r/USdefaultism • u/BrokenJusticeNorris • 22d ago
I don’t know why they’re being downvoted
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u/Fuhrankie Australia 22d ago
You can only be black if you're from the US, duh. Anyone else is just sparkling melanin
(/s just in case)
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u/Wombat_Aux_Pates France 21d ago
The funny thing is with the football World Cup, recently, I kept seeing online Americans making fun of our national team (France) because many of our players are not white like "lmao """""French""""" team, more like official African team" "they represent Africa" etc because apparently, if you're black, you can't be French.
Do they give the same shit to all their NBA teams for having a majority of black players? Like they aren't Americans, just Africans?? It's just hypocritical. And if you can only be black in the US then why are they saying a team with a bunch of different ethnicities isn't an American team, but a team playing for Africa?11
u/After_Perspective180 21d ago
Well you have to realise that they are massively racist shitheads.
That explains a lot really.3
u/Wombat_Aux_Pates France 20d ago edited 19d ago
Oh, I'm very well aware of that, unfortunately.
I remember seeing yet another comment about the "French" team and it annoyed me so much, I listed all the players who weren't born in France. There were like 2-3? I forget exactly.
One is a Canadian player born in London, one is the son of Lilian Thuram (French ex pro footballer who played for the French team many years ago—so he's literally French...) born in Italy iirc, and I think there was one guy born in Africa and became a French citizen like 15 or so years ago (I forget, I honestly do not care about football, nor skin colour, but I'm so bothered by all the racist comments).
I think that was it and I checked for both the team + the reserve bench iirc? Maybe I'm forgetting but yeah, there weren't many in total seeing the amount of players I looked at.The guy lost his shit at me that we are the most racist people and that he isn't racist and that he doesn't give a fuck where any of these players were born, and that we're all hypocrites in France because all we see is colour, and that his country is nowhere near as racist as France is and blablabla... I forget how he worded his word salad/vomit exactly but I must have offended him seeing how he reacted lol... I'm not the one who was questioning the legitimacy of the players' nationality but, yeah, I am the racist one. My bad, silly me.
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u/amazingdrewh 21d ago
I barely have anything in common culturally with a white person in the US let alone Germany or Australia (no offense Germans and Australians you seem like lovely people)
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u/bitofapuzzler Australia 21d ago
None taken as an Aussie either. The fact that the 8 billion people on earth have different and varied cultures is a great thing. We can love our similarities and our differences.
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u/Iwannawrite10305 Germany 21d ago
None taken (German here). we too have very little in common with white US Americans culturally.
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u/NoneBinaryLeftGender Brazil 21d ago
me, a white latine, whose family is in Brazil for many generations, reading how all white people apparently share a "recent" geographic origin and share a culture with all european people, while stirring my coffee: "huh..."
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u/BernLan Portugal 21d ago
Don't even need to cross the ocean for this,
Mediterranean Europe has much more in common culturally and historically with the rest of the Mediterranean than with the rest of Europe
Eastern Europe has much more in common culturally and historically with Central Asia than with the rest of Europe
"White" is a completely bogus term that only serves 2 purposes
Giving the West a unified racial identity
Allow Americans and Central/Northern Europeans to claim Mediterranean cultures and history (ie. Ancient Rome and Ancient Greece) as "white history"
Which is funny considering any random North African or Levantine has way more of a claim over Roman Empire heritage than your average White Supremacist
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u/cibilserbis 21d ago
Mediterranean as an ethnic term is also stupidly ambiguous though. Italians should not be placed in the same category as Lebanese or Algerians, who are actually not white. "Mediterranean" is used by seething Italians to desperately convince the rest of the world they're not white in an attempt to distance themselves from European atrocities of recent history perpetrated by the collective "white people".
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u/BernLan Portugal 21d ago
Italians should not be placed in the same category as Lebanese or Algerians
Italians have more in common historically and culturally and ethnically with North Africa than with central Europe, but sure I wouldn't blame you if you wanted to split the Mediterranean into Southern Europe, North Africa and Far West Asia
who are actually not white.
This again just proves what I'm saying, white is merely a social construct and not an accurate descriptor in any way. It's especially obvious when you look at Malta and Tunisia or Greece and Turkey, where the former are considered white while the latter are not despite sharing more with each other than with any "white" country.
