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It's mild xenophobia. The idea that some Hispanics are racially white scares the Jesús out of some people. When you cannot visually recognize the genetic markup of a population that has been stereotyped and marked as "undesirable social currency", the thought of procreating with them by the slightest of oversights (having a bunch of white Hispanics running around below the radar causes such risks to materialize) causes people to become obtuse in their differentiation of race and ethnicity.
As a white Hispanic myself, I saw it come full circle during my tenure living in Alabama. Most of these Southeners had the prescribed notion of the mestizo puerto rican you highlighted above, complete with the cultural crutches, language barriers and african-american by-proxyisms. So when I showed up they didn't know which way was up. I was accepted by the peer group by sheer racial and macro-cultural compatibility (the guy is white, speaks english without a heavy accent and doesn't wear puertorican flagged wifebeaters), but the name and the inflection of voice, nevermind the bilingualism, created a source of mistrust. So in true paranoid fashion they devised a further stratatization of race. They called it "white white". I kid you not, you cannot make this stuff up. According to them, there was no question I was white, but sure as the sky is blue they were certain I was not "white white". Have you heard crazier nonsense? Dating was an afterthought during that college phase of my life, as not being "doubly white" was not the kind of social currency these "belles" in Tuscaloosa were looking for. As opposed to blacks, I could fully interact socially and publicly with them, making great friendships along the way, but I sure as heck could not sexually engage any female in that crowd, that's just textbook xenophobia. It is what it is. This is 2003 so it wasn't that long ago.
The bottom line is that race is very much still social currency in this country, and that is unlikely to change, even with a black president and all. Granted, other countries have even more blatant racial tensions than our US of A (Brazil, Spain come to mind), but to suggest threads like these are not exemplifications of the inherent value people place on ensuring their offspring are racially white in this country is blatantly disingenuous. As somebody who has been simultaneously a victim AND a beneficiary of said racism, I know this reality to be true first hand.
So if a genetics test was done you, would you be pretty confident that the results would come back saying you are genetically 100% European without a single drop of Taino and or African ancestry ?
You do know that if even 1% of your ancestors are Taino or African, you can not be considered White, you do know that right ? Are you familar with the one drop rule that disqualifies people who are not genetically 100% European from being White.
So are you 100% confident that none of your ancestors have ever mixed with a Puerto Rican who has Taino and or African ancestry ?
You can't go around calling yourself White if you have Black and or Taino looking people in your family.
The reason I call myself White is because there is not a single person in my entire family that racially looks like Jennifer Lopez. Everybody in my entire family looks lily Whitebread. Blue eyes, ginger red hair, blond hair, etc are all very much present in my family.
Nobody in my family has the high cheek bones and almond shaped eyes that you find among the Tainos and other Amerindian groups.
Can the same be said about your family Mr. "I am a White Hispanic".
So if a genetics test was done you, would you be pretty confident that the results would come back saying you are genetically 100% European without a single drop of Taino and or African ancestry ?
You do know that if even 1% of your ancestors are Taino or African, you can not be considered White, you do know that right ? Are you familar with the one drop rule that disqualifies people who are not genetically 100% European from being White.
So are you 100% confident that none of your ancestors have ever mixed with a Puerto Rican who has Taino and or African ancestry ?
You can't go around calling yourself White if you have Black and or Taino looking people in your family.
The reason I call myself White is because there is not a single person in my entire family that racially looks like Jennifer Lopez. Everybody in my entire family looks lily Whitebread. Blue eyes, ginger red hair, blond hair, etc are all very much present in my family.
Nobody in my family has the high cheek bones and almond shaped eyes that you find among the Tainos and other Amerindian groups.
Can the same be said about your family Mr. "I am a White Hispanic".
Are you for real? Why do you keep fighting windmills brother? You bring up yet another tangent that hasn't even been contested. You do prove me right by your response though, your obtuse quest for racial semantical purity is textbook xenophobia.
