we have someone visiting who is here to help so we are trying to keep her busy, too.
    I have curriculum questions, but there is no one here now who can answer them. Waiting for our grade one teacher to return, who will be our principal in January, who knows all.

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  5. Well, good morning Chas, and evening, Jo. A beautiful day here. Off to chores and maybe do something about getting some starts from the honey berries, some folk at church expressed interest.

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  6. This from the “Politics” thread:
    ““Psychologists Can’t Figure Out Hardly Anyone Wants To Date A Trans Person”

    I hadn’t thought of this before. But people who want to change the gender (I started tow write “sex”, but you can’t change the sex.) of a child. This leaves the person alone in the world. Who is she/he going to marry?
    Who is she/he going to date? What will he/she do in high school, but be the butt of jokes.?
    SAD

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  7. Morning! Oh how brightly the sun is shining this morning, casting beautiful shadows on the forest floor. The birds area singin’ and we are going to have a lovely week of temps in the 70’s. We may just have tasted of the beginning of summer ☀️ And that means we shall attend a baseball game on Wednesday with a couple of friends….can’t get much more summery than that!! 😊

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  8. Good Morning Everyone. Dentist, show property, go to a home inspection, then staff meeting. My husband made the comment this morning that I compliment what good grandfather’s my dad and my father-in-law were but I never compliment him. He obviously needs to clean the wax out fo his ears!

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  9. This is big news here. https://www.al.com/news/mobile/2019/05/toll-opposition-dominates-i-10-mobile-river-bridge-project-hearing.html

    A few of you have driven this stretch of interstate. Can a state place a toll on an interstate highway? I thought interstates were governed by the Federal Government. It will be interesting to see how this plays out. There is a lot of opposition and now it is coming out that a toll company in Australia is funding this and will receive payment for 50 years. Our state government is selling us out.

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  10. I’ll send him a note.

    Today, finally, life returns to a semblance of normal.

    And then I looked at the calendar.

    Now that there’s space in my life, I’m getting the car washed, going to the dentist and getting a mammogram. Who arranged those events back to back????

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  11. In other VBS story news.

    The theme was “The Incredible Race,” built around the story of the Tower of Babel.

    As I indicated, the teacher kids in the before VBS half-an-hour whom I oversaw, spent a lot of time with plastic cups and ping pong balls. They built towers most of the time.

    My husband borrowed the cups (I had about 100) and had his 5/6 grade boys build a tower under his directions (Color selection of cups, height, width, and so forth).

    They built a tall structure. (Then had the fun of knocking it down).

    He then told them they had to build like the people after the Tower of Babel–without speaking to each other–in the same pattern.

    They got frustrated by not being able to give each other directions and eventually broke into three groups and built their own towers.

    He laughed. “You proved the lesson. That’s exactly what happened with the Tower of Babel.”

    When they couldn’t communicate, they separated themselves into their own tribes.

    Curious how timeless God’s lessons are, isn’t it?

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  12. Elvera never compliments me, as I remember.
    Matter of fact, I don’t remember getting any compliments. I’m sure I have, I just don’t remember any.

    A guy, many years ago, said, “You teach a good lesson.” I don’t remember anything else.

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  14. Kim we have I25 in CO and the voters approved a tax to add a lane between CO Springs and Denver. Well CDOT decided that third lane should be a “toll lane”….umm we just gave them money to add the third land and now it will be a toll lane costing drivers more money to drive it!!?? Let’s just say taxpayers are not happy but CDOT at every community meeting said they know better than us. I hope ya’ll have better success at stopping this madness than we have had…..

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  16. Now you have blown it, Michelle. He was looking for the applause of the One and now he has had the applause of mankind….

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  17. Peter, from yesterday, ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ was made in the style of Bollywood and featured a couple of very well known Bollywood actors (Irfan Khan, playing the police officer, and Anil Kapoor, playing the game show host), but was produced and directed by Americans. Indians actually resented the film’s depictions of organized crime, sectarian violence, and extreme poverty, complaining that it misrepresented India. The thing is, that Bollywood films make such depictions all the time. I have certainly seen frothy romantic comedies, over-the-top adventure flicks, and sentimental family films that depict the upper and middle classes in Indian films, but I have also seen very well made Indian films that depict cultural problems such as political and judicial corruption, terrorism and organized crime, human trafficking and prostitution, honour and caste culture, rape and violence against women, and systemic poverty with gut wrenching realism. But, like all groups of people from nations to families, Indians can say whatever they like about themselves, but any outsider who says the same thing is going to be immediately resented.