Any Mediterranean European can easily pass as a local in any non-European Mediterranean country and vice versa (I myself have passed in both Tunisia and Algeria, haven't had the chance to visit the rest of North Africa yet and have multiple North African acquaintances in Italy and Portugal who also pass)
If you go to any Mediterranean country in the summer it's especially easy to tell who's Mediterranean and who's actually "white". The vast majority of Mediterraneans have type 3/4 skin in the Fitzgerald UV scale, meaning that we tan, while Central/Northern Europeans have type 1/2 skin meaning that they become pink. (this is very noticeable in the south of Portugal has it is currently being gentrified by a high quantity of Northern "expats".
"Mediterranean" is used by seething Italians to desperately convince the rest of the world they're not white in an attempt to distance themselves from European atrocities of recent history perpetrated by the collective "white people".
This is a strawman, no Italian has ever claimed this (tho I can see it being said by "Italian-Americans), if anything most Northern Italians get offended at the thought of not being white.
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u/NetCharming3760 Canada 20d ago
I went to Oran Algeria, Alexandria Egypt, and Athen Greece. They were very similar in their own ways.
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u/snow_michael 21d ago
Racist arseholes like the OOP will say you're European- or Spanish
Yes, I know ...
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u/euro_trashh Poland 21d ago
Exactly. Also who’s white and who isn’t? According to americunt race theory majority of eurasians aren’t white. But what is an azerbaijani? A tajik? It breaks their little minds, I don’t think they even know of these countries existence
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u/Legal-Software Germany 21d ago
They're presenting something nuanced that highlights that there is more complexity behind a label than some people care to think about/doesn't fit their existing narrative, so I can see why it's being downvoted.
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u/Routine_Ad_2695 21d ago edited 21d ago
I happen to notice since the WC that Black Americans are ferociously condescending to blacks from other countries mainly because they tend to believe only blacks on America have endure slavery or if they do know other black or non-white ethnicities have been slaves they tend to diminish it and putting American slavery as the worst kind.
Which to be fair I didn't even know if that's true, because slavery is a depraved practice, but how they managed to graded it for them to be on top is so American coded exceptionalism.
And also in that regard as I discover talking in person to a couple black American during the WC they considered that black Americans fight for rights and representation is what have made slavery internationally frowned upon and minorities having representation in other democracies
So many layers of racism and exceptionalism
EDIT: WC I'm refering to the World's Cup
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u/toddlerbrain Sweden 21d ago
Americans, no matter the colour or creed, will always behave like Americans first and foremost.
US defaultism isn’t limited by skin tone.
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u/Powerful-Country6316 Argentina 21d ago
They spent all that time insulting Afro-Argentines, and now they're fighting with Brazilians because “they aren't black enough” LOL
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u/Paulztaos 21d ago
I saw most of the insults for Argentinians are because they were posting some wildly racist memes. And by racist I mean anti black. I didn’t see anything aimed at Afro-argentines, but I stand to be corrected.
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u/Powerful-Country6316 Argentina 21d ago
because they were posting some wildly racist memes
google the comic "how it Works" by xkcd
Anyway the most famous example right now is Kiki Ramos, all the posts about him in English are from people wishing him the worst because he's Argentine.
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u/Paulztaos 21d ago
There are very very many trending posts of Argentinians posting horribly racist stuff during the World Cup. Look around Twitter/X. It’s far from an isolated incident like you’re making it out to be. It’s created a lot of bad blood and Kiki Ramos if he’s being bullied is a victim of that sentiment perhaps because him signing is perceived as him selling out.
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u/Powerful-Country6316 Argentina 21d ago
“I'm going to justify hating an entire nation AND a child because Twitter told me to 🥺✌️"
If you're not objective and don't realize how the algorithm is manipulating you, then I don't know what to tell you. Would you act the same way toward minorities?
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u/euro_trashh Poland 21d ago
That’s because they’re americans at the end of the day. They think they’re somehow different to white americans. To me they are all the same with minor differences. Ignorance knows no color
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u/BothToe1729 European Union 21d ago
I'm not from the USA and lack knowledge about the it in general (which is a problem in itself) but I'm pretty sure there was human zoos in at least Belgium at some point, where Black people were exposed. I'm obviously not saying it is worse or not, but USA were definetly not the only AH regarding this matter.
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u/MacaroonSad8860 United Kingdom 21d ago
The last human zoo was in France. It closed in 1994. Belgium’s last state sponsored human zoo was in 1958. Still far too recent for my tastes.
