Best Links US: Culture

BestLINKS US: Cultures and Lifestyles, minority, womens, mens major links BestlinksUS

First, Who we ARE

We are peoples of various, colors, races, ages, genders, heritages, statistics. This page explores minorities, counter-culture music and alternative thinking, and the new rage, "WOKISM."

US Population: 333 million

Census Map shows US counties with urban areas containing the most dense populations.

Civilization is made of many cultures: racial, national, religious, gender, and many more. Contemporary thinking holds that humans are naturally tribal and tend to form groups originally for tribal survival but the tendency runs as deep as it does for some animals who live in packs.

Culture a word for the 'way of life' of groups of people, meaning the way they do things. Different groups may have different cultures. A culture is passed on to the next generation by learning, whereas genetics are passed on by heredity. Culture is seen in people's writings, music, clothes and cooking in what they do.

--Simple Wikipedia Longer Version Wikipedia

Alternative News
Click to Read Stories

Gender Cultures

Women's Issues

What is Feminism? Wiki Simple English

Men's Issues
What is Men's Rights Movement n Wikipedia

Gay Rights Issues LGBT Wiki Simple English

This link may not be suitable for everyone.

URBAN LEAGUE

-Blacks, Hispanics, Natives Undercounted by US CENSUS

Native American Cultures

Native Americans in the US Wikpedia

The ancestors of contemporary American Indians were members of nomadic hunting and gathering cultures. These peoples traveled in small family-based bands that moved from Asia to North America during the last ice age; from approximately 30,000–12,000 years ago, sea levels were so low that a “land bridge” connecting the two continents was exposed. Some bands followed the Pacific coast southward, and others followed a glacier-free corridor through the centre of what is now Canada. --fm Encyclopedia Britannica

A grim history. Like black Americans, disorganized Indian tribes suffered, mostly from the elements and that they did not have common languages and had no schools to pass on knowledge. Then came the European explorers in the 1600s. Europeans thought the world was smaller than it was and they had reached "India" so they called the natives in this new land, "Indians." They were wrong. It was a new continent and to the other side, the vast Pacific Ocean.

The Natives of north America were pushed by white colonialists from their open lands across the forests, mountains and vast plains. Many of those not killed fighting for their open land were rounded up and put on small reservations in only about two hundred years-- by the late 1800s. Their numbers severely dwindled.

The Indian cultures had deep respect for the land but unlike Europeans, had no concept of land ownership by individuals. They did fight with other tribes over territory and scarce foods. For most of their history, they hunted buffalo and other game until the game became depleted, resulting in great starvation. A large number died of disease brought over by Europeans--disease of which they had built up no natural immunity.

Until the last hundred years or less, the US government and its laws reflected the racism of their European ancestry. After the American Revolution against Britain, the new government paid their soldiers in land plots they did not own--Indian land. That is a story whites have downplayed over the decades until the movie industry and authors truthfully told in TV and film, such as "Roots", and "Dances With Wolves."

History: Native Americans
American Indian People Britannia
Indigenous Life Movement FB
A site dedicated to American Indians

Indigenous Civilizations Wikipedia

History Channel: Native American Cultures

African American Culture

HuffPost - BlackVoices

Mostly kidnapped and enslaved from Africa starting in the1600s before the British colonies became a nation of its own, the "Black" African Americans became the largest minority in the US. For them, life was cruel and disrespectful under their white masters. Black slaves were forbidden to learn how to read and write; slave families were broken up and children were sold separately and runaway slaves were hunted down and often killed.

Census map to the right shows still the most densely African American populations remain in Southern counties.

Their numbers were largest in the plantation South where landowners bought large numbers of slaves to work their cotton fields. But beginning in the early 1900s, a half century after their legal emancipation, many migrated from farm work northward to urban cities for better opportunities.

Descendants (many eventually of mixed parentage of white slave owners) now are finding legal equality following the Supreme Court's Brown v Topeka Board of Education rule in 1954 for equal and integrated schools. The court ruled that racially separate schools cannot be equal under the Constitution.

A decade later, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 passed by both political parties and signed by Democrat Lyndon Johnson. Blacks had finally won legal gains that ended most segregation laws.

Even so, actual integration in government and schools with help of the courts took another twenty years because discrimination was politically hard to end in many cities.

Black Americans' battle continues yet there has been progress. Barrack Obama became the first black President in 2008 and now more black faces are seen in government (usually just when Democrat presidents are in office) and in more walks of life including achievement in the arts, education, medicine and business. Even so, wages for most blacks and other minorities still fall well below white worker salaries.

Below are links as the black culture celebrates its achievements and struggles for a larger slice of the American dream.

Black Past

Black History FB

Black News Magazines

Black Voice News

Charlamagne Tha God FB

Radio host Lenard "Charlamagne Tha God" McKelvey is an entertainment mogul who has earned a reputation as one of the most authentic voices in BLACK media over the last two decades. Hosts The Breakfastclub on iHeart.

