# White America **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [September 23, 2003, 1:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-america/203217 "2003-09-23T01:10:56Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2003, 2:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-america/203217/21 "2003-09-24T02:15:52Z")
Monstro: Note that I specifically said: > [@](#): > > John Mace wrote: > I’m not saying I see the ethic groups as bad… ---
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2003, 3:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-america/203217/22 "2003-09-24T03:00:13Z")
Of course you don’t think ethnic groups are bad. But you did say you weren’t a fan of “ethnic” clubs, which was what I was addressing. ---
**Author:** ![Nobody](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/94ad74/32.png) [@Nobody](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nobody)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2003, 5:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-america/203217/23 "2003-09-24T05:47:38Z")
> [@](#): > > **then is not BLACK also meaningless for the same reason?** > [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by tomndebb \* > **Not really. While blacks were imported from many different peoples in Africa, they all went through the same “breaking” process to separate them from their original cultures and they were then placed into a separate subculture within the U.S. It is not a matter of them sharing “only” slavery, but a matter that slavery was much more than simply being forced to work without wages, actually encompassing every aspect of their lives (and the lives that they created for themselves under the noses of the majority population).** Why is it that blacks are only thought of as African? What about people from India? What about people from Jamaica? What about the Maori? There are plenty of other places that have black people, and I’m sure that there are some people from most or all of these places (are there any Aboriginal people here in the US?) Anyway though, I think it is a valid point that, if White is meaningless since there are very many different kinds of white people, then Black is meaningless too, since, I just gave some examples, there are many different kinds of Blacks too. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Ryan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7feea3/32.png) [@The\_Ryan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Ryan)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2003, 6:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-america/203217/24 "2003-09-24T06:39:29Z")
monstro > [@](#): > > If you really believe having “black” things (BET, black scholarships, black clubs, etc.) are racist then you should be equally peeved at ALL organizations that are built around equally superficial criteria. Like, Asian-American beauty pageants. Or Spanish television channels. Or Irish-American social clubs. Or entitlement programs for disabled persons. Or sororities/ fraternities geared towards Jewish students. Etc. Etc. I find it odd that you would put Spanish television channels in the category of “superficial” criteria. There’s nothing superficial about the language of a television broadcast; that’s a crucial part. And it supports the point of view espoused by the OP: no one considers having a broadcast in Spanish to be racist, nor does one consider one in English to be. Joel > [@](#): > > Why is it that blacks are only thought of as African? What about people from India? What about people from Jamaica? What about the Maori? People from India would be Indian. People from Maori would be Maorian. Blacks from Jamaica are descended from Africans, so they are considered to be “originally” African. Of course, the point you were responding to isn’t completely accurate; not **every** black person in the US is descended from slaves. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2003, 7:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-america/203217/25 "2003-09-24T07:41:50Z")
> [@](#): > > Why is it that blacks are only thought of as African? What about people from India? What about people from Jamaica? What about the Maori? You are confusing one discussion about nomenclature with a separate discussion about cultural affiliations. The use of the _word_ black is tied to a somewhat arbitrary selection of a term to identify a particular social group. The words “white” and “black” (or “negro” from the Spanish for black and its derivatives) have come down to us from earlier times and are not subject to logical discussion. The words have long been selected and applied and arguing about their appropriateness based on some attempt at logical distinction would be fruitless. There are multiple reasons why we do not lump Indians and Maoris in to some “black” category. Fore one thing, the majority of people who have immigrated from India tend to more resemble “whites” than “blacks.” Even the old ethnologists lumped people of the Indian subcontinent into the odd “Caucasian” category, despite the fact that some percentage of those who live in the farthest south of that region have somewhat darker skin. Regardless, people who have immigrated from India (or New Zealand) look sufficiently different than those who were imported from Africa that they would not normally be confused as having the same background. In addition, they have only recently begun to immigrate in any numbers and, to the extent that immigrants tend to cluster for mutual support, they clearly have separate cultural identities. If we look at people who cherish their ethnic traditions, we find “whites” clustering around the various European or West Asian cutural traditions based on religious traditions, foods, preferred forms of alcohol, dances, songs, poetry, folktales, etc. The Indian immigrants do the same. (Google for “desi” or check out the [Any resident Indian (from India) Dopers here?](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=154181) thread.) If you want to assert that we’re all human, I’ll agree with you. However, we humans tend to seek support among people of shared cultural traditions and the people in the U.S. who happen to have picked up the label “black” _generally_ have a closer set cultural traditions acquired through the peculiar institution of slavery that is separate from the mutiple European and West Asian or South Asian ethnicities that tend to get called “white.” Arguing who should or should not be lumped together according to various attempts to impose some outside logic is meaningless when we are viewing existing shared traditions. ---
