The Study of Racialism

I agree completely. If there is one thing that U.S. history teaches is that that "Whites," by definition, denotes whoever is mainstream. The label continually stretches to embrace and include each previously non-White group as soon as it is accepted into the main.

Have any of you seen an example in an Anglo Saxon dominated country where non-Caucasian or a group who was not of majority (like 75-80%) Caucasian ancestry has become "white" as a whole? I can understand how Irish or even Italians became "white" as if they have no accent and their kids grow up here or marry a WASP it is difficult to tell them from a WASP. There are some people of Welsh and "black Irish" origin who look "Italian". The only way you will know their ethnic heritage is by name. Yes, some Italians and some Jews have a stereotypical look, but most do not...not in my life experience. Even Iranians, Arabs or Northern Indians who marry WASP often have children who fall in the typical phenotypical range of a European.

Kids on a playground can tell (usually) who is a mulatto or who is half East/Southeast Asian...they can't often tell who is Russian, Italian, Swedish, and often even Persian or Armenian.

Adrian Perry Pasdar from heroes is half Persian:



Ralph Nader is purely Arab:



All of these groups have not historically been seen as 'white' in America, although they usually are on the census. I do not believe that most white Americans think Osama Bin Laden is white, although he is also Arab. I would say most Arabs outside of the Levant look like him than Ralph Nader...but on the U.S. Census Bin Laden would be "white".

In any case all these groups being anthropologically Caucasian means their body shapes fall into a closer grouping with the average WASP than do most black Africans, mulattoes, East/Southeast Asians, Southern Indian (Dravidans), hence why they have been grouped as "Caucasian".

I can see people loosening up to "white Hispanics" as they do now and maybe lighter mulattoes with some visible "black" feature...but I can't imagine Asian Americans or most Hispanics will be called white in America.

One difference is that, in Latin America several centuries ago is that we have ethnic pressure group and we have people coming in a large number than ever before with the ability to travel and community with their "homeland", as has been pointed out on this board, this decreases interracial marriage rates, not increasing them, because people are more likely to marry thier co-racial/ethnic than an out group if the opposition is avaiable.


I also know in areas where Asian Americans are large in population they are starting to form race based political groups and movements, as are Hispanics...they are defining themselves by culture or just appearance as different from "White Americans (Anglos)" even if, for example many of those same Hispanics call themselves "blanco" they don't see themselves as "Anglo".

My point being...to my knowledge there were not these divisions or issues in Latin American at the colonial founding that would have prevented widespread inter-mixture and the creation of a "middle man" minority that is generally seen as "white" or a group that is quite physically different (Asian Americans) being considered "white".

I just can't see that happen in my last time.

You are begging the question. The only objective replicable definition of "Caucasian" is "accepted as White." So your question asks for examples of people who are "not accepted as White" being "accepted as White." This is silly.

For what it is worth, more than half of the USAmericans with one east-Asian parent and one Euro-descended parent consider themselves White and are accepted as White.

Let me clarify.

In my definition all whites are Caucasian but not all Caucasians are white. Not in the American context, as I explained above.

I'm using Caucasian in the classic anthropological sense, to include most North Africans, Middle Eastern, North Indians, a lot of Central Asians, etc.

It has been discussed on this site (likely more than once) that the majority of Hispanics in the U.S. consider themselves "white". There are obviously Hispanics who are look no different from people in Iberia or even France, etc. That being said, (I'm estimating from what I remember) in America in 2008, I do not believe 75-80% of Hispanics are considered white.

This is not due to their last name being Spanish/Portugese. Christina Aguilara is considered white and her father (I believe) is Costa Rican, but she looks like this:



The same can be said for Cameron Diaz, Emillo Estevaz, Charlie Sheen, Martin Sheen, etc.

Typically the more AmerIndian the people appear in their appearance (or black) the less likely they are to be considered white, due to phenotype. There is a range in which someone is considered "white" in America. That range has expanded, but to my knowledge that range has never been extended to people who were nonCaucasion. Asian/white mixed people can fall inside a general range that is Caucasian and even falling in the range of a Western European they would not stand out walking the streets of a small Western European nation. I will give an example of this below.

