4 ms·

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

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 Which is problematic in its own right as it keeps rather outdated concepts alive even when the scientific community, for the most part, considers them untenable.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.
    - tinyhouse 6y ago
      It's true skin color is a feature of an ethnic group. But it's not a unique feature. Most of the middle east is white (a bit darker than the average white American but still white). In the US they are classified as white even though they have very little in common with the majority group of white Americans. Basically what I really want to say is that environment is the main thing that defines people, not skin color. The environment someone is raised in is far more important than skin color. African Americans for example makes much more sense to me as a classification than blacks.
      - ttt0 6y ago
        > The environment someone is raised in is far more important than skin color. African Americans for example makes much more sense to me as a classification than blacks. So you want to essentially just exclude from blacks, like what, Sub-Saharan Africans? I don't know American demographics in detail, but I imagine that African Americans have to make up an overwhelming majority of the black population, so would that really make any difference? Or is it just another rebranding? Breaking things down to specific ethnic groups is surely useful in some cases, but is it really for everything? And I'm not sure what the point of that even is or what problem is it supposed to fix. It's still skin color, just a little bit more specific. I mean, you can be a white kid raised in the exact same environment as African Americans and that doesn't make you an African American in any stretch of imagination. I wouldn't mind being more specific about it, but I just don't get why replacing race with ethnic groups would change anything. Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but my impression is that you want to reject race just for historical reasons, but at the same time you want to keep ethnicities around, because you're still not crazy enough to take it to its full logical conclusion, go full Lysenkoism and deny genetics all together. Probably going to change in near future and this seemingly progressive idea will be considered as a serious thought crime, but hey, what do I know.

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.
  - tinyhouse 6y ago
    It's true skin color is a feature of an ethnic group. But it's not a unique feature. Most of the middle east is white (a bit darker than the average white American but still white). In the US they are classified as white even though they have very little in common with the majority group of white Americans. Basically what I really want to say is that environment is the main thing that defines people, not skin color. The environment someone is raised in is far more important than skin color. African Americans for example makes much more sense to me as a classification than blacks.
    - ttt0 6y ago
      > The environment someone is raised in is far more important than skin color. African Americans for example makes much more sense to me as a classification than blacks. So you want to essentially just exclude from blacks, like what, Sub-Saharan Africans? I don't know American demographics in detail, but I imagine that African Americans have to make up an overwhelming majority of the black population, so would that really make any difference? Or is it just another rebranding? Breaking things down to specific ethnic groups is surely useful in some cases, but is it really for everything? And I'm not sure what the point of that even is or what problem is it supposed to fix. It's still skin color, just a little bit more specific. I mean, you can be a white kid raised in the exact same environment as African Americans and that doesn't make you an African American in any stretch of imagination. I wouldn't mind being more specific about it, but I just don't get why replacing race with ethnic groups would change anything. Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but my impression is that you want to reject race just for historical reasons, but at the same time you want to keep ethnicities around, because you're still not crazy enough to take it to its full logical conclusion, go full Lysenkoism and deny genetics all together. Probably going to change in near future and this seemingly progressive idea will be considered as a serious thought crime, but hey, what do I know.