**Author:** ![alterego](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/6bbea6/32.png) [@alterego](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alterego)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2003, 11:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-america/203217/26 "2003-09-24T11:25:28Z")
**OP,** yes it would seem so. It is not logical to follow the thought that you can have Black Entertainment Television and not White Entertainment Television. If peoples sharing commonality want to come together to celebrate, or do whatever they wish so long as it does not impede the rights of others and is legal, they are welcome to do so. An African American is someone who is of African decent and now lives in America. This person could very well be Chinese if he happened to be born in Africa. A Black person is someone who has black skin. It doesn’t matter where they were born. Many black people are born in Italy for example. A White person is someone who has white skin. It doesn’t matter where they were born. A club for African Americans is different than a club for Black people. It caters to people who share the commonality of having an African decent. All black people do not share this attribute. A club for White people caters to people who have white skin. It also caters to the specific group of Irish Americans, if they have white skin. However, someone In the Irish American club could have black skin. These are the facts and interpreting it in any other way is just reading into it in my eyes. ---
**Author:** ![Horatio\_Hellpop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Horatio\_Hellpop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatio_Hellpop)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2003, 11:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-america/203217/27 "2003-09-24T11:55:19Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Joel \* > \*\*Why is it that blacks are only thought of as African? What about people from India? What about people from Jamaica? What about the Maori? > There are plenty of other places that have black people, and I’m sure that there are some people from most or all of these places (are there any Aboriginal people here in the US?) \*\* American culture has very arbitrary and rigid racial classifications. We consider Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, Burmese, Cambodians and Filipinos to all be the same East Asian race, a view few East Asians would share. We consider all East Indians to be pretty much the same race, in spite of their rigid caste system that is apparently based on skin color. All sub-Saharan Africans are covered by the rubric “Black,” although the Nigerians in my building don’t have a lot to say to the Ethiopans. There’s not a large Maori presence in the US, and our census forms would lump them in with other Pacific Islanders. Are there Aboriginal people in the US? You mean Australian Aboriginal? Not many, but yeah. “Aborigine” in the broader sense has several meanings, some of them rather insulting. American Indians, Basque, and Ainu people are considered “aboriginal” by some. (I think it was Ambrose Bierce who defined “aborigine” as “The unwanted inhabitant of a newly-discovered continent.”) ---
**Author:** ![Dogface](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9d8465/32.png) [@Dogface](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dogface)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2003, 12:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-america/203217/28 "2003-09-24T12:26:24Z")
And don’t forget that Africans living in Africa are all "African-Americans. ---
**Author:** ![Nobody](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/94ad74/32.png) [@Nobody](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nobody)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2003, 12:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-america/203217/29 "2003-09-24T12:44:35Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Dogface \* > \*\*And don’t forget that Africans living in Africa are all "African-Americans. \*\* Even a white person who was born in Africa? And Krokodil, yes, I was asking about Australian Aboriginals. ---
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2003, 1:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-america/203217/30 "2003-09-24T13:37:13Z")
**The Ryan** , Spanish television isn’t superficially different from “mainstream” television. Just like BET isn’t superficially different either. Note that I said that these things are “equally superficial”. ---
**Author:** ![Paranoid\_Randroid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/paranoid_randroid/32/18_2.png) [@Paranoid\_Randroid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Paranoid_Randroid)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2003, 1:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-america/203217/31 "2003-09-24T13:56:07Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by monstro \* > \*\ ***The Ryan** , Spanish television isn’t superficially different from “mainstream” television. \*\* I wouldn’t say that. Even though I don’t speak Spanish, I was watching some news show - apparently akin to Good Morning America - on a Spanish-language channel a few months ago. As she show ended, all the anchors (?) stood up and began to _sing and dance_. Spanish television, I conclude, must be very, very wiggy. ---
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2003, 4:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-america/203217/32 "2003-09-24T16:51:21Z")
**Cheese Monster** , you seem to agree with me. ---
**Author:** ![Paranoid\_Randroid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/paranoid_randroid/32/18_2.png) [@Paranoid\_Randroid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Paranoid_Randroid)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2003, 6:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-america/203217/33 "2003-09-24T18:22:44Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by monstro \* > \*\ ***Cheese Monster** , you seem to agree with me. \*\* Agree with you? Well, I don’t necessarily disagree with you - I think there’s something good to be said about Spanish television in America, or clubs for blacks, or what have you, so long as there’s some real uniting factor among the members. Separation doesn’t have to be a terrible thing. But really, I was just being kind of silly; I didn’t have any actual point. My post was inappopriate. Sorry. I just thought it was funny that news professionals sing and dance on Spanish TV. ---
**Author:** ![Paranoid\_Randroid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/paranoid_randroid/32/18_2.png) [@Paranoid\_Randroid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Paranoid_Randroid)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2003, 6:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-america/203217/34 "2003-09-24T18:24:05Z")
Derg. Replace “Spanish” with “Mexican” in my above post. