Posted: Fri 21 Jul 2006 10:51 Post subject: Definitions of racism, colorism, and classism
interesado wrote:
I have no idea why I need to explain myself.
You need to explain yourself because you were unclear.
interesado wrote:
Actually that's the definition I´m giving.
I gave two standard definitions, one involving beliefs, the other entailing acts, both based upon perceived inferiority due to ancestry. I suggest that you were using neither one, but instead invented one of your own involving colorism (inferiority due to appearance) and classism (inferiority due to wealth).
interesado wrote:
Not all cubans are "mixed into a normal distribution of admixture" and there are "genetic populations" in Cuba.
It would be wise to learn the meaning of what others write before disagreeing with them. You are apparently uninformed as to the meaning of "normal distribution." It is a feature of populations, not of individuals. It means that an admixture histogram has just one mode or peak in the center of its range. Here, for example is an admixture histogram of Puerto Rico (on the right).
The United States is unique in this hemisphere in having a bimodal admixture histogram (two peaks). Similarly, the term "genetic population" does not mean that people are all the same. It means that they vary continuously from one extreme to the other without an abrupt genetic discontinuity. There is no abrupt genetic discontinuity between "white" Cubans and "black" ones. There is an abrupt genetic discontinuity between White Anglo-Americans and Black ones.
interesado wrote:
I´m saying racism is maybe worse than other parts of latin america...
I know what you are saying. There is no need to repeat it. The problem is that it is unclear what exactly you mean by "racism."
interesado wrote:
...black people features are considered less desired...
Now that statement is a bit clearer. You might have said that up front. Could you now expand on it please? "Desired" by whom? Perhaps you could give some examples and/or sources.
interesado wrote:
...and black people tend to be underrepresented in high-profile jobs.
That statement is even clearer yet. You definitely should have said that up front. Could you now expand on it also please? Perhaps give some examples and/or sources.
interesado wrote:
I´m saying maybe because every critic to the communist state is considered as treason.
See? That is exactly what I am talking about. I doubt that one person in a million would know that you use the word "racism" for what most people would call "totalitarianism."
interesado wrote:
Pretty sure you haven´t read the articles,
Wrong. I am simply skeptical of deliberately murky phrases and ambiguous untestable claims.
interesado wrote:
cuba is no different and has a history of slavery and discrimination more similar to the USA than mexico or brazil.
Really? The U.S. ended slavery in a civil war between two wealthy world powers (Union and Confederacy) that took the lives of 630,000 Americans--more than all other U.S. wars combined, so far. Forty years later, the U.S. went through a half-century of terroism and oppression of its Black community, a terrorism that included the ritual public torture-murder of between 5,000 and 20,000 individuals aimed at cowing all U.S. Black citizens into "keeping in their place." In exactly what way was Cuban slavery and discrimination more similar to the U.S. than to Mexico or Brazil?
interesado wrote:
Again, latin america is not a paradise.
Nobody suggested that it was. This form of arguing is called a "straw man" and is explicitly forbidden by The Rules.
interesado wrote:
It actually looks the same as the USA right now.
I cannot even begin to imagine what you mean by this. The statement is inaccurate in so many ways that it looks like sheer nonsense. Please try to explain what you mean when you write.
interesado wrote:
Well if [colorism] is not racism, I don´t know what it is.
That is because you have not been paying attention. I have explained three times, the two standard definitions of "racism." Here is a simple rule of thumb. Please refer to it in the future:
Racism -- Beliefs or acts due to the perceived inferiority of someone's ancestry (regardless of their appearance or wealth).
Colorism -- Beliefs or acts due to the perceived inferiority of someone's appearance (regardless of their ancestry or wealth).
Classism -- Beliefs or acts due to the perceived inferiority of someone's wealth (regardless of their ancestry or appearance).
Totalitarianism -- Government suppression of dissent.
Look, I am explaining all of this because you have a different national perspective than most other members here, and so you have important and valuable contributions to make. But your contributions will not even be understood, much less accepted, if readers do not know what you were trying to say.
Last edited by fwsweet on Mon 24 Jul 2006 02:32; edited 1 time in total
Joined: 28 Apr 2006 {Posts: 282 } Location: 51st State
Posted: Fri 21 Jul 2006 13:12 Post subject: Re: Racism or Colorism
fwsweet wrote:
Colorism -- Beliefs or acts due to the perceived inferiority of someone's appearance (regardless of their ancestry or wealth).
I'm not sure how to conceive of appearance without regard to (WRT) ancestry.
