I’ve been lead to believe that the inhabitants of Africa consider themselves to be of numerous races even though in the US they all might be described as blacks.
I’m curious if in China the Chinese think of themselves as “non-white”.
you with the face,
Am I right to think you are implying that you define black as a mixtuire of races rather than a race in and of itself?
I really enjoyed reading puddin head wilson.
You can’t estimate your how well you’ve explained your thoughts by how well I’ve understood you.
John Mace,
Sure, sure.
But the concept exists now and I’m curious about the various boundaries that exist.
I have no good idea of what race is. That’s why I’ve come to the SDMB.
A general current I think I’ve noticed here is the impression that race is defined by socio-political themes- “a trip through our national psyche”.
If anybody does have the rules please come up off 'em.
You do realize that the term “African-American” was coined in quite deliberate emulation of the multifarious appellations like “Irish-American” and “Polish-American” that were so common in the rust-belt at one time, yes?
The reason I ask, is because questions like yours often tend to be leading, with the implication that the term African-American was coined in an attempt to promote difference and is inherenty divisive ( which it might be, but this was more an unintended consequence ). When in fact it originally arose as an attempt to blend in with the American mainstream ( however erroneously viewed ), while still asserting a distinct identity in the manner of various European ethnic communities in the Midwest and mid-Atlantic states.
How do you defining race :)? One older definition is actually any geographic, national, or ethnic entity ( as in “the Irish race” ), though that has fallen out of common usage to some extent in recent years.
Anyway to try to answer your question, race and ethnicity has no exact definition or set border. Rather it tends to vary from culture to culture and can be rather inconsistent from one to the next ( and even from one individual to the next ). A maddening inconsistency perhaps, but there you have it.
Most scientists (biologists) will tell you that race does not exist, that it’s a “social construct”. Sure, many people fit into what we call “races”, but the problem is there are no clear boarders. Imagine going on a trip. You start in Beijing. (Let’s ignore foreigners for the sake of the experimnet.) Everyone looks Chinese. No problem. You start driving east. As you enter Central Asia, people still “sort of” look Chinese, but there’s something not quite “right”. Then you drive further east and the people don’t look Chinese anymore, but they don’t look European either. As you drive further, the people start looking more and more “European”. But there is no line you can draw and say: The people west of this line are Asian, and the people east of this line are European. It all blends together. Same with Africans. Ethiopians (east Africa) don’t look anything like people from, say, Nigeria (west Africa).
What about people from New Guinea? Superficaillly, they look a lot like Africans. But in other ways they don’t. And we know that geneteically, they are as dissimiliar from Africans as Europeans are.
What about the !Kung San (sometime called pygmies)? Have you ever seen them? These are the guys who’s language has the unusual click sounds. Some scientists claim they are the closest living example of what we all might have looked like before the races diverged (some 50 - 70k yrs ago). They are beautiful people, but they don’t fit any standard racial category. They have medium brown skin, dark curly hair, and very high cheek bones with eyes that could almost be Asian.
While many or maybe even most of the people in the world more or less fit into common racial categories, as soon as you define the categories, you can find whole groups of people who DON’T fit. That’s the problem.
In the meantime we have Halle Berry talking about how it means so much to be the first Black woman to recieve the Oscar for Best Actress. Then the camera pans to her tearful mom, who is… white! Go figure.
Oops. You were supposed to drive WEST, not east, in the trip I desscribed above. Sorry for the counfusion. If you drove east, you’d end up in the Pacific.
No, actually I didn’t. I came upon it just as an appellation whose connotations appear to differ from its denotations. Eliminating my ignorance is why I’m here, so thank you.
I also have the same question of the terms you mentioned as well-
How many generations does it take before someone is no longer Irish-American, Polish-American or whatever sort of hyphenated American and becomes an American-American? When phrased this way it seem to be a question about nationality instead of race. Or maybe ethnicity.
I’m curious about 21st century American views on race.
When will there be an American race? Will there ever be one?
Answer me this: Are white Americans “American Americans”? Calling yourself African American is no different than calling yourself “black”, “Asian”, “Jewish”, or “Irish American.” People will stop calling themselves “African American” when white Americans stop referring to themselves as “white”, when hispanics stop calling themselves “hispanic”, and when Asian Americans stop calling themselves “Asian American”.
you with the face’s definition of “black” is right on the money. In the US, black = mixed. In places like Brazil, there are several racial classifications that span a spectrum from white to black. In places like South Africa, there’s “black”, “white”, and “coloured”–meaning “mixed” or anyone who isn’t “white” or “black” (like Indians). This just goes to show that race means different things to different people.