As far as Asian/white mixed people saying they are white.

What evidence do you have they are seen as "white" because they mark white on a census form? The follow up would be what do these people look like? I can mark anything I want on a census form, that in and of itself has nothing to do with how others see me.

If they look like this Eddie Van Halen (Indonesian/Dutch)



I can see that.


If they look like this guy Lou Diamond Phillips (Filipino/White American)




I doubt it.

Now Lou Diamond Philips considers himself Asian, I have read this several times from him, but even if his parents put "white" on his birth certificate and he himself felt he was white, would the average person walking down the street in American in 2008? My opinion is no. I would think he was a Mestizo on first glance (a role he has played before several times) and would not consider him "white".


So maybe, here is a revised question:

Has a group that is seen as non-Caucasian and not immediately mixed race (i.e. Amerasians) ever became "white" in an German (including ANglosaxon) nation to your knowledge? An example would be Chinese people becoming white. I'm not talking about having honorary "white status" as being except from Jim Crow Laws effecting blacks, etc. That is not the same as a white person looking at a man from China and saying "oh he is white...same as me"...It is obvious that Irish people were not considered white at one time, neither were Germans, but today a typical man of Anglo-Saxon ancestry in America would think (my opinion) an Irish person is just "white like them"...although maybe a different ethnicity...

The point of this goes back to the assumption that as the white population grows they will just absorb or expand the definition of white. This has happened in the past, but I have never seen this happen in regard to people who were not Caucasian. There were people "passing" and people who were seen as ethnically different "White Hispanics" but even the "passing" or the very light Mestizo is usually so white in ancestry as expressed in their appearance they don't significantly fall out of the range of Caucasian or even European, etc.

I find it hard to believe that non-Caucasian people or people who can pass in the phenotypical range of a European (which I know is fairly broad) are going to be considered white...so I'm wondering where all these "new whites" will come from. There aren't that many Asians having mixed kids or "white Hispanics" to greatly reinforce the "white population".

I just don't see it.

Christina Aguilera's father is Ecuadorian, not Costa Rican.

Thanks.

There is no such "classic anthropological sense" of Caucassian. The term delineates nothing outside of your own mind. Prior to the term's abandonment by physical anthropology it was defined by craniofacial anthropometry, and included the natives of Sri Lanka, Ehtiopia, Somalia, Chad, Burkina Faso, and Sudan. Those populations are excluded by your personal imagined Caucasian label. Indeed, few of the Americans today who carry such templates in their heads (as you do) would see them as falling under the Caucasian label.

Conversely, the average American of 1750 knew with utter certainty that Germans did not "look White." The Caucasian template in their heads excluded Germans, southern Europeans, Slavs, and Irish. To them, the distinction between Caucasian and "other" was obvious and visible. In their eyes, Germans were not white because they did not look white and could not possibly pass for white. By 1860 Americans considered Germans to be physically Caucasian but the Irish were still clearly a simian cross between humans and apes. By 1920 the Irish "looked Caucasian" but Jews and Slavs did not.

You ask, "Has a group that is seen as non-Caucasian [by Dragon Horse] and not immediately mixed race (i.e. Amerasians) [as seen by Dragon Horse] ever became "white" [as seen by Dragon Horse] in an German (including Anglo-Saxon) nation to your knowledge?" Your deliberate use of use passive voice to give the illusion that you speak for others forces me to clarify that you alone are doing the seeing and classifying in this thread.

You simply re-state the original question. You have in your brain a picture of who "looks Caucasian" to you and who does not. I do not know if your personal racialist mental template includes native Turks, Afghanis, Pakistanis, Khyrgistanis, or Bangladeshis, and I do not care. The point is that you are still asking for examples of people who do not "look Caucasian" to you, who at the same time "look Caucasian" to you. This is a silly question.

I know I can never convince you that your own personal belief as to who "looks Caucasian" is neither universal nor eternal. You believe that everyone carries the same mental template (of what Caucasians looks like) as do you. And you believe that your personal essential racialism has been common throughout history. So be it.

