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Is American an Ethnicity?

Is American an Ethnicity?

  • Yes

    Votes: 9 19.1%
  • No

    Votes: 38 80.9%

  • Total voters
    47
I'm pretty sure "black" isn't an ethnicity. I'm also pretty sure that no one actually looks "black". I know a lot of people in varying degrees of brown, some reddish/brown, some tan, and a lot of peach. I know a whole lot who are red on their neck, brown on their arms and face, and just about the color of vanilla ice cream under their shirts (their wives are sometimes sorta orange), but I'm not sure I'd say they "look" ethnic to me. If an Indian, Pakistani, and Brazilian look the same, does that make them the same ethnicity?
Are you trying to be difficult. It is just a name. Not every name have to be perfect. Should we stop using colour entirely, because we can never identify the perfect colour?

Yes if a Indian, Pakistani, and Brazilian look the same, then they do have the same ethnicity.
 
Your confusing ethnicity with race...a black person would not stop calling themselves black because that is their race...
You are not allowed to say race anymore, so ethnicity has replaced it.

Except ethnicity only relates to how you look, and not other kind of genes.
 
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First of all, I'd like to say people seem to be confusing ethnicity and race, which are two distinct concepts, ethnicity is race, combined with culture and history.

Secondly:
Ethnicity is nothing more than a social construct......In some parts of the world, it's very common for people to identify their ethnicity and their nationality as one and the same (i.e. China, Japan). In other parts of the world - especially in "melting pot" countries like the US - ethnicity is more often defined based on superficial traits like skin color and hair color.

Ethnicity is a social construct, that doesn't make it any less relevant, also there are thousands of different ethnicities in China, the Chinese, or Han, are just the majority, a similar situation exists in Japan, with the Yamato people being a dominant ethnic group, but native Japanese also include the Ainu and Ruykyuan peoples. You'd be hard pressed to find a place in the world that doesn't have a few ethnicities, except isolated areas like Australia, the Pacific Island and New Zealand tend to be limited to the one ethnic population (Aborigines, Islander and Maori respectively).
 
They can use whatever method they want to identify ethnicity. I don't see why US should adopt a system that would make it impossible to identify different ethnicities, just because someone else does it differently.

I'm not saying the US should or shouldn't adopt any specific system (since there are plenty of lingering civil rights issues to resolve). I'm just talking about how to think about ethnicity in general.

I would have reformed it. Ethnicity should be measured through DNA, not through a self-survey.

If that's the case, then we would need to throw out nearly all of the labels we often use to define ethnic groups...because "black" has more genetic diversity WITHIN it than all the others have BETWEEN them, and "Native American" and "Pacific Islander" have almost no diversity and are essentially just offshoots of "Asian." If we were serious about classifying people by DNA, it might look like this: Khoisan, African "Pygmy" tribes, other African, White, Asian, New Guinean, Aboriginal Australian. Based on the DNA evidence, those categories would offer the most diversity.

They may have a lot of names for themselves, but can you quantify that there is a larger difference in DNA. For me, it seems like there is just as large difference between people from Botswana, Zimbabwe and South Africa, as there are between European people.

The human species originated in Africa, which naturally means it has more genetic diversity. This is because humans have had longer to diverge from one another in Africa than elsewhere. Compare it to a relatively young "race" like Native Americans...which have existed for only 12,000 years and which have almost no genetic diversity.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/3326376/African-DNA-has-more-genetic-diversity.html

And again, ethnicity has nothing to do with what you call yourself. That is called cultural heritage.

Then where do the categories come from? What makes a Libyan and an Italian different ethnicities, if not culture? They're from the same part of the world, have similar ancestral roots, and look pretty much the same.
 
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What would be messy about all of us identifying ourselves as “American”?

Defining themselves as "American" in nationality won't be a problem, but being an "American" as in ethnicity overgeneralizes and leaves much confusion as to whether the person is African, Caucasian, Hispanic, Asian, Arab, or any other types of ethnicities.
Don't you understand?
 
First of all, I'd like to say people seem to be confusing ethnicity and race, which are two distinct concepts, ethnicity is race, combined with culture and history.
That is not how it is used anymore in many societies. For instance, you describe asian as a ethnicity even though there are massive differences in culture and history between japanese, and chinese people.
 
