Which is why I jumped your shit earlier upthread (no offense, btw; I hope you didn’t take it personally). It gives me the willies. Did you know that in South Africa under apartheid the Japanese were considered white and the Chinese not? Does that make any sense to you at all?
PBS ran a series on the history and absurdities of race a few years ago. Trying to [url=http://www.pbs.org/race/002_SortingPeople/002_00-home.htm]sort people into preconceived categories is like herding cats.
So, they’re still a plurality. As anyone who’s followed mass politics should be able to tell you, a plurality is usually close enough. :rolleyes:
Actually, I prefer to use ethnicity over the word race because I know that we are all part of the human race. However, I also believe that there are minor genetic differences between me, somebody who’s black, an Asian, Native American, etc…
And as for the way I’m using it, well, that’s kind of complicated, but then, it is a complicated issue, which is why, I’m sure, most people tend to sometimes blur ethnic, cultural, and national identities.
Oh, and not that it makes any difference, but I was born in America.
As opposed to in Mexico? 
Yeah, I agree that it’s a complicated issue. While there are some scientific realities behind race (without doing any genetic testing on either of us, I know that my kids are less likely to suffer from sickle-cell anemia and more likely to suffer from skin cancer than the kids of my next-door neighbors), these are very rough categories, and they don’t really correspond to what folks are talking about the vast majority of the time they talk about race. There are cultural realities to race, of course, but these too are rough and inexact and often inaccurate.
I like Kurt Vonnegut’s term granfalloon, which describes any arbitrary group that a person identifies with.
Daniel
“To discover the nature of a granfaloon
Examine the skin of a toy baloon.”
It is fascinating to me how things I read oh, 35 years ago (and not since) have stayed with me, and shaped my thinking.
That’s the one! That rhyme goes through my head very often.
Daniel
I work for a large mortgage company. We’re required by the federal government to ask people about their race and ethnicity (although the borrowers are not required to answer). The first question asked is “Are you Hispanic or not Hispanic?” the second question is “What is your ethnicity?” These are the federal government’s classifications. So, yes, you can be, say, Hispanic and Asian (what, never heard of Peru’s criminal president Alberto Fujimori?). I have three cousins who are Hispanic and white. Two are redheads, one is blonde, all three have blue eyes and light skin. And they’re Mexicans.
Now I’m thinking it’s “puncture the skin of a toy balloon.” Hell, I guess it’s time to go to Amazon and re-stock some Vonnegut.
Form the horse’s mouth–
“If you wish to study a granfalloon, just remove the skin of a toy balloon.”
No, it’s going to be George P. Bush by a margin of 49% in 2050.