Just keep in mind that the goal of this site is to study how and why people cling tenaciously to such beliefs as yours, and not to preach them.


I agree. And you probably never will. You are too old to unlearn the mental template you absorbed in early childhood. And you are too uninformed to reject it at an intellectual level (you grotesquely refer to the overwhelming scholarly consensus based on solid evidence and zero counter-evidence of an expanding template of whiteness in U.S. history as an "assumption").


I caution you that if you become too vehement in insisting that people who consider themselves White are not "really White" because they do not "look Caucasian" to you, you will run afoul of rule 2.6. As I recall, your one-week suspension of 9/15/07 was the result of your expressed disdain for those who do not self-identify as you think they should but are accepted as they identify anyway.

1)
2.3 Do not engage in straw man. — Make sure that you understand what the other person is saying before replying. Never caricature or distort another person’s argument.

and from you:



I will be referring back to this.


2)


No they are not. I said specifically:



I wrote this specifically to avoid having to type out a paragraph of all people considered Caucasian.

How do you know the Irish “looked white”? I’m asking for a reference to this. I find it hard to believe that if a person born in Ireland who grew up in America with no accent and had the name Daniel Bryant could be told apart from an Anglo-Saxon on appearance. What Irish features did not “look white”? Who said this?

I would ask the same of Germans in 1860. My point being if I know someone is Irish I could easy start a stereotype that is not based on the reality of appearance but on their accent or name. I can give a real world personal example of this.

My wife is Japanese, when we go to Korean Grocery stores in the DC Metro area (where there are many) people often speak Korean to her because they assume any East Asian looking person is Korean. When they find out my wife is Japanese, this has happened twice, people will look at her hard and say something like “oh of coarse she is Japanese…she looks Japanese” when less than 1 minute before they obviously thought she was Korean and thought nothing of speaking Korean to her. I’ve had the same experience with West Africans in DC.

Please, refer to #1.


How is it you know what I deliberately did something with a certain intent in mind? Please do not distort my argument by assuming intent.

I have done some research and you are correct it is the use of the word Caucasian is “out of date”.

I will no longer use that word and admit it is incorrect. I think that the general meaning of what I am saying will not change if I substitute Caucasian with the word “European”. I do this because this was recognized as more legitimate and does not fundamentally change my argument which I will restate in it's entirety at the bottom



"Other Notable MeSH Changes and Related Impact on Searching: Ethnic Groups and Geographic Origins" (2003). NLM Technical Bulletin 335 (Nov-Dec). “The MeSH term Racial Stocks and its four children (Australoid Race, Caucasoid Race, Mongoloid Race, and Negroid Race) have been deleted from MeSH in 2004. A new heading, Continental Population Groups, has been created with new indentions that emphasize geography.”
I will come back to this in a second….
Please see #1


I never made such a claim that it was universal or eternal, in fact I said above “one’s parents or an individual might classify themselves one way but others may not”. That would obviously conflict with the idea that there is “universality” and eternal is not something I have said.


Please see #1 again. What I said is:


I also said:



I think it is rather obvious that I accept the fact that historically people have “become white”. I am not arguing what happened in the past. What I’m saying is I doubt this trend will continue in the future with other groups who do not fall in the phenotypical range of Europeans.



"Expressed disdain" over "self-identity"...okay.

I am not aware of a sentence I have typed in this thread where I said anything similar to this. I did ask you how you know people are accepted by the general population based on what they write on a census form.

That is a leap of faith, to assume such a thing. Is it against the rules to state that? If it is then I withdraw it, but generally, for anything, stating something and having others buy into it are not the same thing. This has nothing to do with a value judgement on my part of "they should or should not be seen as such". A person saying the sky is red and others saying it is blue and me remarking on this has nothing to do with what I think is morally just or "right/wrong". Please do not attempt to assign intent to me. Refering back to #1, once again.

Please provide a quote of a sentence you think is close to that. I'm am having trouble finding one.