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  18. Speaking of VBS, I hear we had forty one or so signed up for the week, though of course not all showed up every day. And at the end, twenty one children made professions for Christ. What that exactly means, only God knows the heart. But lots of discipling in the coming years.

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  19. I was not surprised at the small number of attendees, (they usually have around seventy children) because they had a difficult time staffing the program this year. I am not surprised to hear God was moving. Smaller groups can make that easier to see.

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  20. Roscuro – “like all groups of people from nations to families, Indians can say whatever they like about themselves, but any outsider who says the same thing is going to be immediately resented.”

    Yeah, like when African-Americans get upset at the use of the ‘n’ word by a white person, but say nothing when one of their own uses it.

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  21. Peter, groups of ‘white’ (I prefer the term European) people do exactly the same thing. People from the Canadian province of Newfoundland, whose unique accent is mostly derived from their primarily Irish ancestry, are masters of self deprecating humour, and often tell ‘Newfie’ jokes about Newfoundlanders who are so dense they completely miss the obvious in hilarious ways. My Eldest In-law is from Newfoundland. He ‘gets’ Newfie humour (and having a Ph.D., he is not at all worried about being thought dense), but I recall when we were still getting to know him, my father, who loves to tell jokes, told a ‘Newfie’ joke. Future Eldest In-law, tongue in cheek, replied with his own ‘Newfie’ riddle, “What is black and blue and red all over and floating facedown in St. John’s Harbour?” [St. John’s is the capital of Newfoundland]
    The answer was, “A mainlander who tells Newfie jokes.”

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  23. Kim – Our former governor wanted to bring back tolls on Connecticut highways (maybe even more than there used to be). Part of our new governor’s campaign was that he was against tolls, as are most – probably almost all – of the citizens.

    Well, guess who is now pushing for those tolls? Yup – our new governor. (And yes, he is a Democrat.) He is also supporting greatly expanding what the sales tax can be applied to.

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  24. I think the reason that many blacks use the n-word is to de-fang the word for their own use, but it still has fangs when used by whites. They have a different connotation in it for themselves. (Not sure how else to explain that.)

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  25. Mumsee, white is a artifically constructed racial term, based on a superficial characteristic of skin colour, that conveys no useful information as there is no significant biological difference between human beings of different skin colour, which is a biological characteristic. The term European speaks more accurately to ethnic origin – while still maintaining a wide enough general reference – as ethnicity speaks to cultural* and linguistic* distinctions that do influence thought patterns and ways of living.

    *European cultures are commonly influenced by Celtic migration, the Greek and Roman Empires, as well as Germanic invaders (i.e. Gothic, Teutonic, and Viking) that shaped European civilization, while the modern European languages, whether Romance (French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, etc.); Germanic (English, German, Dutch, Swedish, etc.) or Slavic (Russian, Polish, Ukrainian, etc.) have all been shaped by the languages spoken by the Celts, Greeks, Romans, and Germanic tribes.

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  26. Note that the term ‘white’ is not only biologically meaningless, but also has a highly arbitrary application, being based in reality on European origin. This becomes glaringly apparent when considering those tribes who originate from Central Asia, such as the Pashtuns, the Kohistanis, or the Pamiris. People from these tribes are frequently as pale skinned as any European [and the difference in European skin colour varies from light to dark between Scandinavia and the Mediterranean], and may be blue or green-eyed as well as brown-eyed, and have varying shades of hair colour from black to blond, but they are not considered ‘white’, because they are not European.

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  27. “white” also seems to be on its way to becoming a derisive term in many circles in the U.S. 🙂 No one wants to be “white” now.

    Very uncool.

    I suppose since “white” was identified with what was the elitist/ruling class status quo for so many years, it is now being turned on its head and used derisively.

    Even back in the late 1970s, early ’80s I remember my Italian-American boyfriend insisted he was not “white.” My Italian-American editor insists the same. Nothing worse than being white.

