I directed the link to the criticisms section because I believe it is of importance. Funny little tidbit in there: the term middle east was first officially used by the United States in a document about the Suez Conflict (source: Wiki). Now how does it make any sense to call somewhere arbitrary on a map "east"? Well, we here in American deem is totally fine to do so (I'm on this little George Carlin thing right now). But look at the map that is in this section: as you can see, there really is NO definition of the "Middle East". It's been changed and reworked and is completely arbitrary, but yet encompasses an entire part of the continent, much more diverse than our own country, and artificially puts them all into one homogeneous word. What does that say about us, or really anyone who uses the term without thinking of its implications?
No comments:
Post a Comment