The intent of the Wiki founders and directors is good and clear. E.g., the Wiki guidelines state: "If possible, terms used to describe people should be given in such a way that they qualify other nouns. Thus, black people, not blacks ...."
Further down on same page
Clair de Lune wrote:
"the word white is not a proper noun. As a description of "white" people, therefore, it is not capitalized. And in Wikipedia, it's not even a noun at all: "If possible, terms used to describe people should be given in such a way that they qualify other nouns. Thus, black people, not blacks.
Some people find the term black offensive when used as a noun (a black) as opposed to an adjective (a black person).
In the United Kingdom, the term black Briton is sometimes used but it is more common to use an adjectival rather than a noun term and write about black British people.
It appears I am not alone objecting that our notion of "different races" must be revised and made to reflect viewpoints on our human race, alone (i.e., via racial adjectives). I think the quoted writers might understand the distinction between nouns and adjectives that I have been pushing.
There is a degree of difference though. The described Wikipedia policy dealt only with non-capitalizing "color-races" ("white," "black," etc.), said to be not proper nouns. (The idea is to describe, not name. Wikipedia seems to grasp this.) My argument extends a bit further. I argue that common nouns moonlighting as surrogate proper nouns continue propagating the same problematic suggestions of "difference." These naming suggestions are problematic for their deprecatory, hypnotic influence.
Effort -- a vigorous campaign -- needs to go into breaking the noun "races" connection in everyone's mind. This clearly requires the government to stop classifying individuals in "races," among other things. All the political correctness that went into renaming the whole Negro "race" "African-American" needs to make racial references mean descriptive adjectives -- NOT "DIFFERENCE"!
As G-Man remarked recently,\
http://backintyme.com/ODR/viewtopic.php?t=1183
there seem to be a now generation of people saying "that race doesn't exist," and "race is a social construct," as if this mantra licenses their continuing eyeballing (& "one-dropping"), attributing "ethnicity" in the same "subspecies" paradigm. "Consequently, we are left with black being simply an ethnic term when it’s possible that black may mean much more to the person using the term." (G-Man.) But merely substituting nouns -- "ethnicity" replacing "race" -- changes nothing. In fact it may be worse, for hiding the racial physiognomy factor under a fig leaf -- as if discreetly curtaining social sex organs.
The "ethnicity" taxonomy is further problematic for its confusion with true ethnicities -- the folk from overseas who left their own languages, armies, or religions abroad. (E.g., Tai-Americans.) This is like telling Zairian immigrants that they can't be African-American, that that name is already taken.
Summing up: There exists but one "rainbow race," and we are free to rejoice in its chromatic splendor -- to say what we see. Unfortunately, we looked this gift horse in the mouth the past 300 years or more. We fell into the bad habit of naming our human race in parts, as if it were separable along endogamous "color" (caste) lines. (And a caste renamed "ethnicity" or "black culture" is still a caste!) Correcting this error requires substituting adjectives for these nouns -- and clearly it requires much more vigor than lower-casing letters for "black" and "white."
George
Posted: Wed 14 Dec 2005 09:43 Post subject: Are the "races" permiable ethnicities? How?
Salsassin wrote:
Who cares. Black is a legitimate noun. if some oen [sic] feels comfortable using it like a [sic] ethnic title so be it.
Government in the U.S.A. classifies all individuals in "races." Criminal prosecution is possible for someone not "feeling comfortable" answering the census "what is your race?" question. Beginning 2000 respondents were allowed to check "race" boxes, which basically were four (White, Black, Amrican Indian), but with 11 Asian nationalities (for "collapsing into "Asian" back in the Office of Management & Budget, or OMB's data tabulation lab.), plus one "Some other race" box. Of course, there also was the Hispanic/Not Hispanic bifurcation of the universe. Answering these check-box "race" questions required affirming the "races" in the boxes -- their existence. Checking two or more boxes indicated "the races" mixed. The OMB had (& has) a procedure for reducing the "mixes" back to a single "race" by hypodescent.