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  28. Thanx everybody. But I wasn’t fishing for compliments. Mumsee nailed it at 10:30
    Occasionally, not often, Elvera says, “I’m glad I have you”. I tell her I love her often.
    A good word to someone, if disserved, is always good.

    Tolls have always been used to pay for the particular stretch of road we were driving on.
    But there was a toll between Richmond and Petersburg that brought in lots of money for Va. until they completed the interstate bypass.

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  29. Ethnic origin? Huh? Sounds like artificial construction to me. My understanding is that we all came from the same garden a few years back. We have the same culture of sin. We use artificial designations (Europe? Celt? Slavic? to comparmentalize. Doing so by color is not much different. The descendants of a person born in this country four hundred years ago should have similar cultural and linguistic processes as everybody else born in this country. Same as Africans whether white, black, Hispanic, Asian. They are no longer from HIspaniola or Asia. I get the impression that people separate but then come back together and separate and come back together in different groups.

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  30. Well two of my girls always said I had “peach” skin, not white 🙃 And then there was the time a neighbor took along my daughter to her daughter’s dance class. Little did I realize it was for “show and tell” purposes….seems Brianna wanted to show off her “black” friend! Upon arriving home the mother was very concerned that our daughter corrected hers when referred to as “black” . Our daughter corrected her daughter announcing “I am brown”!!! Mother wanted to know if we objected to our daughter being “black”!! I explained to her daughter was quite literal as her skin was indeed brown and that was how she preferred to be seen….Mom left the porch quite aghast. Our daughter no longer went to said dance class with neighbor child……

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  32. Mumsee, differences in language create differences in culture. See also the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11:9). Those ethnic differences coming from culture (which is shaped by a people’s history) and language create barriers, but they also convey important information, which, when identified and understood, can be used to bring unity. It does no good for a missionary to say: “Well, we are all one people from Adam, so I am not even going to try to identify how I might think differently, due to my historical cultural and linguistic origins, than the people I am trying to reach. I will just act the way I always act and speak the way I always speak and these people will understand me because we are all from Adam.” A wise missionary will identify, continually, the differences and similarities between their own culture and the culture they are ministering to in order to be an effective witness. Paul did that, interacting with Jews and Gentiles on their own cultural terms so that he could more effectively share the Gospel (I Corinthians 9:19-23). Pretending cultural and linguistic barriers are insignificant to the sharing of the gospel is foolishness.

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  34. Roscuro, understandable. I am not talking about missionaries. I am talking about people who have shared a location for four hundred years. You would think their children would have played together and picked up some stuff, and their children and so on.

    And then there are differences in this country, as in yours. People in the northeast are similar to those in the northwest, but there are differences. As with the South, and the Southwest, and the Central. But as we move around, we pick up new stuff and bring old stuff to the table. We blend.

    I expect to be able to communicate with those around me.

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  35. Let me put it this way. We are all agreed that God created both male and female humans in His image (Genesis 1:27). We are all agreed that in Jesus Christ there is neither male nor female, that both sexes have equal standing before God. Now, the orthodox teaching is that while marriage will no longer exist in the resurrection, male and female will still exist. Resurrected humans will not become neutered beings, the diversity between male and female will still exist.

    God created the division of language, and thus culture, at the Tower of Babel, and that division was reversed at Pentecost, with the coming of the Holy Spirit. But as was pointed out in the message I heard preached at Pentecost, the Holy Spirit did not reverse the Tower of Babel at Pentecost by making the diverse languages into one unified tongue. Rather, He caused the Gospel to be preached in all the diverse tongues: “How is it that each of us can hear in our own native language? Parthians, Medes, Elamites; those who live in Mesopotamia, in Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs—we hear them speaking the magnificent acts of God in our own languages” (Acts 2:8-11). The Spirit created unity within diversity, rather than making unity without diversity.

    The Apostles were unequivocal, that all nations and tribes are of equal standing before God, just as male and female are of equal standing before God (Galatians 3:28). But the vision of John in Revelation (7:9-10) shows resurrected people of every tongue, tribe, and nation praising God, and speaks, when describing the New Jerusalem, of the nations bringing their glory to the city (Revelation 20:24-26). I find the diversity of ethnicity and culture, their languages, their history, their music, their creativity, to be glorious, although that glory is diminished by the taint of sin, and I see human diversity as much reflecting God’s creative power just as the diversity of plants and animals reflects His creativity. I get excited by thinking how that taint of sin be removed in the resurrection and the full glory of each culture is used in the worship of our Lord. How beautiful the melodies of the Celts, the rhythms of the Wolof, the harmonies of the Chinese, the instrumentation of the Arabs, and the scales of the Hindi will sound together when we sing together the praise of our God!

