6 ms·

Not very surprising that the official US races are BS. If I understand them correctly, officially someone from Portugal or France is supposed to be Caucasian, w

Not very surprising that the official US races are BS. If I understand them correctly, officially someone from Portugal or France is supposed to be Caucasian, whereas someone from Spain is supposed to be Hispanic, which makes zero sense from any point of view.

pram 1y ago
FWIW "hispanic" isn't a race on those forms, it's an ethnicity. You can choose any race with it.
- octopoc 1y ago
  Yeah and it actually kinda makes sense--in Mexico, there are white Hispanics who descended from Spanish Jews and have not interbred much with the natives. They are tall and white. Then there are people with little or no European blood in them, and they are short and brown, generally speaking. So it makes sense that you could be a Caucasian Hispanic.
- lazide 1y ago
  The really weird thing is why a bunch of other things aren’t also ethnicities.
  - dragonwriter 1y ago
    What other ethnicities do you think there is an equally strong case to include in the list of minimum reporting categories (which is what the official scheme defines) on par with the one current ethnic and six current (with the recent addition of Middle East and North African) racial categories?
    - lazide 1y ago
      Chinese. Indian. Northern European (Nordic countries). English. These all have just as much claim from a cultural-diaspora perspective eh? With a wide variety of phenotypes, if we go back a bit. Though Indian should probably be more finely divided if we’re being honest. If you really wanted to piss people off, we could of course lump Indian, Singaporean, Australian, American, etc. under English Ethnicity. The only reason Hispanic is one is because the conquistadors were really, really persistent, murderous, and shameless eh?
      - dragonwriter 1y ago
        The case for including an ethnicity in the minimum reporting categories starts with, largely, that it is both a large community and that it significantly cuts across rather than existing largely within a category already defined as a racial category; "Ethnicities" which would fall almost entirely within the Asian, Asian, or White racial categories don't really have a strong case. That said, there is probably a good argument for breaking out at least South Asian from Asian as a distinct top-level racial category, in the same way that MENA recently was. (But note that all of the top-level categories also have more detailed breakdowns available, and recent revisions have also moved to require the more detailed options to collected in a wider range of circumstances.) > The only reason Hispanic is one is because the conquistadors were really, really persistent, murderous, and shameless eh? Mostly, the opposite: that the successors to the conquistadors were less genocidal and more assimilationist than their British and British-descended North American counterparts.
        lazide 1y ago
        American born Ethnic Chinese would like a word. As would a very large number of other groups. The only reason these groups are included this way is because of lobbying power (for and against) and $$ and privileges related to being in or out of various categories. From an ontological perspective, your argument is BS looking at the actual distributions and ground truth of these groups.
        dragonwriter 1y ago
        > American born Ethnic Chinese would like a word. What racial groups in the minimum reporting scheme does this ethnic group cut across, and in what rough proportions?
    - kjkjadksj 1y ago
      Realistically the US has different ethnicities just considering the differences between north and south, east, midwest and its spectrum, and then the west. For some the differences are so great the language spoken is no longer mutually intelligible.
paganel 1y ago
The entire US "race" discourse is pretty stupid, to be fair, too bad it has infected much of the rest of the world because of the influence of the US media.
- sorcerer-mar 1y ago
  You live under a rock if you think "race discourse" originated (presumably recently) from US media or the US at all.
  - gjm11 1y ago
    I don't think paganel's claim is that all race discourse is derived from the US. Rather, that (1) the race discourse in the US is stupid and (2) that much race discourse elsewhere these days is derived from the US's and is therefore similarly stupid. (Other independent race discourse might also be stupid but in different ways.)
    - gitremote 1y ago
      Race discourse in the US is not stupid. Nazis from Germany mass murdered people because of white supremacy before US critical race theory. It's important to talk about Nazis and white supremacy instead of ignoring the problem and hoping it will go away by itself.
      - ty6853 1y ago
        [flagged]
      - gjm11 1y ago
        It is possible for something to be important to talk about, and for the way it's talked about to be stupid. In fact, I think it's quite common. I agree with paganel that a lot of US race discourse is stupid. I agree with you that sometimes it's important to talk about race. There's no contradiction between those. (But I don't think "white supremacy" is a good way to think about the Nazis' hatred of Jewish people. They were white supremacists, but they hated the Jews for other reasons and if by some miracle they had abruptly stopped being white supremacists I think they would have gone right on persecuting Jewish people.)
MangoToupe 1y ago
Actually, ironically I don't think that someone from Spain is intended to be considered Hispanic. Which also doesn't make sense, I know.
- ceejayoz 1y ago
  Technically, they're included. In practical usage, they'd far more likely be called Spanish or European in the US context.
  - MangoToupe 1y ago
    Technically according to what? These labels were based on implicit understanding that shifted over time and place.
    - ceejayoz 1y ago
