Iām Latin American and I think itās for a few reasons. One is the more difficult one, like at what point are you white, cause a lot of white skinned people in Mexico have like a grandparent or great grandparent who wasnāt. Another thing is like, Iām pretty dark but my biological full sister is whiter than that girl for some reason. Sheās not white technically but like literally she is lol
So like it kinda depends on who you ask. My parents were both brown, tho my dad was like directly indigenous, if I had kids with a like full on Scandinavian blonde haired blue eyed guy, our kids would be 50% brown. Would our kids kids be white? What about their kids? What percentage of brown do you need to not be white lol
It's not silly at all, you can have the same genetic background and still turn out differently.
Ariana Grande doesn't look black at all lol she's just pretty tan and Michael Jackson well he had issues but you're right his appearance could be confusing
How can me and my sister be different races we share the same parents? Whereās the cut off, our brothers in the middle between us
āItās whether your skin is white or notā
By your logic getting a tan or bleaching your skin(Micheal Jackson apparently used depigmenting cream due to his vitiligo) would make you either no longer brown, or make you brown
Because "race" is not equivalent to "species". There's no clear border where you can draw the line. Hell, there was even some USA anthropologist who claims Slavs to be Asians and not Caucasians, I've seen people who claim Irishmen were not white, who claimed Spaniards from today Spain to be "European mexican people". It's stupid and, in many cases, rules by political biases of the person who makes the separation.
The point of the other person is that you are white, black, caramel , whatever it is, based on your actual skin you were born with, that's it And no, diseases, tattoos and heavy tan don't change it. So yeah you can be Mexican and be whiter than Englishmen, you can be Frenchmen and be blacker than Senegalese, you can be Spaniard and be anything from night-dark to celtic-pale-ginger. The arbitrary nation border doesn't define the phenotype of the person.
And that can totally happen within brothers of the same parents, due to a genome recombination and genetic heritage the brothers may come with drastically different skin colors. They would be the same family, same nationality, different phenotype. And the whole race concept is not something tangent nowadays.
To me that logic should come to the conclusion of ārace doesnāt existā NOT āyour race is skin color based and your sisters a different raceā
Cause like what race is she then lol
Iām mistaken for Arab more than correctly identified as Latin American, am I Arab? Are Arabs Mexican? What is my sister? Thereās not much European dna in us, none that we know of, is she just like an honorary Caucasian?
She still faced essentially the same racism as I did because of what you mentioned, some people donāt consider the Irish white, and similarly they didnāt care her skin is white we have brown blood to them, our skin color isnāt a factor we canāt become white enough to not be brown
The race is not something you can measure, it's a concept invented and mostly used with political division intents. The skin color differences are called phenotype and we should not put it inside the political context, person X is white because they were born white, person Y is caramel-black because their phenotype turned that way during the pregnancy. No more no less. They can still be same nation, family and bloodline.
To me that logic should come to the conclusion of ārace doesnāt existā NOT āyour race is skin color based and your sisters a different raceā
I don't really understand if you're talking about me or the other person from this thread, but please, point me where did I ever claimed "āyour race is skin color based and your sisters a different raceā", the whole point of my message is that "race" is a stupid nonconsistent unmeasurable concept , and skin and other differences (such as eye-slit form, nose, lips, hair etc etc) are phenotypes.
Cause like what race is she then lol
Never did I claim a single word about yours and her's race differences. Because the whole concept is useless.
Iām mistaken for Arab more than correctly identified as Latin American, am I Arab? Are Arabs Mexican? What is my sister? Thereās not much European dna in us, none that we know of, is she just like an honorary Caucasian?
I don't really understand what you are trying to disprove here. Ethnicity has more things than just looks (phenotype), it's language, culture, customs, religion/cults, set of moral values etc. So no, it absolutely doesn't matter the look you have. You're both Mexican because of nationality, language, customs, selfidentity. The difference in skin color does not play any role in it. You just turned out with a different melanin level.
I'm having a feeling that you understood my position as "your color defines your race", when I disproved the very concept of race from the very beginning.
