Which is to say, no logic at all. Or a twist on “If you don’t understand it, I can’t possibly explain it to you.”
If someone is deliberately misunderstanding your point, then shame on him. If you have a point that is blindingly obvious but impossible to elaborate, you have no point at all. You simply have argument by assertion. Which is not a logical argument.
Depends on the tribe. Each has set up its own standard for claiming membership, and it varies quite a bit between tribes. If all you have is two great-great-great grandfathers, then you probably aren’t going to qualify. However, if both your grandmothers were members of the same tribe, you’re probably good.
Contrapuntal writes:
> Which is to say, no logic at all. Or a twist on “If you don’t understand it, I can’t
> possibly explain it to you.”
No, what I’m saying is that you know very well what I mean, and I think that you’re just being contrary for the fun of it. When someone claims that he’s African-American because his ancestors were Jewish and at some point long ago lived in North Africa (assuming that it’s true that Biblical Israelites derived from North Africa, which I’m not sure about), or when somebody claims that Charlize Theron (whose ancestors immigrated to South Africa from the Netherlands less than 400 years ago) is African-American, or when someone says that everyone is African-American because every human’s ancestors lived in Africa 100,000 years ago, that person is just being contrary for the fun of it. You know perfectly well what is meant by the term. Did the person’s ancestor’s live in sub-Saharan Africa in 1500 A.D.? Do they look like they are of sub-Saharan African ancestry? Does their DNA indicate that they are mostly of sub-Saharan African ancestry? In the vast majority of cases, the answers to these questions will all point the same way.
There isn’t any air-tight definition to these matters. There isn’t any logical, air-tight definition to most legal matters. For instance, what does it mean that a jury has to find someone guilty “beyond all reasonable doubt”? “Reasonable doubt” does not have a logical, air-tight definition. A jury just has to decide on their own what that means. I think the only part of the definition of African-American that’s genuinely difficult is the question of what percent of your ancestry has to be of sub-Saharan African ancestry to make you an African-American. If 31 of your 32 great-great-great-grandparents were slaves in the U.S. (and one was a white slave-owner), pretty much everyone will say that you’re an African-American. If one of your 32 great-great-great-grandparents was a slave and the others were all white (and none of your grandparents called themselves a Negro), pretty much nobody will say that you’re an African-American.
Get used to ambiguity. Look, I’m a mathematician. I know perfectly well that most issues in human society (like legal matters) don’t work like mathematical logic. You’ll merely make yourself miserable trying to make them work that way.
I wrote:
> Did the person’s ancestor’s live in sub-Saharan Africa . . .
I meant:
> Did the person’s ancestors live in sub-Saharan Africa . . .
There’s a huge difference, as I’m sure you understand, Wendell, between a closely argued legal definition of “African-American” and no definition at all. I’m trying to point out, in my own mild and querulous manner, that almost any definition I can think of would be open to gross misinterpretations from what we all understand the term “African-American” to mean.
If a 20th century immigrant from Nigeria is eligible for grants, jobs, scholarships on the basis of being an African-American, then the need to demonstrate descent from pre-1860s slaves is no longer a necessary part of the definition. Once that door is opened, it seems to me that perhaps the whole sub-Saharan element is also perhaps unnecessary.
Personally, I find it scary as hell to have ill-defined regulations in effect, and I find it likely that someone has tried to test the limits of these regulations, even someone doing it for contrarian reasons. But even if no one has tried to test these limits, why does it seem to disturb you that a contrarian would ask for some precision here? Maybe he won’t find satisfaction in the attempt, but it’s a good thing to ask for clarification, isn’t it, even if the answer is “Suck it up and move on”?
pseudotriton ruber ruber writes:
> But even if no one has tried to test these limits, why does it seem to disturb
> you that a contrarian would ask for some precision here? Maybe he won’t find
> satisfaction in the attempt, but it’s a good thing to ask for clarification, isn’t it,
> even if the answer is “Suck it up and move on”?
Oh, I’m not disturbed by your question. You’re perfectly free to ask it. I’m perfectly free to answer “Suck it up and move on.”
Sure you are. Doesn’t seem like much of a debating point, though.
No, I’m not being contrary at all. I have asserted nothing other than that your ‘logic’ depends upon an unsupported statement; an assertion that is proven by your response.
The OP has made it quite clear that he is interested in the specific definition of African-American as it applies to social funding, employment, et. As things stand today, as pseudotriton has pointed out, a second generation Nigerian immigrant is considered to be African-American from a federal government standpoint. Your definition with respect to slaves *vis a vis * sub-Saharan Africa c. 1500 A.D. is insufficient.
The condescending tone of your “get used to ambiguity” comment is noted. It is quite the complement to “you know what I mean.” I would expect a touch more rigorous rhetoric from a mathmetician.