      Technically according to Wikipedia, at the very least. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hispanic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hispanic
      - tokai 1y ago
        No Wikipedia explicitly states that people from Spain are not included; "The term commonly applies to Spaniards and Spanish-speaking populations and countries in Hispanic America and Hispanic Africa" I.e. not mainland Spain.
        ceejayoz 1y ago
        “The term commonly applies to Spaniards AND…” This is not a complex sentence.
        bombcar 1y ago
        A friend in college from Spain had way too much fun pretending to be stereotypically hispanic and would insist that he had more a claim to it, being from Hispaniola, after all.
mistrial9 1y ago
actual detail about this evolving topic here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hispanic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hispanic
fumeux_fume 1y ago
To be fair, in the eyes of the US government, Hispanic is an ethnicity and not a race so you can be White and Hispanic. However, this distinction is lost among most and ethnicity and race are commonly used interchangeably.
- dragonwriter 1y ago
  To be fair, in the eyes of the US government, races are non-exclusive and you can be White, Black or African American, American Indian or Native Alaskan, and all the other racial categories simultaneously, as well as either having or not having Hispanic or Latino ethnicity.
  - bombcar 1y ago
    The kicker is that if you select "American Indian or Native Alaskan" they start asking for tribal documentation. But you can check Black or White or Hispanic (Not White) or anything else all you want. Who will gainsay?
    - dragonwriter 1y ago
      > The kicker is that if you select "American Indian or Native Alaskan" they start asking for tribal documentation. No, for most purposes they never did (in fact, for many purposes where this is used, it is immediately separated from anything that would associate it with the submitter, so it would be hard for them to come back and ask you for anything), and the 2024 revisions to the definitions of the minimum categories removes the language about maintaining an ongoing affiliation ("who maintains tribal affiliation or community attachment") from the definition of that category. [0] [0] https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2024/03/29/2024-06469/revisions-to-ombs-statistical-policy-directive-no-15-standards-for-maintaining-collecting-and https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2024/03/29/2024-06...
      - bombcar 1y ago
        The ACA definitely follows up, because tribal membership changes how the health benefits are billed to the government.
dragonwriter 1y ago
> Not very surprising that the official US races are BS. The modern concept of "race" in general is a BS construct that was invented to support and justify European imperialism, and which has long been recognized as having only the loosest relation to biological reality despite in its own terms being conceptualized as a biological reality of some importance. OTOH, its also produced very real communities of differentiated experience, identity, and treatment, and it is largely that which the US government system of race (plus one ethnicity, in the minimum scheme) is designed to gather data related to. > If I understand them correctly, You do not. > officially someone from Portugal or France is supposed to be Caucasian "Caucasian" is not part of the official race/ethnicity scheme used in US federal government reporting. Someone who has prehistoric ancestors who were from the region which is now Portugal or France, and who identifies with the racial group into which people with that ancestry are categorized, would be White, possibly with another racial and/or ethnic category depending on what other ancestry they identified with. > whereas someone from Spain is supposed to be Hispanic With the same description as above, replacing "Portugal or France" with "Spain", the person would still be White. A person who also identifies with Spanish or South, Central, or North American (south of the US border) national/cultural origin would be Hispanic or Latino by ethnicity (the only ethnic category in the scheme) as well as any racial category or categories they identify with. Here's a news release on 2024 updates to the scheme, which involve combine the race/ethnicity questions into a single multiple answer allowed question (the race question was already multiple answers allowed, but the presence or absence of the one ethnic category was a separate question) as well as other updates to the scheme: https://www.census.gov/newsroom/blogs/random-samplings/2024/04/updates-race-ethnicity-standards.html https://www.census.gov/newsroom/blogs/random-samplings/2024/...
- lazide 1y ago
  Regardless of what specific term is used, it is used (and abused!) equivalently pretty much everywhere humans exist. Is ‘caste’, race? Because it sure is used that way (or worse) in places that have it. And that’s been going on for longer than what we currently call European civilization.
  - paxys 1y ago
naasking 1y ago
> whereas someone from Spain is supposed to be Hispanic, which makes zero sense from any point of view. Hispanics are Caucasian in the original classification: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caucasian_race https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caucasian_race
- anthk 1y ago
  Hispanic can be any race, from African Black to Nordic White. Also, there can be huge differences between Hispanic themselves, an Argentinian, Mexican, Peruvian and Asturian might share common traits (Catholic Culture -not beliefs, culture, something affecting even Atheists, and I am not talking about superstitions- , food) but their customs and worldview can be totally alien between ourselves. Just compare a Mexican Mariachi with an Asturian folk guy playing Celtic songs with bagpipes. Or the differences on ideology, state support, progressiveness... as much as a Brit and the average North American if not more.

