Is Chinese an ethnicity?

Dutch said:

......and there is no reason it shouldn't remain civil. However, I thought you were a white liberal. Of course, if you share their values I feel the same way about you I would about white liberals. Isn't that fair?

As an aside, a good friend of my wife is married to an american of ethnic taiwanese decent. They don't seem to like you guys very much. Ironic isn't it. :mrgreen:

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That dislike I believe comes from when Chiang Kai-shek and the KMT took over Taiwan and killed a large number of ethnic Taiwanese

StillBallin75 said:

I respect that.

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It irritates most.

I view as cowardly an activity involving shooting something that can't shoot back (hunting people, as in participating in warfare where your enemy can return fire is more honorable and respectable in my opinion). I believe people should only hunt if it's necessary (for instance the deer in suburban Maryland where I live are out of control), or if hunting for sustenance is their chosen way of life. If I want to shoot, I go to the range.

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My father and mother survived the great depression by being subsistance farmers and hunters. Without hunting for food to augment their gardens, they wouldn't have made it. For that matter hunting, farming, raising cattle has sustained my anglo saxon ancestors for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years.

I still hunt. In my youth my father, brother and I would spend a great deal of time in the woods. I hunt alone now. I've lost my brother and father, but, sometimes, I can almost feel them with me. Hunting is a part of my culture. I wouldn't expect you to to understand that. Many/most liberals want to ban hunting and firearms ownership. This is something I cannot abide.

No disagreement here. Liberalism also does not inherently view children as a "liability." Abortion has more to do with personal choice than any abstract view of children as a liability. In any case I already stated I am for the most part against abortion.

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Yes, it does. Do some reading of the founder of planned parenthood, margaret sanger. Like most liberals they tended to view children as a source of poverty, and those who were inferior to them. If liberals valued children we wouldn't have some 50 million dead since roe v wade, some 40% of them black.

I consider myself a nonreligious deist and am partial to people who think critically and realistically about religion (i.e. studying the histories of Christianity and Islam and how they came to the founded, and just how valid and "holy" the scriptures really are). In no way do I think that religion is necessary to living a better life or making yourself a better person.

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I teach in a small rural school district in northern arkansas. The churches play an important part in the social fabric of the community. It's social in that it allows people to come together as a people. Think of them as a ready made support group.

We also have a number of transient drug users, who subsist off government checks, larceny, and dealing. The churches are very good at working with their children. Like school they provide a safe environment and some structure and hope to the children of these people. I've come to believe the churches are of a more positive influence in their lives than the government checks that allow their parents to continue their drug use.

I believe religion is beneficial in many ways and detrimental in others.

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In my world they are more beneficial than anything. From an historical perspective they've always been important to us. In my part of the flyover states they've served this purpose for quite some time now.

I see expansive government as necessary given the complex world we live in, and we would be facing much worse problems if government were minimalist. However I do agree that the government is capable of doing more harm than good in many cases. That in no way means that it is unnecessary. At the end of the day the performance of the government is a reflection of the individuals we elect to participate in it. I believe that it is a good thing to hold government accountable for it's actions, but this is pretty much an open-ended proposition.

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I disagree. I see it as inept, overeaching, and creating more problems than it solves. In point of fact the more the federal government tries to do the worse it seems to get.

I would much more prefer a small, efficient federal government tasked with defence of the nation, treaties, regulating trade between the states, and regulating corporations. I see the state and local governments tasked with all other affairs not addressed by the federal government. This is pretty much what the founders had envisioned. Being a large country doesn't mean this paradigm isn't still the best way for us.

I would also like to see the end of this "policeman of the world crap." Why have troops stationed all ove the world? Why bomb serbia to make it safe for albanians? Why have troops protecting south korea while our own borders are wide open. Why protect taiwan from china? Why not build products people want and then sell them to anyone who wants to trade with us? Just a thought.

Lord Tammerlain said:

That dislike I believe comes from when Chiang Kai-shek and the KMT took over Taiwan and killed a large number of ethnic Taiwanese

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Actually the majority of the Taiwanese population is Han to begin with. I am told by my parents that their ancestors left the southern coast of China and settled in Taiwan sometime in the 1600s during the Qing Dynasty. The KMT is an altogether different issue. Also I believe Dutch was referring to liberals rather than Chinese.

Albert Di Salvo said:

If one takes what some of them say seriously one would think the Han are a superior species.

