2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forummucifer
(23,565 posts)DemocratSinceBirth
(99,711 posts)Two things stand out
- We were taught to address adults as Sir and Ma'am. I do it to this day.
-A heavy pro-integration, anti-prejudice message.
Great lessons !!!
riversedge
(70,299 posts)whistler162
(11,155 posts)hope you come in peace. Just don't pay attention to the gentleman with the orange face.
riversedge
(70,299 posts)whistler162
(11,155 posts)IronLionZion
(45,528 posts)America is diverse and that's what makes us great.
What's interesting is that back in the day people were worried about white immigrants from Italy, Ireland, Eastern Europe, etc.
Francis Booth
(162 posts)in the can, usually a generation or two. My Italian grandparents settled in the Bronx around 1910. It was the only place that Italians could get housing. They were considered filthy peasants, even though they were skilled stonemasons.
The city I grew up in, Worcester, Massachusetts, had distinctly Irish, Italian, Scandanavian, and Polish sections. If you veered too far off of your turf, you'd get your ass kicked for sure.
It seems kind of quaint today, but we still segregate newcomers. These days it's Vietnamese and Cambodians. Poorer cities like Lowell and Lawrence have seen white flight to suburbs, leaving the inner cities to Asian newspcomers.
I think the movie 'Gangs of New York' depicts this brilliantly. The Irish wave of the early 1870s were immediately shipped to the front lines and ground into hamburger. Nobody gave a fuck - they were hungry and were good fighters, so that's where they went. Today they run almost all of the big city and state political machines.
While our ideals were worthy, in practice we didn't do very well at welcoming immigrants. There seems to be a strong tribal instinct hard-wired into us, even to this day.
baldguy
(36,649 posts)America welcomed him, adopted him & made him a national symbol.
What happened in the last 50 yrs that we stopped doing that?
Bucky
(54,065 posts)Good one!
Moonwalk
(2,322 posts)....Yet he believed in "truth, justice and the American way."
underpants
(182,878 posts)The creators were Jewish and wanted to show how much they appreciated Anerica and how they felt they needed to contribute to it.
BlueMTexpat
(15,373 posts)information!
Moonwalk
(2,322 posts)Originally, at least. They were depression era boys from Cleveland, Ohio, and the father of the writer (Jerry Siegel) was killed (the year before he came up with Superman) in a robbery at the family's second hand clothing store. Originally, the character was very much a depression era superhero (a "strong man" like in the circus, which accounted or the cape and leotards), meaning he intimidated wife beaters and threatened bankers, and yes, protected the poor from the criminal activities of both outright thieves and greedy landlords.
He became more of the "all American" Superman fighting big "evils" with WWII.
Interesting, huh?
underpants
(182,878 posts)I was not aware of the background about Superman until I learned about it on DU. Your post was something I didn't know about until now. Thanks.
awoke_in_2003
(34,582 posts)was replaced with In God We Trust. Yes, that is very simplistic, but that little saying serves as a reminder that we are a nation made up of many different people.
Mendocino
(7,505 posts)Out of many, one.
That was the national motto until 1956 though never codified. Now of course it's In God We Trust.
My maternal grandparents came through Ellis Island from Germany in the mid 20's. They barely spoke any English. Yet grandpa got a good job, kept it through the depression and was elected mayor of their small town in the 50's.
brush
(53,849 posts)Thanks for reminding us.
Old Crow
(2,212 posts)Over the past two decades, I've seen the melting pot metaphor derided, often by people who don't understand it. One critic I read seemed to think it was a culinary reference, and was describing a melting of different ingredients (i.e., cultures) into a homogenous soup. This particular critic then suggested that America really ought to be considered a salad, with different ingredients tossed together, but each ingredient retaining its own properties.
To understand the melting pot metaphor, you have to understand its origin. It refers to the melting pot or crucible used in, first, the iron industry and later the steel industry. The idea was that by combining different elements--iron, carbon, nickel, manganese, chromium, tungsten, et cetera--you could get something stronger and more useful than any of the individual elements alone.
I understand the objections to the metaphor and think all immigrants should be encouraged to celebrate and retain the unique elements of their heritage. But I think the metaphor gets it more right than wrong: Immigrants to America should assimilate not to form some homogenous soup, but to make us all stronger, in the same way that elements are combined to make steel. E pluribus unum, indeed.
Francis Booth
(162 posts)metaphor exactly as you describe it. Many immigrants in those days did not teach their children the old tongue, believing that English was the only way to succeed.
I'm fine with people being bilingual, but everyone should learn English.
I'll probably get alerted on for saying this.
brush
(53,849 posts)it comes in handy. During the Iran crisis we were critically short of Farsi speakers.
Francis Booth
(162 posts)It seems like everyone in Europe speaks 3 tongues.
My Spanish is passable and would be better if I had someone to practice with. I have a neighbor from Columbia, but he's very assimilated and sticks to English.
For my money, though, there's nothing more musical than Italian.
brush
(53,849 posts)Last edited Sun Aug 14, 2016, 06:33 PM - Edit history (1)
Francis Booth
(162 posts)that I used to work in, and they had a very large population of Brazilian Portuguese.
Great food, and a beautiful people.