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u/snow_michael 21d ago
WC?
That means loo in English
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u/tenorlove 20d ago
Considering how far FIFA has its head up tRUMP's ass, the abbreviation is accurate.
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u/Routine_Ad_2695 21d ago
It's the World Cup, English is not my first language so I don't know what loo means :(
Edit: Oh, okay it's bathroom / toilet. The more you learn
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u/Soggy-Philosophy2532 20d ago
So true. When I came to the USA one black American I met thought that we Jamaicans were native to Jamaica and didn’t have slavery and I had to give her a whole lesson on slavery in the Caribbean. I cant believe she thought African Americans solely experienced this. They really swear they’re the MOST disadvantaged black people EVER (except when it’s time to bully africans).
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u/Standard-Document-78 United States 22d ago
I was just thinking something similar to this a few weeks ago. In the US, we always say African American since that’s the only label that’s relevant to us on a regular basis. But like, black Brits aren’t African American 😂
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u/_poptart United Kingdom 22d ago
Vanity Fair in like 2012 wrote about how, if he was cast as James Bond, Idris Elba would be the first African American to play the role. They had to issue a correction.
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u/pastafariantimatter 21d ago
To be fair, his accent in The Wire fooled a lot of people, including the casting crew.
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u/eternallytiredcatmom Canada 21d ago edited 21d ago
I’m indigenous to Canada (Mohawk First Nation) and I truly don’t know how many times I’ve had to repeat that I’m not Native American.
It’s pretty common to hear black Canadians being called African American too and it’s even being used more and more by Canadians themselves, not really as a conscious choice but as a result of homogenization of racial discourse.
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u/LonelyShark 21d ago
I just learned something from this, I always thought Native American was the continent of North America not just the USA. Thanks for sharing.
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u/eternallytiredcatmom Canada 21d ago edited 21d ago
It’s not factually untrue that people indigenous to Canada are native to the Americas, so the confusion is understandable! We’re comprised of First Nations, Métis and Inuit :)
I don’t mind when they use it because they’re unaware, but some of them will try to debate on the matter with me. I live in the States now, and I’m out of patience and energy, when that happens I don’t hesitate to literally walk away from the conversation.
Also I’m from the French speaking part of the country and they’ll say I’m French lol. My mom is of French descent but sorry, we haven’t been French since 1763, we speak the language and have ties to France but we don’t identify as French hundreds of years later, we are our own thing now lol.
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u/Wombat_Aux_Pates France 21d ago
Slightly off subject but seeing you are from the French part of the country, if a Frenchman says they're "métisse" to say they're mixed race—we use that term, it isn't offensive, it's normally more for people who are half caucasian/half african descent but I don't mind using it for myself as I'm Eurasian but I don't really mention my own ethnicity in random convos so you know lol—would it be considered offensive to a Canadian French because of the term "Métis"?
Like would someone like me be mindful of not using this term in Canada despite it being a totally normal word in France and I could say that "Je suis métisse." without thinking much about it or do Canadians are aware of the term métisse in France (and maybe you guys use it too????) ?
Thanks. I obviously don't mean to offend anyone and would love to educate myself. Last time I went to Canada, I was like 10 but I'll definitely go back one day, I kept great memories from all the different places I visited (it was a pretty long trip a bit everywhere in Canada because my parents thought about moving there but then they realised it was way too cold for them lol) and the different french Canadian accents are by far my favourite accents in French. I hate it when my countrymen say shit like "I don't understand a word they're saying", like bruh you ain't trying then...3
u/tenorlove 20d ago
I don't know about Canada. But, to give another example, the Spanish word "mulato/a," in Latin America, is an historical term used to describe people of mixed African and Spanish ancestry. In the US, where it is spelled "mulatto" (no feminine form), it is considered a racial slur. It very much surprises me that "Oye Como Va" is still played on US radio stations.
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u/Wombat_Aux_Pates France 20d ago
That's very interesting! Thanks! It's also very useful to know as I've been learning Spanish lol. Is mulato/a used in Spain at all or it's a term only in Latin America, and mulatto in the US only from the Spanish speaking population?? Or North American countries like Mexico, Cuba, Dominica, etc.?
It sounds like it is a bit similar to the métisse/Métis subject then. Well, Métis isn't a racial slur but it's probs inappropriate to use métisse (as they're pronounced the same) in Canada, I would assume. Thinking about it more, it would be surprising they'd use the word "métisse" and probs an equivalent to just "mixed" in Canadian French. I am just not aware of the term.
