Clarification: my first sentence should be, “Actually, most black immigrants here are descendants of West Indian slaves…,” etc., etc.
As far as descriptors go- as long as people don’t all look and act the same and come from different backgrounds, they’ll use words to explain these differences. People sometimes talk as if the divisions and differences between black and white and other Americans didn’t exist before the terms came about.
Well, thanks Askia and Marley23 for setting me straight. It’s obviously a fairly complex issue.
Just one bit of clarification on this posted by Askia:
Couldn’t this exact same thing apply to “white”. Surely there are cultural differences between the different nationalities of people lumped together under “white”, yet no effort is made to single them out or categorize them. Why the need to do so with black?
And I realize that there might be an Italian-American neighborhood, or an Irish-American neighborhood, but we still point to them and say, “Him, the white guy”.
People can generally tell when someone has used an offensive word to offend, when they have used it knowing it’s offensive but not knowing there were people present who would be offended, and when they didn’t know it was offensive.
The first case is quite rightly met with hostility. The second case is met with a “Perhaps you weren’t aware that I’m…” and the offender scuttling off, hopefully.
The third case, which as a gay and genderqueer person I have to deal with semi-often, is fairly difficult, because you want to emphasize you realize that the person didn’t mean to give offence while still communicating your message (so they don’t inadvertently offend others in the future).
You want to avoid the person becoming extremely embarrassed or (the flip side) throwing up their hands and going “you people take offence to everything!” I’ve gotten it down more or less to “Incidentally, a lot of people consider (whatever) to be offensive and prefer (whatever),” with assurances that “Oh, I knew what you meant, I’m just letting you know” as needed, along with my usual pleasant and sunny disposition.
One of the many jobs I have had was “customer service” for American Express. Guess what? Nobody ever called up to say “great job guys, just keep doin’ what you’re doin’.”
So, don’t take this the wrong way, please, because much of what you say strikes a chord within me, but I just have to say What The Fuck? If I use the word “niggardly” I deserve what I get? As in the same thing I would get if I used the word “nigger”? Please, you are perpetuating ignorance if you suggest that word is deserving of retribution. The one who needs correcting is the one who misunderstands the meaning, not the one who uses it properly.
How about “vinegar”? What will happen when some began to take offense at that?
Contrapuntal. Put yourself in my shoes a second.
There are some people in this world who use homonyms like “nickel” or phrases like “Monkey’s uncle” and “big gorilla” – terms just infused with loaded racial subtext and used as deliberate digs to push your buttons. Other people are so damned insensitive and passive-aggressive that they do it, but I have come to honestly believe that they have no conscious idea that they’re even doing that. Pull either stunt with the wrong people and you’re asking to be blasted – and you probrably deserve it.
Nothing wrong with using niggardly in correct usage and at the right time, but if you’re white and you’re already in a hostile conversation with someone who just happens to be black and you say some shit like, “Let’s not get bogged down in all this niggardly thinking” or “You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar,” or “Isn’t that the pot calling the kettle black” – I don’t care if it’s your card carrying ACLU grandmammy’s quaint exasperated expression … sometimes you just don’t pull that in front of the average black person.
Words are weapons. Choose them well. Know your audience.
Well if the dictionary and I are wrong and African doesn’t mean someone inhabiting Africa or descended from Africa, then do tell me what it means. I’m obviously a moron who doesn’t know English any better than the dictionary does.
So we should strive to make English as senseless and logicless as possible? Perhaps that’s your goal, but it’s not mine. I can’t believe someone would say what you just did.
That’s just flat out not true. Many specific things that have been said about races that are full of shit, but to say that races in general don’t exist is just as wrong. People probably put too much emphasis on race and think it seperates us more than it does, but we obviously have differences of which skin color is one of the lesser differences. It’s best to realize races for what they are: groups of people with significantly different gene pools due to isolated evolution.
I don’t. I seem to recall saying that both were inaccurate for describing what they’re used to describe. Actually, I could see black being used solely for people with very dark skin, just as white is used for people with light skin with no exceptions (that I can think of), but it’s not.
