Comment on Is this just how it’s gonna be till Election Day?
Cryophilia@lemmy.world 1 month agoLike, would you say “what race are you” is a grammatically incorrect question, then?
No? That question is totally in line with the definition of race I gave.
The census says “hispanic” is an ethnicity rather than a race. I disagree; I think that’s splitting hairs.
How do you be hispanic-er than someone else?
I’m 1/4 Hispanic. My mom was half Hispanic (Mexican mother, European father…not saying the country = race before you get your panties in a twist, it’s just a fucking shorthand, everyone knows that most Mexicans are Hispanic and most Europeans are not). My mom is more Hispanic than me. Fairly simple concept.
CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 1 month ago
Right, so what’s the Hispanic phenotype? As far as anyone can tell it’s a language, and until someone brown opens their mouth they could just as easily be an Arab or a particularly tawny Italian.
Cryophilia@lemmy.world 1 month ago
…if all brown people look the same to you, you might need to start meeting more people from different races.
CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 1 month ago
Hmm. How good is your eye for heritage? Can you pick apart Telugu from Hindi, for example? Mongol from Chinese?
It’s a total continuum so there is no perfect, but mine might be bad, it’s true. I have an uncle with mixed ancestry, and I didn’t pick up on it until someone told me, lol.
Cryophilia@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I think I actually can pick Mongol from (Han) Chinese, actually.
As for your edit, you responded to me, dude. I didn’t jump over here.
barsoap@lemm.ee 1 month ago
Phenotypically? Yes, they’re very close. The whole Mediterranean is which shouldn’t be terribly surprising. I guess the reason USians use “Hispanic” and not “Greek” is because Mexico speaks Spanish.
The reason Europeans can reliably tell Sicilians and Arabs apart is not because of phenotype, but because Arabs tend to look like they visit the barber five times a day. Probably because they do.
CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 1 month ago
Yeah, but to be a phenotype, and not just a social construct based partially on a phenotype, it has to go the other way. If having the phenotype isn’t enough on it’s own to guarantee a race, it’s not just about phenotypes. Kind of like how having wheels doesn’t make a suitcase a car.
(Also, FWIW Spaniards are mostly white - I know because I’ve actually been there. The brown in Latin America comes from admixture with other local populations)
Cryophilia@lemmy.world 1 month ago
No category is absolute. By your logic, it’s impossible to call anything a car, because cars have wheels but suitcases ALSO have wheels, therefore the entire idea that cars exist is just a made up social construct.
Or for a less ridiculous example: is a battery-powered bicycle actually an electric moped? Or the ever classic, is a hotdog a sandwich? We can discuss these questions without questioning the validity of concepts such as bicycles, mopeds, hotdogs and sandwiches. Categories exist. They are useful descriptors despite the existence of edge cases and blurry boundaries.