Here is a question; I’m not making a definitive statement. I am asking how to talk about appearance and not violate the rule. Do you accept that “race” in America is partially due to ancestry and phenotypical appearance? If a Swede went to a New Black Panther Meeting and he had blond hair and blue eyes and said he was black what would other people in the meeting hall think? I concede he has the right to identify as he wishes. If my grandfather (Creole from Louisiana with some SubSaharan African features) said he was a white man and moved to Alabama would the declaration by him of his chosen race make him except to Jim Crow Laws?

The point of these question is obvious. If you are not allowed to discuss a phenotypical range of “race” in an American context then the only definition would be what one defines for themselves. Historically and even today race is not just socio/cultural/political it is also based on how that individual interacts with society (including their family). Once again, if a Chinese American (both of whose parents came from Central China) said he was a Mulatto, he has the right to do so but how can you discuss what a “black man” is or any race if you can’t place people in a phenotypical range? I accept completely that race is not just a phenotypical issue and there are more factors, but phenotype does come into play and to say there is no range makes that variable worthless and can lead to arguments that are so far outside what occurs in reality as to be meaningless. So what is the proper way to discuss what one “looks like”? Does the opinion of other in society matter? Did my grandfather need to obey Jim Crow laws? If he didn’t tell anyone he was African American, just walked around Selma, Alabama and went in the white restroom, if appearance has no meaning or the thing that matters most is his self definition than would his action be permissible?

Using European instead of Caucasian (as stated above), is it permissible to say there is a range in European appearance that does not include people in East Africa or natives to Nigeria for example?
If it is then can others say someone falls in the phenotypical range of a European?

If so, would you agree in 2008, that the majority of people in the U.S. consider European as synonymous was white? The U.S Government says:


http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/fedreg/1997standards.html

So all Europeans are white by Government standards.
Are there groups from outside of Europe, Middle East, North Africa in American history who do not fall in the phenotypical range of a European who are considered “white” in America by the general population?

The problem I see with framing a question like this is that there are people of strong sub-Saharan African ancestry, that is visible in phenotype in the Middle East and North Africa, but I do not believe in the American racial context on the street they would be considered “white” by a majority of the population, although I’m not sure how they themselves would identify.

If you want to make the argument very base, what I'm saying can also be explained as this.

1) I contend that "white" as known in the U.S. is a poli-social catagory but also had a phenotypical range. I have also said that range has expanded over time, but I have also said I felt that the expansion of the term white as it relates to phenotype has limits.


So if you put this on a Bell Curve and "white" started at 0.

One can look at history and say "white" in the U.S. context have expanded to 68%. This number has no meaning but in framing an argument...it is not my actual contention, I'm just attempting to give visual reference for boundaries. I'm saying that those people in that 68% who "became white" had a similar appearance on average so they could pass for Anglo-Saxon or close enough, so it is understandable to me that white could be extended. I've explained why in detail above.

No one has explained to me what did not look "white" in phenotype about Irish or Germans. I contend it was not based on phenotype but appearance, mannerism, culture, and language. I gave examples of this to, from my own life.

[img]http://imjustaguy.files.wordpress.com/2008/05/iq_bell_curve.gif[img]

http://imjustaguy.files.wordpress.com/2 ... _curve.gif

2) So my question is simple. Where there any people with extreme variance in phenotype from the "white" source group (in America that would be Anglo Saxons, who are 0 on the Bell Curve) that are still considered as "white".

So I used examples of East Asians or Nigerians being potentially considered white.

I believe the above contention by Frank was that "if they become mainstream they will usually be considered white"? Is this correct Frank.

I don't know how you are defining mainstream, but lets use that loose definition...if East Asians became "mainstream"...whatever that means to you (as I consider Will Smith and P.Ditty mainstream) would they become "white"?

I asked for historical evidence to support this.

I got back condescending comments, assumptions, and application of intent to my words which can not possibly be substantiated. I believe at least two of these are a violation of site rules.

I'm not sure why putting forth a question is requires such a response.

As I recall Frank you said the rules apply to you too.