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They, IMO, are NOT an inferior group.I do not believe that any on this planet are in or su perior!
Thinking "superior" or "inferior" has caused so much trouble for/against man...We must move away from this.

Chinese is not an ethnicity just like American isn't an ethnicity. Chinese is a nationality, but not an ethnicity.

digsbe said:

Chinese is not an ethnicity just like American isn't an ethnicity. Chinese is a nationality, but not an ethnicity.

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Indeed.

But it's hardly surprising someone would think Chinese is an ethnicity, when most people don't even know Chinese itself is not a language.

StillBallin75 said:

Actually the majority of the Taiwanese population is Han to begin with. I am told by my parents that their ancestors left the southern coast of China and settled in Taiwan sometime in the 1600s during the Qing Dynasty. The KMT is an altogether different issue. Also I believe Dutch was referring to liberals rather than Chinese.

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And before the 1600's? I'll find out what name they call themselves but they really don't like you guys. Yes, I find american liberals/leftist mostly objectionable. I have no such feelings about the chinese. The chinese kids around here are mostly college kids. They seem nice enough, just like all college kids. They don't always seem to get along with the japanese kids tho. Imagine that.

Lord Tammerlain said:

That dislike I believe comes from when Chiang Kai-shek and the KMT took over Taiwan and killed a large number of ethnic Taiwanese

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I'm guessing it goes back farther than that, but I'm not taking sides here. My dog's not in that fight.

Jetboogieman said:

Indeed.

But it's hardly surprising someone would think Chinese is an ethnicity, when most people don't even know Chinese itself is not a language.

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Yeah. Mandarin is the language most people would say is "Chinese." However, Cantonese is a very prevalent language as well. I believe the two main ethnic groups are the Han a Hui (although I'm not sure).

My father and mother survived the great depression by being subsistance farmers and hunters. Without hunting for food to augment their gardens, they wouldn't have made it. For that matter hunting, farming, raising cattle has sustained my anglo saxon ancestors for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years.

I still hunt. In my youth my father, brother and I would spend a great deal of time in the woods. I hunt alone now. I've lost my brother and father, but, sometimes, I can almost feel them with me. Hunting is a part of my culture. I wouldn't expect you to to understand that. Many/most liberals want to ban hunting and firearms ownership. This is something I cannot abide.

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Again, you are entitled to your own beliefs as I to mine. Like I said I believe that person should be able to hunt if they require it for sustenance. Hunting/fishing for sport is something I absolutely despise. I also believe that just because something is rooted in traditional and culture doesn't make it morally right. On a personal level i support banning hunting, and I believe that gun ownership is a privilege rather than a natural human right. The mere existence of firearms in our society creates many more problems than it solves, and I don't believe that it really makes our society any more free. However i'm not going to go out of my own way to suggest that we should be banning all those things because in practical terms it probably can't/won't be done.

Yes, it does. Do some reading of the founder of planned parenthood, margaret sanger. Like most liberals they tended to view children as a source of poverty, and those who were inferior to them. If liberals valued children we wouldn't have some 50 million dead since roe v wade, some 40% of them black.

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All I can say is the root problem is unwanted pregnancies. Margaret Sanger was much more a proponent of contraception than abortion, although she supported both.

I teach in a small rural school district in northern arkansas. The churches play an important part in the social fabric of the community. It's social in that it allows people to come together as a people. Think of them as a ready made support group.

We also have a number of transient drug users, who subsist off government checks, larceny, and dealing. The churches are very good at working with their children. Like school they provide a safe environment and some structure and hope to the children of these people. I've come to believe the churches are of a more positive influence in their lives than the government checks that allow their parents to continue their drug use.

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I can respect that. No (at least none that I know) support the banning of religion and religious organizations. However in the absence of the church, other types of organizations could take on a similar role.

I disagree. I see it as inept, overeaching, and creating more problems than it solves. In point of fact the more the federal government tries to do the worse it seems to get.

I would much more prefer a small, efficient federal government tasked with defence of the nation, treaties, regulating trade between the states, and regulating corporations. I see the state and local governments tasked with all other affairs not addressed by the federal government. This is pretty much what the founders had envisioned. Being a large country doesn't mean this paradigm isn't still the best way for us.