After the U.S. Government is done with Americans essentially all the major organs of society endorse the taxonomic "races." If that were not enough, the civil rights grievance industry in this country, through its NGOs, pressures people to self-classify in "races" following the Jim Crow hypodescent, ODR scheme. Liberal arts universities, also law schools, seem now well infiltrated with the grievance industry's structured "anti-racism" philosophy, which dictates the hypodescent, ODR reconstruction of "different races" for their use combating "racism" (supposedly). The liberal output of all these schools come forth self-appointing as hypodescent, ODR "soul-patrol." Individuals such as our new member, Sapphire, have no "comfortable" choice for identifying "black." In the U.S. it is a "race" which was ascribed to her even before her parents (indeed long before her great-grandparents) had married.
Salsassin sometimes alludes to "color races" as if they are ethnic identities. In the real world a person can change their ethnic "title" by naturalizing a citizenship, learning a language, adopting a religion, dressing as others do -- in short, by acquiring the habits of the people of another ethnicity. But this is not the case with the U.S.'s ubiquitous notion of the endogamous "color line." It is intended to be impermeable because it is conceived to divide biological subspecies. Salsassin's remarks about "white" or "black" "ethnicity" or "culture" in the U.S. are irrelevant to the actual situation here. One would need to somehow remove the endogamous "races" before it could be proven that any "ethnic" or "cultural" stain of this caste-system remained. Anyone wanting for their to be a dark stain surviving or replacing "the races" logically must be an enemy of the People; must hate the U.S. Perhaps Salsassin will fully explain his odd theory and put these suspicions to rest for us?
George
that racialism co-exists in this country along with ethnicity is irrelevant to the fact those ethnicities exist. You keep on fighting against the theories of ratialism and give them alternative perceptions for a reality they live, that of the Black community. You can rant an rave on paper all you want, but I bet you haven't changed on e Black identified person's mind because you do not offer realistic alternatives. Your tangential analysis does nothing to promote an end of racialism. And wether they see themselves as Black or Black people is not going to change if they see themselves as a race or not.
I do not get the impression that George is trying to change the self-identity of Blacks, as much as he is trying to persuade voters to end government enforcement of involuntary "racial" identity. As I understand his argument, with government coercion out of the picture, people will become more flexible in how they see themselves (as in my anwer to Sapphire about St. Paddy's day, which everyone took as a joke rather than dead serious).
Posted: Thu 15 Dec 2005 02:04 Post subject: Are the "races" rightfully ethnicities?
fwsweet wrote:
I do not get the impression that George is trying to change the self-identity of Blacks, as much as he is trying to persuade voters to end government enforcement of involuntary "racial" identity. As I understand his argument, with government coercion out of the picture, people will become more flexible in how they see themselves (as in my anwer to Sapphire about St. Paddy's day, which everyone took as a joke rather than dead serious).
I agree generally with Frank's surmise. However, I might refine it this way: Frank's surmise sounds too like Ward Connerly's Calif. Prop. 54 (which received only 1/3rd of the vote of the electorate in 2003 amid the accelerated, Arnold Schwartznager vs. Gray Davis gubernatorial recall election that unexpectedly cropped up during our campaign). Had Prop. 54 passed it would have blocked most of state classifying individuals in "races." I am not satisfied with Prop. 54 without more -- only "trying to persuade voters to end government enforcement of involuntary 'racial' identity." As I lamented in my 14 Dec. post,
winwinkel wrote:
... [E]ssentially all [of] the major organs of society endorse the taxonomic "races." ... [E.g., law, medicine, education, entertainment, etc.] [T]he civil rights grievance industry in this country, through its NGOs, pressures people to self-classify in "races" following the Jim Crow hypodescent, ODR scheme. Liberal arts universities, also law schools, seem now well infiltrated with the grievance industry's structured "anti-racism" philosophy, which dictates the hypodescent, ODR reconstruction of "different races" for their use combating "racism" (supposedly).
Instead, I want a sweeping re-conceptualization of our human "biodiversity" keyed to ONE HUMAN RACE. (Period!) I can see this requiring a federal constitutional amendment, one essentially refining the Fourteenth Amendment. It should finish-out Jefferson's preamble about "all Men being created ..." by making it plain that constitutional rightful equality seriously means NO DIFFERENCE! -- not in this racial (subspecies, breed, etc.) "taxonomy" which cleaved our society, sadly, into a caste system. Accordingly, Congress maybe will need to be empowered by the new amendment to whip governmental offices into line, force their observing this one human race principal.
