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Actually,I like the various ethnic/ racial accents...
Even as an immigrant I can distinguish on the radio if the speaker is black ( more easily ) or Latin ( less so) ...but I cannot distinguish ...statehoods...
Maybe ...seasoned Americans can even pinpoint the state,or at least the region of a speaker...
Miami is one of the largest diasporas of the Caribbean in the world
and the Caribbean is FAR greater than Cuba, Puerto Rico, Jamaica and Haiti
some islands have very mixed people of both african and indian background, not to mention Caribbean Chinese, Caribbean Syrian, French Caribbean, Dutch Caribbean, European...you name it...it's impossible to just say that Caribbean people in Miami are automatically "African American"
Actually no,it was exhausted & closed, I try to revive it,perhaps avoiding some nasty comments ,by 1 particular person...
Now I see that it is moved to Politics...
Anyway,let's see if it survives,through quality comments...
Maybe we can have pan-american opinions,not only from Miamians...
Honestly, Harry- there was already a 178-post discussion about this. There's not much more to say, and it doesn't help that this is in a general/national forum.
So you have (simplified): Black: AA culture/ethnicity with its history going back to slavery, Jim Crow, Civil Rights Movement + the diverse cultures/ethnicities of the relatively new immigrants. Asian: Chinese, Indian, Japanese, Indonesian, Korean, Vietnamese, Pakistani, Filipino, etc. Each with its own diversity not only culturally but also physically. Latino: Argentinian, Chilean, Brazilian, Colombian, Cuban, Mexican, Nicaraguan, etc. Each with its own diversity. White: White American + the diverse cultures/ethnicities of the newer immigrants.
We don't call "White (American)" an ethnicity or culture because it's the majority, the mainstream, the "normalcy" if you will. But basically what we call "race" in America encompasses culture & ethnicity to a great extent.
You may think that your four-group color-coded classification simplifies the matter, but it just exacerbates the misconceptions that people have about about race, ethnicity, and culture. Here are my comments on your groups:
"Black" : Black is a racial classification, and for a while in this country, virtually all black people were enslaved and separated from the rest of free society. Therefore, an African-American ethnic identity developed that covered virtually all blacks. The terms in this country were basically interchangeable, and this didn't start to change until black immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean started to arrive that asserted distinct ethnic identities.
"Asian" : aside from the small exception of Indians descended from African origin and perhaps the "mixed-race" border region between the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia, South Asians are racially Caucasian. Ethnically speaking, South Asians don't really identity with East Asians. They consider themselves to be separate groups and even within those groups there are strong religious divisions. I don't even want to go into the fact that an increasingly small percentage of Filipinos identify with being ethnically Latin.
"Latino" : it is downright unreasonable and incorrect to call this a racial term. It is a cultural term and arguably an ethnicity. Contrary to the belief of so many people on this forum, many "Latinos" do not identify with each other at all. There are such vast geographical, racial, economic, and social divisions that it would be foolish to think otherwise. I honestly struggle to even talk about this "group" as an ethnicity; it is so vast and diverse that it means more on paper than it does in real life.
"White" : a subset of the Caucasian race that is informally used as a racial term. This has nothing to do with being "American." Plenty of non-English-speaking foreigners are white yet not American. Additionally, if you're trying to distinguish "white Americans" from "Latinos" a substantial percentage of white people in this country are "Latino," and a huge percentage of these "Latinos" are Americans.
If you want to talk about ethnicity, "white" has never been considered one in this country. From the beginning of this country's history, white immigrants of various ethnic groups mixed while blacks were enslaved and separated from society. White ethnicities in this country generally waned over time as people assimilated to mainstream American culture. Though some may not agree, it could be argued that "American" arose as an ethnicity for those people who no longer identified with the ethnicity of their ancestors, or who identified with their ancestors' ethnic group and the newly-formed "American" one at the same time. Many people of Latin European origin (both from the Meditteranean and via Latin America) blended into the "American" majority without retaining a Latin ethnic identity, and many people of the same description identify with both the Latin and the "American" ethnicities. It never ceases to surprise me that there are people out there who believe that people of Latin origin do not identify with others who identify with the "American" ethnicity. As a sidenote, many mestizo Americans whose families have lived in the American west and southwest for generations have adopted the "American" ethnicity and may not even identify with being Latin at all.
You may think that your four-group color-coded classification simplifies the matter, but it just exacerbates the misconceptions that people have about about race, ethnicity, and culture. Here are my comments on your groups:
"Black" : Black is a racial classification, and for a while in this country, virtually all black people were enslaved and separated from the rest of free society. Therefore, an African-American ethnic identity developed that covered virtually all blacks. The terms in this country were basically interchangeable, and this didn't start to change until black immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean started to arrive that asserted distinct ethnic identities.