Not once I argued there wasn't genetic mixing of racial traits and lines in my family tree, and you seem to be rather naive to the intricacies of dominant and recessive genetic makeup. We have a saying in the Air Force: "perception IS reality". In essence what you see is what you get. You can have plenty of recessive genetic pairing so as to be white, without having the genetic makeup of a Norwegian who has never left the country. That's the point, and that's what scares the crap out of people like you. That a man with a family tree with mestizos in them, in aggregate, if one looks back far enough, can effectively be lighter skinned, freckled-shouldered and burn faster than his Indiana wife who is expected by default to be whiter due to an Irish surname tree as opposed to a Spaniard one. Yep, xenophobia.
It would be one thing for me to put forth the idea that I was white while being mestizo, which was the original challenge of this thread, but having mestizo family members, regardless of how recent or separated that lineage may be, does not preclude one from being white in the colloquially accepted defintion of it: in skin color, hair color and composition and facial features. That just scares you so you resort to anachronistic arguments of one drop rule and ante bellum racial nomenclature debate. You can keep fighting that fight all the way to the Kehlsteinhaus if you wish, but that just further proves my point.
To put it simply, if I were to walk down the street and you were to point at me and scream "there goes a mestizo", people would laugh you off, perhaps refer you to the closest lab for a CT scan. If I were to be walking down the street with my wife and you were to point at us and declare "there goes another d#mn interacial couple", people would probably call you in to the cops for public intox. Does that negate that I am puerto Rican? Of course not, nor does it negate that if you look down my family tree there is a fair amount of mestizo lineage, albeit proportionally less than the median puerto rican. But more importantly, it debunks the credibility or even purpose of your crusade towards limiting the use of the term "white" to exclude people whose caucasian traits can be attributed to Iberian origins (Spain and Portugal). The reality is that absent physical features to differentiate a white of Ibearian lineage from an Anglo/Franco/Germanic white, most americans are unable and frankly uninterested in pursuing your narrow defintion of white.
In the CONUS, white is a broad denominator for social currency. As race-obsessed as this country is at the end of the day people just care that you look white and that your kids do too, few to no people in this country care to trace the whiteness of others further than looking and sounding white. That puts you I'm afraid in the tinfoil-hat table on sunday dinner, even among "white whites". My southern college buddies used "white white" as a cultural subrugation of their inability to differentiate themselves from me racially, for which at least they recognized the absurdity of calling me mestizo just because I'm Hispanic. If these good ol boys could acknowledge that much, then your definition really has no relevance in today's America. Feel free to continue bashing your head against a wall though, and pray to the white gods your current or future offspring don't confuse my future offspring for whites *gasp*; God knows what kind of irreparable damage could be done to your family tree.
So if a genetics test was done you, would you be pretty confident that the results would come back saying you are genetically 100% European without a single drop of Taino and or African ancestry ?
You do know that if even 1% of your ancestors are Taino or African, you can not be considered White, you do know that right ? Are you familar with the one drop rule that disqualifies people who are not genetically 100% European from being White.
So are you 100% confident that none of your ancestors have ever mixed with a Puerto Rican who has Taino and or African ancestry ?
You can't go around calling yourself White if you have Black and or Taino looking people in your family.
The reason I call myself White is because there is not a single person in my entire family that racially looks like Jennifer Lopez. Everybody in my entire family looks lily Whitebread. Blue eyes, ginger red hair, blond hair, etc are all very much present in my family.
Nobody in my family has the high cheek bones and almond shaped eyes that you find among the Tainos and other Amerindian groups.
Can the same be said about your family Mr. "I am a White Hispanic".
No he does not know what he's talking about. No matter what the skin color is, everybody would have some black in them, some indian(taino) in them.
The reality is that absent physical features to differentiate a white of Ibearian lineage from an Anglo/Franco/Germanic white, most americans are unable and frankly uninterested in pursuing your narrow defintion of white.
Most Americans I know have a definition of White that does not include having Taino or any other type of Amerindian ancestry.
Quote:
for which at least they recognized the absurdity of calling me mestizo just because I'm Hispanic
I consider you a Mestizo because you are not genetically 100% European. You have people in your family tree that racially look like Pocahontas.
Racial purity is extremely rare in Puerto Rico.
That is why you never see any Puerto Rican families where everybody looks White.
Look at the family album of most Puerto Rican families and you will always see pictures of atleast one family member that looks Taino or Black.
I knew a Puerto Rican guy who looked like he could pass for a Jew, Italian, or Greek but has a grandmother who looks like she could be Donna Summer's twin sister. In other words he has African ancestry in his family tree and does not draw 100% of his family tree back to Spain.
