>> I mean, if it admitted any of the none-too-admirable reasons that
>>America is more non-white than Germany, maybe I wouldn't feel the
>>knee jerk desire to say something like "yeah, three cheers for
>>slavery, capitalism and imperialist adventures".
>
>If I hadn't spent the last 15 years of my life writing and talking
>about those things, I might think that comment was apt.
My point wasn't that you didn't or that you don't know, it's that these comments don't reflect that knowledge, and this is what makes people react.
>We could talk about the caste system in India, or Hindu-Muslim
>relations, or the BJP, or the propriety of a country filled with
>hundreds of millions of desperately poor people developing nuclear
>weapons, too. Is the U.S. the only country that's viciously
>stratified?
We could. Who's stopping you? The only reason it didn't occur to me is that it didn't seem to me (corrections welcome) that anyone here knows very much about the subject.
Do you realize how cliched you're being? First the "if you don't like it here," now "what about country x". Today it's India, but fifty years ago, it would have been the USSR. Again, it's a red herring.
And I have to say, one predicated on the assumption that my position wrt to India is the same as yours to the US. You may get jollies out of other people watching Titanic and drinking Pepsi, but I have no such (nationalistic?) feelings. Anyone who knew very much about India would assume so about someone like me, anyway (joke).
Props to Pradeep.
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