Perhaps the middle bar of the admixture histogram of Puerto Rico or a similar one for Cuba, represents those of the ethnically indeterminate appearance. But at either ends of the spectrum, the history shows that those who have the appearance (and suspected ancestry) of those populations originating in one geographical location have consistently been treated differently than those from another.
Joined: 04 May 2005 {Posts: 2021 } Location: santiago, chile
Posted: Fri 21 Jul 2006 13:33 Post subject: Re: Racism
Quote:
[quote="interesado"]...Pretty sure you haven´t read the articles, when we talk about racism and colorism in places like mexico or brazil nobody brings the mestizaje myth, cuba is no different and has a history of slavery and discrimination more similar to the USA than mexico or brazil.
Hi,
Could you explain me, please, what is the "mestizaje myth"?
I far as I know it is not a myth. Mestizaje, in that context, means mixing of people of the several "racial" backgrounds that exists in Latin America.
As far as I know most people in Latin America are at least bi-racial, many are tri-racials, and some have even more mixtures.
Yes, it is true that in many places same "race" or the other predominates, but taking the region as a whole, it is a melting pot of three races.
Where is the myth? What people don't buy it?
Are you talking about the "La Raza" or the "Cosmic Race" ideology? are you talking about small marginal minorities that also exist? Or are you talking about the largest majorities of Latin America?
Joined: 04 May 2005 {Posts: 2021 } Location: santiago, chile
Posted: Fri 21 Jul 2006 13:43 Post subject: Re: Racism or Colorism
Altertude wrote:
...I'm not sure how to conceive of appearance without regard to (WRT) ancestry.
...
Because is not the case. Phenotypes are not directly related to genotypes. In highly mixed populations, people can have a "pure" phenotype that does not correspond to the genotype. That's easy to see.
If you have 3 racial populations heavily mixed, it is even harder to find the origin of the individuals just by looking at them.
If you talk about genetics, you are talking about DNA. If you talk about appearance the discussion is about less than 1% of the genes (perhaps 300 genes or less) that make a person looks one race or the other.
Yes, white, black, red and yellows, share most of the genetics, from the shapes of the toe to the chemistry of the stomach, to the form of the lungs to the making of bones. Most of what you concibe as "human" is shared by all the races.
In simple worlds, a person could be 99% West African and look 99% "pure" Nordic. And viceversa. Is just a matter of probabilities, and cases exist. Take a look at the white chldrens of black couples in another thread.
Posted: Fri 21 Jul 2006 13:50 Post subject: Re: Racism or Colorism
Altertude wrote:
I'm not sure how to conceive of appearance without regard to (WRT) ancestry.
Surely, you must be joking. This website contains literally hundreds of messages describing siblings, or parent/child pairs, with identical ancestry but different "racialized" appearance. There is even an entire Sticky subsection of the Molecular Anthropology forum titled Black Parents with White Children. If you learn nothing else from this website, please, please learn that appearance and ancestry are far from the same thing, that siblings with identical ancestry often have very different "racialized" traits. If you do not want to lose all credibility here, you must make the effort to "conceive of appearance without regard to ancestry."
Altertude wrote:
Perhaps the middle bar of the admixture histogram of Puerto Rico or a similar one for Cuba, represents those of the ethnically indeterminate appearance. But at either ends of the spectrum, the history shows that those who have the appearance ... of those populations originating in one geographical location have consistently been treated differently than those from another.
Precisely. This is in stark contrast to the United States, where people of unmistakably European phenotype were tortured to death in public rituals because they tried to "pass as White" while being suspected of invisible African ancestry. Often, the perpetrators, especially in Louisiana and East Texas, looked distinctly mixed, but were accepted as White on the grounds that their dark looks was due to Native American ancestry. "Racism" is based on ancestry, not appearance. "Colorism" is based on appearance, not ancestry. One more time:
Racism -- Mistreat people for having African ancestry, even though they look utterly European, while accepting people who look mixed because they do not have known African ancestry. -- Racism
Colorism -- Mistreat people for having African appearance, even though they have known European ancestry, while accepting people who look European despite their known African ancestry. -- Colorism
Of course, if you wish to apply the word "racism" to appearance-based discrimination, rather than to ancestry-based discrimination, you have the right to do so. But I will insist that you explain your non-standard usage each time in order to avoid lack of clarity. Indeed, like Interesado, you have the right to apply the word "racism" to the phenomenon that most would call "totalitarianism," if you wish. Again though, I will insist that you explain your non-standard usage.
The important thing is for you to please try to distinguish appearance from ancestry in your own mind. Otherwise, this entire website will be unintelligible to you, and you will gain little from your membership here.
