10 ms·
I consider my race to be Hispanic. I otherwise would have no race, right?
by nefitty 5y ago
I consider my race to be Hispanic. I otherwise would have no race, right?
- spacechild1 5y ago> I otherwise would have no race, right? Yes, you don't have a race. There are no human races.
- CRConrad 5y ago> There are no human races. That's mostly down to a weird quirk of English, which uses the word "race" for both ~"breed" and "species", so you can say "There are no 'races', we're all just the Human Race!". In most other languages, where "race" means only ~"breed" and not "species", that's as silly as saying "There are no 'breeds', all dogs are just the Dog Species!" Yeah, sure, but a Dachshund is quite different from a Great Dane in many ways (and, yes, of course quite similar in many more), so the statement is nonsense. They're both the Dog species, but different breeds. Limit the word to mean only ~"breed" and it does kind of make sense for humans, too: There are definitely sub-groups of us, the members of which share many similar physical characteristics within the group and differ in these characteristics between the groups, because of long genetic isolation. If you look at it calmly you realise that's not a big problem in and of itself -- the problems come when you start claiming some of these groups are inherently superior or inferior to each other: One can admit that an African differs from an Asian, while still realising that a blanket statement saying an African is "better" than an Asian or vice versa is as silly as a blanket statement saying a Dachshund is "better" than a Great Dane or vice versa. I'm not sure, but it often feels like this linguistic oddity makes the whole subject so much more inflamed and harder to discuss in the English-speaking world.
- guerrilla 5y agoWhy do you need a race?
- nefitty 5y agoAt the very least, representation in government. People who share my ethnicity have unique social problems that don't apply to any other "race". I don't need a race, but the people who share my background need to be discernible on a census.
- stavros 5y agoBut you just said "people who share my ethnicity", which has nothing to do with race. People of any race can share your ethnicity. Is a black Mexican closer in culture to a Nigerian or to a Mexican?
- nefitty 5y agoI'm not sure you understand how governments work. That's ok. On a census, there's no box to check off every strain that makes up my ethnicity. There's a box that says "Hispanic". I'm being descriptive, not prescriptive.
- stavros 5y agoI'm not sure I understand how the US government works. Your experience is far from universal.
- nefitty 5y agoInteresting comment to get downvoted on...
- nec4b 5y agoWhy do you need a name, a surname, a name for the place you come from,...? Because giving something a name helps us differentiate between things.
- guerrilla 5y agoA name names an individual, a "race" doesn't name anything but an arbitrary set of genetic and cultural traits (opposed to an actual ethnicity.)
- nec4b 5y agoAnd why can't an arbitrary set of genetic and cultural traits have a name? Everything else in this universe can be broken down to an arbitrary set of something. Why for e.g. call somebody an American when it's only a person living withing arbitrary lines on map?
- guerrilla 5y agoBecause some such groups of people tend to actually have little in common and don't want to be lumped in with each other or be represented together.
- nec4b 5y agoI'm sorry but that is a really weird argument. Who are those groups of people who want us to pretend there are no similarities or differences between them and other groups of people?
- guerrilla 5y agoCalling it "pretend" is both dismissive and begs the question. The people you want to call "Hispanics" are ethnically rather diverse, far from homogeneous. The similarities you see originate in ignorance. Mexicans aren't Columbians, Brazillians aren't Portuguese and all of these countries are home to many different ethnic groups with their own histories, languages, cultures and genetics.