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Ryan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7feea3/32.png) [@The\_Ryan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Ryan)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2003, 5:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-america/203217/35 "2003-09-25T05:54:17Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by monstro \* > \*\ ***The Ryan** , Spanish television isn’t superficially different from “mainstream” television. Just like BET isn’t superficially different either. > > Note that I said that these things are “equally superficial”. \*\* So when you said “equally supreficial” you merely meant that the level of superficiality is equal, and did not mean to imply that any superficiality exists? :rolleyes: Anyway, I still disagree with you. Spanish Television is completely different from BET. Television does not have a race, so “black” is a superficial designation. Television does have a language, so “Spanish” is not superficial. ---
**Author:** ![syncrolecyne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f08c70/32.png) [@syncrolecyne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/syncrolecyne)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2003, 6:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-america/203217/36 "2003-09-25T06:34:40Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by aylaraistlin \* > \*\*Don’t get me started on Harold Ford Jr. I live in Memphis, and he is an ass! Some of our local radio stations talk about him and say all this bad stuff that he has done lately. As far as I am concerned he is a piece of shit. The news aired a video clip of him one time yelling at Congress and standing up and ranitng and raving, b/c they had not come to a decision and the next day was a holiday. He told them he wasn’t coming, he don’t care if he supposed to. > He was the only one to stand up and make an ass of himself! Al Sharpton would be better than him, or anyone! \*\* I wasn’t endorsing either one of these two as great statesmen, simply as people who have more clout that better known “activists”. Ford didn’t make a name for himself from shaking down corporations and banks, or pursuing only issues of concern to the NAACP leadership. There was a time when all “minority” politicians ran on the basis that they were representing or serving their minority community’s special interests. We have now ‘progressed’ to a point that many minority politicians are becoming general interest political weasels. But in doing so, they are more influential than the “racial” politicians like Sharpton and Jackson. ---
**Author:** ![you\_with\_the\_face](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/ecccb3/32.png) [@you\_with\_the\_face](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/you_with_the_face)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2003, 9:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-america/203217/37 "2003-09-25T21:35:36Z")
**The Ryan** > [@](#): > > Anyway, I still disagree with you. Spanish Television is completely different from BET. Television does not have a race, so “black” is a superficial designation. Television does have a language, so “Spanish” is not superficial. Television doesn’t have race, but that doesn’t mean that it is inherently wrong to have a station with a specialized focused that happens to be related to ethnicity. Look at the Spanish channel. If everyone on the Spanish channel suddenly started speaking english, would you still object to having a “spanish” channel? The difference between mainstream TV and spanish TV goes beyond language; can we agree on that? So even if english became the official language of the spanish channel does not negate the existence of a niche audience for that particular station. Apply that the BET. Language is just one of many things that could potentially make one channel different from another. Taking away the language difference does not automatically make all programming indistinguishable from each other. BET does not look like an NBC except with black people. The programming is flavored with a different cultural spice. Maybe BET should change its name from Black Entertainment Television to Entertainment Targetted Towards a Demographic Group Interested in African-American Culture and Community. But wait a second. Wouldn’t that name change be…(gasp!) playing right into the hands of PC-ness? Well, ain’t _that_ a bitch! ---
**Author:** ![KarlGrenze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/dbc845/32.png) [@KarlGrenze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KarlGrenze)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2003, 11:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-america/203217/38 "2003-09-25T23:50:00Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Cheese Monster \* > \*\*Derg. Replace “Spanish” with “Mexican” in my above post. \*\* No, it reads better without the Mexican and with the Spanish. It is Spanish TV in the sense of using the Spanish language. Most of the shows in that program are not the ones that appear on local Mexican TV stations. In fact, many of the famous shows (Primera Hora, Despierta América, Sábado Gigante) are produced in the United States, and air in other countries as _enlatados_, that is foreign shows. ---
**Author:** ![Isabelle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/b5a626/32.png) [@Isabelle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Isabelle)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2003, 7:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-america/203217/39 "2003-09-26T19:03:41Z")
Why is chocolate (black) cake called "Devil’s Food Cake and White Cake is called “Angel Food Cake?” Things that make you go hmmmm ---
**Author:** ![Isabelle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/b5a626/32.png) [@Isabelle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Isabelle)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2003, 7:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-america/203217/40 "2003-09-26T19:12:39Z")
Why is chocolate (black) cake called "Devil’s Food Cake and White Cake is called “Angel Food Cake?” Things that make you go hmmmm [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-america/203217.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-america/203217.md?page=3)