It is. It's called "American mutt". ;)

But above all America is a nation state rather than an ethnic state.
 
Yes if a Indian, Pakistani, and Brazilian look the same, then they do have the same ethnicity.
You are not allowed to say race anymore, so ethnicity has replaced it. Except ethnicity only relates to how you look, and not other kind of genes.

How you look, your race, and your DNA do not define ethnicity. Yes, people in the same ethnic group often look the same, are of the same race, and share DNA ancestral traits (all of those things mean essentially the same thing), but your ethnicity has to do with culture, beliefs, background, and such just as much.

Here's a little tutorial that might help consideration of the tread question.
 
How you look, your race, and your DNA do not define ethnicity. Yes, people in the same ethnic group often look the same, are of the same race, and share DNA ancestral traits (all of those things mean essentially the same thing), but your ethnicity has to do with culture, beliefs, background, and such just as much.

Here's a little tutorial that might help consideration of the tread question.

Tell that to government first, and I may change back to race.
 
That is not how it is used anymore in many societies. For instance, you describe asian as a ethnicity even though there are massive differences in culture and history between japanese, and chinese people.

Asian is a race, no-one uses ethnicity in place of race, ethnic conflicts aren't called so because it's races going at it. Look at Burma, there are over 20 different ethnicities involved in the conflict, but they're all Asian, hence why it's called an ethnic conflict.
 
No, they'd probably START calling themselves black, because that's how their adopted European culture would view them. I bet that most Africans don't even think of themselves as "black" - defining ethnicity by one's skin color is mostly a Eurasian concept. I would suggest that Africans would be far more likely to define themselves by their tribe or their nationality than by their skin color. In fact, Africa is the most heterogeneous place on earth, with far more diversity than the rest of the world combined.

In Kenya (and the surrounding countries at least, and west and South African people I've met), we have black and brown designations. When telling someone about someone else I've met (and I can't remember the name), brown or black is most always expected in the description. After that comes tribal looks (or if I can hear a mother tongue). The above looks like noble savage wrapped anti-west blahblah. Kandahar, go to Africa and see if anyone notices your skin color. haha. Did you make that stuff up yourself, or did someone tell you it.

They don't even notice skin color in Africa.

haha

And yes, skin color is related to tribe in some cases. It might not designate an "ethnicity", but it is far more paid attention to here than anything I experienced in the US.
 
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Most Americans originate from western Europe, so we are, ethnically speaking, western European.

I disagree with any description of me that includes the word “European” or any variant thereof.

I'm three generations removed from my nearest ancestors that were born anywhere other than North America, and I have at least one line that's been here since the late 1500s or early 1600s. I, myself, have never been to Europe, and I have no connection to Europe.
 
You know - my kid's school is doing some sort of special curriculum that discusses cultures and ethnicity around the world - and one homework assignment was to interview family members and write about their Ethnicity.

I didn't know what to put, either - so we didn't do that assignment.
 
American will become an ethnicity after around ten thousand years of geographical isolation.

for now, it's a culture.
 
Obviously American is a nationality that everyone is a part of, but is American an ethnicity?...

"Citizen of the United States of America" is 100% not an ethnicity, nor are we a nation-state.

"American" is a political nationality that has nothing to do with language, culture, religion, ethnicity, origin, etc etc.

Similar to that of Australian, Canadian, South African, Argentinian, Brazilian, and even to some extent.....British.
 
Most Americans originate from western Europe, so we are, ethnically speaking, western European. Then it delineates from there into sub-categories. Nordic, Germanic, Anglo, etc...

Germany is part of Central Europe. And as Germans are the largest ethnic group in the USA, that would make us a Central European nation.
 
Germany is part of Central Europe. And as Germans are the largest ethnic group in the USA, that would make us a Central European nation.

Where did you get that Germans are the largest ethnic group in the USA...they havent been that for decades...Italians were the largest european ethnic group in the USA for along time and soon if not now it will be Latino...the difference is it will not be a specific latin ethnicity...like puerto rican or cuban or mexican it will be a grouping of all of them together.
 
