Can you pass the US Citizenship test?

Yep.  Because the rights the states wanted to keep was the right to economic freedom based on the back of slaves.
Forostar said:
It did, I realize that it was pretty cynical, so I changed it. However, it was not completely different.
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Or maybe foreigners are expected to think good things about their new culture, yes?
 
Hmm, indeed, and my comment was also in the vein that it's more important to learn something about the amount of stripes on the flag. But hey, every nation its own pride, eh? ;)

Wasted CLV said:
slavery was really the key issue.  --ring true, LC? 
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That sounds like what they taught me at school.
 
Well, there is a reason why; they probably want that reason to be remembered.

And when it comes to slavery being the key issue, there's two school of thoughts there.  One is that it was the states' right to self-determination; the other is that it was all about getting rid of slavery.  It's really complex, but it boils down to the one thing that the south wanted to protect was slavery.

Those who are in the "states rights" category often say that slavery would have died off naturally, but I don't think this is true.  After all, when the Civil War started, there were still lots of slaveholding nations.
 
Could you say that in the south racism was seen as something normal (so: it was not seen), it was more integrated and tolerated in their society?
 
Yes, I would think so.  There was the expectation that black people weren't people, but property.
 
First - didn't someone say it's odd to have no Civil War questions on the test?

That's because it's a citizenship test, and so it covers areas of US law / history which are relevant to being a citizen today. The Civil War is big, important history - but it's not as relevant to life today.]

As to Wasted, and his bit about being taught in school that the war was over state's rights... Where did you go to school? In the South?

I went to school in Wisconsin, and I was taught it was about slavery. Which it was. And I've read all the history and opposing viewpoints, so please don't throw them at me if you disagree. My personal conclusion is that it was all about slavery.

"State's rights" was never anything more than code for slavery. I mean, what "rights" were they fighting for? The right to continue slavery. Duh.
 
Wasted CLV said:
Well, it's been a while. If I recall correctly, it was a debat of states rights vs. slavery.  most of my teachers have stated that the war was more about states rights, where as LC said his (US) prof said that no matter what the teachers in the states said, slavery was really the key issue.  --ring true, LC? 
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It's both. It was about State rights, specifically property rights, and well, slaves were considered property in the South and that became part of the discussion and then it became the key issue...
 
55%, LOL. I think i KNEW the answer for about 2 answers.
I guess this means that my guess rate is about 50%. That's not bad. If you study a day before it shouldnt be a problem.
Is the test really that short?
 
SinisterMinisterX said:
First - didn't someone say it's odd to have no Civil War questions on the test?


As to Wasted, and his bit about being taught in school that the war was over state's rights... Where did you go to school? In the South?

I went to school in Wisconsin, and I was taught it was about slavery. Which it was. And I've read all the history and opposing viewpoints, so please don't throw them at me if you disagree. My personal conclusion is that it was all about slavery.

"State's rights" was never anything more than code for slavery. I mean, what "rights" were they fighting for? The right to continue slavery. Duh.
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Illinois.  And as I recall, the concept taught was that the war was fought over the States rights to leave the union, to conduct their business (slavery) as they wanted, etc.  My teacher (granted, an old fossil) told us that slavery was something that Lincoln didn't go into the war to end, but was pushed into it as the war wore on.  I am not trying to say that it wasn't about slavery; that was always my thought-- which led to the discussion that LC and I had. 
 
It comes down to the reason for the divide, and the reason was slavery.  Lincoln was fighting to "preserve the union", but the union was divided because of slavery.
 
I saw a documentary once, I don't recall the name, but it was written as if the South had won the war and had taken control of the union.  It was interesting how the writers depicted the change in history.  The concept was that, since the States were now a slave country, they were a more 'evil empire'.  They had sided with the Germans during WWII, because they now had a greater belief in 'purity'.  It was weird.
 