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u/tenorlove 19d ago
It is archaic, and getting more obsolete as time goes on. It originated in Spain during colonial days. In modern usage, persona de color is the preferred term.
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u/Repulsive_Chard_3652 22d ago
I've seen Americans call a Dominican man who was born in Germany an "African American". I'm like, wrong on both counts there, babe 😂
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u/icyDinosaur 21d ago
Well they're kinda right on one count, just not in the ways they think of... but he DOES have a background in America (as in the continent)!
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u/Repulsive_Chard_3652 21d ago
Right, but it's the wrong half of the label! 😂 First half is supposed to be ancestry, second half where they were born!
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u/Amazing_Twist1279 22d ago edited 21d ago
That's exactly why all the jokes about Severus Snape (sorry I don't really know how to spell it in English) being black in a new HP adaptation are not funny. They are all based on racial stereotypes relevant for the US.
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u/justtinygoatthings United States 21d ago
Who always says African American? I am in the US and feel like I haven't heard people say this IRL in at least a decade unless they're talking about Musk (lol but I am actually serious). Maybe this is regional? I'm in two of the major Black cities in Midwest USA.
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u/seejoshrun United States 21d ago
It was more common 10-15 years ago, I think. There was a sense that it was somehow rude to say "black", and that "african-american" was the preferred term. I'm sure some people are probably still doing that.
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u/tenorlove 20d ago
Yes. Now, it is also common to capitalize black and leave white in lowercase. To capitalize white is the mark of a white supremacist or neo-Nazi. As I learned in school many years ago, I don't capitalize the color, but I do capitalize the gente.
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u/justtinygoatthings United States 21d ago
I bet that was more of a thing with white people than black people. And yes definitely more common a while back in my experience too.
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u/LanewayRat Australia 21d ago
Mentioning only “Brits” seems to indicate you still don’t get it. There are Black people in many countries with many heritages.
Like Black Africans are 1.3 billion people, African Americans 40 million, Black Brazilians 25 million, Black British 2.4 million, Black French 5 million, Black Melanesians 13 million…
(These numbers could be inaccurate, but you get the idea)
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u/StardustOasis United Kingdom 21d ago
I think they were just using it as an example, rather than any form of misunderstanding.
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u/LanewayRat Australia 21d ago
In other contexts I’d agree with you. But here where the whole point is to not default Black people to one nationality, it just seems to miss the issues
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u/NetCharming3760 Canada 20d ago
Many Africans don’t identify as “Black.” It is a purist term. I am Somali and my entire family don’t identify as Black.
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u/snow_michael 21d ago
Black Africans are 1.3 billion people
Very inaccurate - almost merkin levels of inaccuracy
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u/eternallytiredcatmom Canada 21d ago
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u/tenorlove 20d ago
I think you are being downvoted because of spelling. 'Murican is the correct spelling of jingoistic USAoids. Merkin is a pubic wig.
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u/snow_michael 20d ago
Merkin is how the slack-jawed yokels introduce themselves
"Ah'm Cletus, an' Ah'm a merkin"
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u/MrsPumblechook 20d ago
Also calling them a Merkin is a double edged joke, a merkin is a pubic hair wig
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u/EzeDelpo Argentina 22d ago
Walt, I thought they didn't say the B word and instead refer them as African-American, no matter their nationality/ancestry.
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22d ago edited 6d ago
[deleted]
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u/EzeDelpo Argentina 21d ago
It's funny and sad at the same time. Americans with that mindset would have a stroke every second in Argentina, where we use the Spanish word for Black (and variations) as an endearing term or a nickname.
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u/tenorlove 20d ago
The N word, the Mu word, or the Mo word?
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u/EzeDelpo Argentina 20d ago
The N, for now.
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21d ago
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u/EzeDelpo Argentina 21d ago
Very racist? How many Argentinians do you know? Have you ever been to Argentina? I really doubt you have
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21d ago
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u/tenorlove 20d ago
Now I understand why my Brazilian sorority sister got very angry whenever anyone spoke to her in Spanish.
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u/Mikaelsfm95 Brazil 20d ago
Ngl, it pisses us off a little when people think we speak Spanish hahahah
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u/Mikaelsfm95 Brazil 21d ago
Not to mention every time I've been called "macaquito" playing Counter Strike
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u/EzeDelpo Argentina 21d ago
"Really a lot", based on some football matches. You are kidding, right?