Most Americans I know have a definition of White that does not include having Taino or any other type of Amerindian ancestry.
I consider you a Mestizo because you are not genetically 100% European. You have people in your family tree that racially look like Pocahontas.
Racial purity is extremely rare in Puerto Rico.
That is why you never see any Puerto Rican families where everybody looks White.
Look at the family album of most Puerto Rican families and you will always see pictures of atleast one family member that looks Taino or Black.
I knew a Puerto Rican guy who looked like he could pass for a Jew, Italian, or Greek but has a grandmother who looks like she could be Donna Summer's twin sister. In other words he has African ancestry in his family tree and does not draw 100% of his family tree back to Spain.
Your contradicting yourself now. The only reason why I thought you were wrong was because you said there was a Puerto Rican "look". I still think there isn't a defined look, Puerto Ricans come in all shades. Even you gave a good example of your friend and his grandma. I'm not talking about mitochondrial DNA, but simply appearance. I know for a fact that Puerto Ricans are rarely 100% anything. That's what makes most of them relatively gorgeous people.
I know for a fact that Puerto Ricans are rarely 100% anything. That's what makes most of them relatively gorgeous people.
Yeah since Puerto Ricans are rarely 100% anything, it does not make sense for hindsight2020 to self identify as White because Whiteness is associated with racial purity.
Yeah since Puerto Ricans are rarely 100% anything, it does not make sense for hindsight2020 to self identify as White because Whiteness is associated with racial purity.
A substantial percentage of white people in the CONUS cannot themselves make that claim either. For all we know your family tree has a couple Jamaican honeymoons you'll never be able to account for. Since you seem to unequivocally assert my family tree is riddled with people who "look like pocahontas" I figure it's finally fair for me to question the veracity of your claim that yours is a notch short of Leif Ericson's time-frozen mDNA. Your obtuse definition of white is of no consequence to everyday americans, but does illustrate your xenophobic tendencies.
Most Americans I know have a definition of white that stops at physical attributes and language, with cultural idiosyncracies a distant third. We clearly live in two different countries, and I live in the South no less. We agree to disagree. You'll have to take the mestizo issue up with the Air Force; the security clearance and official medical records list me as a white male, both being closed to self-reporting. I'll get right on it though, forget national security, the future of racial purity is at stake by such crass oversights.. Good luck with that Crusade, hope the killings go well....
A substantial percentage of white people in the CONUS cannot themselves make that claim either.
This is what a White family in the United States looks like. I doubt very much that they have any Indian or African ancestors. If they did a genetics test the results would most likely reveal that they are genetically 100% European.
Most Puerto Ricans look Biracial or Triracial, so there is a Puerto Rican look.
Most Puerto Ricans have a distinct look that is limited only to the New World a.k.a the Americas. In other words most Puerto Ricans have a unique look that can not be found in the Old World like Europe or Sub Saharian Africa.
Your average Puerto Rican is too dark to pass for a European and at the same time too light to pass for a Sub Saharian African. Your average Puerto Rican racially looks out of place in both the White community and the Black community and can not racially blend in neither of those 2 communities appearance wise.
Luis Guzman and Jennifer Lopez are the bench mark for looking Puerto Rican because they fall into the category of not looking European enough to pass for White and at the same time not looking African enough to pass for Black. This is what happens when a society is created out of racial miscegnation between Africans, Amerindians, and Europeans. You get a population where the majority does not racially resemble David Beckham or Deion Sanders.
There is only some truth to that. MANY Puerto Ricans have a certain look that comes from their triracial heritage. But there are also many people from other countries that have that same look, including some non-Latino North Americans. As well, there are many exceptions. I have one Puerto Rican friend, for example, who is a dead ringer for Deion Sanders.
No he does not know what he's talking about. No matter what the skin color is, everybody would have some black in them, some indian(taino) in them.
I think he's kinda shook up that even though he was almost accepted into the white man's club up/down there in Alabama, when it came to the bedroom he was excluded because the "belles" thought that since he was Puerto Rican, his racial purity as a white man indeed would come under question, and he had no papers he could present to disprove their theory.
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Good luck with that Crusade, hope the killings go well....