I can produce that quote from you if you would like.

As I said. I am not going to convince you, so it is pointless to continue.

In answer to your questions about how Americans physically perceived Irish, Germans, etc., see The "Race" Notion's Role in Ethnic Assimilation, which is extensively footnoted.

In answer to your question about east Asian acceptance as White, the only objective measure of acceptance as White is intermarriage. Japanese-Americans, for example, outmarry at the same rate as Irish-Americans, and most children of such marriages consider themselves White and are accepted as White (again, as measured by outmarriage).

If you would like to read the same facts that I am trying to teach you, but from a peer-reviewed journal by two highly respected experts on the subject, see White Americans, The New Minority?.

If you are truly interested in how the physical perception of Whiteness has changed and evolved in the U.S. over the past few centuries, I will be more than happy to guide you to the standard peer-reviewed literature on the subject. But if you just want to argue without knowing the facts, please find someone else, preferably in another website.

This is not an attack on you, if you think that you should not. In fact I consider this constructive criticism, not of you but of your theory. There are ways you can make it stronger if you can think of ways to address these questions/concerns I have. I ask you to read all of what I write and consider it closely. I believe it is quite logical and relevant.

I read the first article (by you) and have not got through the PDF yet.

The first article does not answer my concerns.

The concerns are that the theory is based on a few assumptions about the past and then it is applied to the future as a framework to analyze different groups.

Some of this can't be answered definitively because the type of study required was not done at the time so we have no way to look back to get a general opinion of the population at the time. We can look, as you have at "experts" and "newspapers", exerts from "books", "quotes".

I do not like arguing to argue and I'm really not arguing. I'm seeking an answer.

My concerns are simple and I have already stated them.


1) The theory, in my opinion, contends that phenotype is a minor or unimportant variable in determining "whiteness" in the American context.


a) I would like to see a study that isolates cultural behaviors/dress from pure appearance. As I stated my wife has this situation all the time. When people do not see you as different from them culturally they think one way, when people see you as different from you culturally (regardless of how you look) they go about trying to find "differences" in your appearance. I have seen this many times in my dealings with East Asians...in American and in East Asia. I can cite many examples, as I have.

I would like to see a study that shows how "whites" (meaning WASPS) saw Irish people who they did not know where Irish based on photos where they are dressed the same as an WASP. Then the same people dressed or in person displaying Irish accents, dress, stereotypical behaviors and ask them to rate how "white" the person is.

I am certain you will get different results.

So this goes to my contention that phenotype does in fact matter and the difference in Germans, most Jews, most Italians, and Irish is that once they did adopt "white" norms whites on average could not tell who they were on the street.

The effect is that a white man can stand next to a Irishman and not know he was Irish and be shocked to find he was "Irish" and think to himself..."damn...he looks just like my WASP cousin and acts like us".

A white man, on average, would not stand next to a Chinese man and necessarily think the same thing because he will have preconceived notions of him not "looking like him" before he even sees how he acts.

This is key to my argument and I see nothing to refute this.

The only thing I see is "after the fact" quotes and stereotypes.

The example you used in the article that stands out was the quote about 'An true Englishman can tell an Irishman' and then the reference to Irish being "half animals"...etc.

Could an Englishman tell and Irish man in a room of 50 mixed Irish and Englishmen with the same clothes and accent? I would bet good money he could not identify 5 Irishmen with no mistake.

If he could pick out Irishmen most of the time in that situation, and saw their FEATURES as "foreign" but then later the "whites" saw these features as "normal for whites" your theory would hold and be strong...I don't see direct evidence of that.

Read this study abstract:

http://www.perceptionweb.com/abstract.cgi?id=p6255

http://dienekes.blogspot.com/2008/10/ba ... names.html



I contend this is not just for multiracial faces.

I also know dienekes is bias and has fudged data...I take anything posted on his site with a grain of salt...this was not from his personal commentary on the subject.