Needless to say, I want the one human race principal propagating to all the major organs of society. I want it placing Civil Rights back on track -- the logical continuation of the movement for racial integration. Also, I do not mean to tell people to pretend color blindness. I have no problem with skin complexions. It is an innocent regional racial thing (human). If anyone happens to need objective describing then may they be described, or they may self-identify objectively.
Salsassin wrote:
that racialism co-exists in this country along with ethnicity is irrelevant to the fact those ethnicities exist. You keep on fighting against the theories of ratialism and give them alternative perceptions for a reality they live, that of the Black community. You can rant an rave on paper all you want, but I bet you haven't changed on e Black identified person's mind because you do not offer realistic alternatives. Your tangential analysis does nothing to promote an end of racialism. And wether they see themselves as Black or Black people is not going to change if they see themselves as a race or not.
Salsassin, who is erudite and succinct on all other subjects, once again is dense, nearly impenetrable here. I decipher from the above a few points:
1.) Racialism exists (and it is bad).
2.) The "Black community," which is also black ethnicity (& sometimes black culture if memory serves me correctly) also exists.
3.) Notwithstanding Salsassin contradicting himself stating "that racialism co-exists in this country along with ethnicity is irrelevant to the fact those ethnicities exist," I think Salsassin will agree with me that the reality of racialism historically compressed the "black community ... ethnicity" into existence.
I am sure our disagreement is over 2.) above, the ramifications of it; however I think we mainly agree on 1.) and 3.) above.
Racialism, 300 or more years of oppression, doubtless forged a solid "black" subculture. Perhaps to many inner-city "blacks" it qualifies as a virtual ethnicity. However, the concept of "black race" is concocted from genetically expressed regional phenotype (nearly black skin, etc.). It is impossible to line between this synthetic ethnicity (termed "a race"), the effect of 300 years of vicious oppression, and the grievance identity-politicking of the past 40 years. The latter pulled all stops struggling to gin up a bitching "black ethnicity" that did not exist in America at the time of the March On Washington, 1963. Until then (dawn of the age of Kwaanza, Diaspora Africanization, antecedent of hyphenated "African-American" identity, etc.) all the American Negro wanted was to integrate, as had the waves of Euro-ethnic immigrants before. Their movement was for integration. This is not ancient history. I remember those days. This "Kwaanza"-Islamic "black ethnicity" is someone's steamed-up, recent political racket. It is not solid historical ethnicity.
I cannot subscribe to Salsassin's theory that an honorable, solid, "black culture/ethnicity" must remain after "black race" and all racialism is banished. Why should the shade of anyone's skin (much less the atrocious hypodescent, ODR interrogations) ground anyone's ethnicity? As I understand ethnicity it is a powerful, necessary human grouping force. Taxonomic "races" by contrast -- our concocted "color line" endogamous groups -- are artificial, mistaken, spurious, and wholly arbitrary for our species to attempt to cut itself into. I see no merit in trying to perpetuate this socially intrusive "phenomenon" with another concocted "ethnicity." One, apparently, of the same atrocious thing re-stocked. Is that not so?
George
Posted: Thu 15 Dec 2005 21:09 Post subject: Re: Are the "races" rightfully ethnicities?
winwinkel wrote:
3.) Notwithstanding Salsassin contradicting himself stating "that racialism co-exists in this country along with ethnicity is irrelevant to the fact those ethnicities exist," I think Salsassin will agree with me that the reality of racialism historically compressed the "black community ... ethnicity" into existence.
No I do not. There co-existence is not a mandatory co-dependence for existence. While racialism compressed them into a community, shared experience can carry that group on even with the concepts of racialism removed. Black refering to an ethnicity just like irish does. Man ethnic terms no longer are used in their original context.
