Reading about other countries

I pretty successfully observed May's Asian Pacific American Heritage Month (I probably could have done better), and so the next two posts are going to be about things I read, with bands that I listened to during May having already been reviewed.

Before that, I want to revisit a question from five years ago. No, I hadn't realized it was from that long ago until a laborious search through my archives.

There had been a lot of talk about white pride on Facebook. No, the talk wasn't so much about the toxicity of white supremacy, but aggravation that everyone was allowed to be proud except for white people. I did write about how it was possible to connect to your heritage without making it a matter of white supremacy, with a little bit of background on when being "white" started being a thing, but there had been another question that inspired two blog posts.

I can link them at the end, though looking back at old posts I see them as being embarrassingly uninformed and wordy, but the question itself was not so much a sincere question as a complaint that why stop at having a Black history month and a Native American Heritage month? Why not study every country?

Without making you read those posts, my answer was that in telling the story of US history we often neglect to cover how much of the building and fighting and planning was done by people who were not white men. There has been that unbalanced view of history for long enough that these special months give us a chance to correct. Sure, honest and integrated history would be better, but having months where we focus on marginalized groups can prepare us to understand that big picture.

Even at the time, though, I thought about how making a point of studying a little about every country would teach us a lot. I have tried to incorporate that a little more into my life, but I have some additional thoughts now.

When I was doing my War is Hell reading, there were some reminders about this via the history of the Philippines, and US involvement there. That was reinforced a bit later as one of the other narratives spent some time in a refugee camp in the Philippines.

In addition, I have heard many times how it seemed odd that the US would have been on the side of North Vietnamese Army instead of the Viet Cong. After watching the documentary, that was a direct result of our relationship with France. Our presence started while France was still in control, and continued to support the government France left, even though many Vietnamese were not happy about that. Russia was happy to offer them the support we didn't. Colonialism strikes again.

Yes, reading about different groups and their experiences within the United States is important, but that is not the full sum of our history. Things we have done in Central America are affecting many lives today.

The interactions are often complex. Maybe it was the Soviet Union who invaded Afghanistan first, but supporting the freedom fighting Taliban there had consequences here.

It is not always the government. Reading about the actions of Dole or Coca Cola in other countries might tell us some things too. Maybe they are things we aren't going to want to hear, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't know.

There are good things to know too. For example, one thing I read about was Burma going all nativist and kicking out foreigners, and absolutely devastating their economy that way. Maybe we could learn from others instead of repeating the same mistakes.

It's at least worth thinking about. You know, rather than being condemned to repeat it.

http://sporkful.blogspot.com/2013/03/why-have-special-history-months.html
http://sporkful.blogspot.com/2013/03/why-have-special-history-months-part-2.html