"Asian" : aside from the small exception of Indians descended from African origin and perhaps the "mixed-race" border region between the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia, South Asians are racially Caucasian. Ethnically speaking, South Asians don't really identity with East Asians. They consider themselves to be separate groups and even within those groups there are strong religious divisions. I don't even want to go into the fact that an increasingly small percentage of Filipinos identify with being ethnically Latin.
"Latino" : it is downright unreasonable and incorrect to call this a racial term. It is a cultural term and arguably an ethnicity. Contrary to the belief of so many people on this forum, many "Latinos" do not identify with each other at all. There are such vast geographical, racial, economic, and social divisions that it would be foolish to think otherwise. I honestly struggle to even talk about this "group" as an ethnicity; it is so vast and diverse that it means more on paper than it does in real life.
"White" : a subset of the Caucasian race that is informally used as a racial term. This has nothing to do with being "American." Plenty of non-English-speaking foreigners are white yet not American. Additionally, if you're trying to distinguish "white Americans" from "Latinos" a substantial percentage of white people in this country are "Latino," and a huge percentage of these "Latinos" are Americans.
If you want to talk about ethnicity, "white" has never been considered one in this country. From the beginning of this country's history, white immigrants of various ethnic groups mixed while blacks were enslaved and separated from society. White ethnicities in this country generally waned over time as people assimilated to mainstream American culture. Though some may not agree, it could be argued that "American" arose as an ethnicity for those people who no longer identified with the ethnicity of their ancestors, or who identified with their ancestors' ethnic group and the newly-formed "American" one at the same time. Many people of Latin European origin (both from the Meditteranean and via Latin America) blended into the "American" majority without retaining a Latin ethnic identity, and many people of the same description identify with both the Latin and the "American" ethnicities. It never ceases to surprise me that there are people out there who believe that people of Latin origin do not identify with others who identify with the "American" ethnicity. As a sidenote, many mestizo Americans whose families have lived in the American west and southwest for generations have adopted the "American" ethnicity and may not even identify with being Latin at all.
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?
http://www.speaking-up.com/blog/wp-content/black-white-twins2.jpg (broken link)
I see so many relocation threads that I decided to try ( again ) an "ethnic " thread...
If we keep it within the TOS & polite,then we will learn the truth about each ethnic group in Mia...
Who they like & why,who they dislike etc...
Remember,stereotypres=solid impressions,we care so that the impression is true or false,if it is positive we endorse it,if it is negative but true,we try to fix it...
A thread that needs sensitive comments...
Let's have them...
Some folks are simply obsessed with race, class, ethnicity, skin color or a person's sexual preferences.
I vote we have a forum for race/ethnicity and another for GLBT, this way bigots and homophobes can have a place to vent.
"Asian" : aside from the small exception of Indians descended from African origin and perhaps the "mixed-race" border region between the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia, South Asians are racially Caucasian. Ethnically speaking, South Asians don't really identity with East Asians. They consider themselves to be separate groups and even within those groups there are strong religious divisions. I don't even want to go into the fact that an increasingly small percentage of Filipinos identify with being ethnically Latin.
I'm sorry Crisp, but you seem to think that the populations of those countries fit in easily into your mongoloid-caucasoid-negroid mold. I really don't mind if you choose to follow that classification. It is one of the numerous racial classifications you can find out there. But I'd still suggest you go to those countries yourself and see how the people actually look like, and see if you could put them into one of your -oid's. A lot of times you'll find yourself finding a family or an extended family comprising of either:
1) more than one -oid's, or
2) a mixture of more than one -oid's, or
3) a different category altogether, not fitting into either one of the -oid's nor a mixture of the -oid's, or
4) an -oid, or
5) combinations of all the above
Now of course certain ethnicities are associated with certain physical characteristics, but most of the time you have a mixture of several features crisscrossing all over the old world.
I don't know if I'm explaining myself well enough. To understand what I mean I'm afraid you'd really need to go to those countries yourself, see how the people look like, and even better, get to know the people so that you know how related they are.
I grew up in SE Asia, have gotten the privilege to know a good number of people from various European and several Asian & African countries and was surprised at how many people could pass for native Indonesians. It went as far as Hungary and Latvia (probably the one I least expected). Btw, Obama is also an example as you could see in a video in the other thread.
The pictures and videos on the thread could give you a slight glimpse of what I mean.
Here's also another video where you can see how people from Madagascar to the Pacific including Taiwan can look like. The so called "Pacific Islanders".
I'm not patronizing you here. If you choose not to believe me, then nothing I do will ever change that.
Saludos
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?
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Race in America