Quote:
Racialism, 300 or more years of oppression, doubtless forged a solid "black" subculture. Perhaps to many inner-city "blacks" it qualifies as a virtual ethnicity. However, the concept of "black race" is concocted from genetically expressed regional phenotype (nearly black skin, etc.). It is impossible to line between this synthetic ethnicity (termed "a race"), the effect of 300 years of vicious oppression, and the grievance identity-politicking of the past 40 years. The latter pulled all stops struggling to gin up a bitching "black ethnicity" that did not exist in America at the time of the March On Washington, 1963. Until then (dawn of the age of Kwaanza, Diaspora Africanization, antecedent of hyphenated "African-American" identity, etc.) all the American Negro wanted was to integrate, as had the waves of Euro-ethnic immigrants before. Their movement was for integration. This is not ancient history. I remember those days. This "Kwaanza"-Islamic "black ethnicity" is someone's steamed-up, recent political racket. It is not solid historical ethnicity.
That is not true at all. While integration was desired, ethnic in-groupism has always existed.
Quote:
I cannot subscribe to Salsassin's theory that an honorable, solid, "black culture/ethnicity" must remain after "black race" and all racialism is banished. Why should the shade of anyone's skin (much less the atrocious hypodescent, ODR interrogations) ground anyone's ethnicity? As I understand ethnicity it is a powerful, necessary human grouping force. Taxonomic "races" by contrast -- our concocted "color line" endogamous groups -- are artificial, mistaken, spurious, and wholly arbitrary for our species to attempt to cut itself into. I see no merit in trying to perpetuate this socially intrusive "phenomenon" with another concocted "ethnicity." One, apparently, of the same atrocious thing re-stocked. Is that not so?
George
Your assumption is still that the only boding force is opression, and racialism. That is false, family histories, memories, cultural trends, cultural pride, etc, are enough to mainain the continuity of an ethnicity.
Posted: Fri 23 Dec 2005 04:42 Post subject: Re: Are the "races" rightfully ethnicities?
Salsassin wrote:
There [sic] ['black ethnicity' + oppression?] co-existence is not a mandatory co-dependence for existence. While racialism compressed them into a community, shared experience can carry that group on even with the concepts of racialism removed. Black refering [sic] to an ethnicity just like irish [sic] does. ...
During my Army hitch I was moved a few times among units. That can bring on a lonely feeling. It evokes the Doors singing, "When You're Strange." However, these readjustments were easier when a couple of men were transferred together to a new unit. It really didn't matter what color was the guy you knew from your old outfit when the two of you woke up amid strangers in another platoon. I had that experience in Vietnam. And wasn't there a comedy movie starring Gene Wilder ("white") and the late Richard Pryor ("black"), their experiencing prison and other strange domiciles together?
Salsassin wrote:
... [F]amily histories, memories, cultural trends, cultural pride, etc, are enough to mainain [sic] the continuity of an ethnicity.
Sure. I can easily top tales of Army life, even Richard Pryor's sit-com skits. I'm the "white" guy whose face sometimes can be glimpsed floating in the billions thronging China -- where I would be utterly lost -- were I not with my in-law family there. My point is, I believe ethnicity -- those affiliation threads -- are far stronger. They are capable of obliterating mere racial pigmentation cues as bases for knowing who one's "own people" are.
Now Salsassin comes trying to make a creepy ethnicity of inherited regional racial skin color, its telltale "blood" ancestry. The same thing happened before -- in 1662, 1705, and other years -- when Virginia Colony (leading other colonies) legislated a heavy bias toward slavery for dark lineage African folks, and mandated freedom from slavery for unmixed "white" folks. Another perfidious racial bias was colonial Virginia in 1691 (again, soon mimicked by other colonies) outlawing marriage across the same "color line." These tactics created a stark racial "color"-consciousness that still splits Americans. Our notion of "white" or "black" "races" continues a stammering ethnic divide today -- one created by this ever-continuing legislated gash along an originally semi-pristine racial fault-line. History shows, though, that before this barrage of laws, 17th Century colonists had been marrying across "colors" unhesitatingly. (Obviously, they hadn't learned racism, "races"-consciousness yet.)
