8 p.m.
I also have Finnish and German colleagues who do work in Africa- and depending on the
cultural issues are- well- complex- take Rwanda for example- where discussion of ethnicity
are outlawed:
https://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/09/world/a-decade-after-massacres-rwanda-...
https://apnews.com/article/rwanda-genocide-anniversary-explainer-hutu-tut...
https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2019/03/28/rwanda-has-ba...
https://apnews.com/article/us-un-congo-rwanda-conflict-m23-rebels-232db27...
And as the US gets more diverse- I continue to think there will be more of a need to
identify some universal principles of culture- my guess- some sort of return to old
fashioned liberalism/conservativism- somewhere in there- unfortunately- the current
multi-cultural framework in academia is anti-integrationist in nature (e.g., separate
graduations by race for example is currently considered progressive in academia)- and the
idea is more like European multi-culturalism- which resists universals also- where
cultural groups self-segregate and maintain their own norms, language, believes, religion,
neighborhoods etc. etc. except for perhaps work- if they are among the educated class-
likely not otherwise. And even for the educated class- they have their own norms- so
divisions then occur by SES-
Sociologists are also looking at dismantlement of “White America”- or “Americans of
European Ancestry” is the current term- I was called a “Euro” once in a meeting- had to
ask what they were talking about- “I have some Euros from my last trip to Germany- but
they aren’t on me”…the libertarian sociologist Charles Murry who wrote the Bell Curve (we
can have a different conversation about that one)- put together a “bubble quiz” you can
take to illustrate the growing divide and shrinking middle class in white American-
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/did-you-grow-up-in-a-bubble-these-zi...
The questions are interesting-
Have you ever held a job that caused something to hurt at the end of the day?
Do you now have a close friend with whom you have strong and wide-ranging political
disagreements?
Have you ever had a close friend who could seldom get better than Cs in high school even
if he or she tried hard?
Have you shopped at Walmart in the past year?
Have you ever walked a factory floor?
You can see how “bubbly” you are- more for you all to help us figure out- MDB