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I don't see how this applies to Morroccan immigrants or even the occasional individual Morroccan refugee seeking asylum for some particular reason.
You have made your case very persuasively, AW, and it is a thing to be admired on that count alone, whether or not the writer Wright has stretched the meaning of "diasphora" to the point of misuse (as you suggest).
I haven't read Wright's article so I took his usage at face value. I assumed that he was talking about a community of persecuted Morroccans who have left the country on that account as a matter of choice, rather than involuntarily in the case of refugees.
Which raises another question. Where do you draw the line between "refugees" and "diasphora"?
Many, if not most, of the Jews who escaped Hitler's Germany and the Nazi occupation in Europe were quite literally running for their lives, not unlike refugees.
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If Mt Fuji is a word, then I demand to know its antonym.
This might sound like a blinding thrust into the obvious, but a word is anything which is intelligible to the reader or the hearer as a communication with a meaning which is understood, or which is understandable by studying the language or culture of the communicator.
Therefore, "Mt Fuji" is a word, or perhaps two words, and it matters not if it has an antonym or an unclnym. It is a word in any event, or, more precisely, it is two words together producing a name, and that name is a word.
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Pooh-Bah
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Which raises another question. Where do you draw the line between "refugees" and "diasphora"? Many, if not most, of the Jews who escaped Hitler's Germany and the Nazi occupation in Europe were quite literally running for their lives, not unlike refugees.
Yeah that's a good question. A diaspora seems to me to describe the movement of a people on a massive scale (the African diaspora), or it can apply to individuals who are part of that movement (including those descended from the translocated individuals). There are ways that diaspora and refugee intersect and ways that they don't. An African slave forcibly shipped overseas is clearly not a refugee, although later they might seek asylum in a free state and become a refugee from slavery.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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re:Many, if not most, of the Jews who escaped Hitler's Germany and the Nazi occupation in Europe were quite literally running for their lives, not unlike refugees.
yeah, but the 'diasphora' of the jews didn't take place in the middle of the last century.. jews leaving eastern europe were refugees.--it might be called a 'modern diasphora' but most don't see it that way.
the diasphora took place long ago, when jews were driven out of traditional homeland on eastern mederterranian. (and end up in places like spain, eastern europe, parts of north africa and else where)
Jerusalum was a capital city of 'jews'(some 3000 to 4000 years ago! --but go back 200 years in times, and area today know as 'isreal' -Jews were in the minority.
there were some jews, many christians, and more muslams. the area was part of turkish (Ottoman) empire.
its a hard case--i know, i have irish citezenship, because irish goverment felt, many irish left ireland not by choice but by economic nessecity.. and they felt they, and their children and their childrens children should not be 'punished'. many jews were forced out of what is now isreal (under threat of death)--many generations ago.
how many generations of force emmigation are needed before the 'forcers' of emigration can say, 'all of the X are gone, and gone for X generations, and now this land is mine, for me and my people(forever!)'?
(a question that could also be asked about northern ireland!)
that's a good deal of what is at the heart of the conflict in mid east. Is the land of Isreal a jewish homeland? or did they 'forfiet it' when they were forced to leave? (and does the group or groups that forced them to leave get to call the land theirs forever? or do they too have to forfiet it if someone forces them out?
same question come up in americas (especially north america)all the time. who owns the land? do the displaced 'first people' have rights to it? and to how much? and can they dislodge current residents (occupiers!) or not?
Many of the first people on north america are gone (intentional and unintentional genocide)--but does that that mean their children, and their children's children still have to forfiet rights to their homelands?
the questions raised by middle east conflict are by no means unusual, or limited to that place! and there are no easy answers--in North america, or in mid east.
(one might say, no matter what happened in past, isreal won right to land in 1948, and has continued over the years to maintain the 'right of ownership'. previous 'owners' aquired the land buy sword, and later generations lost by sword.. and that's the way it goes--basicly, that is what US government/people have done in north america.)
who are the 'rightful people' of UK? picts? are there any left? celts? Angles? Saxons? Danes? 'french Normen'?--(in the future will it be the Pakastanis'? the Jamacains? )
I haven't read article.. and i don't know what is behind Morrccan's leaving (are they being forced, by gun, or economic nessicity, or on religious grounds? or are they chosing to emigrate.? (and what is choice? how bad do things have to be economically to be called force? stavation? or just lower middle class existance?)
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Carpal Tunnel
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A lot of you have spent a goodly amount of time providing your opinion on this, but seem not to have read the ariticle linked in the original post. (context is meaningful.)
I may be the only one who was bothered by the use of diaspora in the context of this article, but I'd be more willing to accept that if I thought anyone else had read it.
-ron o.
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I may be the only one who was bothered by the use of diaspora in the context of this article, but I'd be more willing to accept that if I thought anyone else had read it.
I read it. So what's your gripe? A quick google around the web shows that many journalists are writing about a kind of Muslim diaspora (Turks, Moroccans, etc.) in Europe, and how various terrorist organizations recruit from young men among them.
The Spanish authorities traced a document found in the van near the Madrid train station to Moroccans living within Spain, longterm: a kind of diaspora.
Is your objection because the diaspora being written about was not Jews, but Muslims? It seems that the meaning of diaspora has extended itself into other ethnicities and religions.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Is your objection because the diaspora being written about was not Jews, but Muslims?
yep.. and with a terrorist connection at that -- it was the first time I'd seen it used in that sort of context, and I just found it jarring; if it has become commonplace, so be it.
(I guess I'm somewhat surprised, in an age when you can hardly utter once-innocent words such as niggardly, to find somewhat of a counter-example. otoh, there's a completely different mechanism at work.)
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Pooh-Bah
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I read it. So what's your gripe? A quick google around the web shows that many journalists are writing about a kind of Muslim diaspora (Turks, Moroccans, etc.) in Europe, and how various terrorist organizations recruit from young men among them.
Well perhaps those journalists have been misusing the word. It seems to me that Middle Easterners, regardless of religion, are moving to Europe by choice to enjoy economic and social advantages of Western culture, just as people in earlier centuries immigrated to the U.S. for economic opportunities. Honestly, I think it's just a P.C.-ism. "Immigrant" is out, and "diaspora" is in because it vaguely smacks of victimhood. Middle Easterners may be leaving behind economic hardship, but things were hardly much worse during the Irish potato famine.
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Honestly, I think it's just a P.C.-ism. "Immigrant" is out, and "diaspora" is in because it vaguely smacks of victimhood. Middle Easterners may be leaving behind economic hardship, but things were hardly much worse during the Irish potato famine.
Which is why folks have written about the Irish diaspora. I didn't say I agreed with it, I said I could understand it in the context. I think it smacks of PC to try to regulate how people use words in general. The original Diaspora to the Persian empire was less a matter of forced removal of Jews from Jerusalem and its environs than the later Roman-induced diaspora as a consequence of the their losing a war of rebellion. That diaspora more to do with Cyrus allowing subjects from different parts of his empire to immigrate to Babylon.
I myself would probably not use the term anyway. As it evokes all kinds of problematic rhetoric.
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Pooh-Bah
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Which is why folks have written about the Irish diaspora. I'll drink to that. I think it smacks of PC to try to regulate how people use words in general. Well I hope I'm not "regulating" the use of words -- just offering up my two cents as a lowly reader. As an aside, here's an interesting article on Jews returning to Russia after having previously immigrated to Israel: http://makeashorterlink.com/?H2ED268F8
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