4 ms·

I never understand why classify people on their looks. Talking primarily about the US. There is such a wide spectrum of white people coming from different cultu

I never understand why classify people on their looks. Talking primarily about the US. There is such a wide spectrum of white people coming from different cultures. Also, you're considered Asian if you're a Chinese immigrant but also if you were born in the US to Chinese descent let's say. The main common thing between the two groups is looks. Same for Africans and African Americans who are both classified as blacks but have very different culture. Then there is the latino group who once the lose their accent and don't look so latino anymore they drift to the white group...

musingsole 6y ago
Arguably that's why the US has less severe racism/classism than much of the rest of the world (despite whatever pop narrative).
- freeflight 6y ago
  I don't understand how that follows from the parent comment? The comment rightfully points out that in the US people are mostly classified by their superficial looks vs their actual ethnicity. Which leads to the situation that quite a diverse field of ethnicities and cultures are boiled down to very generalized "white/black/yellow/whatever" groups. Case in point: The recent shooting in a Colorado grocery store was, rather quickly, tried to be framed as "white extremism" due to skin color of the perpetrator and footage of his arrest going public. When said perpetrator is actually a Syrian who became a naturalized US citizen by the name of "Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa, of Arvada", which is about the least "white" name one could come up with. Or for another example: The Nazis are regularly evoked as an example of racism and white supremacy, when the vast majority of people killed by the Nazis were actually "white", just not the right kind of "white". That's why in Europe racism often isn't based on color of skin, but rather on accents, ethnic looks and family names, as skin color alone is not enough to differentiate the out-group from the rest: A white British person is just as white as a white Polish person, yet that doesn't mean that the two of them will consider themselves as part of the same ethnic or cultural group. That idea only exists in the heads of people who evoke some allegedly unified "European culture" to stipulate that Europe is "racially homogeneous" because it's only made up of "white people".
  - ttt0 6y ago
    You could make a similar argument about ethnics groups instead of race. Every categorization is a generalization until you get down to a single individual. Races are just as valid as specific ethnic groups, they just have a broader definition. You don't have to list and compare each and every ethnic group separately to say that the European culture(s) are overall much different from, let's say, African culture(s).
    - freeflight 6y ago
      > You could make a similar argument about ethnics groups instead of race. Colloquially they are pretty much interchangeable as rarely anybody uses "race" in the proper modern anthropological context. Which is problematic in its own right as it keeps rather outdated concepts alive even when the scientific community, for the most part, considers them untenable. > You don't have to list and compare each and every ethnic group separately to say that the European culture(s) are overall much different from, let's say, African culture(s). You don't need to but if you don't it often ends up with generalizations where there are not "European culture(s)" or "African culture(s)" but only the singular versions of them and the only differences are made out between these two. But in actuality neither Europe nor Africa are culturally homogeneous. Some cultural groups in Europe and Africa can have more in common than comparing European with European/African with African groups due to the wide diversity among cultural groups even inside the same geographical region. A reality that's too often lost in the discourse when cultures are compared like they are monolithic blocks, particularly when these blocks are defined by color of skin.
      - ttt0 6y ago
        > Colloquially they are pretty much interchangeable as rarely anybody uses "race" in the proper modern anthropological context. Seems like a straw man to be honest, but I don't know, maybe it's true. Not sure what the "modern" context is either, since some people were trying to convince me that "according to the science" biology basically doesn't exist or that you're born as a blank slate, but oh well. > Some cultural groups in Europe and Africa can have more in common than comparing European with European/African with African groups due to the wide diversity among cultural groups even inside the same geographical region. Any example? > But in actuality neither Europe nor Africa are culturally homogeneous. That's right, but there is much more overlap within Europe and Africa respectively in terms of basically everything you can think of than between them. > A reality that's too often lost in the discourse when cultures are compared like they are monolithic blocks, particularly when these blocks are defined by color of skin. Again, the same thing can be said about ethnic groups. Ethnic groups are not a monolith either. Plus, a skin color is one of the features of an ethnic group. There are no asian Nigerians, there are no black Ukrainians, etc. Sure, you might become a citizen or marry a person of some ethnic group, but that doesn't necessarily make you a part of it.
- bloqs 6y ago
  Er... I'd argue this is the root cause, the US has some systemic historical issues with people of a certain appearance. They had to, because of the relative melting pot of culture, you couldnt really pick a pole from a frenchman if they both spoke American English. Not the case for other groups.
throwaway894345 6y ago
I agree. In the last 5-10 years the belief that race encodes all useful information about a person seems to have caught on among certain political circles to the extent that overt displaces of prejudice seem to be a signal that indicates ingroup membership. There was a brief period during which the popular aspiration was to deny or try to combat our racial biases, but we seem to be increasingly giving ourselves over to them.
ativzzz 6y ago
> I never understand why classify people on their looks. Because it's easy. Our brains are expert pattern matching machines. The things we see immediately cause our brain to act and match based on the prior data it holds. What's the easiest thing to see about a person that relays the most information to our brain? The color of their skin, what they're wearing, their hairstyle, etc.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

musingsole 6y ago

Arguably that's why the US has less severe racism/classism than much of the rest of the world (despite whatever pop narrative).