2) The assumption that one is an immigrant groups, blacks, or white and the immigrant group leverages their "whiteness" on how they treat blacks and/or how they adopt "white norms".

a) I somewhat I agree with this, especially the section of your article about the Irish. The problem I have is that it is too simplistic. It is not on or off. Maybe you do not mean that and I recognize that you mentioned "Irish assimilation" took a very long time. My meaning is more that in most nations their are tiers of discrimination. Just because Asians marry whites at a high rate are discriminated against less than blacks or one can argue Hispanics as a whole (based on interracial marriage numbers) this does not necessarily mean they are on their way to "whiteness" because this is what occurred with the Irish, Germans, etc.

A simple explanation for this is that more than other groups who are "non-white" Asians come here with a higher level of education and money...also culture for educational achievement (at least East Asians...not as much Southeast Asians) and this makes them more likely to be in contact with whites socially because they live in the same place and due to the gains made in the civil rights movement more Asians are coming (often they are grad students, etc) and settle in white areas and work in fields with whites. One can argue that contact on nearly equal status leads to greater rates of marriage. I'm 100% certain I can find peer reviewed articles to support that contention.

One can still hold that African Americans (notice I did not say blacks) are/have been especially discriminated against. That argument you have made in your article and I do agree. That in no way means that Asians and Hispanics with considerable nonEUropean range phenotypes are becoming whites.

We have no way of knowing if they will just move to a certain level of acceptance and fall short of whiteness or not.

Tiers of discrimination are not unknown.

Jews in many European nations were not treated the same as Muslims and those two groups were not necessarily treated the same as Gypsies.

Koreans, Yao, Uighurs are not treated the same in China. The one's who look Han Chinese and have a similar culture (the first two) are large assimilated but the one who does not (Uigure Muslims) are not. I can give examples of my Uighur friend and I in China and how he was treated and people did not know where he was from or anything but his face. He was not treated as Han.

Koreans, Ainu, Eta, and Okinawans are not treated the same in Japan.

So this type of multilevel discrimination/racism is not unusual, it is common.

3) Because this happened in the past it will happen in the future or is happening.

a) As I said above...the key thing for me, more than anything else, is the role of phenotype in "race", specifically in regard to "whiteness". I should probably say that I know it is obvious that phenotype is not the only variable, obviously there are "black" people who look like WASPS who are treated as black and considered black by "white" due to the "taint" of black blood. That being said, if a average blond haired blue eyed guy from Sweden walked in the streets of Washington DC and told people he was black (and he had no accent and they did not know his name) most people would not take his claim seriously. So phenotype is still important, even in the one-drop rule.

All that being said, the question of the true role and meaning of phenotype leads me to question is European people or people who fit in the standard phenotypical range of Europeans being considered "or becoming white" is the same as a dark Amerindian looking Mestizo or an East/Southeast Asian being seen as 'white".

There is not enough evidence to support that, or at least I have not yet seen it.

4) As you stated above, people are "white" because people mark white on a census form (or their parents do).

a) This is silly to me, I'm sorry, and no offense to you but it is obvious to a child that because you say you are something or even if your parents or close friends who know you say you are something does not automatically mean people outside your "core group" believe it or see it.

As I said before, this in no way is a moral argument on my part, this is an observation of reality. So for you to say ..."Asian/white kids say (or their parents say) they are white on the census means they are accepted as "white" okay has problems.

That is an assumption and nothing more. To prove that you would need a study to get public opinion of "whites" and others, but specifically "whites", a random sample...to see what they think based on what they see with no cultural queues. Then one with cultural queues.


I appreciate your wanting to "teach" but a good teacher listens. Good teachers (and I was a teacher in another life for some time) do not brow beat students or try to intimidate them. A good researcher (work I have done in real life and do in a different field) also listens and considers others opinions and provides logical arguments or admits the flaws. They also do not hold theory up as irrefutable scientific law. In social science (and hard science) there are challenges to theory all the time.

You have holes Frank that you have not filled.

I'm not saying you can't fill them, what I'm saying is that they need filling if you are to continue with this theory. If I'm not wanted on your site for stating that. That is not a reflection on me and I not concerned with not being able to post here. Internet is a great big place.