I covered this in my post above. For Native American the BIA allows each tribe to set it’s own rules and it could be a legal problem claiming to be Native American if you are not (depending onw what you are trying to get, of course, note that some tribes with a casino pay each tribal family a very nice monthly stipend)
Otherwise, at least when I was on the EEOAC, there are no rules at all, you may freely claim to be any other “race”. In general, there are no benefits for doing so.
Contrapuntal writes:
> The OP has made it quite clear that he is interested in the specific definition of
> African-American as it applies to social funding, employment, et. As things stand
> today, as pseudotriton has pointed out, a second generation Nigerian
> immigrant is considered to be African-American from a federal government
> standpoint. Your definition with respect to slaves vis a vis sub-Saharan Africa c.
> 1500 A.D. is insufficient.
My definition never mentioned slaves. (You’re confusing my definition with those of other posters.) My definition asked whether one’s ancestors lived in sub-Saharan Africa in 1500 A.D. If a person is a second-generation immigrant (to the U.S.) from Nigeria, then they are African-American. I think that most people would consider an American who is a second-generation immigrant from Nigeria to be an African-American.
> The condescending tone of your “get used to ambiguity” comment is noted. It is
> quite the complement to “you know what I mean.” I would expect a touch more
> rigorous rhetoric from a mathmetician.
The reason that I mentioned that I’m a mathematician was to point out that I know perfectly well what rigorous definitions are. I also know that rigorous definitions don’t work for most of ordinary life. Trying to make ordinary life correspond to mathematical logic will merely make you unhappy.
But how about a specific benefit such as I outlined above? When we go looking for a professor and imply that we will look particularly favorably upon the application of an African/American candidate (in that we’re spending part of our ad money to state quite clearly and unambiguously that we are an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer) and we get a candidate who writes in his cover letter, “As an African-American, I delighted to respond to your ad” but who turns up lily-white at the interview, isn’t he or she helped in that case? Wouldn’t getting hired (in a tight job market, at least for non-minority applicants) constitute a real benefit for someone claiming to be African-American?
Besides, are there no longer all the other tangible benefits of self-identifying as “African-American” that I mention above? Minority business loans, scholarships, grants, etc.? Am I just making up these tangible benefits, and you’re perfectly correct to dismiss my inquiries as just talking outdated nonsense, or do these things exist?
If the definition of African-American, for the purpose of governmental record keeping, includes a second generation Nigerian, then it is over-broad. Why should such a person be eligible for minority funding or affirmative action programs?
pseudotriton ruber ruber writes:
> When we go looking for a professor and imply that we will look particularly
> favorably upon the application of an African/American candidate (in that we’re
> spending part of our ad money to state quite clearly and unambiguously that
> we are an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer) and we get a
> candidate who writes in his cover letter, “As an African-American, I delighted to
> respond to your ad” but who turns up lily-white at the interview, isn’t he or she
> helped in that case?
Theoretically this could happen, but in practice it doesn’t. If it did happen, you could ask the candidate, “Could you provide some proof that you are of African descent?” If he refuses to provide such documentation, you could just ignore the claim and assume that he has no African ancestry. If he insists that he is, despite the evidence, what could he do - take you to court? He’s making a contrary-to-fact claim. He has no case.
Sure, he does. He could just state “I have some of the strongest possible evidence that my family lived in Africa, and if you doubt me, I can produce it in a court of law.” Meanwhile, he’s already got his foot in the door (we gets literally hundreds of applications for every job opening we advertise, and we usually interview no more than a dozen candidates, so that’s a sizable advantage right there. When we’re interviewing with a particularly strong AA/EOE bent, which we’ve done on some occasions–like the dean reminding us every few days how our department could really, really use a larger minority compoenent–we tend to interview candidates whose overall credentials are weaker than when we’re not under special pressure. So a lily-white candidate might even seem particularly qualified in the pool we’ve chosen to interview.
We might feel intimidated by his confident claim of having strong evidence of African descent, and just give up arguing the point right there, but say we challenged him, and he produced the book of Exodus, and said, after filing a discrimination suit, “Is this court claiming the Bible on which we swear to be factually errant?”
Mind you, this could even be someone who has in mind PRIMARILY the intent of getting a court to rule that the Bible is completely unreliable as to fact, and is only secondarily seeking a job. Like me, for example. I have a job. I don’t really want another job. But say I wanted to make a test case for some reason, and wanted to spend the money necessary to get some court to rule that my claims based on Exodus are false claims. Or say I’m a Nigerian immigrant post-1990 who finds it ridiculous and patronizing that my countrymen are eligible for federal aid, and wish to challenge that eligibility in court. I can imagine plenty of cases where someone would want the law to be clarified, and wants to file a discrimination suit to do so.
it just seems crazy to me that the legal standard is “We all know perfectly well who is and who is not eligible for whatever legal benefits accrue to ‘African-Americans’.”