Where did you get that Germans are the largest ethnic group in the USA...they havent been that for decades...Italians were the largest european ethnic group in the USA for along time and soon if not now it will be Latino...the difference is it will not be a specific latin ethnicity...like puerto rican or cuban or mexican it will be a grouping of all of them together.

Hmm I just went and looked and Im wrong...it does say German as being the largest...I learned something
 
"Citizen of the United States of America" is 100% not an ethnicity, nor are we a nation-state.

"American" is a political nationality that has nothing to do with language, culture, religion, ethnicity, origin, etc etc.

Similar to that of Australian, Canadian, South African, Argentinian, Brazilian, and even to some extent.....British.

I agree with some of this, but you lost me after "has nothing to do with." It has A LOT to do with language, culture, religion, ethnicity.
 
Where did you get that Germans are the largest ethnic group in the USA...they havent been that for decades...Italians were the largest european ethnic group in the USA for along time and soon if not now it will be Latino...the difference is it will not be a specific latin ethnicity...like puerto rican or cuban or mexican it will be a grouping of all of them together.

Race and ethnicity in the United States - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

German Americans made up 17.1% of the U.S. population followed by Irish Americans at 12% as counted in the 2000 U.S. Census. This makes German the largest, and Irish the second-largest, self-reported ancestry groups in the U.S.


hmmm...though this may be wrong:

The leading country-of-origin for Hispanic Americans is Mexico (30.7 million), followed by Puerto Rico (4.2 million) and Cuba (1.6 million), as of 2008.[33]

Looks like Mexicans are the largest ethnic group in the USA, if you wish to consider them an ethnic group.
 
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I would suggest that American IS an Ethnic group. It's the single most diverse Ethnic group on the planet. It revolves around two very simple, core principles. The first is having been BORN here in the United States (regardless of what Ethnic group one's parents identify and/or associate themselves with) and the second is a loyalty to the United States of American First, Foremost, and Solely in your heart.

I take this viewpoint from several of my own family members.....

My great-grandmother (my paternal grandmother's mother) who in 1980 threw a US Census bureau worker out of her home because he stubbornly refused to list her Ethnicity as AMERICAN. See, her family had been here in the United States for more than 300 years (since before there WAS a United States) and so far as she was concerned anything further back than that didn't mean jack squat.

My great-grandfather Adam (my paternal grandfather's father) who chose to wait three years after having the money to immigrate to the United States with his wife, Karoline from the area around the Germany/Poland border to ensure they both spoke sufficient ENGLISH (in addition to multiple other languages) that once they came to this country, they would never have to speak one of those other languages again. He also did it to ensure that when they came through Ellis Island, that his wife's name was spelled with a "K" and that their surname was spelled with a "ks" at the end rather than an "x". Upon arriving here in the USA, 101 years ago, he flat out forbade his wife to speak any language other than English in a public place and/or to teach even a single word of any language other than English to any of their eventually EIGHT children.
 
I would suggest that American IS an Ethnic group. It's the single most diverse Ethnic group on the planet. It revolves around two very simple, core principles. The first is having been BORN here in the United States (regardless of what Ethnic group one's parents identify and/or associate themselves with) and the second is a loyalty to the United States of American First, Foremost, and Solely in your heart....

"ethnic group" suggests a common origin, culture, customs, language, dress, history, etc etc.

American citizens are clearly not one single ethnic group. We have a VAST array of origins.

secondly, American citizens who are born in another country, are just as American as someone who's ancestors came off the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria.
 
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"ethnic group" suggests a common origin, culture, customs, language, dress, history, etc etc.

American citizens are clearly not one single ethnic group. We have a VAST array of origins.

secondly, American citizens who are born in another country, are just as American as someone who's ancestors came off the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria.

No... AMERICANS are all born here in the United States. We do share a common culture, custom, language, dress, and history. The fact that those things are less than 300 years old does not make them any less common. I am of the opinion that those who were born in another country should have a much more difficult time claiming US Citizenship than they do now. They need to prove a knowledge of this nation and a loyalty to it and nothing else so far as I am concerned.
 
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