Legislation is powerless to eradicate racial instincts or to abolish distinctions based upon physical differences, and the attempt to do so can only result in accentuating the difficulties of the present situation. If the civil and political rights of both races be equal, one cannot be inferior to the other civilly or politically. If one race be inferior to the other socially, the Constitution of the United States cannot put them upon the same plane.
That’s 1896. This was (famously) written in justification of a separate but equal approach that was obviously, intentionally, structurally racist. It was, to state the obvious, a really bad argument. There was no good reason to think racial inequalities somehow existed outside the scope of governmental action in 1896; these were classifications that the government was directly drawing. I don’t see much better reason to say that in 2023, things have changed so much that now the description of society in Plessy is an accurate one.
That meaning is what is significant in my argument. The meaning so easily becomes the basis of belief in a fundamental difference in people that doesn’t exist. Not because it has to, but that shift is pervasive in culture throughout the world, and there is a lack of properly directed education and awareness to counter it because so many are caught in the web of racism and need to create excuses for their failure to address this.
I’m not saying it does have to have anything to do with genetic differences, I’m saying the opposite, it doesn’t actually have anything to do with genetics.
And I have successfully separated myself from any race or ethnicity. So it really is just voluntary behavior. Not that I object to the idea of cultural commonality at all, but again it is of the utmost importance that we emphasize how this is not inherent behavior.
I just took that term from something said in the OP. Remember, I don’t distinguish the difference in ethnicism and racism. That some concept of a particular ‘ethnicity’ is not equivalent to racism is of little matter when almost all are.
I fully understand how people find their ethnicity to be of great significance, it is inevitable in this world where almost everybody believes the fiction of fundamental differences down to the genetic level in different groups of people they categorize. Many of the strongest ties to such beliefs are based on the most severe realization of racism and the necessity of strength in the relationships of oppressed people. But I believe that is a tactic of necessity which shouldn’t carry into a strategy to erode the mistaken and potentially greatly destructive practice of racism.
Someone fight my ignorance: what’s the difference between race and ethnicity? I thought all humans were the same race, and only differed in ethnicity. But perhaps my definition for each is incorrect.
They’re pretty flexible classifications, so it’s unlikely you’ll get a single answer that nobody else will quibble with, but basically race is physical characteristics, and ethnicity is about cultural/political background. You could think of it sort of as what you look like vs. who your people are. In a lot of contexts those will be effectively interchangeable, but in a lot of other contexts they aren’t.
I remember my sister talking about our Irish roots and I had to stop her and explain that most of our ancestors on both sides of the family hailed from Scotland and Northern England. I have no idea where she got the idea that we had Irish origins.
The Venn diagram of the ethnicities bigots try to impose and the ethnicities people choose to identify with is not a circle. Self-identity is a big part of the modern concept of ethnicity (and by “modern”, I mean since Barth’s seminal 1969 essay)
Nice for you that you can separate yourself from your ethnicity. Lucky for you the world offers you the privilege to do so, I guess.
What’s “lucky” and “privilege” mean here if not in contrast to those who cannot chose their ethnicity? That’s why the “often self-chosen” feels off to me.
One thing to add - when I say often people self-identify as a given ethnicity, this may not always be in a positive sense (out of pride or some other similar feeling, or for economic gain). It may very well be out of negative or neutral impetus - for protection, out of ignorance, etc.
I don’t play that game either. I see the way people are treated differently based on perceptions of race and ethnicity. I wish that wasn’t the case whenever I meet a ‘Black’ person here in the US. And I know I am lucky to have the privilege of being considered a ‘white’ man here.
I don’t think I know better than anyone. I think that there is a problem with the perception of ethnicity as being equivalent to ‘race’, not by me, but it is obvious to me that is how the concept is viewed my most of the people in the world and I don’t want to contribute to it. Please continue to discuss this with presupposition so we may clarify what each of us means.
Seems to me that both “race” and “ethnicity” have lost any dispassionate or objective meaning that they might ever have had. Sort of like how cretin became moron became retarded became whatever it is now (‘differently abled?’) but always managed to almost immediately escape the “scientific description” into insult.
If people weren’t so vicious, the word ‘race’ would be nothing but a loose descriptor of where you live or came from, some physical traits you share with your community, and how you look at the world. By which I mean, what is particularly revered and valued, what you drink on holidays, and so forth.
Ethnicity does have a general sense of a whole fabric of appearance, behavior, history, and origin that race at least now has been stripped of. People from Sub-Saharan Africa may share some genetics with American Blacks but really not much else. Does that mean they’re the same ‘race’ but not ‘ethnicity’? Because they have no American culture or history, they are – except by sheer bigots – often treated like any other foreign visitor, which is to say, not feared or judged or despised the way American Blacks are. And what does that mean?
I am just as much a racist as anyone else raised in the USA. When I encounter Black or Hispanic people it triggers a layer of assessment which is automatic and unconscious. Most especially if they are clearly not doing ‘white culture’ – the accent, vocabulary, posture, the everything. There is nothing I can do about that but notice it. And that is true of every fucking person, whether they admit it or not.
But a substantial number of them (if not a majority) could trace that lineage if they cared to do so. Maybe easier for some than for others, but there’s a significant difference between the difficulty in tracing records that exist somewhere, and having one’s family history deliberately erased upon the enslavement of their ancestors.
They could, but they’d learn they are mutts. Pre-immigration ethnicity isn’t very important to a lot of Americans. The American ethnicities like “WASP” and “African American” tend to matter more.