@pseudotriton ruber ruber
What an amusing concept, this thread had me in stitches.
How about calling yourself an Albino Falasha ?
Underlying your question is a valid problem
I can see a good case for helping people from seriously deprived backgrounds, but to do so on the basis of colour or supposed ancestry is rather peculiar.
Taking the mick out of the system an excellent way of undermining it.
What is ‘taking the mick out of the system?’ It’s a cool sounding phrase, but I want to be sure I use correctly.
Thinking upon it, Wendell, I need to ask: what on earth would be my department’s motivation in challenging this candidate’s claim? Say we’re looking to hire a Chaucerian specialist. We understand that at any given moment there are only a handful of unemployed Ph.Ds with a specialty in Chaucer who are African-American. Most of the applicants we get will be either unqualified but African-American, or qualified but not African-American. If we are lucky enough to get an application from a qualified A-A candidate, there is no assurance that he or she will accept the job offer we will almost certainly make after interviewing him or her, because he or she likely will have dozens of other offers, and probably for a lot more money and perks that we’re authorized to make.
So this white dude turns up, says he’s African-American. He doesn’t look it, but hey. We mainly want a qualified Chaucerian, which he is, and the dean mainly wants someone who self-identifies as African-American. So why would anyone here want to challenge his claim and get entangled in legal proceedings when if we do nothing, we all get what we want?
It is British slang
Generally it means pushing things beyond reasonable limits, either verbally or materially - but doing so with a degree of dexterity.
Mick refers to ‘Irish’ who are renowned for blarney (sweet/persausive talking)
In the more technical NG’s etc that I troll, we teach British slang, and learn (mostly) American argot in return. It happens by accident.
It depends on the justification for that minority funding. If its “your ancestors got screwed, so you get a break”, then they shouldn’t be eligible. But if the reason is “African Americans still face systemic discrimination” then they should, as a second-generation Nigerian faces all the same sort of discrimination as someone whose family has been here three hundred years. More interesting is if the reason is “It’s not about you, it’s about increasing diversity in order to provide a more dynamic enviroment for everyone”, because a second generation Nigerian is certainly diverse, but not really in the way intended. Still more interesting is the reason “It’s not about you, it’s about increasing minority representaiton so as to encourage minority participation as students/clients/customers”, because then you have to start talking about how “traditional” African Americans see that second generation Nigerian.
I had two cousins from Zimbabwe one year. They’d been here about four years. One clearly identified as white, the other black. They both had friends of both races (we have a very diverse school), but the looked to very different places to model their clothes and mannerisms. If you met the first one, you’d assume he was born here and his ancestors were slaves and the very slight accent perhaps a pretension to African roots. The second is clearly an immigrant who is melding nicely into “mainstream” culture. Racial identity is complicated.
If the American Jews are now considered “African American”, then will people stop referring to the Falashas as the “black Jews”? I hope so.
Affirmative Action is not reparations for slavery, nor is it just about compensation for past discrimination. If it were, white women wouldn’t be the biggest beneficiaries of Affirmative Action. Think about it. White women have not inherited the legacy of discrimination in the same way as certain racial groups, but they get preference. First-generation Pacific Islanders and Hispanics are also “encouraged to apply”. So if AA is actually meant for the descendants of slaves, then a whole lot of folks, not just Africans, have been scamming the system.
As for the OPer claiming to be an African American when he is not: well, it’s hard not to see this as being a jerk. I firmly believe that one can be black without looking black, but I’m not for folks claiming an identity for no other reason than perceived financial benefits.
I find it a bit ironic that a Jewish person is decrying the arbitrariness of how a racial group is defined. Using your logic, pseudotriton ruber ruber, someone descending from an East African could make the claim that they’re Hebrew, since 1)the ancient Hebrews were present there, 2)there is evidence that gene flow between ancient Hebrews and surrounding populations was present, and 3)no one can prove that he’s NOT Hebrew. Do you think Israel would grant someone citizenship based on such a tenuous claim? Do you think Jewish law would view this claimant as a Jew? No. And IIRC, doesn’t Jewish law deny the Jewishness of someone who has only a Jewish father? Isn’t this just as arbitrary as the rules for “blackness” in the US?
All populations has fuzzy boundaries. When it comes to government policies, one can risk making definitions too stringent (historically, it was difficult for people to claim Native American status…though that may have changed) or too loose (the “one drop rule”). The compromise is the honor system we have now. Maybe one day we will be able to dismantle programs that recognize race and definitions will cease to be important. But until that day comes, the compromise will just have to suffice.
Subverting the system by claiming an identity that is not yours does not do anything but make you look like a self-serving jerk. You want to be a nigger without having to be a nigger, and that’s a slap in the face to people who don’t have a choice.