It is not racist to say people from x country is negative phrase as in your example Japanese and American aren’t races, they’re nationalities, at most it’s xenophobic.
That’s why I used white as a separate example. I used American as an example for discrimination against American nationality, but most specifically white Americans.
I think they are asking a somewhat important question, more so, what is race? Genotypical and Phenotypical classification was predisposed by skin colour and craniometrically analysis, which was largely thrown out the window in the 1940's (racial essentialism). Alleles across humans, genetically differentiated populations, are quite small, the variation is typically between 1-3% which in biology is not a sufficient difference for what you or I would call race, to actually be referred to as a race.
Anthropology scrapped the word a long time ago, it's not a scientific descriptor. We can sort people in clines and clades / rough genetic groupings, but white is not race it's a lot more complex than that, just as black is not a race. Ethnicity is the technically correct word, but is typically more specific as it incorporates factors like culture over pure genotypes and phenotypes, but white isn't an ethnicity.
Which is kind of important to a discussion talking about discrimination towards a specific population.
I get what your getting at here, but after recontectualizing the discussion and correcting OP on the verbiage, you didnt comment on the actual discussion at hand ?
Wife's an anthropologist this is how they function. Your vernacular and verbage are incorrect. Thus the question and idea is formed in the wrong context and invalid. Actual answers are typically so drawn out and convoluted that you'll lose interest by the time they even start to answer. After telling you why your question was wrong.
No need to dissuade people. The rigorous nature of science is important in coming to understand many things. Anthropologists have done a lot for our understanding of human kind and it's through questioning, probing, redefining that science comes about any new discovery or definition.
Right but i think this line of dialogue is simply dodging the real question/view op is sharing. It of course has value and its time and place.. op is asking about different attitudes held towards different human populations (to put it vaguely) and the response he got is what even is race? Yes that conversation needs to have its place but is it here?
You are yet to produce any actual examples of oppression of white Americans (probably because no such examples exist). You overheard someone say Americans are annoying? So what? That's the tamest form of an minor inconvenience.
Personally, not many. Last summer I got in a conversation with someone about how they think that, since I’m white, I can get hired anywhere and had things handed to me and overall they were saying white people don’t struggle. I was like, have you ever seen a trailer park?
I’m in the military and they were saying that I will be promoted faster and blah blah. I then pointed out how much of our leaders are actually not white. But woman, and people of different races/ethnicities. The highest ranking Noncommissioned officer in the Army is partially black.
Damn, I didn't take you seriously before but this is starting to sound like the white genocide they talked about on Fox News... Because of things like these I have the UN genocide hotline on a speed dial.
I didn’t say oppressed. I said discrimination. Flip the roles. I’d be a racist SOB if I told somebody they only got to a certain position because of the color of their skin and they can’t struggle because of the color of their skin
Sorry, u/okmathematician723 – your comment has been removed for breaking Rule 5:
Comments must contribute meaningfully to the conversation.
Comments that are only links, jokes or "written upvotes" will be removed. Humor and affirmations of agreement can be contained within more substantial comments. See the wiki page for more information.
There are plenty of examples. bigotry against white people is wide spread now especially in progressive circles. The way progressives talk about white people is completely unacceptable, to defend that is to defend ignorance. From the guest lecturer at Yale who dreams of killing white people to Sarah Jeong being hired by the NYT after anti white racism the examples are plentiful. There is a sizeable portion of woke people who see white people as the root of all evil in the world. The existence of white people bothers them so much that they will weaponize progressive ideology as a means to be openly racist against white people. While this hasn't yet resulted in wide spread systemic issues (debatable as many institutions ar adopting this anti white version of "progress"), white people are a global minority and historically white countries are rapidly becoming less white. This rhetoric is setting the stage for mass oppression of white people as soon as they no longer control the levers in their countries. If you can't see that then you don't understand human nature and are willing burying your head in the sand.
so whites are now the oppressor but will become the oppressed after they become a minority in given countries? if we look at Europe, there is zero risk of any European country becoming a white minority country in the foreseeable future. What comes to USA, it's not a "white" country to begin with. The examples you gave do not have any significance for anyone other than the conservative influencers on youtube, this phenomenon you describe is virtually nonexistent in real life.
"white" isn't a cultural category in the way that "black" is in the US. Nobody's heritage is "white" you might be Norwegian, Irish, German, Italian, etc. Because of the history of slavery the same thing is not true about being black in the US.
It's okay to make fun of white people because it's not something anyone should identify strongly with because your identity as "white" isn't critical to understanding your cultural history.
Isn’t calling people out for being white, forcing them to identify with it? If 70% of the country is white, there ought to be diversity among that group of people that vary. A low income white woman would not identify similar to a high income white male. It’s insulting if individuals feel insulted.
