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SLAVES built this country. And illegal aliens, can't forget them. Oh, and American Indi--oops, I mean Native Americans.

White culture celebrated? I've heard that before, and I'd like to know what those people are smoking. White culture is dissed, not celebrated. Whites are taught self loathing as far as racial history and culture are concerned.

And blacks? Well, if what I learn in school is any indication, they have no culture aside from the civil rights movement and trying to overcome oppression and stuff. Come on. All the names of famous black people I know were civil rights activists. I know they made contributions to society in areas other than civil rights, but they never teach us anything about it. It's really kind of annoying.

Right, slaves magically made all the infrastructure appear. The only real whites were a captain of a slave ship and a plantation slavemaster.

Oooh kira, I have so much material and ammunition for you - but you may know of it already?

Slavery began in the old country, a way of life for Arab slavetraders (even in the bible! Joseph was sold as a slave) who would routinely get slaves from Europe, Africa, and their own backyards.

Slavery is still in Africa today. It is not a practice invented by the tribes of Europe. It is a thing black people have been doing to each other for millennia. Why aren't they marching against the Sudan? Where are Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton and other protesters against black oppression?

Feminists are against oppression of women, right? Why didn't they speak out against the Taliban when we heard the reports of them beating women in the streets for showing their faces? Why don't they say anything about clidorectomies that is common in Islamic and African cultures? Where is the million women march about that?

And - one of the poets of the nation was a Negro slave. The builder of our capital was a black freedman (I think). One of our most famous scientists was born in slavery. HMMM.....now how come they didn't need civil rights to accomplish great things? I wonder.

Why are literacy rates lower among blacks after civil rights than they were in the first half of the 20th century?

I'll stop now, but there's sooo much research on this...

Slavery in other countries? Yes - my family knew a man whose wife claimed her father sold her to an Arab when she was a child. She was a blonde woman, a native speaker of French and had two teenage children, both very dark, evidence of her previous marriage. I have no idea what the whole story is since I was so young when we met them.

I didn't actually go this year because they stopped doing fireworks at the place my family usually goes.... but there was a large amount of Mexicans there every other year. I mean, it was mostly Mexicans. But then again, that town is mostly Mexican now.

In a differently legal way.

Yes. I was being sarcastic. They probably think. "It's not our country, why the X@#$ should we bother following its laws?"