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  36. Rosuro, totally agree. But I don’t believe we can keep people in a box.

    You are of European extraction, so therefore you must….
    You are of African extraction, so therefore you must….
    Etc.

    I join you in celebrating the languages and the cultures. I do not like the idea of disrespecting a group of people for their anything. Language, dress, behaviour, music, etc.

    Though I can dislike music or dress or language that is disrespectful of people.

    But I do not believe any of this “belongs” to a certain group. It is either okay, or it is not okay.

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  37. For a sample of what that cultural diversity of worship might sound like, this piece is a combination of French Celtic* bagpipe with Senegalese drumming and I first heard this piece as the end credits of a Chinese film:

    *Breton, from the Celtic province of Brittany in France. France, known to the Romans as Gaul, was Celtic before successive waves of the Romans, the Teutons, and finally, the Vikings, known as Normans, formed it into what we now know as France. When the Angles and Saxons invaded Celtic Britain after the collapse of the Roman Empire left their British colony vulnerable, some Roman Celts fled to Gaul (France) and formed what became the province of Brittany. The Breton language, still spoken in portions of Brittany, is a Celtic language related to Scottish Gaelic, Welsh, and Irish.

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  38. I certainly would not care if others started wearing hand me down polo shirts, old lady pants with the elastic waste that are not blue denim, and hand me down sweatshirts with their hair in a ponytail.

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  39. My experience with international worship was in the international churches in Greece and Italy. Amazing and such a blessing!

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  40. Roscuro- Since some “whites” are form Central Asia, how about referring to them (us) as Caucasian? Blacks form Africa are “negroid”, but I don’t know how you would classify the dark skinned peoples of India and the Pacific Islands. then there are those from the Far East who are classified as “mongoloid”. Using these terms might be okay, but any term could be used derisively. Mumsee has the right idea- We are all humans and descend from the same ancestors.

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  41. We could have attended all Italian churches, or all European, or all Nigerian, or all Korean, etc. But we preferred the mix. It was neat to see a bunch of people acting like a bunch of people, worshiping God together, from all over. Different languages, different music, different clothing styles, different stories, but the same prayers and the same concerns for family.

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  42. Mumsee, I am talking about people who have shared a location for four hundred years
    The Jews lived among Europeans for two millennia, and the two thousand year record of European antisemitism, from the expulsion of Jews from Rome (Acts 18:2) to the Nazi Holocaust, show that time is no creator of unity. Sin will always use God’s gift of diversity* to justify destroying other human beings.

    *Twice in Genesis, God takes away something from humans in order to preserve them for salvation. He first bars them from the Garden of Eden so that they could not attain eternal life by eating the Tree of Life, because to eat of the Tree of Life after sinning would have condemned humanity to a living hell with no hope of salvation (Genesis 3:22-24). It is because humans die that Christ died for us (Romans 5:17). At Babel, God divided humans by language because without that division, we would have become wholly self satisfied and self absorbed, forgetting God’s mandate to fill the earth (Genesis 11:6-7). Diversion in language and culture made us spread throughout the world as we were commanded, twice (Genesis 1:28, 9:7).

    It is sobering to reflect that God deliberately scattered the Church at Jerusalem, through persecution, in order to fulfill Christ’s command to go and make disciples, just as He scattered humanity through confusing language (Acts 1:8, 8:1,4). God always thrusts humans away from finding stability and security in anything but Himself. If we flee, like Jonah, from what He told us to do, He will rock our boat until we fall – or are pushed – out. All Christians, not just commissioned missionaries, are called to fulfill Christ’s commandment. The unknown Christian writer of the early church document, Epistle to Diognetus aptly summed up the Christian status as strangers and pilgrims (Hebrews 11:13, I Peter 2:11) on the earth: “They [Christians] dwell in their own countries, but simply as sojourners. As citizens, they share in all thing with others, and yet endure all things as if they had been foreigners. Every foreign land is to them as their native country, and every land of their birth as a land of strangers.”

