Help! My semi-retarded liberal gf is reading My Antonia and she's convinced Bohemians are "brown/black people of color". I don't know how to disabuse her of this notion. I'm worried because she's completely misunderstanding the text and thinks Bohemians are a completely different race from White people. She's ascribing a racial/segregationist element to the book which only exists in her liberal mind because she's unable to conceptualize that people in the past had different concepts of race and class than we do in the 2000s. The reality of the text is obviously Bohemians were looked down upon as a class due to their social mores and an association with Gypsies, but they were obviously white! just a little swarthy...I don't know guys, she was just talking in that smug liberal way about "PoCs" and it was grating on my nerves, especially since she was 100% wrong about Bohemians being brown or black. She literally thinks their skin color is similar to dark Arabs or Central/South Americans.>inb4 chuds chime in and say Bohemians aren't White and that they're a bridge between Gypsies/Romanis and WhitesI'm sure I could just show her a few pictures of Bohemians, such as Franz Kafka to disabuse her of this notion, but I would like some advice.
>>25162055>My girlfriend doesn't know how czechs look???>I know what, I will show her a picture of german jew!
>>25162070>Franz Kafka is GermanSaar...be using the wikipedia saar and you no make benchod of self
>>25162055>>25162070>> The reality of the text is obviously Bohemians were looked down upon as a class due to their social mores and an association with Gypsies, but they were obviously white! I understand that Bohemia was a province of the Holy Roman Empire and basically is just the Czechs who wanted to be with Germany… but I also assumed the term had some sort of connection to literal gypsies? ‘Bohemian’ as a slur means a layabout person who does nothing and I thought this had some sort of relation to gypsy caravans or the like in Czechia and that’s where it originated.
>>25162070>Franza Kafka isn't Czech/lit/ once again proving they're just a bunch of performative pseuds
>>25162079>>25162071Franz Kafka wasn't czech you retards, no czech person considers him czech author and he didn't consider himself czech. He was jewish bohemian-german. Like 20% of population of today's Czechia was german back then (called bohemian germans), especially the Sudetenland and big cities (Prague, Brno). Only retarded americans consider Kafka to be czech - just like americans think they are irish or vikings or sioux or whatever.>>25162078Yes, the term 'bohemian' (as in 'bohemian lifestyle') is based on a mistake. IIRC it's from french, some czech gypsies emigrated to France and the french thought they are Bohemians so they called their kind of lifestyle 'bohemian'. But the book in OP is about czech emigrant to USA, not a gypsy. It was written shortly after creation of Czechoslovakia so back then czechs were probably still called bohemians in eglish.
>>25162109>He was BohemianSo why did you post that he wasn't?
>>25162109That story you related is interesting. I figured it must be something like that to have your ethnonym be shorthand for “lazy slob.”As for Bohemia the nation it is the incarnation of the Czech state which existed under HRE and was more Germanized I believe. So Bohemia is technically not the same as Czechia because back then it was Germanized Slavic country - same people but the culture was different. That’s why they fought for independence and kept throwing German ambassadors out of windows and rebelling to get their Slavic nation back and freedom from Catholicism
>>25162109Your girlfriend reminded me of the old timey slur WASP Americans had for central euros - Bohunk. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bohunkIt’s out of date not but it’s a portmanteau of Bohemian and Hungarian. They were associated with manual labor so it was an old timey slur like Chink that just fell out of use after their descendants learned English and didn’t stick out anymore
>>25162055>My semi-retarded liberal gfno matter what you do, you already lost
>>25162116He wasn't bohemian. It's pretty disrespectful to claim he was. By bohemian the book meant what we today mean by the word czech. 'Bohemian-German Jews' were entirely different ethnicity (Jewish people who spoke german and lived in Bohemia) who didn't consider themselves german or czech, there just isn't better name for the ethnicity. The people were practically destroyed by holocaust (those who survived moved to Israel and became just regular Israelites over time I guess), so pretending they didn't exist is pretty shitty. Especially since being the other and not fitting in anywhere was central point of their works.>>25162122No, czechs were never germanized, stop just making shit up. Being part of HRE didn't mean germanization, in 11th-12h centuries the german were invited by czech kings to collonize the border regions that were not inhabited by anyone. Most of czech nobility was czech until 1620, when they lost civil war and were executed or forced to emmigrate and even then the 'germanization' between 17th century and 19th century is pretty big myth. German was enforced official language and the nobility was replaced by germans/austrians but majority of people (who were not germans) spoke czech. Idk, it's complex issue, hard to explain to people who know shit about european history.
>>25162135that word more likely originates from the czech word 'pohůnek' - low-ranking farm worker, it's used as semi-curse word in czech language too, meaning something akin to 'ass-licking side-kick to someone who did something bad'
>some czech retard is sperging out because we don't know the detailed history of his third-world country
>>25162195>THOUSANDS OF YEARS AGO BEFORE THE DAWN OF THE USSR STARRING SIGOURNEY WEAVERthey're all like that
>>25162173That’s interesting. I learned something today.
>>25162070>yeah that author who was born in Prague, lived his whole life in Prague, and wrote books heavily influenced by his experiences of living and working in Prague...>yeah he's not Czech>...>BECAUSE I SAID SO
>>25162221‘Prague’ wasn’t Czechia at that time. It was part of the Austrian empire. Same way that Rudyard Kipling isn’t an Indian Pajeet because he was born and lived his life there.
>>25162055Are gypsies POC
>>25162229gypsies aren't P
>>25162221>George Orwell is Indian!!!!!
The easiest way to disabuse the notions is to abuse the persons
>>25162223>yeah that city that belonged to the Czech people since its inception>yeah it's not Czech
>Otto pretended not to be surprised at Ántonia’s behaviour. He only lifted his brows and said, ‘You can’t tell me anything new about a Czech; I’m an Austrian.’show her this passage from chapter 18 and a map
>people in year of our science 2026 cannot comprehend the idea of a cultural minority group living in a city or a state of different cultural groupI love living in an idiocracy
>>25162055>>25162221But if one were able to find a picture of a black man living in Prague at the same time as Kafka, would that not do just as much to prove that Ántonia was black as a picture of Kafka "proves" she looks like Kafka? You can call Kafka a Bohemian or a Chezch if you like, but he's not Bohemian or Chezch in the way that Ántonia is the same way that a black person from Prague is not a Bohemian or Chezch in the was that Ántonia is.
>>25162055>I'm worried because she's completely misunderstanding the text and thinks Bohemians are a completely different race from White people.good>She's ascribing a racial/segregationist element to the book which only exists in her liberal mindher mistake is funny>she's unable to conceptualize that people in the past had different concepts of race and class than we do in the 2000s.in the third millennium anno Domini, every historical situation must be understood in terms of fuck whitey. so the more you can trick her into viewing whoever as whitey, the more you fuck with that herm a nudic. its like saying nigger on /b/, first you get a 5000 word essay to not say the n word, then you get a 500 word essay, then you get ignored