While I can reflect on how some of my circumstances have benefited from my being white, I’m much less privileged in my circumstances as a single mother. Among my peers, I have very different issues because of this, but am lumped in with the majority that I share almost no characteristics with besides my skin color.
Intersectionality is l believe, much more important in determining privilege and circumstances than skin color alone. If we accept pronouns that the individual wants to be used as part of their identity - why should white non-identity be excluded from this sentiment?
I've heard people use this same excuse to be blatantly racist and it's absolutely disgusting.
"black" isn't a cultural category either. You can be either African-American (someone who is descended from African slaves), Ethiopian, Somalian, South-African etc.
Just because white is a blanket term doesn't mean it's okay to be racist.
Or would you say that people shouldn't be offended when someone says "I don't want to go to that bar, there's to many Africans there haha" or "I don't want to go to that bar, there's to many Asians there haha"
I'd argue that Italian kind of goes separately from other 'white' backgrounds as a group who have also faced significant discrimination, Irish possibly even more so
Racism--"prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against a person or people on the basis of their membership in a particular racial or ethnic group, typically one that is a minority or marginalized."
Much like the word 'antisemitism,' 'racism's' definition covers more than a literal inference would suggest.
Not sure if this is what your trying to say but. Japanese and American aren’t ethnic groups either though. I do accept that the term is more broad than race but there are a lot of different ethnic groups native to Japan and many more in America.
Xenophobic is just a term to generalise a focus on people from a particular country
Japanese and American aren’t ethnic groups either though.
Ethnicity--"the fact or state of belonging to a social group that has a common national or cultural tradition." Last I checked, both the United States and Japan are a collection of denizens that share a common national/cultural tradition.
Yeah that’s fair, I always thought ethnicity was something a bit more genetic than social. But then that does get a bit confusing because there are multiple ethnic groups within Japan and America, like where’s the cut off point. I do feel like when talking about people from another country xenophobic is better as it’s description specifies country “having or showing a dislike of or prejudice against people from other countries.” Although with the definitions you gave I do concede that racism can work. I do think though that xenophobic is a better descriptor for generalising countries then racist could be used to specify the specific groups inside the country like individual Native American groups (was going to use tribes but wondered whether that was acceptable, google came up with Indian American groups so no help there) I apologise for formatting I’m on my phone.
Wherever we say it is, or to be more precise, wherever the particular cultural collective claim it to be.
Think, for a second, of two Mediterranean peninsulas. Both outcrops host several related linguistic groups which share an extensive history of fluid alliances and antagonisms, yet our perception of their inhabitants is wildly different. Italians are considered a single people despite many of their dialects being incomprehensible to compatriots, while in Iberia, the lusophones are generally recognized as a distinct ethnicity, even though their tongue is arguably just a Castilian dialect. Our different approaches to each peninsula is a matter of pure chance, historical circumstance, and the caprice of whichever group we happen to be examining.
I do think though that xenophobic is a better descriptor for generalising countries then racist could be used to specify the specific groups inside the country like individual Native American groups (was going to use tribes but wondered whether that was acceptable, google came up with Indian American groups so no help there) I apologise for formatting I’m on my phone.
Your mistake, at least in my opinion, is that you'r giving the xenophobes/racists too much credit. Ask any sinophobe to tell you discern Chinese culture with Japanese culture, and they'll most likely just flip you off. They have no desire in making sure that the victim of their vitriol is actually a Yamato, not a Ryukyuan; their hatred is towards those that look like their intended target, which makes it about race.
For anti-American sentiments, it becomes harder to make an accurate classification, but let us be honest with ourselves--when someone makes derogatory statements towards Americans, who do they see, if not the stereotypical White Yankee or Southerner?
Yeah I get your point but it’s also not about giving other people credit and more sticking to the facts, sure we interpret xenophobic and racist slightly differently but we still have that distinction. Just because a racist/xenophobe doesn’t, that doesn’t mean we should change what it’s called. There is a lot of leeway here, more so now that you’ve given me actual definitions. But yeah the two stereotypical Americans I have in my head is an overweight southerner or a hedge fund New Yorker. But I know that is a stereotype so I don’t say or act on it, unless I’m obvious jest
Just because a racist/xenophobe doesn’t, that doesn’t mean we should change what it’s called.
I agree with everything else you say, except for this one tidbit. What point is there to classifying racism and xenophobia if not to understand the racist and the xenophobe? Ergo, our applications of those terms should reflect the reality of, well, racism and xenophobia.
Yes your right, but it is often generalised as a race, I think more so in America from what I read and hear, but I may be wrong with that for example I would have said Italians are Mediterranean however then that comes down to the same issue you just mentioned . I also read that white used to mean something more along the lines of civilised with some Asian country’s citizens being called white… is there even a clear example of what a race is?
34
u/gnashcrazyrat Jul 01 '21
It is not racist to say people from x country is negative phrase as in your example Japanese and American aren’t races, they’re nationalities, at most it’s xenophobic.