I would also like to see the end of this "policeman of the world crap." Why have troops stationed all ove the world? Why bomb serbia to make it safe for albanians? Why have troops protecting south korea while our own borders are wide open. Why protect taiwan from china? Why not build products people want and then sell them to anyone who wants to trade with us? Just a thought.

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I disagree with the first sentence. I can somewhat agree with the second. As for "policeman of the world" I agree that our military intervention abroad is too stretched. However some people hold the view that as the world's leading military superpower we have an obligation to uphold international law and intervene in many cases, because no one else is capable of doing so.

Albert Di Salvo said:

Not any more it isn't. The idea of assimilation created the melting pot and created a unique people. But assimilation is dead as an idea in this country. Bluntly - prove this statement. The American Left rejects assimilation and embraces multiculturalism. Multiculturalism killed assimilation and unity. The American Left wants a mixing bowl instead of a melting pot. Unity dies that way.

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I am "liberal - left"...and neither embrace or reject these things. No man is forced into any melting pot...Human tolerance is the melting's pot fire...
I think the trouble is, the blacks cannot melt and the conservatives hate this..

Albert Di Salvo said:

Not any more it isn't. The idea of assimilation created the melting pot and created a unique people. But assimilation is dead as an idea in this country. The American Left rejects assimilation and embraces multiculturalism. Multiculturalism killed assimilation and unity. The American Left wants a mixing bowl instead of a melting pot. Unity dies that way.

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These are meaningless platitudes. Let's get to what your bottom line is here: intolerance, inability to accept diversity, hatred of new and different things, fear of change. That's what motivates this talk of "unity" and fear of multiculturalism.

I find that when you let your fear motivate your thinking you run into the same problem as all fearful people: your desire for self preservation becomes your undoing.

Dutch said:

And before the 1600's? I'll find out what name they call themselves but they really don't like you guys. Yes, I find american liberals/leftist mostly objectionable. I have no such feelings about the chinese. The chinese kids around here are mostly college kids. They seem nice enough, just like all college kids. They don't always seem to get along with the japanese kids tho. Imagine that.

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Before the 1600s they were on the southern coast of China. Referring the poll I cited before, liberalism is more predominant among Asian-Americans than almost any other demographic (including blacks). And like I stated before I am rather conservative in my personal life. I am a 20-year-old college student (I attend one of the biggest party schools in the entire nation), a virgin, and have never touched alcohol in my life. Imagine that. My political beliefs are totally separate from my personal life.

Just because I believe that gay marriage should be a right doesn't mean i'm going to get one. Just because I don't think the 2nd amendment is a good idea doesn't mean I'm going to force someone else to get rid of his gun. Just because I despise the idea of hunting/fishing for sport doesn't mean I'm going to force you to stop doing it. Just because I distrust organized religion in general doesn't mean I can't keep an open mind about religion and religious people, and have friends that are uber-religious. Just because I am nonreligious doesn't mean that I don't want to make myself a better person morally. Just because that I believe the government should help those who face barriers to achievement doesn't mean I'm not a hard worker. I support affirmative action in a broad sense even though it hurts Asian-Americans like the me most.

Albert Di Salvo said:

This is sophistry.

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Simply state that you disagree and why.
I happen to agree with him(Kandahar)

StillBallin75 said:

Again, you are entitled to your own beliefs as I to mine. Like I said I believe that person should be able to hunt if they require it for sustenance. Hunting/fishing for sport is something I absolutely despise. I also believe that just because something is rooted in traditional and culture doesn't make it morally right. On a personal level i support banning hunting, and I believe that gun ownership is a privilege rather than a natural human right. The mere existence of firearms in our society creates many more problems than it solves, and I don't believe that it really makes our society any more free. However i'm not going to go out of my own way to suggest that we should be banning all those things because in practical terms it probably can't/won't be done.

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This is a prime example of what I have been refering to all along. You want to impose your cultural norms upon mine. I want protection from your culture. I want distance from your culture. I want a divorce from your culture. I want borders.

For what it's worth, I'm not the only one. Prop 8 was opposed to some 70% of black christians. Hispanics, as a group, hate abortion. There is a lot of talk among hispanics of either joining with mexico or forming a new republic called atzlan. You should think about that. They may vote for your political party, but they don't particularly like you. What these peoples know is what I know, many aspects of your culture are offensive to ours.

All I can say is the root problem is unwanted pregnancies. Margaret Sanger was much more a proponent of contraception than abortion, although she supported both.