Actually it just never hit me that caucasian was derived from Caucasus. I guess now the only racial descriptor I know (which I thought about last night) that isn’t considered racist (as far as I know) is Arabic.
They’re not nearly as different as major races, though. Evolutionary, they’re probably about as different as different tribes in Africa. I kind of think of them as minor races.
You mean, “Why the need to do so with African-American?”
The term was originally coined back in the 1880s as *Afro-American * and is typical of working class whites of the Northern “Rust Belt” – pockets of ethnic groups like Polish-American, Italian-American, Irish-American, etc. Yeah, they’re lumped under “white”… but West Indians, Kenyans and South African Zulus are lumped under “black” – they’re just not African-American. Read the link for my contribution to an earlier discussion.
What if we started using “Afroid” to refer to black people (anywhere in the world)? It avoids the incorrect usage of African or black. I would have to put more thought into coming up with the names of other races, but it can be done.
snailboy. Because I can just hear some black kid in Bronx talkin’ 'bout: “Afroid? I aine afroid uv a gahdamn thang.”
Black is the universal descriptor of people of African descent. I’d be wary about just arbitrarily naming people some other term.
Thanks again, Askia. I’m trying to get a grasp on it all, and you are doing a far better job of explaining it than I’ve seen before.
Now this part is pure ignorance: What’s the deal with the “You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar” ? I had no idea at all this was an offensive phrase. What is the story of how this became offensive? It’s not a phrase I can ever recall using, just looking for the backstory.
TIA
Many Turks and Russians are Asiian…If I said 2 Asian friends are cdoming to the house today, would you picture them as Orientals?
The world is becoming too politically correct…My school of 10 years…used to be the Stanford Indians…and they stopped that almost 50 years ago because Indian was thought to be derogatory…They since called them …the Stanford Cardinal…
Everyone should lighten up…and not be “hurt or insulted” so easily.
Life is too short…Abusive, mean word or phrase calling has no place in general rhetoric but Negro, Oriental, Indian is not objectionable imo.
The final two syllables of the last word sound like an offensive term for blacks. The point of the poster is that, under certain circumstances (a white in a heated argument with a black, for example), it would be wise to avoid not just obvious racial epithets but also words that, while not denoting racism, may conjure up a racist image. That may not be fair, but you run the risk of making that argument while applying an icepack to your nose…
I interpret some of the posts in this thread as depressing examples of latent racism. Justifying the use of “oriental” because the speaker thinks it expresses his attraction for the exotic nature of Asian women is simply ridiculous, as is some posters’ tendency to pedantically belabor and liguistically dissect race terms. To be fair, I think this is a fairly minor issue, and in no way believe these posts are equivalent to the violence that has attended racial acts. But I would encourage posters to review this thread with an eye toward self-examination.
The key point I think is that groups should be allowed to choose appropriate names for themselves, and the word “appropriate” does not mean “name that passes another group’s lingual or historical test”. There is no clearly defined process for this; it is a matter of group consensus, and certainly some individuals in each group will not “get the memo”. But racial ephithets have traditionally be used so one group could assert some unjust control over another; circumventing that mechanism alone–by allowing groups to determine their own nomenclature–should be the sole concern, not whether or not technically the term “African American” includes Charlize Theron .
No, as a matter of fact, it isn’t. Look up some other SDMB threads on the subject. I don’t feel qualified to discuss the science, just the conclusions.
Except that they aren’t. The people are not significantly different (in fact, I recall a GQ thread where it was discussed that many people who identify as one race often had a lot of genetic material “from other races.”
There’s no race, just geography. Look up sickle cell anemia sometime. It’s thought of as a “black” disease (or what you called Negroid), but in fact it’s found in people from around the Mediterranean area, regardless of their skin color or the race they’re supposed to belong to.
But then, as someone else already said, you’d be describing only skin color and not “race.” There are people with very dark skin - take some Africans and Australian aborigines - who you might call ‘Negroid’ on sight. You’d be totally wrong, since they are not closely related compared to other groups.
