Who's White, Who's Hispanic, Who Caresgreenspun.com : LUSENET : A.M.E. Today Discussion : One Thread |
Jeff Jacoby, Jewish World Review, July 6, 2001:"For 250 years, the American melting pot has been turning ethnic groups once thought to be racially distinct (and socially indigestible) into undifferentiated -- which has usually meant white -- Americans. In 1896, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge bemoaned the influx of "races with which the English-speaking people have never hitherto assimilated, and who are most alien to the great body of the people of the United States." He was talking about Russians, Poles, and Greeks. Early in the 20th century, Italians, Jews, and the Irish were classified as separate races by federal immigration authorities.
Today, it is strange to think that Irish or Russian immigrants were once deemed "nonwhite." Fifty years from now, it will seem just as odd that Mexicans and Cubans were once regarded the same way.
But let us hope that by then we will have abandoned the fable that racial categories have concrete meaning in the first place. How useful is the term "white," after all, if its definition is so mutable? Isn't race, as the confusion over "Hispanic" suggests, ultimately a matter of personal choice? In a nation where millions of people fall in love and raise children without regard to the color line, isn't it time the government stopped counting by race altogether?"
The 2000 Census had a category for mixed race people (black & white, black & other)to identify themselves as non-black. Yet in the reports, these people are again grouped with those who identified themselves as black. I consider race ought to be meaningless as far as our government is concerned and we ought stop counting by category. I also think that the overwhelming focus on race in media is the source of some if not most of our racial problems.
Blessings Pastor Paris
-- Anonymous, July 06, 2001
<<>> AMEN! I am German and Swiss by heritage, and I think it is appalling that the minutest presence of negroid race assigns an individual to the negro race. Most negroes in America have quite a lot of European blood in them. Racism in this country has escalated because of the "multiculturalism" taught to this generation. It only draws the lines more deeply between races and assigns people to their little spot, and woe unto those that deny their natural ancestral culture.
<<>>
It isnt just the media. It is in the public school system, where the government enforces attendance of all children to brainwashing sessions many hours every day. It's the liberal agenda to set races against one another, and in the dividing of the people, they conquor them all.
-- Anonymous, July 07, 2001
Tell me daffodyllady is there such a place called Negroland?!!! Perhaps when you find it, you'll find some Negros!Click on the link for a complete definition of the word "Negro". http://www.amonhotep.com/dialogue/creationofthenegro.htm
In Love and Light, Brenda
-- Anonymous, July 07, 2001
Just want Daffodyllady to know that I know it is the same person as Mr. Nathan Paujo, who has dis-respected Black people on this Bulletin Board before, only with a different name.We are on to your game and soon you will be exposed!
-- Anonymous, July 07, 2001
Dear Rev. Paris,What an interesting subject! " In a nation where millions of people fall in love and raise children without regard to the color line, isn't it time the government stopped counting by race altogether?" I agree with you that America should not be obsessed with race. However, according to Dr. Audrey Smedly, an African-American anthropologist at Virginia Commonwealth University, historically the United States and South Africa have been the most race conscious countries in the past 3 centuries. Dr. Smedly pointed out at a symposium on ancient Egypt at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Oct. 99 that race is a cultural construct and that there are no scientific criteria for race. Although, forensic anthropologist can identify skulls as negroid, mongoloid, or caucasoid, there exists no valid and reliable tests to identify individuals to a particular race. Nevertheless, the US government's obsession with race is based on the need to have power. According to THE NATURE OF PREJUDICE by Gordon W. Alport (1970), racism exists for three main reasons. It makes possible social, economic, and sexual gain of one race over another. Hence, America is determined to control the numbers of its nonwhite population for the purpose of power. So in essence, there are only two races in America. There is a white race and a non-white race. All other categories on the census forms are merely for desciptive purposes. How did America arrive at this obsession with race? Dr. Smedly pointed out that in the 18th century, scholars developed a concept of the inferiority of the races. One of those scholars was a German named Blummenbach and another was a Frenchman named Gobineau. These theories arrose primarily to justify the Atlantic slave trade of Africans. Dr. Frank Snowden in BLACKS IN ANTIQUITY pointed out that in the Greco-Roman empire that racism against blacks or Ethiopians as we were known during that time was not the same animal as it is today. As a matter of fact, he stated that Ethiopians or black people were considered regular members of the Greek and Roman societies and were admired for their contributions to learning. The only racism was an acknowledgement that they were from a different race. The African was held in high esteem and not in subjugation as he is today because of America's obsession with race. How does America get beyond its obsession with race?
JazzMan
-- Anonymous, July 09, 2001
Friends, I think you miss the forest for the trees. Personally, I believe that the current preoccupation with race points directly with America's efforts to move beyond it as valid cultural distinction. In the past, there were never any serious discussions about race, only a skirting of the issues of why blacks and whites and Asians and Hispanics were the way they were. I find it encouraging to see that people of different hues will openly admit their preconceived notions, and will receive redirection and clarification.Government's concern with racial breakdowns helps to illustrate the futility of such indicators, and points to their imminent demise, for it is obvious that we are moving toward a society that will not be able to categorize people in terms of one race or another.
Finally, my own preoccupation with race has to do with self-esteem. I have incredibly high self-esteem, and that is because I know that there are other persons in the history of this country that look like me, that have achieved great things. It has given me an example to follow. My parents are wonderful people, my two greatest role models. However, neither of them went to college, neither of them has ever visited Europe, Africa or South America, and neither of them has ever owned their own business. If I still lived in a society where there weren't any examples of the kinds of success that men of color have achieved, then I likely would not have gone to college, would not have become a professional, would not have been exposed to all of the wonderful teachers and mentors, of all races and ethnicities, that I have.
A preoccupation with race helps those that do not have role models with whom they can identify move from "can't" to "can", from "why" to "why not", from "I wish" to "I am!"
-- Anonymous, July 09, 2001
If I read correctly, my brother, you believe that a role model MUST be of the same race as the modelee. And the preoccupation with race is a solution rather than a contributer to the problem? Hmmm, very intresting.Blessings
Pastor Paris
-- Anonymous, July 09, 2001
No, I don't believe that a role model MUST be of the same race. But for those that cannot make the color leap, it helps.
-- Anonymous, July 10, 2001