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No, the root problem is the devaluation of human life.

I can respect that. No (at least none that I know) support the banning of religion and religious organizations. However in the absence of the church, other types of organizations could take on a similar role.

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It has, it's called secular religion. I include socialism and environmentalism in this group. So, american liberals/leftists do have religions.

I disagree with the first sentence. I can somewhat agree with the second. As for "policeman of the world" I agree that our military intervention abroad is too stretched. However some people hold the view that as the world's leading military superpower we have an obligation to uphold international law and intervene in many cases, because no one else is capable of doing so.

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We're going broke. We are losing the capability to do so. The world isn't worth our blood. BTW, were you aware the majority of the makeup of the military......isn't from your side of the cultural divide? It's time our son's and daughters come home to us. We need them. You've had them long enough.


source

.....Based on an understanding of the limitations of any objective definition of quality, this report compares military volunteers to the civilian population on four demographic characteristics: household income, education level, racial and ethnic background, and regional origin. This report finds that:

U.S. military service disproportionately attracts enlisted personnel and officerswho do not come from disadvantaged backgrounds. Previous Heritage Foundation research demonstrated that the quality of enlisted troops has increased since the start of the Iraq war. This report demonstrates that the same is true of the officer corps.
Members of the all-volunteer military are significantly more likely to come from high-income neighborhoods than from low-income neighborhoods. Only 11 percent of enlisted recruits in 2007 came from the poorest one-fifth (quintile) of neighborhoods, while 25 percent came from the wealthiest quintile. These trends are even more pronounced in the Army Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) program, in which 40 percent of enrollees come from the wealthiest neighborhoods-a number that has increased substantially over the past four years.
American soldiers are more educated than their peers. A little more than 1 percent of enlisted personnel lack a high school degree, compared to 21 percent of men 18-24 years old, and 95 percent of officer accessions have at least a bachelor's degree.
Contrary to conventional wisdom, minorities are not overrepresented in military service. Enlisted troops are somewhat more likely to be white or black than their non-military peers. Whites are proportionately represented in the officer corps, and blacks are overrepresented, but their rate of overrepresentation has declined each year from 2004 to 2007. New recruits are also disproportionately likely to come from the South, which is in line with the history of Southern military tradition.........

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We're just going to have to agree to disagree on most of this. All I'm going to say is gay marriage is not an attack on any individual, or group, or culture. If you or your church don't support gay marriage, that's fine. Gay Marriage is not an imposition on anybody. You are free to not get a gay marriage and to try and prevent your children from doing so. I don't see why people against gay marriage are so intent on denying other people something that has little to do with them.

You keep on saying "you" as if you think I am the embodiment of liberalism and liberals are this huge monolithic entity out to get you. Liberals consist of 20% of the American population. It seems to me that you know very few actual liberals or else you wouldn't be painting them with such a broad brush, and that some abstract monolithic "liberal culture" actually exists.

At the end of the day, Conservatives still have drastically more votes than liberals simply because they constitute a much larger percentage of the population. All this fear-mongering about how liberals are out to get you is rather amusing to me considering we're still a drastically conservative country. It's amusing because conservatives still hold the most power.

This is a prime example of what I have been refering to all along. You want to impose your cultural norms upon mine. I want protection from your culture. I want distance from your culture. I want a divorce from your culture. I want borders.

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On a personal level, I think hunting should be banned and firearms should be controlled. In no way does that mean I actually want to impose anything upon you, especially since it would probably impossible legislatively. On the other hand, denial of gay couple's right to marry has a concrete and material impact on the lives of those individuals. Just who exactly is imposing upon who? Conservatives dominate the population and as a result our government. The degree of your fear is inordinate.

We're going broke. We are losing the capability to do so. The world isn't worth our blood.

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For the most part true. I was merely explaining the logic behind the international policeman way of thinking. I wasn't saying that I agreed with it totally.

BTW, were you aware the majority of the makeup of the military......isn't from your side of the cultural divide?

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I am completely aware. Yet joining the military has always been a dream of mine. That's not going to stop me. At the end of the day you fight for you buddies and your comrades because your survival depends on the man on your right and left. Personal politics should have nothing to do with it. If I decided not to join the military just because it was dominated by conservatives that would make me rather narrow-minded, don't you think?

It's time our son's and daughters come home to us. We need them. You've had them long enough.