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  43. That is all correct and good.

    The Hebrews moved to Egypt voluntarily and were told by God to maintain their culture, tradition, call by God. They did and they were enslaved because the Egyptians became fearful and forgot history.

    We, as believers, are called to be in but not of. We are to live where God puts us, or calls us, for Him. Understood and agreed.

    We, as people, move around. If we don’t assimilate (as you tell us the missionaries are to do when serving in foreign lands, and it certainly makes sense), we will not learn the language or the foods or the clothes or the culture. If a person moves to Canada, what do you expect of them? If you move to Australia, what do you expect of you?

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  46. We had a toll on our bridge spanning the harbor for many years (it opened in the early 1960s, replacing the ferry that transported port and cannery workers to and from work).

    There were little booths where you’d have to stop to pay your toll (I think it was 50 cents but may have started out as a quarter — those of us who went across regularly bought coupon books that lasted for several months). We all got to kind of know the toll guys & gals, one of them was a crowd favorite as he was always so upbeat friendly.

    On holiday nights, when traffic was slower, it wouldn’t be uncommon for drivers to pay for the car behind them as a gesture of good will and holiday cheer.

    Then, sometime in the 1990s, it was announced that — at last! — the bridge was paid for!

    What?!

    The toll familiar booths were ripped out 😦 (the state transportation workers who manned them were transferred to other posts, reportedly) and driving across was suddenly and completely free.

    Funny, but many of us lamented the little personal touch that, while complained about at times, was very much a part of our daily lives and the experience of going and coming to work every day for so many years.

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  47. By the way, I am not advocating that anybody forget their past. I have no problem with celebrating cultures. But I don’t have a problem with a Girl Scout from one country dressing to depict a different culture at her culture days celebration. It is not appropriation, it is celebrating diversity.

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  48. Peter, both ‘negroid’ and ‘mongoloid’ have also been used derisively, while ‘causcasian’ and ‘white’ were both used from similar motivation – to establish who is superior and inferior in a physically diverse society.

    I mentioned yesterday, in talking about Indian films, that one gains insights from seeing films from other cultures. One of those insights has been into racism and the terms ‘white’ and ‘black’, Causcasion, Negroid, and Mongoloid – all terms based on superficial physical characteristics based on archaic science [modern genetic studies has shown that genetically, there is more genetic variation within each so-called race than there is between the different ‘races’]. I am sure you all know about the Hindu cultural issue of caste, and the plight of those considered Dalit (untouchable). What you may not be aware of is how castes are identified. The answer conveyed in films dealing with the issue is a strangely familiar one, skin colour. Darker skinned people are of lower caste.

    The historical record shows that the terms such as Caucasian or ‘white’, Negroid or ‘black’, and Mongoloid or ‘yellow’, were used by European colonists for the same reason Hindus use terms such as Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaishya, Shudra, and Dalit: to create class division based on superficial physical characteristics. Such systems of grading people by skin colour do not emphasize the glorious diversity of languages and cultures or even the creative glory of genetic variation. Rather the terms are used tear down those with one physical characteristic in order to elevate those with another physical characteristic.

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  49. Mumsee, If a person moves to Canada, what do you expect of them?
    To obey the law and not commit criminal acts (theft, murder, etc.). Beyond that, bring on the cultural diversity. It makes life more interesting (see description of parade witnessed yesterday).

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  50. Back to toll interstates – the Ohio Turnpike, Pennsylvania Turnpike, and New York Throughway are all interstates, as are many of the toll roads in the Chicago area. The state is responsible for maintaining and policing them, so I guess they have authority to set tolls too.

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  51. By the way, it should be obvious the Sikhs both preserved their tradtional culture and assimilated to Canadian culture. They clearly knew enough of Canadian language and law to legally organize a parade and get Canadian law enforcement to supervise it. As I mentioned, I saw them all the time on campus, getting a university education, along with many other types of immigrants – there were a lot of Eastern European (‘white’) students who spoke their Slavonic languages among themselves. I often wished those who complained about immigrants not learning the language could have heard visibly Sikh (the turban) or Muslim (the hijab) students talking on campus or on the bus. Blindfolded, they would have been completely indistinguishable by their speech from any other Canadian, using Canadian slang and expressions in abundance.
    Of course, not every immigrant can speak English or French (we have two official languages) equally well, as some have not been here long enough to learn it well, or are, like many a Canadian born here, just not good with languages. Not all missionaries become completely fluent in the tongue of those they minister to. Our mutual friend is extremely fluent (indistinguishable from a native speaker on the phone), and is highly gifted with ability languages, but there were others who had spent years on the field and still spoke poorly accented Wolof littered with grammatical errors. Not everyone learns a new language equally well, even with practice.