P.S. Regarding your parenthetical, "and suspected ancestry," suggesting that Latin American colorism is driven by supicion of ancestry: if you have any evidence of this, please cite it. As far as I know, the only measurable raw data on the existence of colorism in Latin America is a correlation between phenotype and socio-economic status. I know of no study that has examined people's "suspicions." If you know of one, cite it now. If you simply made up this factual claim out of your own imagination, be advised that such a practice is frowned on in this website.
Joined: 28 Apr 2006 {Posts: 282 } Location: 51st State
Posted: Fri 21 Jul 2006 15:20 Post subject: Re: Racism or Colorism
fwsweet wrote:
Altertude wrote:
I'm not sure how to conceive of appearance without regard to (WRT) ancestry.
Surely, you must be joking. This website contains literally hundreds of messages describing siblings, or parent/child pairs, with identical ancestry but different "racialized" appearance. There is even an entire Sticky subsection of the Molecular Anthropology forum titled Black Parents with White Children. If you learn nothing else from this website, please, please learn that appearance and ancestry are far from the same thing, that siblings with identical ancestry often have very different "racialized" traits. If you do not want to lose all credibility here, you must make the effort to "conceive of appearance without regard to ancestry."
O.k my bad. I thought quoting what I was replying to would provide some sense of the context of my statement. In that case I should have written "I'm not sure how to conceive of appearance without regard to (WRT) ancestry [in the beliefs and actions of a suspected racist/colorist]".
Does that clear up any misunderstanding? Added to the fact of me posting many messages about such matters which I would have thought conveyed my comprehension of said phenotypical-genotypical differences, after enquiries by me myself seem to have initiated the creation of the Sticky thread linked above.
fwsweet wrote:
Altertude wrote:
Perhaps the middle bar of the admixture histogram of Puerto Rico or a similar one for Cuba, represents those of the ethnically indeterminate appearance. But at either ends of the spectrum, the history shows that those who have the appearance ... of those populations originating in one geographical location have consistently been treated differently than those from another.
Precisely. This is in stark contrast to the United States, where people of unmistakably European phenotype were tortured to death in public rituals because they tried to "pass as White" while being suspected of invisible African ancestry. Often, the perpetrators, especially in Louisiana and East Texas, looked distinctly mixed, but were accepted as White on the grounds that their dark looks was due to Native American ancestry.
I haven't read about this severe punishment for "passing". I read your paper The Rate of Black-to-White “Passing” including The Maroon Escape Hatch section which recounts how Melungeons, Lumbees and other Maroon groups - similar in a way to Dominican Republican nationalism - hid their African ancestry to re-invent themselves as a Native American Tribe.
It doesn't surprise me that some mixed looking people participated in violently policing the color line as it keeps the 'heat' of them. It is curious how Native Americas were mostly genocided, but mixtures with Europeans are given a path to acceptance by whites as "White".
Quote:
Of course, if you wish to apply the word "racism" to appearance-based discrimination, rather than to ancestry-based discrimination, you have the right to do so.
And there is exactly my point. How can someone in Cuba and the rest of Latin America, at either ends of the color spectrum tell when someone is not correlating race with color?
I'm still trying to work out if you amended the definition from the original ones. Did you? Regardless, we can write any definition we want. The standard one you allow in this forum may or may not be one where 'the rubber meets the road' on the street, in an airliner, or in the minds of people.
Quote:
P.S. Regarding your parenthetical, "and suspected ancestry," suggesting that Latin American colorism is driven by supicion of ancestry: if you have any evidence of this, please cite it.
Hence my original statement and question above which I shall repeat for convienience. How can someone in Cuba and the rest of Latin America, at either ends of the color spectrum tell when someone is not correlating race with color?
Quote:
As far as I know, the only measurable raw data on the existence of colorism in Latin America is a correlation between phenotype and socio-economic status. I know of no study that has examined people's "suspicions." If you know of one, cite it now. If you simply made up this factual claim out of your own imagination, be advised that such a practice is frowned on in this website.
"and suspected ancestry," meaning those without the knowledge of the genotype-phenotype distinction who believe phenotype = genotype/continent of historical population groups.
Posted: Fri 21 Jul 2006 16:00 Post subject: Re: Racism or Colorism
Altertude wrote:
How can someone in Cuba and the rest of Latin America, at either ends of the color spectrum tell when someone is not correlating race with color?
One cannot. That is the problem with distinguishing between different behaviors based only upon what is in a person's mind. An independent sceptic cannot measure what was in someone's mind. What was in someone's mind might be of interest to a criminal lawyer or to an artist but it is outside the realm of science. All we can measure are the external facts of overt behavior.