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What are you talking about here? Who's "us" and who's "you." I have no sons or daughters (it would be rather troubling if I did.)

Dutch said:

Wouldn't that be the predominate ethnic group? That's kinda' the point here.

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Chinese is a nationality not an ethnicity. Like I said there are 56 ethnic groups in China. The Han people are the majority but they are one of 56.

Kandahar said:

The Han are pretty homogeneous as an ethnicity...not much miscegenation or immigration in China. Certainly not as much as you'd find in most other large countries. Whether they're a "unified culture," as you put it, is an entirely separate matter. And I'd agree that they aren't, as it's impossible to find 1.3 billion people who are culturally similar to one another.

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But are the Han truly an ethnicity? They don't share the same language, the same culture, the same history, or most of the markers that most scholars use when they identify an ethnic group? In that respect, they certainly are NOT homogenous.

SgtRock said:

There are 56 ethnic groups in China. Europe has 87 distinct ethnic groups. The Tlingit indian tribe of Alaska shares ethnic ancestory with the Koreans. Both of them are decendants of a distinct ethnic group the Mongol people. China is not an ethnicity. The Han people of China are an ethnic group.

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1. 56 officially RECOGNIZED groups -- though one of them lives in Taiwan, which is NOT part of China -- though there are at least two dozen groups that do NOT have official standing.
2. Han, if you use the conventional definition of ethnicity, is not a single ethnic group, but rather an amalgamation of ethnic groups that have traditionally lived in lands controlled by Chinese dynasties. They have their own separate languages, cultures, histories, and in many cases, identities...

ludahai said:

But are the Han truly an ethnicity? They don't share the same language, the same culture, the same history, or most of the markers that most scholars use when they identify an ethnic group? In that respect, they certainly are NOT homogenous.

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One might even call them multicultural.

Guy Incognito said:

These are meaningless platitudes. Let's get to what your bottom line is here: intolerance, inability to accept diversity, hatred of new and different things, fear of change. That's what motivates this talk of "unity" and fear of multiculturalism.

I find that when you let your fear motivate your thinking you run into the same problem as all fearful people: your desire for self preservation becomes your undoing.

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Your comments are just as much platitudinal as mine. What I have said is that assimilation is dead. And you have no response to that. Please address that issue. Assimilation created shared identity. There is no shared identity in California. There are two separate states. Laws like the Vehicle Code apply to some people, but not others.

Lord Tammerlain said:

That dislike I believe comes from when Chiang Kai-shek and the KMT took over Taiwan and killed a large number of ethnic Taiwanese

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That is exactly where it comes from. I live in Taiwan and my wife is ethnic Minnan/Taiwanese and I have to say that there is definately some residual effects from the days of the White Terror, but also renewed now with more Chinese (nationality) tourists coming to Taiwan and exhibiting uncivilized behavior while guests here...

StillBallin75 said:

Actually the majority of the Taiwanese population is Han to begin with. I am told by my parents that their ancestors left the southern coast of China and settled in Taiwan sometime in the 1600s during the Qing Dynasty. The KMT is an altogether different issue. Also I believe Dutch was referring to liberals rather than Chinese.

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Most Taiwanese are a mixture of minnan/taiwanese aborigine or Hakka/Taiwanese aborigine. They have constructed their own identity and culture in the four hundred years of being separated from Fujian.

earthworm said:

I am "liberal - left"...and neither embrace or reject these things. No man is forced into any melting pot...Human tolerance is the melting's pot fire...
I think the trouble is, the blacks cannot melt and the conservatives hate this..

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I wasn't referring to African Americans. They are not illegal aliens.

Quite frankly, the melting pot is over. Instead, American will look like Lebanon.

You folks on the left have the best of intentions. And we on the right have the ability to prevent your dreams from coming true. Both left and right have veto power. The decline in the American standard of living, especially for young people, will promote the sense of grievance in this country. But young people will be taxed to death to pay for my beer and pizza. I can accept that. Can you?

Jetboogieman said:

Indeed.

But it's hardly surprising someone would think Chinese is an ethnicity, when most people don't even know Chinese itself is not a language.

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Well, it is written, though to be fair, when people say "Chinese", they mean Mandarin. This usage is even common when speaking Mandarin and other Sinitic languages. If I ask 你會不會中文 (do you speak Chinese - written), the actual meaning is 'do you speak Mandarin'.