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  52. Peter probably has something to add to this, but languages are best (and most quickly) learned at very young ages — which is why many young foreign-born children end up as the family interpreters for their immigrant parents. It’s best for schools to catch them in kindergarten with an immersive language curriculum rather than relying on the “second language” classes later on. Or simply “immerse” them in the new language and most very young children will start to pick it up quickly.

    Many people where I live recall coming here as children from Croatia and Italy. While those languages were still spoken at home, many say they picked up English quickly. Adults have a much harder time.

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  53. Yes, you expect them to follow the law and know enough of the language to do so. But by following the law and learning enough of the language, they are trimming off some of their old ways and putting on the new. We don’t expect people to live in a cultural block of their own (China town, etc), and we should welcome them to the table. We should not go to a country, ignore the laws and language, demand they speak ours, and hide in our corner.

    And we have a lot of people in this country and presumably in yours, who believe the same. We then, after some time, have a shared culture. It is not us against them, but us. Not all looking the same, but with many similarities. And people begin to understand that we are all the same inside.

    I don’t believe we have a toll road in Idaho.

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  54. Mumsee, We should not go to a country, ignore the laws and language, demand they speak ours, and hide in our corner
    Aptly summing what was wrong about the European colonist treatment of the other people of the world in a nutshell. Ironically, if Canadians of European descent had observed the rules many European Canadians expect new immigrants to observe, we would be speaking such languages as Ojibwe, Mohawk, Mi’kmaq, Haida, or Inuktitut, and observing the laws, codes, and customs of the First Nations and Inuit. British colonists had a derisive term for those of their nation who did try to accommodate to the colonized cultures – they called it “going native” and it was decidedly discouraged. Hudson Taylor was even criticized by other British missionaries for wearing Chinese dress, learning to speak Chinese, and living outside the British quarter.

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  56. My understanding is those were conquered nations, not people moving into a country. Whether or not colonization was correct is neither here nor there, it happened. When you take over a nation, you do expect to change things.

    Again, those earlier residents all came from the same area as we did. We are all people. Some of them may have killed off the people who came before them, as so often happened in Europe. Nobody actually knows but it happens. I doubt anybody will be willing to go back to where they started, or we would be very crowded in the Fertile Crescent region.

    When is the last time you saw colonization happening?

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  57. Last year, in Nunavut. I have talked about the subtle, and not so subtle racism I saw law enforcement show to the Inuit.

    Colonization was not conquering nations. Had the nations that were colonized been outright conquered, as the Romans did with their Empire, they might have been treated with more respect and felt less resentful. Human nature generally respects a fair fight. But, as Rome knew all too well, empires by conquest are very costly, both in money and men, and Europeans were out for profit. Colonization was planting corporations – e.g. in Canada, the Hudson’s Bay Company; in India, the East India Company – to make profits from trade, and then taking over the political administration of said country in order to keep the profits flowing. Canadians are still pushing the First Nations around in the name of profit, with the latest pushing being about increasing oil production.

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  58. I haven’t read this whole thread yet, since I need to get back to work. Peter, not Caucasian. I skimmed Roscuro’s answer, so I think she said something of what I am going to say, but to me that term is way too “parallel” with “Negroid.” Now, as you know, the word negro simply means black (in more than one language). But used for a person, it has negative connotations.

    In one of my social studies books, somewhere around fourth or fifth grade, we had stereotyped drawings of people of four of five races (the “caucasoid” was blond with blue eyes, and I have blue eyes but medium-brown hair, so none of them actually fit me). The “negroid” had medium dark skin and very pronounced features, and I think they had a race darker still, if I recall correctly. They also had a “Mongolian,” and Mom clarified for me that “Mongoloid” didn’t work because it was a prejudicial word about those with mental handicaps. But to me that is exactly what Caucasian pictures, a gross stereotype from a 1970s (or earlier) social studies book. “White” in contrast is neutral. European-American works in some contexts (when the European heritage is relevant).