Truth is, our U.S. "black/white" "races" endogamous "color line" still is only an artificial, man-made ethnic crack. Our cultural, ethnic basics all are shared. (I.e., English language, Western European traditions, values, religion, American birth, etc.) Because hypodescent and the "one drop" "rule" (ODR) goes unenforced, for over 38 years now, their function enforcing endogamy is failing. Also, not everyone follows the "rule." (E.g., U.S. Hispanic/Latino, Egyptians, Arabs, Greeks, Romani, Armenians, Persians, Italians, Jews, Anglo multiracials.) Therefore, our opposing American racial phenotypes are losing distinction as we blend. As the look of our people increasingly blends, our distinctive "colored" neighborhoods ("white," "black," etc.) will lose color contrast too. Why shouldn't the synthetic "ethnicities" which segregated manufactured "races" fade along with our skin pigment distinctions? I would welcome this synchronized fading of the memory of the hypodescent/ODR, and what they begot. Why not?
For whatever reason, Salsassin thinks he wants to see the same "black" racial "ethnic" identity perpetuating the same endogamous segregation along the same racial "blood"/"color" lines? He would substitute-in the name "black ethnicity." However, doesn't this still describe the same "black race" in terms of a means of perpetuating it, functionally identical to Jim Crow laws sequestering and stigmatizing Negroes with the ODR mark of pariah? If that is what Salsassin wants, then I invite him to take his hateful racism and go to Hell!
George
Nice try, bookie. It will only take a few sentences to reply to your wordy monologue. I believe Blacks as an athnicity have every right to exist as an ethnicity. With time, if racialism is removed, that group should be able to adopt other people into their group. But it is harder when there is an endogamous group. Don't tell me in CHina they just embraced you as Chinese. The more you diverge from the norm the more you will be percieved as an outsider. that works with most ethnicities. Clothing, looks whatever. The army is just another in-group. I belong to it. And it also has those who discriminate and look down on non-army people as well.
Posted: Sat 24 Dec 2005 22:05 Post subject: Is Black an ethnicity independently of "black race"?
Salsassin wrote:
Nice try, bookie. ...
I believe Blacks as an athnicity [sic] have every right to exist as an ethnicity. With time, if racialism is removed, that group should be able to adopt other people into their group. But it is harder when there is an endogamous group.
Hmm? "Bookie"? Sounds almost complementary. Well, here is another of my wordy monologues.
Okay, let's see if I can help Salsassin out here. Is it not true that what Salsassin is going on about is a retrospective view of American Blacks comprising an ethnicity? "Retrospective" means their history together, the government classifying them "different" for more than 300 years, the other things. This retrospective view recognizes them existing yesterday, clearly existing today, and almost certainly they will be with us into the future for some time.
However, I am concerned with the "other things" category above. Chief among these "other things" is African-resemblance, or "black" phenotype. This concept has no edges. I assume the same is true for all "other things" except one. The exception is the hypodescent/ODR "rules." These relentless social fabrications presume to lift settled Americans out of their chosen, or life-long ethnic identity, deny them choice, even tell them they were wrong. Just so, Greg H. Williams, the "white" boy, woke up to find himself and his brother tarbrushed as "niggers" by the ODR. Just so, Captain Healey, Anatole Broyard, and many others cannot rest in peace. Just so, their living descendants are hounded with the ODR allegation that their ancestor was a Negro "passing," hence they themselves -- what are they?
In Jim Crow Texas (late 1940s-1960s) I grew up among a diverse array of "white"-identifying people. We could all see the "blacks" plainly in the distance -- because they were so dark, so "black." (And they couldn't use our segregated beach in Galveston; they suffered many other discriminations. I remember the sorry little drinking fountains, all of that.) In the late 1990s (!) I learned the existence of the One-Drop "rule." Recalling the clear negroid features on so many of my "white" Texas peers, whom I grew up with, invites my speculating, my wondering how many knew that they had a family "Indian" secret (e.g., as my long-ago passed on Mom had confided to me)? How many had no clue? What fighting words might come of putting such a question? Of all the vehement fights I saw break out in Texas, I do not remember anyone ever broaching that, that ancestry, with their fighting words.
IF no governmental or significant institutional inquiry were ever made asking "Who's black?" ("Who's gotta get off this beach?"); IF there was no ODR, then I am sure the environments such as my native Texas would quickly loose all of their ability to know who was "black" in the exclusionary sense. I think I see signs that pockets in Texas are going that way anyway (e.g., my late Dad's Methodist church community). Certainly California, where I live now, is far down this road. However, they face strong resistance in the form of leading "black" identity mavens seemingly doing all they can to draw a "color line," to keep all "black" identifiers herded apart into a sense of their "difference." Hypodescent/ODR, and all the "race"-inquiring questionnaires we keep encountering are useful devices for this identity-herding of people whose diverse phenotype has no clear edges.