freeflight 6y ago
I don't understand how that follows from the parent comment? The comment rightfully points out that in the US people are mostly classified by their superficial looks vs their actual ethnicity. Which leads to the situation that quite a diverse field of ethnicities and cultures are boiled down to very generalized "white/black/yellow/whatever" groups. Case in point: The recent shooting in a Colorado grocery store was, rather quickly, tried to be framed as "white extremism" due to skin color of the perpetrator and footage of his arrest going public. When said perpetrator is actually a Syrian who became a naturalized US citizen by the name of "Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa, of Arvada", which is about the least "white" name one could come up with. Or for another example: The Nazis are regularly evoked as an example of racism and white supremacy, when the vast majority of people killed by the Nazis were actually "white", just not the right kind of "white". That's why in Europe racism often isn't based on color of skin, but rather on accents, ethnic looks and family names, as skin color alone is not enough to differentiate the out-group from the rest: A white British person is just as white as a white Polish person, yet that doesn't mean that the two of them will consider themselves as part of the same ethnic or cultural group. That idea only exists in the heads of people who evoke some allegedly unified "European culture" to stipulate that Europe is "racially homogeneous" because it's only made up of "white people".
- ttt0 6y ago
  You could make a similar argument about ethnics groups instead of race. Every categorization is a generalization until you get down to a single individual. Races are just as valid as specific ethnic groups, they just have a broader definition. You don't have to list and compare each and every ethnic group separately to say that the European culture(s) are overall much different from, let's say, African culture(s).
  - freeflight 6y ago
    > You could make a similar argument about ethnics groups instead of race. Colloquially they are pretty much interchangeable as rarely anybody uses "race" in the proper modern anthropological context. Which is problematic in its own right as it keeps rather outdated concepts alive even when the scientific community, for the most part, considers them untenable. > You don't have to list and compare each and every ethnic group separately to say that the European culture(s) are overall much different from, let's say, African culture(s). You don't need to but if you don't it often ends up with generalizations where there are not "European culture(s)" or "African culture(s)" but only the singular versions of them and the only differences are made out between these two. But in actuality neither Europe nor Africa are culturally homogeneous. Some cultural groups in Europe and Africa can have more in common than comparing European with European/African with African groups due to the wide diversity among cultural groups even inside the same geographical region. A reality that's too often lost in the discourse when cultures are compared like they are monolithic blocks, particularly when these blocks are defined by color of skin.
    - ttt0 6y ago
      > Colloquially they are pretty much interchangeable as rarely anybody uses "race" in the proper modern anthropological context. Seems like a straw man to be honest, but I don't know, maybe it's true. Not sure what the "modern" context is either, since some people were trying to convince me that "according to the science" biology basically doesn't exist or that you're born as a blank slate, but oh well. > Some cultural groups in Europe and Africa can have more in common than comparing European with European/African with African groups due to the wide diversity among cultural groups even inside the same geographical region. Any example? > But in actuality neither Europe nor Africa are culturally homogeneous. That's right, but there is much more overlap within Europe and Africa respectively in terms of basically everything you can think of than between them. > A reality that's too often lost in the discourse when cultures are compared like they are monolithic blocks, particularly when these blocks are defined by color of skin. Again, the same thing can be said about ethnic groups. Ethnic groups are not a monolith either. Plus, a skin color is one of the features of an ethnic group. There are no asian Nigerians, there are no black Ukrainians, etc. Sure, you might become a citizen or marry a person of some ethnic group, but that doesn't necessarily make you a part of it.
bloqs 6y ago
Er... I'd argue this is the root cause, the US has some systemic historical issues with people of a certain appearance. They had to, because of the relative melting pot of culture, you couldnt really pick a pole from a frenchman if they both spoke American English. Not the case for other groups.

throwaway894345 6y ago

I agree. In the last 5-10 years the belief that race encodes all useful information about a person seems to have caught on among certain political circles to the extent that overt displaces of prejudice seem to be a signal that indicates ingroup membership. There was a brief period during which the popular aspiration was to deny or try to combat our racial biases, but we seem to be increasingly giving ourselves over to them.

ativzzz 6y ago

> I never understand why classify people on their looks. Because it's easy. Our brains are expert pattern matching machines. The things we see immediately cause our brain to act and match based on the prior data it holds. What's the easiest thing to see about a person that relays the most information to our brain? The color of their skin, what they're wearing, their hairstyle, etc.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]