By your logic, there are no ethnic groups since you can always subdivide a group and argue that the resulting parts have little “shared tongue and history”. An Ashekenazi Jew born and raised in southern Lousiaina and an Ashekenazi Jew born and raised on Martha’s Vineyard shares just as much tongue and history as the black people in the same boat. But I’m guessing–and the Ashekenazi Jews in this thread can correct me if I’m wrong–that these two Jewish individuals would tend to see each other as members of the same tribe, the same as the black folk (assuming they are both African American). Despite the cultural and geographic distance between them, they likely do share enough cultural traits and familiarity that it is not totally crazy to lump them together.
It’s well enough that you don’t think black people in NOLA share enough with the black people in NOVA to call themselves fam. But if these two groups call themselves fam and behave as fam (which they do, FYI), then what you “see” doesn’t matter all that much.
I will concede that “Jew” is a self-identifed ethnicity that probably doesn’t belong in a list with “Asians” and “Whites”. But it’s a group that encompasses many ethnicities, which makes it quite dissimilar from “African American” (which I personally reserve for the descendants of slaves brought to the swath of land now known as the United States of America).
I don’t know the three major languages that are shared among all Jews.
I don’t think we can insist that an ethnic group has to share a language. I had a co-worker who was born in Armenia, but she was embarrrassed to admit that she didn’t speak Armenian, her first language was Russian. She was very happy that her daughter (who had English as a first language) had learned some Armenian though.
Anyway, if you told her she wasn’t Armenian because she didn’t speak Armenian, she’d think you were crazy.
Ethnicity is a fuzzy concept, and a shared language is an important ethnic identifier, but it’s not the only one. Jews can speak Yiddish or Hebrew or English and they’re still Jews.
She didn’t identify, ethnically, as Russian? That is very common in ex-Soviet Republics which were often forcibly Russified. She may have considered Armenian to be her nationality (or what she was before moving to the US), but Russian to be her ethnicity.
My great-grandmother tried to join the DAR sometime in the 1920s or 30s and was turned down. My grandmother tried again in the 1970s and was accepted. Nothing about our religion in practice, ethnicity, or looks, changed.
My point is that changing attitudes doesn’t make people more or less white.
When did the concept of “white” even develop, and at that time were Jews considered white? I don’t know, but I’d like to know. I know that throughout most of European history the Jew/gentile distinction was very important to a lot of people, and light skin was beside the point.
No, she was Armenian, despite speaking Russian as a first language. Lots of people in Ireland speak English as a first language, does that make them ethnically English?
Or here in America, there are lots of native American tribes where very few people speak the Indian language fluently. Not being able to speak Navajo doesn’t make someone not Navajo.
Just like I wouldn’t tell a self-identified Irish American who has never set foot in Ireland and can’t speak a word of Gaelic that they are crazy, since it’s likely their parents, grandparents or great-greatparents did. Culture doesn’t disappear in a generation.
Neither of those examples is comparable to the situation in Soviet Armenia. I have no dog in this fight, and am not interested in a debate. I’m just saying that, given what is commonly known about ex-Soviet Republics, I would suspect there is more going on than “I’m just an Armenian girl from Armenia who only speaks Russian and none of my ancestors is Russian either”. Possible, I suppose, but not likely.
I didn’t include “English language” as a unifying tie of African Americans because I didn’t think it would be necessary. But I guess I shouldn’t make assumptions like this.
You have to be careful when you’re talking about ethnicity in America. Ask an American what ethnicity they are and few are going to say “American”. They might say that when traveling in another country, but when they are in the US, most likely they are Italian or Mexican or German or “Irish and German” or “African-American” or “Native American”. Blacks who immigrant to the US from Africa may or may self-identify as African-American (and that’s a whole 'nuther debate), but if every white person whose ancestors came here form Europe gets to be some ethnicity other than American, then why wouldn’t African-Americans get to be their own ethnicity (or multiple ethnicities), too?
So - when you posted “African Americans have their own dialect” you actually meant they all speak English? Because English is not a “dialect”.
See, I made an assumption that you meant some kind of dialect of English that is specific to African Americans. But I guess I shouldn’t make assumptions like this.
If we appreciate that race is a social construct and that our attitudes are inherently social, then it stands to reason that the racial make-up of a group can be perceived differently depending on prevailing attitudes. Most Westerners view the Japanese as being no racially different than the Chinese or Koreans. Nonetheless, Nazi Germany perceived “whiteness” in the Japanese. I don’t know if contemporary Germans still have this perception, but I would be quite surprised if they do. Doesn’t this say something about the capriciousness of whiteness?