pram 1y ago

FWIW "hispanic" isn't a race on those forms, it's an ethnicity. You can choose any race with it.

octopoc 1y ago
Yeah and it actually kinda makes sense--in Mexico, there are white Hispanics who descended from Spanish Jews and have not interbred much with the natives. They are tall and white. Then there are people with little or no European blood in them, and they are short and brown, generally speaking. So it makes sense that you could be a Caucasian Hispanic.
lazide 1y ago
The really weird thing is why a bunch of other things aren’t also ethnicities.
- dragonwriter 1y ago
  What other ethnicities do you think there is an equally strong case to include in the list of minimum reporting categories (which is what the official scheme defines) on par with the one current ethnic and six current (with the recent addition of Middle East and North African) racial categories?
  - lazide 1y ago
    Chinese. Indian. Northern European (Nordic countries). English. These all have just as much claim from a cultural-diaspora perspective eh? With a wide variety of phenotypes, if we go back a bit. Though Indian should probably be more finely divided if we’re being honest. If you really wanted to piss people off, we could of course lump Indian, Singaporean, Australian, American, etc. under English Ethnicity. The only reason Hispanic is one is because the conquistadors were really, really persistent, murderous, and shameless eh?
    - dragonwriter 1y ago
      The case for including an ethnicity in the minimum reporting categories starts with, largely, that it is both a large community and that it significantly cuts across rather than existing largely within a category already defined as a racial category; "Ethnicities" which would fall almost entirely within the Asian, Asian, or White racial categories don't really have a strong case. That said, there is probably a good argument for breaking out at least South Asian from Asian as a distinct top-level racial category, in the same way that MENA recently was. (But note that all of the top-level categories also have more detailed breakdowns available, and recent revisions have also moved to require the more detailed options to collected in a wider range of circumstances.) > The only reason Hispanic is one is because the conquistadors were really, really persistent, murderous, and shameless eh? Mostly, the opposite: that the successors to the conquistadors were less genocidal and more assimilationist than their British and British-descended North American counterparts.
      - lazide 1y ago
        American born Ethnic Chinese would like a word. As would a very large number of other groups. The only reason these groups are included this way is because of lobbying power (for and against) and $$ and privileges related to being in or out of various categories. From an ontological perspective, your argument is BS looking at the actual distributions and ground truth of these groups.
        dragonwriter 1y ago
        > American born Ethnic Chinese would like a word. What racial groups in the minimum reporting scheme does this ethnic group cut across, and in what rough proportions?
  - kjkjadksj 1y ago
    Realistically the US has different ethnicities just considering the differences between north and south, east, midwest and its spectrum, and then the west. For some the differences are so great the language spoken is no longer mutually intelligible.

paganel 1y ago

The entire US "race" discourse is pretty stupid, to be fair, too bad it has infected much of the rest of the world because of the influence of the US media.

sorcerer-mar 1y ago
You live under a rock if you think "race discourse" originated (presumably recently) from US media or the US at all.
- gjm11 1y ago
  I don't think paganel's claim is that all race discourse is derived from the US. Rather, that (1) the race discourse in the US is stupid and (2) that much race discourse elsewhere these days is derived from the US's and is therefore similarly stupid. (Other independent race discourse might also be stupid but in different ways.)
  - gitremote 1y ago
    Race discourse in the US is not stupid. Nazis from Germany mass murdered people because of white supremacy before US critical race theory. It's important to talk about Nazis and white supremacy instead of ignoring the problem and hoping it will go away by itself.
    - ty6853 1y ago
      [flagged]
    - gjm11 1y ago
      It is possible for something to be important to talk about, and for the way it's talked about to be stupid. In fact, I think it's quite common. I agree with paganel that a lot of US race discourse is stupid. I agree with you that sometimes it's important to talk about race. There's no contradiction between those. (But I don't think "white supremacy" is a good way to think about the Nazis' hatred of Jewish people. They were white supremacists, but they hated the Jews for other reasons and if by some miracle they had abruptly stopped being white supremacists I think they would have gone right on persecuting Jewish people.)