In one phenomenon (herein labeled racism), people suffer due to ancestry, even invisible ancestry. We know this because a "black" victim's European appearance is often stressed by witnesses or even by the perpetrators themselves. In the other phenomenon (herein labeled colorism), people suffer due to their looks, despite their mixed ancestry. We know this because the perpetrator's African ancestry is often mentioned by the perpetrators themselves. Specifically, the fact of mixed ancestry among the so-called "white" Cubans is mentioned in several places in Verena Martinez Alier, Marriage, Class and Colour in Nineteenth-Century Cuba: A Study of Racial Attitudes and Sexual Values in a Slave Society (London: Cambridge University, 1974) as well as in Helg's book.
Altertude wrote:
I'm still trying to work out if you amended the definition from the original ones. Did you?
No, although I have rephrased it several times to focus on what distinguishes the different phenomena: racism, colorism, and classism.
Altertude wrote:
Regardless, we can write any definition we want. The standard one you allow in this forum may or may not be one where "the rubber meets the road" on the street, in an airliner, or in the minds of people.
Very true. But this is my website and I make the rules. Each of the three phenomena discussed in the last few posts -- mistreatment based on known ancestry despite looks or wealth, mistreatment based on looks despite ancestry or wealth, and mistreatment based on wealth despite looks or ancestry -- is important and worthy of discussion. But I consider it essential to textual clarity for everyone to warn the reader which phenomenon is being discussed. As I said in my last message, please feel free to use any definition you wish. But bear in mind that if you choose not to use the standard definitions (my definitions) then I will insist that you explain your definition. Let me be clear, you either follow my rules or you find somewhere else to discuss U.S. racialism. I do not want anyone posting here who deliberately employs imprecise or nonstandard terminology and refuses to reveal the fact. Surely, The Rules are sufficiently clear on this point.
Altertude wrote:
Hence my original statement and question above which I shall repeat for convienience. How can someone in Cuba and the rest of Latin America, at either ends of the color spectrum tell when someone is not correlating race with color?
I repeat, one cannot. But what is in perpetrators' minds is not the basis of precise distinction among the two phenomena: colorism and racism. The distinction comes from external measurable differences between the phenomena. One can marshal evidence (the eyewitness testimony of victims, perpetrators, and witnesses) either that (1) victims looked European and suffered due to invisible ancestry even from perpetrators who look mixed (as in the U.S.) or (2) victims invariably looked mixed or African and suffered even from white-looking perpetrators who admitted mixed ancestry (as in Cuba). What is in their minds is not measurable. The external facts of the phenomena are measurable. The external facts of the phenomena are what distinguishes them.
Joined: 28 Apr 2006 {Posts: 282 } Location: 51st State
Posted: Fri 21 Jul 2006 19:54 Post subject: Re: Racism or Colorism
fwsweet wrote:
Altertude wrote:
Are facial features colorism or racialism?
Neither. Colorism and racialism refer to beliefs and actions. The mere fact of having any specific feature does not make one either a colorist nor a racialist. For the current site-standard definition of "racialism" and "colorism" see The Rules, paragraph B.3. Please post questions and comments on site standards in the Site Management forum.
Are facial features part of the standard site definition of colorism or racialism?
Joined: 28 Apr 2006 {Posts: 282 } Location: 51st State
Posted: Fri 21 Jul 2006 20:24 Post subject: Re: Racism or Colorism
fwsweet wrote:
Altertude wrote:
Are facial features part of the standard site definition of colorism or racialism?
No. As stated above, the site standard definitions can be found in The Rules, paragraph B.3.
The Rules wrote:
racism — Belief in someone’s inferiority, or mistreatment, based upon ancestry but independent of appearance or wealth.
I'll have to look up Walter White and also re-read posts about "invisible ancestry" because if the ancestry is invisible how can it be racism? Didn't White fear racism because he knew about his ancestry.
What are facial features if not ancestry (or does that one only apply when one has a knowledge of forensic anthropology?
The Rules wrote:
colorism — Belief in someone’s inferiority, or mistreatment, based upon appearance but independent of ancestry or wealth.
Again, I have to go over "invisible ancestry" but this on surface (no pun intended) would seem a more likely fit for Walter White.
Posted: Fri 21 Jul 2006 20:38 Post subject: Re: Racism or Colorism
Altertude wrote:
Didn't White fear racism because he knew about his ancestry.
No. White was the nordic-looking (blonde, blue-eyed, pink-skinned) Secretary of the NAACP who considered himself (and was considered) socially Black because he acknowledged a trace of African ancestry. Sort of like Gregory Howard Williams today. He was not afraid of himself finding out about his ancestry--he already knew it. He was afraid that the lynch mobs he was investigating might find out.
'
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