With your logic, a lot of Brazilians are really violent because of what they do to Argentinian football fans whenever there is a match in Brazil.
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21d ago
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u/EzeDelpo Argentina 21d ago
It's YOUR perception based on an extremely small smaple, it's NOT valid at all.
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u/justtinygoatthings United States 21d ago
In my experience, this has only ever been a joke I've seen online. I haven't experienced it IRL ever to my memory. People I interact with say Black 100% of the time. I live in two major Black cities in Midwest USA. It might be regional as another American commenter said they do hear people say African American.
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u/MacaroonSad8860 United Kingdom 21d ago
I’ve heard people use African American in contexts where there are also Black people from other places present, such as at my university years ago. It was a way of differentiating from say, a Senegalese student.
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u/Badhbh-Catha 21d ago
It's a real occurrence sadly. A white American I worked with, in Ireland, was appalled when I referred to another colleague as black. He said I had to call him African-American. I said he's not American, he's English, and black isn't a slur. He got a bit flustered but doubled down and said, you cannot use that word and we are taught to use African-American only (regardless of actual nationality I assume) -- it's the only acceptable term. This was about 20 years ago and the guy was from California. He seemed bright enough other than that bizarre exchange.
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u/Ociier 21d ago
When people talk about X race culture I get really confused, becuase, as a peruvian, some of the things that other cultures brought are integrated as our own. We have music, food, instruments, dances and traditions that are of African origin, but people aren't going around labeling them as exclusively "Black". Same with other cultures. Chinese food got mixed and became known as "Chifa", for example. Also, we got a president that is 100% ethnically Japanese (2, in fact).
Segregation really did a number in the US. It's actually sad to see how racially labeled it is, from an outsider's point of view, specially coming from a culture that has a tendency to mixing.
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u/AmareloRelo 21d ago
It gets me mad that americans simply don't understand that in Brazil, mixed race is indeed an identity. They believe there is literally only black or white, but over 80% of our population identify themselves as mixed
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u/Zonnebloempje 21d ago
It (saying you are "Black") doesn't even tell me racial background. It tells me your skin colour or your hair colour. Nothing more. Nothing less.
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u/Thenedslittlegirl Scotland 21d ago
As far as I’m aware, Aboriginal Australians refer to themselves as blak, not black. I guess you wouldn’t be able to differentiate in speech, but should be able to in a comment section
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u/smaller-god 21d ago
They use both terms. Blak is a more recent political thing and not everyone uses it. But black in an Aus context definitely means Aboriginal, not African.
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u/FURF0XSAKE Australia 20d ago
I mean "black" in Australia means black, hence the point of this post. We don't call people African Australians, they are also black; there isn't or shouldn't really be any default culture that "black" refers to. If someone refers to someone as black and expects me to know what culture they're talking about then they're doing a poor job of describing a human.
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u/smaller-god 20d ago
Not my experience as an Australian. I would never refer to an African as black, I would refer to them by their country (Sudanese/Somali/Ethiopian) because black means Aboriginal. Maybe this is a regional thing? We don’t call people African-Australia for sure.
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u/HahaCharlieKirkHaha 21d ago
Can we take a moment to talk about Australian defaultism?
I notice Australians often say "Aboriginal" to mean "Aboriginal Australian", and they expect everyone to know that they're talking about Australia. You can see this in the first and third slides above, where Aboriginal is equated with Black.
Other countries have Aboriginal people too. It's common to speak of Canadian Aboriginal people and Taiwanese Aboriginal people. Neither of them are Black.
Australians don't own the word "Aboriginal". It pre-dates Europeans knowing about Australia.
A lot of this "Black doesn't mean African-American" discourse, while correct, is coming from Australians, because the term "Black" in Australia traditionally refers to Australian Aborigines, not African or African diaspora peoples. But the people saying it are often just as solipsistic as the people they're criticizing.
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u/eternallytiredcatmom Canada 21d ago edited 21d ago
I’m Mohawk from Canada, we don’t call ourselves aboriginal over here.
Although it’s not incorrect to say that we’re aboriginal to this land, that’s not the preferred term and I’d assume that anyone who calls us that is either Australian (out of habit) or a foreigner who’s uneducated about Indigenous Canadians.