If you looked into it, you’d find that there’s quite a bit of variety in “Arabic” (or Semitic) peoples as well. They did not develop in isolation.
The concept of major or minor races exists only in your mind.
But then, I’m guessing you’re not one of the people who’d be offended by any of those terms.
I would be happy to if I had a link.
So? We share a lot of genetic material with chimpanzees. I don’t believe sharing genes prohibits two beings from being taxonomically different. (I don’t know if human races are part of taxonomy, but I’m guessing it is.)
So what? One disease was thought to attack only Afroids (that’s what I call them now) but wasn’t. It sounds like someone made a mistake about the disease. Parvo attacks all dogs. Does that mean that dog breeds are fictitious? No… They treat each other equally, which we should do, but there is still categorical differences in breeds.
That’s what I was getting at. Black should be used to describe skin color alone. Perhaps someone robs a convenient store wearing a ski mask. You can see their skin color around their eyes but certainly not the shape of their face or anything. You can’t tell if they’re Afroid or dark Indian, so why not call them black? (Actually, dark skinned would probably sound better.)
Again, there’s less variety than between major races.
That’s very doubtful. I’m sure millions of people have thought of it.
My last name originates from a French name. I don’t get offended when people call me a coonass. People are too politically correct and not enough technically correct.
I’m not having any luck with the search function right now. Search GD topics for “race” and I imagine you’ll find what I’m talking about.
My point is that races are not, despite your comment, concretely defined.
The mistake is not about the disease. It’s that the “race” doesn’t exist. Sickle cell anemia is the result of a mutation that makes people from those climates less succeptible to malaria. People who you would say belong to the “Arabic” race and the “Afroid” (oh brother) race have the same mutation because of geography. Race is a non-factor.
…which would be relevant if people said in the past something like “Parvo attacks only certain ‘races’ of dogs which have the same color fur,” and then it turned out that all dogs from certain regions were succeptible to parvo regardless of any phenotype.
‘Millions of people’ can be wrong easily; that doesn’t trouble me. I don’t really care how many people say it or how often you do. “Major races” or other races do not exist from a scientific standpoint.
In this case, you’re neither. And I’m not concerned with the political correctness.
I searched and couldn’t find the thread. I did, however, look around on Wikipedia (I love that site) and unsurprisingly, your statement that taxonomists don’t classify humans into seperate groups is incorrect. There is actually a lot of debate on the topic among the professionals, mainly whether the different groups of people should be classified as races or populations. Even if they are considered populations, there is still without a doubt slight differences in genes.
If you’re saying that the edges between races are fuzzy, then I agree and never disagreed. There has been crossbreeding between races/populations throughout history. It hasn’t been enough to neutralize the differences between the groups of people, however.
I don’t see how you could possibly think that proves your point. It’s proof that different groups of people have different genes, requiring that we have evolved differently, ergo races/populations.
Okay, sickle-cell anemia was an adaptation to one’s environment. How do you explain Europeans having a higher incidence of cystic fibrosis or Eastern European Jews having a higher incidence of Tay-Sachs disease? They’re strictly related by population, not geography.
Yes, you’re right; everyone else is wrong. Hell, the evidence is wrong for that matter. Whatever…
Maybe I should have asked this earlier, but can you just tell me what a race is before we continue here? It seems to me you’re saying it means different things at different times. Obviously you can find groups of people with different genes.
Well what I called a minor race earlier should probably be called a population, the smallest group of people sharing a gene pool with little or no interbreeding outside the group. A race of people would be a group of populations which have similar genes (not as similar as within a population but more similar than the entire human species) likely because they branched from the same populations well after our species came about, or because they experienced a bit more interbreeding than more distanced populations. I almost compared races to subspecies earlier, but the genetic dissimilarities are probably not great enough for that to hold.
Uhh… I think you got the wrong URL. That isn’t so much about race-related diseases as it is about rocket propulsion.
If you don’t get it, I’m not going to explain.
Actually I’ll go figure out why that happened, maybe a number got snipped off.