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ORIGINAL: BKSir

Meh, the only skin colour I ever really notice, to be honest, is when it's those cute, girly, subby Japanese boys.  GREEDYTOP!  You said you were sending me a half dozen of them as new toys for christmas!  Where are they!? >:(

I bet that damned UPS driver took them.  He seems the type that would steal my toys.

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ORIGINAL: Venatrix
Dastan, I was using the expression "fearsome to behold" less in a literal sense and more in a facetious one.  It was quite interesting, as an Anglo in Miami, to see a pecking-order in operation, and every Latino whom I came across accepted it as fact.  The Cubans were at the bottom of it and even *they* seemed to accept it.  I was talking to a Cuban woman once, and she told me she hated Cubans.  I just stood there, looking at her, because I didn't know what to say.  If you've been raised during a period of racial strife (the 1960s), as I was, and evolved out of it, to a degree, anyway, seeing a hierarchy in action like this was one of the more curious aspects about living in Miami, a city very different from the one in which I was raised (London)

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ORIGINAL: Dastan
Señor Boot Sadist, you are Venezuelan. ¿Is it a problem for you what specific ethnicity am I coming from ? Your country and mine almost went to war once and I guess you should recall that we often fight over a lot of things as nations, and i don't want to repeat history and do you wrong.

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ORIGINAL: FullfigRIMAAM1

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ORIGINAL: Venatrix
Dastan, I was using the expression "fearsome to behold" less in a literal sense and more in a facetious one.  It was quite interesting, as an Anglo in Miami, to see a pecking-order in operation, and every Latino whom I came across accepted it as fact.  The Cubans were at the bottom of it and even *they* seemed to accept it.  I was talking to a Cuban woman once, and she told me she hated Cubans.  I just stood there, looking at her, because I didn't know what to say.  If you've been raised during a period of racial strife (the 1960s), as I was, and evolved out of it, to a degree, anyway, seeing a hierarchy in action like this was one of the more curious aspects about living in Miami, a city very different from the one in which I was raised (London)

V I've only visited Miami a couple of times. They were enough for me to get the phony vibe, and decide I could never live there. I think fearsome to behold is perfect in describing the bullshit that makes people think they are any better or worse for being born in a certain place, etc...
Human beings are soo scary and evil to one another, particularly if they've been victimized or brainwashed into the "only ours is the pure/best" thinking that thinking is completely unnatural, and why that mentality will never work, while genes are looking for different combinations to survive. M

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ORIGINAL: PeonForHer

You make me wonder about something on an entirely different level.  That is, I've generally assumed that knowledge is better than ignorance on any given subject.  In the UK, I'm probably usual in not being able to tell a Venezualan from a Parugayan. a Colombian or even a Brazilian.  All of these would simply be "South Americans" and that would be that.  On the face of it, I think I'm better off not knowing the differences - certainly in terms of any "pecking order", anyway. 

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ORIGINAL: Venatrix

Oh, don't take what I was saying in a bad way.  I merely meant that this was my observation as an Anglo looking in at Latin American culture from the outside and from what my Latin American friends told me (in addition to my Colombian, I acquired a couple of Brazilians along the way).  Absolutely no value judgements were implied.  I found living in Miami to be quite the culturally eye-opening experience.  And I even learnt a truly wonderful phrase about fanning one's papaya. [:D]

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ORIGINAL: DavanKael

Interesting how racial/cultural bias was evidenced by the person complaining about it in the first place.  I am not slamming, however, just making an observation.  I think that many people are so-inclined, the tendency may be sublimated by political correctness but, as we see, it boils to the top pretty easily.  Again, not a snipe.  I think it's rather natural, really.  It'd be interesting to see honest discussion about that. 
Davan

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ORIGINAL: Dastan

The "pecking" order has worked for us, allowed us to advance, move forward after refinind, distilling and depurating our country, purging out the undesirable, incapable individuals out for the greater good. It may have had some costs, my own family paid it, but we all excelled and reached higher and further places with greater force and speed in less time, so Mr Boot Sadist may weep for the lost ones, but we laugh in joy for the ones who survived and proved their worth so as to advance all as a group. Maybe your country didn't need to have such pecking order because it already got to a given position or level where your progress allowed you to not have it, but if memory serves me well, there were some orders, or separations between groups of people...like Scots, Irish and the like, and one of those still survives, doesn't it ?  I can't tell an Scotsman from an Irishman, or an Englishman, but to me they are all British (at least those who claim the nationality and are loyal to the group it covers) and yet, i have still heard from some Scottish people residing here make some comments about Irish and they don't really like being confused with them.

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ORIGINAL: Dastan

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ORIGINAL: DavanKael

Interesting how racial/cultural bias was evidenced by the person complaining about it in the first place.  I am not slamming, however, just making an observation.  I think that many people are so-inclined, the tendency may be sublimated by political correctness but, as we see, it boils to the top pretty easily.  Again, not a snipe.  I think it's rather natural, really.  It'd be interesting to see honest discussion about that. 
Davan

My post was about the problem of a race for itself. Then i expanded it and explained that just like al white American people don't share the same cultural heritage that is the basis and cause of their personal intellectual/moral structure and customs or ideology, hence the differenciation between cities and the alienation or distinction of cultural groups such as "rednecks" and the like due to such, all Latinos didn't deserve to be put in the same bag and that prejudice is often created by such.....

Now, what I defend isn't RACIAL prejudice or discrimination, but more of a MERIT segregation because due to each coutnry's history and efforts as a people and as a nation or government, each country in the continent has gotten a given place on the scale, a level or grade, and just like there are Gold, Silver and Bronze medallists at the Olympics, and the rest are the losers who settle for the cold comfort and pathetic patronizing phrase of condescending pity "what matters is to participate, and give it your best regardless of the outcome or result" truth is my nation's merits, its people's merits, are different from city to city, region to region and all, but as a nation, we do have a common ground,a  common denominator or standard that is above other nations and to deny us of such is like to deny us of our own worth based on what we can do and what we have done.

But then again, it's impossible for someone outside our reality to understand why, because you didn't born and got raised in our culture and faced our challenges, shared a history and an identity and inherited a duty or debt to the nation.