Ebony Magazine

Kwanzaa

NAACP

PushBlack FB

Popular activist and black history page

Urban Intellectuals FB

The Root

Hispanic Peoples

Latin American Culture

Wikipedia

HuffPost - LatinoVoices

Immigrant Cultures

While some call America a "melting pot" of peoples, nowhere on Earth is that so because humans are tribal in nature and have always worked best in small groups beginning from their pre-historic family tribes that lived together for defense and shared responsibility in hunting, nurturing their young, and defending the group from other aggressive humans.

A good film to explain it is called "Quest for Fire" which can be rented online...it's the story of a small tribe of early humans who survived without language yet, and with only small tools. The storyline is about man's dependence on fire for warmth and cooking but they had to keep it from burning out because they didn't for a long time, know how to create fire. The film shows the brutality of human life before civilized order and touches on what we now call rape, murder, even cannibalism. There is no dialog as we would understand today, but it helps us understand early human life many thousands of years ago.

Today in America, we continue our tribal ways as groups from more oppressed countries often live together in neighborhoods or towns where inhabitants have similar ancestry. Some came to America for better opportunities from other places where resources were fewer, land was limited, customs prohibited inheritance to all but the oldest son, lack of religious freedom, and many fled from oppressive governments and wars. Europe has had two major wars just last century where millions died in World War One and World War two.

Even after that, in 1945, one of the victor countries, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republicans (Russia) spanning much of Asia was an oppressive nation. They brutalized and rode heavy handed on the nations they had either conquered or given as spoils of war. Less than a hundred years ago, the Soviets encircled their small nations and restricted migrations.

To the right, is a series of US Postal stamps commemorating what they called the "Occupied Countries" in 1944 and until the breakup of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, much of Europe was behind their "Iron Curtain" of oppression and influence. It was both a political division and a cultural one centering on the differences between how countries should be governed--whether like western democracies of the people, or by strong, often socialistic or communistic economies run by totalitarian leaders.

Slavic Nations Immigrants
A brief history of Eastern Europe nations...and the many who left for what today we call "political asylum"...to find a better life away from war-torn Europe.

East German, Polish, Czech, Lithuanian, and other east European countries had long been culturally and politically influenced by Russia. This occurred especially in the Baltic nations in the 1800s by the Russian Czars. Lithuania was once the largest country in Europe but in the 1800s, Russian expansionism came to be named, "Russification".

It was an ugly time; Lithuanians remember privileged people disappearing to be sent to Russian labor camps in cold Siberia--never to be heard from again, or to return years later. Many thousands fled for Germany, the UK, and America. The Russian influence remains today in names and sub-cultures of Lithuania as well as an anti Russian, anti Communist sentiment.

Lithuanian Culture

Lithuanians in Michigan - a $12 paperback on Amazon
In Lithuanians in Michigan Marius Grazulis recounts the history of an immigrant group that has struggled to maintain its identity. Grazulis estimates that about 20 percent of the 1.6 million Lithuanians who immigrated to the United States arrived on American shores between 1860 and 1918.
While first-wave immigrants stayed mostly on the east coast, by 1920 about one-third of newly immigrated Lithuanians lived in Michigan, working in heavy industry and mining.
With remarkable detail, Grazulis traces the ways these groups have maintained their ethnic identity in Michigan in the face of changing demographics in their neighborhoods and changing interests among their children, along with the challenges posed by newly arriving "modern" Lithuanian immigrants, who did not read the same books, sing the same songs, celebrate the same holidays, or even speak the same language that previous waves of Lithuanian immigrants had preserved in America. Anyone interested in immigrant history will find Lithuanians in Michigan simultaneously familiar, fascinating, and moving.

Bridges Lithuanian Magazine

Draugas - Facebook version

TrueLithuania.com
The most comprehensive website covering the history of one of Europe's most oppressed peoples....Lithuania was once the largest country in Europe!

Genealogical Family Research

The study of ancestry has always been popular as people wanted to learn more about their ancestors who lived before them. Some cultures have maintained thorough records of families and ways of life through art, literature, and religious records. Today, there are three major companies, one a religious organization, that has created computerized records of families all over the world.

FamilySearch.org
A free Non-profit genealogy family tree worldwide project of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (The Mormons of Salt Lake City, Utah). The Mormons support ancestral research for their own church members and offer it to the public as a worldwide service project. They do not charge the public to build and work with others to create ancestral family trees. They also do not recruit for you to join their church on their genealogy site. FamilySearch ScreenPrints and BestLINKS US Manual

Ancestry.com
A subscription based Family Tree company that has existed for about 25 years which charges users about $25 a month to build their own family trees and share information with millions of others in the US and other nations to record ancestry.

Geni.com A free based system similar to ancestry that does allow free accounts but this private family tree online service withholds research except for the "Pro" subscription of about $20 a month. Geni is a favorite for certain immigrant communities like Lithuanians to store and exchange research in their own foreign languages back to European roots. It's owned by another Pay site, My Heritage which requires yet another subscription.

Stephen Morse's "One Step"

Ancestry Search
This brilliant search engine has you entering your ancestors and it can search ship arrivals from Europe, Census records in the US and much more. It's a tool many genealogists use to research people's family ancestors.

