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American is absolutely an ethnic group. It’s not high salience in the US but it’s very obvious if you go abroad. Black Americans hang out with White Americans,

American is absolutely an ethnic group. It’s not high salience in the US but it’s very obvious if you go abroad. Black Americans hang out with White Americans, not Africans. If you’re in a place where there are relatively few English speakers they all hang out together and the first split will be North Americans versus British + Irish + Aussies + Kiwis + South Africans.

car_analogy 5y ago
> American is absolutely an ethnic group. Keyword "unified". There was a series of recent protests complaining some groups were not treated as well as others - if they're all merely "Americans", what did they form groups based on? Edit: On further reflection, no, even if you drop "unified", I don't see how you could consider Americans being a single ethnic group. Ethnicity is not assigned based on hanging out together when abroad. By that criterion, ex-Yugoslavians would become a single ethnicity.
- barry-cotter 5y ago
  Unified by whose criteria? It’s a rare Irish person who identifies in any emotional way with being of Gaelic, Viking, Anglo-Norman or English ancestry but they are not evenly distributed by class, profession or political loyalty. It’s been almost a thousand years since the Normans conquered the English and Norman surnames are still wildly over represented among the professions and British ruling class. > By that criterion, ex-Yugoslavians would become a single ethnicity. Yes. In China they’re a single ethnic group in Shanghai in my experience. The salience of different ethnic identities varies by context. That’s what social construction of identities is about. Shared ancestry is not the only determinant of ethnicity. Mormons are an ethnic group. There are old stock Mormons all over the American Wear. Mormonism is also a universalist religion. Things are complicated.
watwut 5y ago
Imo, African American is ethnicity too. It is complicated in US. But, a lot of issues related to race in US was difficult to me to understand, until it clicked that if I think about African Americans as about ethnicity too, some stuff starts to make sense.
- barry-cotter 5y ago
  Yes. Nigerian-Americans aren’t African-American. Somali-Americans aren’t African-American. The descendants of Southerners who were held as slaves are African-Americans and over time some people of predominantly sub-Saharan ancestry acculturate to that identity, most obviously and quickly West Indians, but they’re not African-American either.
  - zozbot234 5y ago
    West-Indian blacks were also held as slaves in the Americas (and in especially brutal conditions), so they're just as African-American as anyone else.
    - barry-cotter 5y ago
      That’s about as accurate as calling Canadians Americans. African-American culture is Southern white culture. West Indian culture is English. Religion, speech, a lot of the food ways came from the white population and just as English people are not American West Indians are not African-American. They’re closer than Nigerians. They assimilate faster but they’re not the same.
      - x86_64Ubuntu 5y ago
        >...African-American culture is Southern white culture. If anything, Southern white culture co-opts African-American culture. We have our own dialects (AAVE), our own foods, and our own music (pretty much any popular form of music from blues to rock-and-roll), and our own religious practices. Southern white culture may take in the some of the above, but it's pretty much a one-way transfer.
        zozbot234 5y ago
        Historically, the transfer was far from one way. Many things that people stereotype as "typical" of African-American culture today were borrowed from poor Southern whites. It was only comparatively recently that African-American culture was self-defined as somehow setting itself apart from that exchange.

car_analogy 5y ago

> American is absolutely an ethnic group. Keyword "unified". There was a series of recent protests complaining some groups were not treated as well as others - if they're all merely "Americans", what did they form groups based on? Edit: On further reflection, no, even if you drop "unified", I don't see how you could consider Americans being a single ethnic group. Ethnicity is not assigned based on hanging out together when abroad. By that criterion, ex-Yugoslavians would become a single ethnicity.

barry-cotter 5y ago
Unified by whose criteria? It’s a rare Irish person who identifies in any emotional way with being of Gaelic, Viking, Anglo-Norman or English ancestry but they are not evenly distributed by class, profession or political loyalty. It’s been almost a thousand years since the Normans conquered the English and Norman surnames are still wildly over represented among the professions and British ruling class. > By that criterion, ex-Yugoslavians would become a single ethnicity. Yes. In China they’re a single ethnic group in Shanghai in my experience. The salience of different ethnic identities varies by context. That’s what social construction of identities is about. Shared ancestry is not the only determinant of ethnicity. Mormons are an ethnic group. There are old stock Mormons all over the American Wear. Mormonism is also a universalist religion. Things are complicated.

watwut 5y ago

Imo, African American is ethnicity too. It is complicated in US. But, a lot of issues related to race in US was difficult to me to understand, until it clicked that if I think about African Americans as about ethnicity too, some stuff starts to make sense.

barry-cotter 5y ago
Yes. Nigerian-Americans aren’t African-American. Somali-Americans aren’t African-American. The descendants of Southerners who were held as slaves are African-Americans and over time some people of predominantly sub-Saharan ancestry acculturate to that identity, most obviously and quickly West Indians, but they’re not African-American either.
- zozbot234 5y ago
  West-Indian blacks were also held as slaves in the Americas (and in especially brutal conditions), so they're just as African-American as anyone else.
  - barry-cotter 5y ago
    That’s about as accurate as calling Canadians Americans. African-American culture is Southern white culture. West Indian culture is English. Religion, speech, a lot of the food ways came from the white population and just as English people are not American West Indians are not African-American. They’re closer than Nigerians. They assimilate faster but they’re not the same.
    - x86_64Ubuntu 5y ago
      >...African-American culture is Southern white culture. If anything, Southern white culture co-opts African-American culture. We have our own dialects (AAVE), our own foods, and our own music (pretty much any popular form of music from blues to rock-and-roll), and our own religious practices. Southern white culture may take in the some of the above, but it's pretty much a one-way transfer.
      - zozbot234 5y ago
        Historically, the transfer was far from one way. Many things that people stereotype as "typical" of African-American culture today were borrowed from poor Southern whites. It was only comparatively recently that African-American culture was self-defined as somehow setting itself apart from that exchange.