If you ask most Americans their ethnicity, they will tell you where their ancestors lived before they emigated to America. I agree with Biggirl, though. Whenever anyone asks me, I just say “American”. They usually correct me and want to know where my ancestors came from. I tell them they came from so many differenct counties that it just doesn’t matter.
I guess we’re just too young a country to have our own ethnicity. If we did, I wonder, would it be different from a Canadian ethnicity? Or an Australian one?
Well, most of the white people I know refer to themselves as “mutts”. They know where many of their ancestors hailed from, but they don’t refer to them or themselves as blank American. They call themselves “American”.
However, I have found that people won’t allow me to call myself plain American. If I don’t tell people I’m a black American, they assume I’ve come from another country. Despite the obvious diversity of the US, most people still assume that American = white. So, it is much easier for a white American to be an “American American” than a non-white, even when that person self-identifies as an “American American.”
When you think “American”, what kind of the image do you get? I’d say that when that image becomes racially ambiguous in most people’s minds, that’s when all Americans–not just African Americans, but everyone born here–will be “American Americans”.
Well, I’m afraid there is no simple answer to that question. For one thing terms like that mean different things to different people. I suspect at some level such terms will always be with us ( “us” being Americans ) simply because this is a nation that takes such pride in its shared mythology ( not meant in a perjorative way, but rather in the sense of a common heritage of traditional stories ) as a nation of immigrants. As much as assimilation is considered a goal by probably the greater part of the national consciousness, so is “remembering where you came from.”
But such terms do become less common as semi-segregated ethnic communities fade and disperse. The thing is, is that there are always new ethnic communities forming as new immigrants arrive and find it advantageous and comforting to cluster together. And as these communities become politically astute, there is a natural tendency to assert the differences that cause them to be singled out as “foreign” to the American mainstream as badges of pride. So it’s a never-ending process, at least until such time as the U.S. becomes unattractive to immigrants, which hasn’t happened yet.
I hearby “allow” you to call yourself an American.
Tamerlane:
Thanks for the correction. Although the !Kung San are SOMETIMES called pygmies, they are, as you point out, more often called Bushmen. The “real” pygmies are the Mbuti who live in the Ituri region of the Republic of Congo. Both terms are pretty insulting, if you ask me.
As an addendum, I should add that in the U.S. the situation of black vs. white has a bit of unique historical baggage that makes “color-blind” assimilation far more problematic than one finds with immigrants from, say, Greece. The same can be said for other non-white ethnic immigrants of course. But the cultural history of the U.S. is particularly complex in regards to the former issue.
Another biracial American is most famous for writing perhaps the best plays about the African-American experience, such as FENCES, TWO TRAINS RUNNING, and MA RAINEY’S BLACK BOTTOM, which is actually reviving on Broadway right now with Charles Dutton.
His birth name’s Frederick Kittel, but you probably know him by his pen name, which is made up of his middle name and his mother’s maiden name: August Wilson.
Here’s a good picture and bio. His German heritage is obvious in his features to me, but he nevertheless dropped out of high school because of racism (his claim; maybe he was just too creative or something) and has almost always worked in black theater.
I’m white but actually I’ve alway thought that Black Americans might be the most American Americans, since they’ve had to create an identity almost from scratch, as it were. And in my identity mind-picture I’m female, Irish, Scottish, a New Yorker, a Wellesley grad, etc. but “white” isn’t part of that. The only time I’ve thought about being white was when I’m the only white girl in classes or choirs or something, which happens sometimes in NYC and Boston.
Well, all I can say is that while I consider myself mostly American, period (I was the last one in my family to learn chopsticks and the only one not to speak any Japanese), it seems that many people wouldn’t, as they assume I’m a foreigner of some kind, asking me what country I’m from and speaking in Japanese to me, as if I’m from somewhere else other than here.
I’m not sure what my point is… Perhaps that the world often reminds you of the non-“American” half of the appellation, even if you yourself ignore it most of the time. Not that I’m sure whether that reaction is a GOOD thing…