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im hawaiian.
wheres the hawaiian/pacific islander option!?
Good question.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lucidus
There is one human genus, and one extant species in that genus. There is no meaningful definition of race, so theoretically you could arbitrarily define the number of races at any value >=0.
I don't believe in this term. It is antiquated. Recent DNA studies have proven that a Swede may be more genetically linked to an African or Asian than another Swede. The lines are so evasive. What makes a person white or black? What makes a person yellow or red? These are all OLD forms of bias meant to add to our collective stupidity. There are lots of "white" folks who look black and lots of "black" folks who look white. Let's try to stop the insane gereralities about people.
If we just take Africa and Europe, we can see the degrees of skin tone change gradually. At what point do we decide as a people to draw the line and say,"He's black or he's white"? Throw in those folks in the south Pacific and it becomes a real quandry.
We are one race--the human race. We come from different backgrounds and there may be seven degrees of separation but that's about it. I won't call myself white or any other generality.
My mother's family came from Quebec (French Canadian) but God only knows who everyone was messing with before that. My father's mother was an immigrant from Holland and his father was Menominee Indian. So, what does that make me? Are we that ignorant as a nation to refer to people like me as an Other?????? What the hell is that????
As people date and mate and life continues, these words will make a lot of sense. Let's get over it now because there are tons of folks who don't relate to these simplistic terms anymore.
That's why race is inseparable from ethnicity. If race were based solely on physical characteristics most of us would be plain mixed and we'd end up having different races within the same family or an extended family.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Neutre
Ethnicity, culture, and race based on physical characteristics are very closely intertwined.
Theoretically you could separate race and ethnicity (e.g. in the census), but that doesn't work in real life.
Even in the census you encounter all sorts of doubts, like Asians who physically are Black or Caucasian, although they're "100%" Asian. This shows how the so called Asian race is inseparable from ethnicity or culture. And then you also have native Europeans who physically look Asian (I've met a number of native Poles, Hungarians, and Greeks who do) or Black. There are also enough Africans (and African-Americans) who look Caucasian or Asian.
One thing that one forgets is that based solely on physical characteristics you often have these different races within one family or an extended family. I know an Indonesian family who has three kids. The eldest one looks Black with dark skin and black curly hair, her younger siblings are twins, a brother and a sister. He looks Asian with "the eyes" and dark brown wavy hair, whereas she looks Caucasian with light skin and straight dark brown hair. And I'm omitting other physical characteristics such as the shape/form of the nose, lips, hair distribution and density, protrusion of the brow ridge, cheek bones, eye color, stature, fat distribution, and a host of other features.
These cases are common all over the "old world" including Southeast, South, Central (including western China), West Asia, Oceania, Africa (Malagasy people of Madagascar are closer to Hawaiians than to Black Chadians, a lot of Bushmen in southern Africa look more like Asians), Russia, etc. Those Poles that are physically Asian probably have siblings or family who are Caucasian.
Are those people supposed to check different races in spite of them being in the same family?
Are these twins now supposed to check different races?
[Open the original post to see the picture]
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A black man on city-data!!!!!!
