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Race matters mostly as a marker for cultural or demographic differences, plus appearance differences make those of another race stand out more. Hispanics in the US are mostly recent enough immigrants to be a distinct population and most are mixed race enough to stand out more than say, an Italian-American. Usually census results by race are meaningless when the white population isn't separated from hispanic population, there's often large differences between the two groups. Whether many of those (if they are) hispanics are 80%+ European ancestry is irrelevant.
I don't think Hispanic is a race, however Mexicans are sort of similar looking and to be honest that is 99% what you see around so I can see why some people might imagine hispanics are a race.
It's not like you go out and you see white argentinians or black columbians walking around, all you see it's mexican mestizo upon mexican mestizo.
Hispanics are defaulted to the WHITE race for census purposes and demographics.
Not true. That is only sometimes the case if the person has pure European ancestry, or someone is ashamed of their partial indigenous/African roots and marks it themselves.
Not every hispanic has african or native heritage though, I spent a few weeks down in Argentina and the people I met were mostly German, Basque, French, Spaniard, Italian descent.
I didn't really meet many mulattos and the Mestizos looked different from the average Mexican mestizo you get to see in America.
Not true. That is only sometimes the case if the person has pure European ancestry, or someone is ashamed of their partial indigenous/African roots and marks it themselves.
Not true. Most Hispanics are defaulted racially to WHITE for census purposes. Many don't bother to fill out anything beyond Hispanic. But it's a known fact that Hispanics are usually listed as whites by default!
Most Hispanics usually identify as or are treated as their own group!
I agree that Spaniards don't look like Mestizo or Mulatto Latin Americans. All I was saying is that in some parts of the US (like the Midwest where I live), Mediterraneans like myself may or may not be considered White. Especially the more rural areas where people are more German, English, or Irish.
Pretty much the same race as in Caucasoid. But when you go into certain parts of East Africa, people there are Caucasoid as well. Some Sudanese people have straight hair and similar features to Mediterranean people, but nobody calls them White.
White is generally agreed upon as having fair skin. Yemeni people don't have fair skin. Neither do Sudanese people or many Southern Mediterraneans. I think maybe olive skin is the upper limit for what can pass as White. Where I work we have a few people from the Arabian peninsula, and even when they don't wear Muslim garb they don't really pass off as White. North Indians are also Caucasoid as well but nobody really considers them White. You seem to have a "Pan-Aryan" view, it seems. You are definitely in the minority in believing that a Swede is the same race as a Yemeni. I don't know many people who adhere to that. Probably in forensic anthropology they are the same race, but by most people's standards (which is what determines race to begin with and NOT science since biological race is non-existent), Yemenis aren't White.
I'm not saying you are wrong in classifying people from Yemen and Sweden as the same race. I'm just saying that it's very rare that people go by the whole "Caucasoid" principle. And you'd be far pressed to find anyone who thinks most Arabs or West Asians look White, even without traditional garb. There are RARE fair skinned types, but they are not the rule.
I'm just saying that genetically speaking, there's no question that People from the Near East who don't have significant admixture from Africa are the same "race" as Europeans. Keep in mind in the modern era most Yemenis have a lot of African admixture. When you look at say Yemeni Jews (who are descendants of pre-Islamic converts, and thus mostly lack African ancestry), there is a quite different look.
As for South Asia, modern genetics has shown that Indians are a mixture of Near Easterners (specifically related to people from the Caucasus) and an indigenous group related to the Andaman Islanders which is now extinct. That said, some Indians, particularly in Kasmir and Jatts in general, are light enough to pass for being from the Mediterranean. And in Pakistan and Afghanistan, you can run into people who look like this in the mountains...
I'm not aware of any lighter Sudanese, with the exception of Sudanese Copts, who are descended from Egyptians. Many Ethiopians have a lot of Near Eastern ancestry however - in some cases people of the Amhara and Tigray ethnicities can have more ancestry from the Near East than from Africa.
Quote:
Originally Posted by EddieOlSkool
Some of the Spanish national team can pass as "average White" to the American eye, but a lot of them don't. 13, 9, 14, and 19 look White. Though 9 (Torres) is known for bleaching his hair. I think he still passes for a White guy without effort. But a lot of the darker guys on that team would look "ambiguous" in the Midwest. On the East Coast they'd be just White guys. Put a lot of them in say, Grand Rapids, Michigan and they would very much look different than the locals. You can place most Mediterraneans on the East Coast and nobody would bat an eyelash. People would think nothing or just assume they are Italian or Portuguese. Maybe French if in East New England. But if you put them in Illinois (outside of the Chicago area), Wisconsin, Western Michigan (they'd blend in around Detroit), any of the Dakotas, Iowa, or Minnesota, I say they would be seen as different. I can attest to that as my family is from the Northeast and over there we are regular White folk but in the Midwest (especially areas with large Dutch concentrations), we are seen as some brown race. Really weird but it makes sense if you look at perception.
If all you're used to seeing is Dutch people with blonde hair and blue eyes who are over 6 ft tall, seeing a normal looking Spaniard would be quite a surprise and your idea of what is White would cause you to see him as not like you.
As stated downthread, there is one half Japanese guy on the team. I think one or two of the team members are immigrants from Brazil as well. And a few on the team are from the Canaries, where people tend to be a bit mixed (the Canaries used to have plantation slavery based around sugarcane cultivation, but the former black population has completely intermixed now, so most natives in the Canaries are around 10% black. Regardless, probably 3/4ths of the team is pretty unquestionably white IMHO.
Quote:
Originally Posted by hobbesdj
I don't buy this one bit. They wouldn't be white in the vast majority of the US: the Midwest, the South, the Mid Atlantic, the Rockies, the Pacific Northwest. Only in parts of New England (apparently), the Southwest and Miami could about half of those guys possibly be "white". And I've spent enough time in the New Jersey to know that even still some of those guys would be "white....but he's Italian" or "white....but he's Jewish". Brown skinned people are generally not considered white in America. Maybe for some who fit into this category people are being nice and not telling you straight to your face they don't consider you white when you claim to be. I used to know a "white" Egyptian guy who always identified as such, and you should've heard the laughs when he walked away. One can imagine that today he still thinks people consider him white, since no one really had it in them to drop the news.
I'm sorry, but this is just ridiculous. I'm almost all northern European (German, Irish, English, Swedish, and Sephardic), but I have dark brown hair, hazel eyes, and skin which tans fairly easily. I'm dark enough that I've been confused for Jewish (I'm only 1/16th, and only discovered this recently) and Latino off and on in my life. But I have a brother with blond hair and blue eyes. And I've spent time traveling in Germany, and met plenty of native-born Germans even darker than I am - dark enough I would have thought they were Italian. With the standards you're setting for "whiteness" - I'm not sure I would be white, let alone a large swath of northern Europeans.
The difference in complexion between southern Germans and Spanish is small enough there's a lot of overlap, though certain facial features might look more Spanish or German. The Canaries are a mix between the natives and Spanish, not just Africans.
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