I agree with you, Dragon Horse. Some people will never be considered White here in the USA simply because either their phenotype does not support the public's perception of what it means to be "White" or in the case of Hispanics because they are perceived as mixed-race no matter how white they look.
But really America needs to move beyond these racial classifications and learn to see that we are all Americans. Will this happen one day or is it just wishful thinking on my part?

I would be careful about Hispanics. Frank pointed out, I believe rightly so, in the above linked article that he wrote, his own experience of being seen as different races in college.

Hispanics have such a broad phenotypical range there are obviously Hispanics who look no different than a man or woman from Iberia and would not stand out in most of Europe. There are also Hispanics who look like they just got off the boat from West Africa, like old pictures of Native Americans, and any mixture in between.

Think about Emillo Estivez (and his brother and father Charley and Martin Sheen), think about Christina Aguilara, Cameron Diez, etc. I've been to Mexico, the only place in Latin America I have ever been and I saw blond locals speaking Spanish and people who appeared pure Mayan on the street next to her and most people were inbetween...some of those folks will be 'white' in America and some will not.

Yes, Hispanics do vary phenotypically but I can say from my own personal experience that once a White person knows your last name is Spanish, they don't see you as one of them. If you have an Anglo last name, as some Hispanics do and you are White enough then maybe you can pass. My last name and my "exotic" looks(I guess it's my almond-shaped eyes complete with epicanthal eye folds) have not allowed me to pass. I no longer want to because as I get older I am more appreciative of my heritage and am a very proud Puerto Rican.

Sadie makes a very important point. It is the ephemeral nature of perception of physical traits. As she points out, a fair-complexioned blonde blue-eyed person named Hans Ericson is seen as physically White (or Euro-looking). But if you introduce the person as Jose Gonzalez, then they are suddenly seen as physically Hispanic (or mixed-looking).

I have personally conducted the experiment many times with PowerPoint photos of unknown people with slight Afro admixture (including Mark Shriver, Charles Byrd) and with myself standing at the lectern. First I show the picure and describe the person's profession. I let the audience form their opinion. Then I reveal that the person has 13 percent sub-Saharan admixture (or however much it is). The immediate reaction is surprise. Then in 10-15 seconds (you can set your watch by it), someone will say, "Ah yes. I can see it now," and several others will agree, to be joined by others.

(I used to include a photo of a famous real-life Norwegian anthropologist and, when they said, ""Ah yes. I can see it now," I would say, "Oops. My mistake. This is the wrong slide. It is famous Norwegian anthropolgist "Dr. XYZ." I no longer do this because it really pisses people off.)

Sadie's point is important. It has been studied in depth and replicated by many cognitive scientists (Lola Cosmides, John Tooby, Robert Kurzban, etc.). The subjective perception of physical traits is so strongly influenced by expectation that it is objectively suspect.

To Dragon Horse:

Read the pdf of the article from The Journal of Black Studies.

Your problem seems to be that you cannot believe that Americans really, honestly, truly, saw Germans, Irish, Slavs, Jews, etc. as physically, biologically non-White. You cannot believe that Jim Crow Mississippians saw Chinese Americans as physically, biologically White. You cannot accept this, despite their own testimony and that of their contemporaries. When an Englishman claimed that he (and all Englishmen!) could spot an Irishman passing for White, you think that he must have been lying or mistaken. When the White Citizens Councils of 1950 Mississippi said that Chinese Americans were indistinguishable from other Whites, you think that they must have been lying or mistaken. In your mind, these perceptions are just not possible.

Read the pdf of the article from The Journal of Black Studies. Let me know when you are done, and I shall suggest some more objectively replicated peer-reviewed findings from other studies of this phenomenon.

Very interesting experiment! It shows how ethnicity influences perception of racial traits. Do you know of any scientific articles that have replicated the study you did?

Not precisely the same, but Cosmides, Tooby, and Kurzban have done many similar experiments. See Lola Cosmides, John Tooby, and Robert Kurzban, “Perceptions of Race,” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 7, no. 4 (2003): 173-79 or Robert Kurzban, John Tooby, and Leda Cosmides, “Can Race be Erased? Coalitional Computation and Social Categorization,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 98, no. 26 (2001): 15387-15392.