JackRiddler
(24,979 posts)Eight persons depicted, six of them identifiable as white -- including Superman. One black kid and one Asian very safely rendered as an adorable six-year-old. Not so far from the actual demographics of the time, the poster would look ludicrous today. That self-evident hegemony has declined, and it's had a number of white people in a moral panic ever since.
athena
(4,187 posts)Sexism is not even listed among the things that are un-American.
Crash2Parties
(6,017 posts)"...tell HIM" (emphasis mine).
I'd forgotten that when I was young, kids were still taught that groups of mixed or unknown gender should always be referred to with male pronouns. Because, you know, they are the ones who should not be insulted by misgendering them.
TonyPDX
(962 posts)Hortensis
(58,785 posts)"decency" movement, perhaps among some conservatives especially, apparently not especially tied to any particular ideology or religion but just a reaction to indecency that's reaching toxic levels.
TonyPDX
(962 posts)Hortensis
(58,785 posts)But I'll join it. We already normally don't watch TV news, though I confess I'm watching a lot of campaign coverage, mostly to see how they drive it.
7962
(11,841 posts)People I've known for years & KNOW they're not voting for Hillary, yet asking "why cant people just be NICE to each other even if we dont vote for the same person"?
Hortensis
(58,785 posts)We need it on both sides. For our part, non-conservatives really need to learn once again how to regard and speak with conservatives respectfully. We once did, back in the days when we didn't understand why they had become so hostile politically and were still thinking they'd become their old selves again. Maybe they are.
7962
(11,841 posts)I believe there was a quote from one of them along the lines of "Friends after 6, but before 6 its all politics"
DownriverDem
(6,231 posts)Back then the Dems and repubs stayed in town more. They interacted more. They compromised to get things done for the people. This will never happen until the repub party is totally defeated.
classykaren
(769 posts)RapSoDee
(421 posts)Kashkakat v.2.0
(1,752 posts)"NEVER AGAIN." I remember very clearly the lessons of Nuremberg trials being openly stated in the classroom - if you see your government is doing something wrong or evil its your obligation as individuals to stand up and do something about it.
On a visceral, feeling level that I find whats so abhorrent about this current rise of Neo-facism in general and Trump's blatherings in particular - just goes against everything we were taught about what was right and just and American.
underpants
(182,878 posts)The creators wanted to depict how Jewish immigrants appreciated this country and how they wanted to contribute to this country.
Snarkoleptic
(6,001 posts)The demographics race were losing badly, said Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.). Were not generating enough angry white guys to stay in business for the long term.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2012/08/29/b9023a52-f1ec-11e1-892d-bc92fee603a7_story.html
Hekate
(90,793 posts)"Truth, Justice, and the American Way" really meant something to me, as did messages like the one in the OP cartoon.
reACTIONary
(5,771 posts)Faster than a speeding bullet , more powerful than a locomotive, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound - Look! Up in the sky! It's Superman! Strange visitor from another planet, come to earth to fight for truth, justice, and the American way!
Now I'll Google and see if I got it right.
Announcer: Faster than a speeding bullet! More powerful than a locomotive! Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound!
Voices: Look, up in the sky! It's a bird! It's a plane! It's Superman!
Announcer: Yes, it's Superman, strange visitor from another planet, who came to Earth with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men. Superman, who can change the course of mighty rivers, bend steel in his bare hands, and who, disguised as Clark Kent, mild-mannered reporter for a great metropolitan newspaper, fights a never-ending battle for truth, justice and the American way.
Hummm, not terribly wrong but not super memory
See my sig line.
Akamai
(1,779 posts)tclambert
(11,087 posts)That's why the Trump wall must be coated with kryptonite.
Doctor Jack
(3,072 posts)Quite progressive for back then
ailsagirl
(22,899 posts)jtuck004
(15,882 posts)white_wolf
(6,238 posts)DemocratSinceBirth
(99,711 posts)It should be updated to what heterogeneity looks like today.
jtuck004
(15,882 posts)'cause to be really accurate, Superman would also need to point out that for that black kid there might not be a legal voting age, and he might not be able to drink from the same fountain.
A public exhortation to live up to our ideals would be a good idea. We sell everything else, that would seem to be as important.
We can drop the superhero. We need to be advertising toward adults, because broken adults can't produce whole children. Accidents happen, but mostly that is the way it is.
Everyone teaches by example. Until we start living like we tell the kids they are supposed to, no poster is gonna make much of a difference.
jtuck004
(15,882 posts)go home and raise the kids on a steady diet of tv showing a white super man.
What we say and what we teach are often two different things.
It's been way too long, but I went through what I could find on youtube, and I did not see one black character on tv superman from the 50s.
This episode was special for the Treasury Dept to encourage savings, - still no black folk, but the guy who says he is a burglar because he never learned to save cracked me up.
From Wiki - Tye (2012): "Weisinger stories steered clear of the Vietnam War, the sexual revolution, the black power movement, and other issues that red the 1960s. There was none of what Mort would have called touchy-feely either, much as readers might have liked to know how Clark felt about his split personality, or whether Superman and Lois engaged in the battles between the sexes that were a hallmark of the era. Mort wanted his comics to be a haven for young readers, and he knew his right-leaning politics wouldnt sit well with his leftist writers and many of his Superman fans."
Maybe that was why we saw a mostly white world.