# Is the influx of White Nationalists bad? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 2, 2004, 3:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-influx-of-white-nationalists-bad/237849 "2004-04-02T03:54:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2004, 11:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-influx-of-white-nationalists-bad/237849/41 "2004-04-02T23:22:30Z")
Great link, **theR**. Of course, those are just people who are Americans. If you had a sampling from around the globe you could get the same results as you moved from europe to central asia to asia to north america, and from europe to the middle east to north africa to sub-saharan africa, and from europe to the middle east to india to SE asia to oceania to australia. Even if you only counted people who’s ancestors had lived in that spot for the last couple hundred years. ---
**Author:** ![eponymous](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e0b2c6/32.png) [@eponymous](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eponymous)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2004, 11:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-influx-of-white-nationalists-bad/237849/42 "2004-04-02T23:33:10Z")
> [@Tigers2B1](#): > > I would call these people “asian” and I think the consensus would agree– If they don’t than I’m wrong. Depdens on who your audience is. Would the people in the photo refer to themselves as Asian? What about about people from India? Or Saudi Arabia? Or [this person](http://www.gwu.edu/~andaman/Andpeople3.htm)? > [@](#): > > In this group I would call one person “White” and the others “Black” and I think the consensus would agree – If not than I’m wrong. I have no problem with your assessment if you are using race as a simple, visual descriptor and nothing else for the people in the photo. > [@](#): > > Maybe we’re talking about different stuff here but I don’t have to know the history of a word to know the meaning. So, no, I don’t see words as being history dependent. They are dependent on how people use the word at that place and that time. When people change the use of the word than the word changes then, at that place and time no matter what meanings it had prior to that. In fact, those people who are aware of the histories of the words that they use - and allow those histories to affect the meaning they give to the word – may ‘be out of touch’ with the way the word is used in common communication and mmight use those words differently. This same for any specialized use of an ordinary word. Not every word - but there are some words that knowing the history of the word has a major communicative impact on its’ meaning. If the white person in the photo above were to start referring to each black person as “nigger”, the inter-group dynamics would probably be completely different than if the white person was absent and the word was used amongst those in the group. Another example: what is the ordinary and the specialized of the words, for example, “gay” or “liberal”? Am I out of touch with reality if I happen to use the word gay in conversation to mean happy? Am I using the word liberal in a specialized sense if I use it in conversation to refer to the political inclinations of the Founding Fathers of the United States? Words have histories because the meanings of words change - that’s the nature of language. But the meanings of words don’t necessarily change uniformally across space and time. That’s why it sometimes important to establish clear definitions - in order to ensure that someone’s use of a word isn’t misunderstood. > [@](#): > > Where the physical appearance becomes “ambiguous” (not my term but I’ll use it) for whatever reason than probably not. When it’s not “ambiguous” than probably so. But in the final — if “race” doesn’t exist for you than “race” doesn’t exist for you. That doesn’t appear to be the case for most everyone else I’ve met - I don’t have a problem with using race to roughly correspond to physical appearance in normal day-to-day conversation. I think most people would understand the general tenor of the conversation. But as others here have pointed out, the White Nationalists have a very hard time defining just exactly who is or isn’t white. When one tries to pin them down on a definition, they often are at odds _with themselves_ on providing us with one that’s consistent. ---
**Author:** ![Charlie\_Tan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/charlie_tan/32/12582_2.png) [@Charlie\_Tan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Charlie_Tan)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2004, 12:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-influx-of-white-nationalists-bad/237849/43 "2004-04-03T00:14:42Z")
Seeing how people of my country are used in the debate, I just want to add two links to pics. [This](http://www.servifans.com/christina_rosenvinge6.jpg) is a pic of a Spanish woman, and [this](http://www.aftonbladet.se/noje/0108/09/NOJE-09s22-rafael-83.jpg) is a pic of a Swedish man. Though both might be considered ‘white’ by WNs of the US, the pics clearly show that the preconceived notion of what a Swedish person and one from the Med look like is very wrong. Carry on. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-influx-of-white-nationalists-bad/237849.md?page=2)