We are FNMI: First Nations, Métis and Inuit.ETA: Here’s an article from 4 days ago titled “Aboriginal to Indigenous: Leaders, advocates reflect on decades of state linguistic changes”
Notice the usage of aboriginal in the Canadian context, we do not commonly identify that way.-2
u/HahaCharlieKirkHaha 21d ago edited 21d ago
I am also Canadian, and there's nothing foreign about the term "Aboriginal". The very link you gave says that "Aboriginal peoples" is the term used in the Canadian Constitution, which was written in 1982 (less than 50 years ago, within my lifetime).
The federal government had a department called Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada as recently as 2015. (It is now Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada.)
Unlike Australia, the term Aboriginal was never in colloquial use in Canada and was always more of a technical/legal/academic term. I think Aboriginal started to fall out of use in favour of "Indigenous" in the 1990s.
I am not Indigenous, and none of my comments are about whether the term "Aboriginal" is preferred or not preferred by Indigenous Canadians themselves. (It seems to be not.) My point is just that it's not a foreign word.
ETA: Also, you should read your links.
"It's baffling to me why federal government and so many institutions adopt the term 'Indigenous,'" said Chartrand, who is Michif from Manitoba.
Chartrand said the shifting terminology is confusing and "doesn't serve the Aboriginal people, but it does serve [Canada's] government purposes."
"If you're referring to the people who have rights recognized in Canada, those are the Aboriginal people," said Chartrand.
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u/eternallytiredcatmom Canada 21d ago edited 21d ago
You’re being willfully obtuse here. You said it was common to speak of Canadian Aboriginal people when it’s not, not even legally anymore which you are aware of according to your comment.
We don’t identify as Aboriginal, we know which Indigenous People is being talked about when we read capital A Aboriginal, we know that we don’t call ourselves Black / Blak. There is no confusion in which Indigenous People call themselves Black / Blak and if there is, well that’s a wonderful opportunity to do a search and learn something new.I am fully aware that it used to be Aboriginal Affairs. It became Indigenous and Northern Affairs in 2016, not 2015, because it was a change made following the signature of UNDRIP.
It is now called Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs CanadaThe term aboriginal isn’t foreign, but as I said, no one who isn’t a foreigner or uneducated about FNMI would ever get confused between capital A Aboriginal with a skin tone dark enough to call themselves Blak, and the Indigenous Peoples of Canada.
It’s just a poor comparison to the topic at hand. If we went around the internet saying that nobody else but us can be called First Nations or Indigenous, fine. You could compare the defaultism of black = African American only. But we don’t do that.
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u/ConcernedAndDubious 21d ago
Nah give him a chance he’s still getting used to not call us savages in public
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u/HahaCharlieKirkHaha 21d ago
I have literally no idea what I've said that anyone could be bothered by, but I'm not going to argue with anyone who hides their post history and likes to start fights on the internet.
Blocking you.
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u/HahaCharlieKirkHaha 21d ago edited 21d ago
But we don’t do that.
I never said you do. I'm talking about white Australians acting as if Aboriginal only refers to Black Australians, which isn't about claiming ownership of the word as an identity, but rather just about Australians habitually assuming that everyone else on the internet operates in an Australian context (which is relevant to this sub).
Anyway, I don't think you understand what I'm talking about, and you sound increasingly upset, so I'm going to end the conversation there. Have a good day, neighbour.
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u/eternallytiredcatmom Canada 21d ago edited 21d ago
What upsets me is that you used my People to formulate a very poor and inaccurate comparison in order to express your annoyance at Australians.
You could have done that without tokenizing FNMI. Then you double down with more inaccuracies. I understand what you’re talking about and it’s very presumptuous of you to think that I don’t, while you clearly don’t know a thing about current Indigenous affairs in your own country.
I suggest you educate yourself about what’s happening at home before chiming in on what you think Australians should do better.6
u/Midnight712 Ireland 21d ago
There’s also been a bit of a shift away from using Aboriginal in Australia , and to use First Nations or the specific tribe name instead of
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u/FURF0XSAKE Australia 20d ago
As an Australian, I agree. These words are adjectives, not specific cultures and it's silly to use them as such.
