[QUOTE="MonkeySpot"]

True Story:

I was taking British History at a college in London, and a fellow American student asked the instructor "Don't you celebrate the 4th of July? Why?"

Proud moment in my nation's history, that question...

:|

I wanted to reach out and slap the girl.

[/QUOTE]

Haha that's great!

Many of my former classmates from college are from Africa, they couldn't figure it out. In the end though they thought it was a pretty awesome holiday, they still couldn't figure out the fireworks though.

[QUOTE="Samslayer"]

[QUOTE="Darkman2007"][QUOTE="rwallacefan"] My question was an intentional joke :P stupid question, but why do people always say the continent of Africa and not refer to the countries within it? :oops:[/QUOTE] off topic of course, but only uneducated people would say Africa is some singular entity, its the same as people trying to put the whole Middle East into one basket, or East Asia.[/QUOTE]

I take offense to that darkman; I am far from uneducated, and I would actually say in certain cases I am over-educated. I only stated Africa, because many of my friends were from numerous countries within. I'd rather not list Ghana, Sierra Leone, Botswana, Mauritania, etc., so I simply said Africa.

The grouping of people by large geographic units is ignorant especially when stereotyping unique cultures. However, when the topic wasn't about any specific cultural group and simply there to point out the broad geographic area where people are from; I would see that as fine.

[/QUOTE]

I wasnt refering to you as such (in fact I didnt see you mentioned it), but I find that anyone who groups together countries over such a large area , is over generalising, and you generally find that people who over generalise, tend to be uninformed (although you can find plenty of people with alot of education who know little)

I think you would find for instance ,that Ghana and Zimbabwe are about as close linguistically, culturally, economically, etc, as the UK or Poland, I tell you as someone who is originally an outsider, that alot of people on the outside would see the UK and Poland as the same, but you know very well that those 2 are very different.

I wasnt meaning to offend you (as I said, I didnt even notice your quote), unless I misunderstood the context of the question.

although as a side note, looking at your statement, you did not call Africa a country, so Im not sure why youre offended.

[QUOTE="Darkman2007"]

[QUOTE="Samslayer"]

I take offense to that darkman; I am far from uneducated, and I would actually say in certain cases I am over-educated. I only stated Africa, because many of my friends were from numerous countries within. I'd rather not list Ghana, Sierra Leone, Botswana, Mauritania, etc., so I simply said Africa.

The grouping of people by large geographic units is ignorant especially when stereotyping unique cultures. However, when the topic wasn't about any specific cultural group and simply there to point out the broad geographic area where people are from; I would see that as fine.

[/QUOTE]

I wasnt refering to you as such (in fact I didnt see you mentioned it), but I find that anyone who groups together countries over such a large area , is over generalising, and you generally find that people who over generalise, tend to be uninformed (although you can find plenty of people with alot of education who know little)

I think you would find for instance ,that Ghana and Zimbabwe are about as close linguistically, culturally, economically, etc, as the UK or Poland, I tell you as someone who is originally an outsider, that alot of people on the outside would see the UK and Poland as the same, but you know very well that those 2 are very different.

I wasnt meaning to offend you (as I said, I didnt even notice your quote), unless I misunderstood the context of the question.

although as a side note, looking at your statement, you did not call Africa a country, so Im not sure why youre offended.

[/QUOTE]

No hard feelings!

Haha, if an individual calls Africa a country they deserve to be ridiculed :)! I just feel that I am personally aware of cultural sensitivities and differences from group to group let alone country to country, and I just wanted to make sure that I explained myself just in case if there was any confusion.

I'm a teacher, and cultural stereotypes is something I try to extinguish in my classes. It is amazing how many of my students think that Africa is just one big culture.