Photo: 1925 European immigrants at the docks of Ellis Island's Immigration receiving station looking across to New York's Manhattan.

America's Culture Wars

The values strongly held by various American cultures are pitting us against each other. In part, tribalism is part of human nature and while there are efforts to encourage diversity, there are also efforts by others to fuel divisiveness. They include fights and divisions between groups:

Racial Supremacists based on culture and national heritage
Political division encouraged between conservative and liberal parties
Rights and customs between religious cults & believers vs non-believers,
Gender issues between men and women, straights vs gay orientated people
Generational differences in thinking between the young and old
Class resentment between wealthy, the working class, and the jobless
Policy disagreements between natives and immigrants of varied races and skill levels

These divisions, sometimes deliberate cause hate crimes and political fights over restrictive laws on health, gun ownership, reproduction, education and welfare policy. Wikipedia discusses.

Analysis: There are people who are saying most of the Culture War debates we see are being stoked by politicians in their zeal to regain control of the government--mostly Republicans who represent a minority of the nation's peoples--and the media which sells more papers containing division and controversy.

Natural Human Tribalism- are Woke-sters asking for too much Tolerance

A Best Links US Essay Read More

The trendy new misused word

WOKE-ISM

The right wing media provides exclusive access to those who have hijacked the mainstream Republican party and they are mischaracterizing the meaning of "WOKISM."

Simply said, Wokism was originally about respecting the diversity of America's people, namely about races and cultures. They made no attempt to provide more until recently

Including Fox, Newsmax, Western Journal and a handful of sites with few writers and no research capability, their EXPANDED definition is filled with Division about all things they condemn--mostly to appeal to the most JUDGMENTAL of the Republican base.

their readers about liberal notions to scare them into hating all things liberal, progressive, or Democrat. In part that's because Republicans have the racist base and need to keep them. Now they've decided to include Critical Race Theory, gender, and sexual orientation falsely in Wokism's meaning.

Here's How Merriam Webster Dictionary defines Woke-ism:

What to Know. Wokism is now defined in this dictionary as "aware of and actively attentive to important facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice)," and identified as U.S. slang. It originated in African American English and gained more widespread use beginning in 2014 as part of the Black Lives Matter movement.

Here are the primary examples of woke gurus on the subject of race and you may wish to Google these names for other remarks about them:

Robin D’Angelo
Ibrim X Kendi
Nicole Hannah Jones

Even liberals have issues with the more pushy Wokesters.

The Woke friendly activists on some institutions, like government and colleges say the activists go too far when pushing their agenda. It is a backlash against the insistence by some to DEMAND every board and body has minority representation giving each interest group an equal (or greater) voice in setting policies--even on advisory boards without policy authority.

Some Republicans are pedaling hard to play to their base's disapproval of minority power, gay rights, interracialmarriage and others into political advantage--today called Culture Wars.

Former Trump Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, with his 2024 presidential aspirations, has campaigned against 'wokism' in social media and he is one attempting to broaden and make sinister, its original meaning. Like most of the warmongers, he resorts to distorting the definitions and the realities of whatever issues he seeks to build condemnation against. His and others are protesting progressive, more open-minded toleration of religious taboos and minority equality. It is not clear if they are deeply concerned or are simply playing for the votes of the conservative religious bloc in America that expresses the same views.

Right Leaning BACKLASH with Tucker Carlson

Fox fired primetime Tucker Carlson is a figure not afraid of controversy.
His topic on an interview show is about transgender, gay and women's roles in society.
Carlson's guest in this half hour video is Andrew Tate... a British American social influencer. HE is controversial, a misogenist, charged with rape, but he has ears and influence. Agree with some of his views or not, this is an interesting Interview
Carlson Interview with Andrew Tate 2023

The CORRECT definition of Wokism

Civilizations

Can we STOP racism, anti-Semitism and bigotry? Man has a history of tribalism. Read More...

New Discourses
Audio essays and texts related to racial and LBGTQ teaching youngers in schools can be found here among other topics.

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Other Cultural Discussions

History of the Gay Rights Movement --History Channel

The story of People with homosexual or lesbian inclinations towards their own sexualty--in conflict with most religious teaching.

HomelessHub half million Americans are homeless. Who are they?

Jewish: National Holocaust Museum
History of Jewish Ghettos

NIH on Homelessness Homeless Statistics

Photo Gallery: Many Faces
This BestLINKS photo gallery is a 30.000 photo collection of human faces showing character, experience, emotions and varied cultures. Link to it or download as many as you wish; some though may be subject to copyright. They are sorted by topic

Parenting Issues
Comprehensive topics of raising children, many links of milestones, childhood health, autism and other issues.

Peace and Quiet
Ways for finding calm, reducing stress, better relationships, understanding, mental health, and immediate CRISIS Help! Many links covering disorders and contacts

Religion and Public Life
Pew Research Center

Meditation Music

Real Simple FB
Food Home Style Holidays

Rise Earth

Knowledge Conspiracy

Spiritually Health Hemp

Quora.com

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