    I could not bring the African-American gentleman I edited a few years ago to understand that, though, when he insisted on using “caucasian” throughout his manuscript, and “First Nations” for American Indians (that is not an accurate term, as it refers to Canadian “Indians”).

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  59. Kevin- I believe some of those roads you mentioned, especially the PA Turnpike, existed as toll roads before the Interstate system started in the 1950s. Now the Interstates are called “freeways” because there aren’t tolls on the new ones. I don’t knw if Uncle Sam prohibits a state from making one a toll road now, though. There was talk in Missouri of making I-70 a toll road from St. Louis to Kansas City in order to afford an upgrade to 6 lanes. It hasn’t happened, and probably never will.

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  60. Well this doesn’t have much to do with the discussion but it did cause me to recall what a reporter said on national news when a terrorist blew up a bakery in France. She said he was “African American”…well not he wasn’t….he was black and he was French….see how things can become so….ummm…well…ridiculous

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  61. I am a white skin here. There are folks from one of the islands here that are truly black skinned. When you see them you know immediately where they are from. I was in Singapore awaiting a flight and my friend said that our flight must be in because that man is from that island.

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  62. Jo, I thought of Papua New Guinea and also Southern India, as places, where people were dark skinned as anyone from Central Africa, but wouldn’t be classified under the North American term of ‘black’, because they were not from Africa. Then there are the north African Berbers, who look like southern Europeans in terms of skin colour, but are not classified as ‘white’. Further examples of just how arbitrary and essentially meaningless use of racial terms pertaining to physical appearance are. I do not often have to fill out census questions about race by skin colour (Canadian questionnaires usually ask more about ethnic origin), but when I do, I chose ‘prefer not to say’ in quiet protest of there being such a category. I have been referred to by West Africans as tubaab and by Inuit as Qallunaat, but both terms mean foreigner or stranger, rather than literally referring to the colour of my skin. Oh, my skin colour was noticed – I stuck out like a sore thumb in West Africa, since I cannot tan (much to my physical discomfort, since I burned whenever I forgot sun screen) – but the language does not distinguish the stranger by skin colour. A dark skinned person of sub-saharan African descent – of which I encountered a few in Nunavut – would still be called Qallunaat by the Inuit.

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  64. yuck, hate the noise of a lawnmower right outside my window. Time to go to school

    Good news is that my bougainvilla just got moved to a much better spot, where I can enjoy it. The funny part is that the temporary gardeners let it grow and it was covering my kitchen window several years ago. I had them cut it down and dig it out. All of a sudden this year it reappeared in the same spot and had a shot 8 feet long. Now it has been moved to the property border where it can grow and grow, I won’t mind.

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  65. Wesley came home yesterday. We have been busy. I read some of the comments and discussed a bit with Wesley. Someone he suggested that might be interesting is Jemar Tisley. I have not listened to all this You Tube yet but thought I would share in case anyone else may be interested.

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  66. I have mentioned my daughter in law is black/white. Her dad is from California and her mom from Panama so apparently Panamanians are considered black as well. Soooo…it comes back to what I have said all along: we are people. We all have different life experience, we all need God and His salvation. We all have something to offer on this planet.

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  67. Colonization sounds to me like a misuse of people and should not be done. But God has used it. Conquering others is a misuse of people and should not be done. But God used it. People have been taking lands from other peoples for as long as we have had more than a few people. It is going to continue even if we don’t like it.

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  68. Then there was the young man who was born in South Africa, but was of Dutch or English decent (I forget which). His family moved to the US and became citizens. He applied to a college and tried for the African-American scholarship. He was denied because of his fair skin, but won the award on appeal since he was truly an African-American. Even immigrants from Egypt are African-American.

    I worked with a black man who said he didn’t want to be called African-American because he wasn’t from Africa and had never been there. He preferred “black”. He also told me that if there were racial unrest, I would be safe from the blacks since I am Puerto Rican, even though I am fair skinned. In PR we are called criollos, which translates to Creole, or one of pure European heritage.

    Yeah, we’re all just members of the human race.

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