Wasted CLV said:
I saw a documentary once, I don't recall the name, but it was written as if the South had won the war and had taken control of the union.
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First off, a documentary-style film about a fictional situation isn't a documentary, it's still just another fictional movie. :bigsmile:

But more importantly: if the South had won, they wouldn't have taken over the North.
a. That wasn't their objective; independence from the North was.
b. The North had far more power to make war: more money, more factories, and more people. So a Southern victory would have been by peace treaty after some more successful battles - not by literal scorched earth devastation like Sherman did to the South. Thus, even if the Southern objective changed to "take over the North", they never could have done so.

Further, the worldwide push to end slavery was too strong. Even if the South had won in the 1860s, slavery could not have lasted until WWII. Just as the world eventually pushed South Africa to end apartheid, the South would eventually cave to the pressure and end slavery.
 
I feel like we would have seen a stricter adherence to Jim Crow laws in the theoretical Confederacy, anyway.  So they wouldn't have had slaves, but they likely would have taken extreme pains to ensure the social structure remained constant.
 
SinisterMinisterX said:
First off, a documentary-style film about a fictional situation isn't a documentary, it's still just another fictional movie. :bigsmile:

But more importantly: if the South had won, they wouldn't have taken over the North.
a. That wasn't their objective; independence from the North was.
b. The North had far more power to make war: more money, more factories, and more people. So a Southern victory would have been by peace treaty after some more successful battles - not by literal scorched earth devastation like Sherman did to the South. Thus, even if the Southern objective changed to "take over the North", they never could have done so.

Further, the worldwide push to end slavery was too strong. Even if the South had won in the 1860s, slavery could not have lasted until WWII. Just as the world eventually pushed South Africa to end apartheid, the South would eventually cave to the pressure and end slavery.
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Yep, sorry-- 'documentary style'

I believe that the concept was that the South had garnered outside help.  They pressed to absorb the North, I think, because they didn't want the North looming over them.  I'll have to see if I can find it again. 

And, yeah, LC, slavery ended, but the structure stayed intact, the slaves were becoming paid servants, but still held apart from society. 
 
LooseCannon said:
I feel like we would have seen a stricter adherence to Jim Crow laws in the theoretical Confederacy, anyway.  So they wouldn't have had slaves, but they likely would have taken extreme pains to ensure the social structure remained constant.
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So, a US South version of apartheid.

<troll>How is that any different from today?</troll>
 
Yeah, something like that.  Or something like what we saw in 1950s south, before the court cases beginning with Charlie Brown v. Board of Edumacation.
 
SinisterMinisterX said:
Further, the worldwide push to end slavery was too strong. Even if the South had won in the 1860s, slavery could not have lasted until WWII. Just as the world eventually pushed South Africa to end apartheid, the South would eventually cave to the pressure and end slavery.
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The big difference is that the world was much more of a global community in 1994 than it was in 1861. I don't think the moral pressure moved the world's major powers to abolish slavery in the course of the 19th century, but simply the progress of industrialisation that allowed much more rapid production possibilities that threw off so much profit that employers could afford to pay minimum wages.
Although slavery was morally outlawed in much of the world at that time, I don't think that a possible Confederate States of America would have become international pariahs in the same way Apartheid South Africa was. South Africa's government-enforced racism was something extreme that was considered completely out of order by nearly every other country in the world in the 1980s. No matter if slavery was considered right or wrong in the second half of the 19th century, Confederate slavery was neither extreme nor unheard of. Let's not forget that there were other slave-holding countries in the world then, which were not considered much more or less progressive, and colonial slavery was still a normal thing. Even the Dutch colonists in Suriname did not free their slaves until 1873.
 
But in (Western) Europe we didn't "need" a Martin Luther King to give black people the same rights.
Why did racism continue so long in this huge Western nation, the USA?
 
Forostar said:
But in (Western) Europe we didn't "need" a Martin Luther King to give black people the same rights.
Why did racism continue so long in this huge Western nation, the USA?
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Because there were far more blacks in the US, obviously.
 
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