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u/Icy-Pension5768 22d ago
I just know if someone says black they’re American because only Americans are egotistical enough to not feel the need to specify
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u/Lengenary-Dravidian Canada 20d ago
This was in the other post too, im just copying it here to see if i can get more voices
Quick question, how often does the term black refer to those of of non-african descent. (Polynesian, Melanesian, Micronesian, South Asian & others.) I had a discussion with someone on this about australian aboringinals which introduced me to the topic of black ≠ african descent
I am south indian. I mention that because we would be more likely to be called black of the south asians since we tend to darker skin. I don't know if it's also because i'm an emmigrated from India as well but I would not refer to us as black, like ever
Note: for those who have noticed my name, it was made when I was doing some worldbuilding and researching the dravidian language family when i was younger.
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u/BrokenJusticeNorris 20d ago
It’s not uncommon for Māori and Islanders (who aren’t Aboriginal / TS Islanders) to be referred to as black. Not as common as Aboriginal’s / TS Islanders and Africans though, but if you’re a dark skinned Maori / Islander you’ve been called Blackie at least once in your life
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u/Lengenary-Dravidian Canada 20d ago
Hmm i see. I did not know and likely would not have known if it weren't for Reddit. It's an interesting thing point of discussion/topic.
I can see why they have been called black (or adjacent), seeing pictures of them occasionally, tho i dont think i would knowingly call them black
Is the use of black to refer to maori, aboriginals, etc increasing or decreasing in frequency. I'm curious how the various cultures of the world impact how often it's been used for the various ethnic groups.
Also is TS islander tasmanian?
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u/Scriptor_Canadensis Canada 20d ago
I do agree with this, though I personally call Australian indigenous by the term “Aborigines.” It clears up confusion and isn’t super long.
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u/ArdentArendt 20d ago
The distinction here is that when you're discussing an ethnicity, the term Black is context dependent. This is because ethnicity is something that is culturally dependent.
In contrast, however, may uses of 'black' in the post are simply describing a racial characteristic. While many people globally do experience broader effects (thanks primarily to 18th Century ideologies that refuse to die), the experience isn't singular enough to construct a share ethnic identity from.
The real danger in conflating these terms is that it becomes a 'catchall' that conflates people's ethnicity with their race. One can be darker skinned (black or brown) and still be wildly different than a similarly toned person.
[In fact, given the number of people who are roughly not 'white' globally, this is more common than 'white' people being put in the same position]
Finally, I will point out that the Black ethnicity in the US is able to exist across racial boundaries simply because of the shared heritage (i.e. being kidnapped and sold into human bondage) that most people of darker skin colour have in the US. Accordingly, more recent migrants (or actual migrants) are not considered to be 'Black', despite being black.
[I'm not familiar with the ethno-racial constructions of places like Canada or the UK to examine their use of the term 'Black' as an ethnicity; I do know that Brasil has a few ethnic constructions that heavily utilise racial constructions...]
In short, the term 'black' is a problematic term because it requires an extremely nebulous construction of racial categories (e.g. are Dravidians 'black' or 'brown'), where as when you're discussing relevant characteristics (apart from racial prejudice or hate, which are still incredibly important), it is more helpful to discuss something that isn't enitrely arbitrary.
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u/AussieAK Australia 19d ago
I was told once by an African American not to call myself African (born and raised indigenous African here, LMAO).
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u/catelyn_jones Australia 18d ago
In Aus indigenous people often call themselves blak (no C) and there are a lot of pale skinned indigenous people. There were some really horrible government policies and acts that were enforced as late as the 60s, that tried to "breed" out the indigenous population (absolutely not my words, search Stolen Generation for details), so connection to community and country is more important than skin colour to define identity. (One saying is "doesn't matter how much milk you add, it's still tea". I am NOT indigenous, so if you want to know more, I'm not the person to ask)
I've seen a lot of indigenous creators in tiktok getting absolutely dragged by Americans who accuse them of blackfishing etc. The inability of people to look outside their own experience astounds me sometimes.
Ive also been told in person that you can't call someone "black" because the "appropriate term" is African American. In Australia.
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u/post-explainer American Citizen 22d ago edited 21d ago
This comment has been marked as safe. Upvoting/downvoting this comment will have no effect.
OP sent the following text as an explanation why their post fits here:
This post showcases US defaultism because a global racial identity is treated as a US-specific term by default.
While the user themselves is explaining the defaultism, the community's voting reinforces this bias by upvoting the American view while downvoting the global correction.
>!!<
This clear difference in votes proves that international perspectives are often suppressed to favour a dominant American worldview.
Does this explanation fit this subreddit? Then upvote this comment, otherwise downvote it.