Salsassin wrote:
Don't tell me in CHina they just embraced you as Chinese. ...[?]
I definitely cannot pass for Chinese, racially. And I am a lame thing there, lacking adequate language skills. However, I am graciously received, courteously treated anyway. My Chinese experience is surprisingly good. I have been pleasantly surprised since the beginning, 37 years ago. I feel generally accepted in a fellow-man sort of way. I sense none of the oppressive "races"-consciousness with Asians that is so awkward (bordering on crippling as I have experienced at times) in U.S. "black"-"white" interactions. Certainly we (Chinese and me) see each other's phenotype. But, again, they do not seem to mentally process the information in a way which evaluates me zoologically. I try to be good, too, of course.
"My people," however (re this report), generally are not young, American born, the second-generation Asian-Americans. Maybe a huge generation-gap is widening between overseas or first generation immigrant Chinese, and American-born, second-generation, the college-educated young ones? Second Generation have gone through our American education "grievance" brainwasher. They see our "different races." Hyphenated identity, progressive activism, "antiracism" among Second Generation is growing. (They've been targeted.)
A striking contrast are the Chinese in China and first generation in America. I doubt they have much grasp of our notion of "the races." Consequently, they arrive here and don't recognize themselves being "different" in that hypnotic salience that we U.S. Americans all zombie-walk to. Although Chinese learn to spot our "main world races" -- doubtless they arrive already tipped-off -- I suspect that they mentally translate our "races" (when they can see them) into ethnic concepts which make sense to them, in their experience. They do not have the "color-treated" lenses on their eyes which our national hypnosis fits on ours. Moreover, their viewpoint is tolerant (I would think) due to the fact the Chinese phenotype varies so widely (to say nothing of all the other Asian countries). A crazy-quilt of variation commonly springs out, even in siblings, and parent-child. My own in-law family have an array of skin complexions, skulls, faces, hair textures. (Not even counting kids from the family's 3 out-marriages, including mine.) My youngest sister-in-law's husband is a Chinese guy almost dark as Tiger Woods; all his life he's rejoiced in the nickname "Black." (He digs it. He's retired former captain of Hong Kong's maritime fire department.) I theorize that massive recent "mixing" has occurred in China. The country is still peppered with thousands of tiny, insular ethnic pockets each speaking their own language. I think these racial micro-populations have exploded into "miscegenation" just in the last few generations. There's a saying about people in "glass houses" not throwing stones.
George
Posted: Mon 26 Dec 2005 15:53 Post subject: Removing government support of the "race" concept
Those who are here mainly to attack George and me are fearful of the following:
1) Removing government support of the "black race" and "black ethnicity" ceoncept.
While some contend that the word of their new-found black-identified mulatto friends outweights all our years of research, we continue to throw down the gauntlet to those who devote themselves to perpetuating the myth that "black comes in all colors." Most of the ethnicities in this country manage to maintain come kind of identity WITHOUT government support or using the power of the state to coerce people into their group. Take away government support and let's see how many non-black "blacks" the so-called "black race/ethnicity" can keep. Black leaders admitted this during the new coverage of the "Multiracial" census category. If the so-called raceless legitimate "black" ethnicity is real (rather than an odious caste to be dismantled), let's prove it. Treat "blacks" like you treat "Jews" - no rewards (race-based affirmative action, scholarships, loans, etc.) and no penalties for being one of them.
2) Stop the unofficial but very real censorship that the media and academia use to shield the public from any criticism of blacks, Hispanics, and their hypocritical role in maintaining the myth of the ODR. Every black and pretend-black who wants to denounce "passing for white" by non-Hispanic Multiracial Whites (while being careful not to offend his Hispanic allies by pointing out THEIR "black blood") can get a forum in the mainstream media and respectable academic journals. Even standard academic histories of the fight for the "Multiracial" census category manage to omit Charles Michael Byrd, James Landrith, William Javier Nelson and others from the narrative. Their articles and speeches are never reproduced like those of black-identified ODR supporters. Heaven forbid that the public should hear the other side!
'
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