Miracle at St. Anna

[SarahG]

The Tuskeegee Airmen weren't exactly a "dream team" either in their time and didn't get much recognition until the mid 1990's . They weren't a favored topic at my private school, Beaver Country Day in Chestnut Hill, MA either (I still get picked on to this day about the doofy name).

Which is partly why these movies are so important, usually it is the only way these stories can be told for the general public... if we are to assume we as a society no longer read, no longer buy books, and no longer knows material that is not presented to them on cheesy, brief, hour long cable-tv shows.... then failing to get it out there, via (to use the Roman bread & circus analogy) "the circus" mediums, will cause people to not know of the events in question.

Racial issues make so called 'elitists' uncomfortable. Threads like this make people uncomfortable from all walks of life. Hell, they even make me uncomfortable because these are topics I usually only feel free to discuss in forums, both straight and transgendered where people don't get attacked for pointing out racially motivated problems. To bring things up to date a bit if I can, the progress in race relations in the to regions you've mentioned have improved markedly because of sacrifices our military and theirs have made before many of us were even conceived. I have a middle-aged Black female friend who's been in Germany visiting her military family in Germany for the past three weeks. She loves her home here in the States but doesn't want to come home just yet because of the way she's respectfully treated there. Another Black couple I know visited Paris for one week and stayed a month.

I can't say I am surprised, Richard Wright had moved to France for that very reason back in the 40's, not long after Native Son.

There's this myth that some radical conservatives try to proliferate, believing that Europe is ungrateful for the Americans who fought over there... but that really doesn't hold up. I can't say I've ever heard of veterans visiting over there (even when not there in conjunction with various war-related ceremonies) and finding a cold reception, or one which varied by the ethnicty or color of the American in question.

The idea of Europe being ungrateful, or hostile, tends to be a way to justify whatever course of action we make as a country, "everyone else be damned"- and the history is usually glossed over in the process. Part of the reason why I dislike WW2 movies, as a genre, is because they're usually so over done, and because at the same time they tend to gloss over the specifics, leaving the viewers with a very inaccurate, incorrect view of what had gone down over there. IIRC the director who did the Patriot also did Saving Private Ryan, and certainly took a lot of liberties with both pieces in ways that gave errous, if not dishonest views of the British (and the British are mysteriously absent from the later piece).

With racial and ethnological issues taken into consideration, the genre does largely lend people- by content omission- to see WW2 as an All American, all White-American undertaking "against pure evil [nazis]"

Our school textbooks are not much better, meaning the few books that people do read on these subjects (so that they can graduate from K-12) will never lend them to knowing that the Canadians took one of the beaches at Normandy, or that there was a reason behind the Zimmerman Telegraph --the Kaiser didn't just wake up one morning and propose to Mexico that they form an alliance against the United States- the true story there, the story that never makes it into our textbooks.... is that a few American soldiers visiting Mexico had gotten drunk and raped a few Mexicans, they were caught, and imprisoned for it- leading to an international incident. The Wilson admin was furious that "those mexicans" would "dare" hold our troops in prison for such allegations, so we used threat of military force to require the Mexican government to salute our flag. The mexicans tried all kinds of alternatives- but we wouldn't budge, destroying US-Mexican relations in the process.

It was in response to THAT, that the Kaiser saw the tension and proposed a military alliance with Mexico against the United States. There was nothing impuslive about it, but I'd challange anyone here to find a K-12 textbook that explains why the zimmerman telegraph was sent... I'll bet you that the most you'll ever find, if anything at all- is the idea that Germany merely wanted the Americans to have a two-front war.

History is absolutely everything about not what we chose to remember... but what we chose to forget.

[IsuckTgirlCock]

The Tuskeegee Airmen weren't exactly a "dream team" either in their time and didn't get much recognition until the mid quote]

lee archer might argue otherwise. they never lost a bomber when escorting bombers over germany on over 200 sorties. they were the most requested escorts, the redtails, of any group available during that part of the war. they were well known even back then, at least thats what ive heard from guys who were there

[KiraHarden]

I'm into WW2 history and looking forward to seeing this movie.

Plus it has all black cast. Yummy.

Black men are so Hawt

[melissacarter]

Black men are so Hawt

I agree on all fours.