Oh, yes - I've looked up Foyle's War on Wiki and found the guy you mean, a nasty piece of work played by Henry Goodman. There will be 3 new episodes next year. Interested to note that you probably saw them in hourly episodes where we have 2-hour episodes. I really like settling down for 2 hours of that sort of drama.
At the moment we have The Killing (3) on Saturday nights and 2 x 1-hour episodes.
Well, perhaps we're making progress. The citizens ofMassachusetts did elect Senator Pocahontas during the last election.
I'll check that out on Netflix. When we last saw Foyle he was boarding a ship for America. My wife is hoping he's after the American arms trader who managed to evade the law.
Yes, the American Indians were appallingly treated. I sometimes think that the US will really have moved forward when they have a Native American president. Even when I was a child, I was always on the Indians' side when westerns were on TV.
Another film for your Netflix "fix" is Last of the Dogmen (Barbara Hershey) about some Cheyenne who live in a hidden valley and know nothing about modern American life.
Gaynor you are so right. I think here it was the American Indians who were the most ill-treated of all. And my grandfather also said it was the Welsh in Liverpool and South Hampton and New York that you had to look out for! They came to the docks smiling, patting Welsh immigrants on the backs with warm, comforting words (in their own language) and offers to help in an effort to steal their meager savings. Of course the Irish, Italian and German immigrants faced the same treatment from their own.
You are right about being overly-sensitive; it does become patronising. Glad you like Foyle's War (still being repeated here on ITV3). Foyle is coming back, post-war, soon.
I think your grandfather was right, by the way. But sometimes it's good to be reminded that it hasn't just been the Welsh that have been marginalised. Yesterday I was reading about the people of the South Tyrol; Mussolini moved a lot of Italian people up there and more or less said that everyone had to speak Italian or they could move away. Now the people of that area are saying that they are Austrian, not Italian, and there might be problems there.
Also, on an episode of Inspector Montalbano, he said that many years ago in Germany (Stuttgart to be exact) there were signs up saying "No Sicilians" (rather, I would imagine, like the 1950s in England when there were "No Irish" signs up at guesthouses etc.).
Yes, she was (American, that is). She was a local reporter from our NBC affiliate sent to London to report daily summaries. Quite a gig! I would guess from her age that she was not long out of journalism school. I suspect her on-air faux pas was caused by hyper-sensitivity. IMO being overly sensitive often backfires and makes one look too racially conscience--almost patronizing. I would love to see her face if she were introduced to a white African-American who had immigrated here from South Africa. I suspect her provincial mind would not be able to grasp it.
I remember that episode of Foyle's War. What a great program the whole series was! My grandfather thought--correctly or not--that the Welsh people were often treated as second-class citizens by the English. He said they thought we were good for singing and digging coal but other than that we were regarded as dumb, dishonest and mostly useful as fodder for comedians.
I take it the commentator was American herself? How on earth did she get a job like that when she was clearly a sandwich short of a picnic!
It reminds me of the recent series The Wartime Farm; they mentioned that "African-American" GIs were segregated from their non-A-A colleagues when they came to Britain in WWII and the locals did not take kindly to that. Everyone, whatever colour, was invited to local parties and dances. I also remember the same issue coming up in an episode of Foyle's War and Foyle having to explain to the mystified American officers that the local people wouldn't have that sort of thing.
During the recent Olympics I noticed a commentator who kept calling black athletes "African-Americans" no matter what their country of origin. She kept referring to African-Americans from the UK, France, etc. Finally another announcer caught it and said, "They're not African-American they're French or Australian..." "Oh," she answered, "What do you call African-Americans over here (meaning England)?" Her colleague paused for a second trying to grasp the meaning of her question. Finally he answered, "Generally we call them yanks." The poor girl still didn't get it.
Jack, you make a very good point about using surnames as the sole criteria.
My wife's maiden name is not Welsh although about half of her progenitors are Welsh coming from the Gwynn and Williams line. My own daughter's married name would not be recognized as Welsh even though she considers herself Welsh through and through. The Powell name willeventually disappear from our family tree because all of the "Powell boys" had daughters not sons. My own family tree contains the surnames of Powell, Lewis, Wynn, Evans, Gronow, Jones and Perry (at some point the spelling was changed from Parry to Perry). That said, I can't think of another method the reseacher could have used. I don't even think DNAwould be able totell much more than the broader classification of "European."
Personally, I refuse to answer offiicial questionnaireswheneverthey ask aboutrace: Caucasion, Hispanic, African, Asian and so on. If I am absolutely required to answer I check "Other"then write in "Homo Sapien." I believe that all humanity is of the same race. Many religionsand even modern day geneticists concur that the entire race is descended from one woman. Of course, there had to be a guy involved but geneticistshave only mitochondrial DNA to work with so far.
Our family has always considered itself part of the Welsh Diaspora--or economic refugees, if you will, driven from home by what it perceived whether real or not as a lack of opportunity. It retained fervent devotion to the homeland and kept in contact with loved ones left behind.
The link below is to an official study of the Welsh Diaspora complete with maps of its concentration around the world. I had always heard about the colony in Patagonia but was surprised to see my own home state of Missouri high on the list. I guess I shouldn't have been surprised because my state was once a major source of coal.Ray County, Missouri, where our family lived, had over 50 coal mining companies operating during the first half of the 20th Century. Several of those companies operated multiple pits
The study: http://tinyurl.com/atpbsxm