MangoToupe 1y ago

Actually, ironically I don't think that someone from Spain is intended to be considered Hispanic. Which also doesn't make sense, I know.

ceejayoz 1y ago
Technically, they're included. In practical usage, they'd far more likely be called Spanish or European in the US context.
- MangoToupe 1y ago
  Technically according to what? These labels were based on implicit understanding that shifted over time and place.
  - ceejayoz 1y ago
    Technically according to Wikipedia, at the very least. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hispanic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hispanic
    - tokai 1y ago
      No Wikipedia explicitly states that people from Spain are not included; "The term commonly applies to Spaniards and Spanish-speaking populations and countries in Hispanic America and Hispanic Africa" I.e. not mainland Spain.
      - ceejayoz 1y ago
        “The term commonly applies to Spaniards AND…” This is not a complex sentence.
        bombcar 1y ago
        A friend in college from Spain had way too much fun pretending to be stereotypically hispanic and would insist that he had more a claim to it, being from Hispaniola, after all.

mistrial9 1y ago

actual detail about this evolving topic here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hispanic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hispanic

fumeux_fume 1y ago

To be fair, in the eyes of the US government, Hispanic is an ethnicity and not a race so you can be White and Hispanic. However, this distinction is lost among most and ethnicity and race are commonly used interchangeably.

dragonwriter 1y ago
To be fair, in the eyes of the US government, races are non-exclusive and you can be White, Black or African American, American Indian or Native Alaskan, and all the other racial categories simultaneously, as well as either having or not having Hispanic or Latino ethnicity.
- bombcar 1y ago
  The kicker is that if you select "American Indian or Native Alaskan" they start asking for tribal documentation. But you can check Black or White or Hispanic (Not White) or anything else all you want. Who will gainsay?
  - dragonwriter 1y ago
    > The kicker is that if you select "American Indian or Native Alaskan" they start asking for tribal documentation. No, for most purposes they never did (in fact, for many purposes where this is used, it is immediately separated from anything that would associate it with the submitter, so it would be hard for them to come back and ask you for anything), and the 2024 revisions to the definitions of the minimum categories removes the language about maintaining an ongoing affiliation ("who maintains tribal affiliation or community attachment") from the definition of that category. [0] [0] https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2024/03/29/2024-06469/revisions-to-ombs-statistical-policy-directive-no-15-standards-for-maintaining-collecting-and https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2024/03/29/2024-06...
    - bombcar 1y ago
      The ACA definitely follows up, because tribal membership changes how the health benefits are billed to the government.

dragonwriter 1y ago

> Not very surprising that the official US races are BS. The modern concept of "race" in general is a BS construct that was invented to support and justify European imperialism, and which has long been recognized as having only the loosest relation to biological reality despite in its own terms being conceptualized as a biological reality of some importance. OTOH, its also produced very real communities of differentiated experience, identity, and treatment, and it is largely that which the US government system of race (plus one ethnicity, in the minimum scheme) is designed to gather data related to. > If I understand them correctly, You do not. > officially someone from Portugal or France is supposed to be Caucasian "Caucasian" is not part of the official race/ethnicity scheme used in US federal government reporting. Someone who has prehistoric ancestors who were from the region which is now Portugal or France, and who identifies with the racial group into which people with that ancestry are categorized, would be White, possibly with another racial and/or ethnic category depending on what other ancestry they identified with. > whereas someone from Spain is supposed to be Hispanic With the same description as above, replacing "Portugal or France" with "Spain", the person would still be White. A person who also identifies with Spanish or South, Central, or North American (south of the US border) national/cultural origin would be Hispanic or Latino by ethnicity (the only ethnic category in the scheme) as well as any racial category or categories they identify with. Here's a news release on 2024 updates to the scheme, which involve combine the race/ethnicity questions into a single multiple answer allowed question (the race question was already multiple answers allowed, but the presence or absence of the one ethnic category was a separate question) as well as other updates to the scheme: https://www.census.gov/newsroom/blogs/random-samplings/2024/04/updates-race-ethnicity-standards.html https://www.census.gov/newsroom/blogs/random-samplings/2024/...

lazide 1y ago
Regardless of what specific term is used, it is used (and abused!) equivalently pretty much everywhere humans exist. Is ‘caste’, race? Because it sure is used that way (or worse) in places that have it. And that’s been going on for longer than what we currently call European civilization.
- paxys 1y ago

naasking 1y ago

> whereas someone from Spain is supposed to be Hispanic, which makes zero sense from any point of view. Hispanics are Caucasian in the original classification: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caucasian_race https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caucasian_race

anthk 1y ago
Hispanic can be any race, from African Black to Nordic White. Also, there can be huge differences between Hispanic themselves, an Argentinian, Mexican, Peruvian and Asturian might share common traits (Catholic Culture -not beliefs, culture, something affecting even Atheists, and I am not talking about superstitions- , food) but their customs and worldview can be totally alien between ourselves. Just compare a Mexican Mariachi with an Asturian folk guy playing Celtic songs with bagpipes. Or the differences on ideology, state support, progressiveness... as much as a Brit and the average North American if not more.