Also, see the endnotes to my essay The Perception of “Racial” Traits for a bunch of similar references.

Amazingly, a report has just been published today about this very topic. See the next message for details.

A Face By Any Other Name: Seeing Racial Bias

ScienceDaily (Oct. 29, 2008) — If Barack Obama had taken his mother's surname and kept his childhood nickname, American voters might literally see "Barry Dunham" as a quite different presidential candidate, a new study suggests. A name significantly changes our perception of someone's face and race, according to research in the journal, Perception.

Participants in the study - titled Barack Obama or Barry Dunham? - rated multi-racial faces with European names as looking significantly "more European" than exactly the same multi-racial faces when given Asian names. Earlier research had established that people tend to be better and more accurate at recognising faces of their own race than those of a different race, an effect called the own-race bias: colloquially, the feeling that people of a different race "all look the same to me".

This bias has far-reaching negative effects, most notably the observation that eyewitnesses to crimes are more likely to incorrectly identify a perpetrator of a different race. By gaining a better understanding of the mechanisms driving the bias, researchers are hoping to devise strategies to minimise its effects.

The study by researchers at the UNSW School of Psychology aimed to test the hypothesis that the presence of racially-suggestive names would influence participants' perception of identical multiracial faces, resulting in multiracial faces being judged to look more like the racial group suggested by their name.

In the experiment, 64 participants were asked to rate the appearance of Asian-Australian faces given typically Asian names, European-Australian faces given typically European names, multiracial faces given Asian names, and multiracial faces given European names. The participants comprised 32 Asian-Australian students and 32 European-Australian students.

Morphing the image of an Asian male with the image of a European male created the multiracial stimulus faces. Morphing together two Asian faces created the Asian stimulus faces, and morphing together two European faces created the European stimulus faces.

For each trial, after viewing the face and name for 3 seconds, participants rated the appearance of the face on a 9-point scale, where 1="very Asian-looking" and 9="very European-looking".

"The study reveals how socially derived expectations and stereotypes can influence face perception," says co-author and UNSW PhD student, Kirin Hilliar. "The result is consistent with other research findings suggesting that once people categorise a face into a racial group, they look for features consistent with that categorization."

For example, a 2001 study found that multiracial (half Hispanic, half African-American) composite faces given stereotypically African-American hairstyles were perceived by both African-American and Hispanic participants as having darker skin, wider mouths, and less protruding eyes compared to the same faces given Hispanic hairstyles.

"The own-race bias is often revealed in people being relatively poor at encoding and recalling the facial characteristics of an unfamiliar racial group," according to Dr Richard Kemp, a face-recognition expert and co-author. "This study reveals that non-physical features such as a name can influence people's interpretation of facial characteristics."

Ms Hilliar adds: "The next step in our research is to investigate whether these racially-suggestive names not only influence people's perception of multiracial faces, but also how well they will recognize these same faces later on."


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Adapted from materials provided by University of New South Wales, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

Dragon horse I understand what you're saying. However remember we live in a society where ODR has become a default way of viewing people. If such a range of people can be included in "Black" I'm sure the opposite can occur. At school I can honestly tell you that to me the distinction between Asian/white mixes become kind of blurry. If some who looks like my aunt sally could be called black without anyone blinking an eye and they had first cousins who clearly dipped to the other side of the color line and then moved north then our minds clearly classify people how we have been conditioned to see them and not how they would visually fit if we took off our cultural lenses. I come from a small town that is composed primarily of blacks, whites, and Haliwa-Saponi. I can honestly tell you we don't determine race where I live by looking at you; unless you fall on an extreme, people determine it by whom you are descended from, or your family name. An outsider would come in and divide our town up totally different than we see it visually but that is because they don't carry our cultural baggage they have their own. I think given time and slow cultural change whiteness will expand much larger than it is now, simply because what is normal to Americans will change. Whiteness in America is essentially averageness.