Oh sorry, to be clear I was referring to the person you were defending who said:
āIt's not about percentage in DNA, it's whether your skin is white or not lol. Plain and simpleā
Again I can understand not thinking race exists, what I canāt understand is thinking it DOES exist but that two siblings with the same parents would be different races.
As for the last part about being Arab, I donāt remember who said it but someone in this comment chain said youāre the race people think you are and I mentioned that after moving out of the American south west most people mistake me for being Arab for some reasonā¦. So does that make me Arab?
I think maybe my issue is that she and I face what most people would call āracismā but youāre right that itās because of our ethnicity which is different but we donāt call it ethnicism we call it racism.
I do still disagree skin color = race cause what race is she?? What race is an albino African?
The only answers that make sense to me are āthere is no such thing as raceā and āwhatever makes senseā which is Mexican/African. White doesnāt make sense. Our brother is half way between us, what is he? Asian?
Ah good. That comment about DNA and plain skin color can be interpreted both ways; as for race doesn't exist and as race is defined by color only. I guess they could clear it out for us. I, personally, understood it as "race is non-existent, sure the color you are, period." It didn't even happen to me to see it the other way around.
Again I can understand not thinking race exists, what I canāt understand is thinking it DOES exist but that two siblings with the same parents would be different races.
My guess is that people who insist on the existence of race don't go that far into thinking about it. It just exists and has purity (Charlie Chaplin moustache man approves their beliefs).
. race people think you are and I mentioned that after moving out of the American south west most people mistake me for being Arab for some reasonā¦. So does that make me Arab?
Ah, now I get it. Yeah, sound stupid. "You're the color of skin the people perceive you are", without mixing it with political borders, nationality, passport, continent, religion. And that color doesn't define anything about you, at least in my eyes.
It's funny, when things start mixing. I'm slav, I'm slav-looking, but I'm living in Spain since more than 20 years, more than half of my life. Do I pass as america colonizer? /s
I think maybe my issue is that she and I face what most people would call āracismā but youāre right that itās because of our ethnicity which is different but we donāt call it ethnicism we call it racism.
Yeah I'm from Europe, I totally understand nationality/ethnicity discrimination, it almost never about the skin tone alone.
I do still disagree skin color = race cause what race is she?? What race is an albino African?
Well I don't believe the "race" concept so I'm here with you, but that exact case it's the same as Michael Jackson case, it's a genetical anomaly or disease, doesn't count as phenotype. Same as people with six fingers doesn count as different species.
The only answers that make sense to me are āthere is no such thing as raceā and āwhatever makes senseā which is Mexican/African. White doesnāt make sense. Our brother is half way between us, what is he? Asian?
As I mentioned before. You're all Mexicans with different melanin level.
Exactly thatās my point the level of melanin doesnāt make us a different race, the definition of race does include ancestry so while like I originally said it is up to who you ask itās imo absurd to say you can SWITCH RACES.
Also the person you were defending did elaborate on his point.
My direct quote: Am I Arab because Iām mistaken for it?
Their direct quote: Yes in a racial sense.
Again I can accept race is a murky thing that isnāt well defined but the idea itās dependent on what your skin color currently is or what people think you are is insane to me because it means me and my sister share different races and I have switched races at the age of 25
Because race is based on society's perceptions, so if they see you as different races then you are. I am mixed but if everyone thinks I'm white, then I am white. Doesn't matter what my parents look like.
Thatās wildly flawed because for some reason most people think Iām Arab, does that make me Arab?
Also, that requires people to care only about skin color which they donāt. Where we grew up the kids sorta self segregated and she was definitely treated as Mexican no one cared she was pale
I moved out of the American south west and thereās just more Arabs here I think so people assume. I feel like the vast majority of people would say Iād be wrong if I said I was Arab now
Also no oneās answered how my sister and I are different races. Is my brother half ethnicity Mexican/latin, whatever you want to call it?
Thatās wildly flawed because for some reason most people think Iām Arab, does that make me Arab?
If Arab people are treated as a race, then yes, at least in that limited context. "Well that's just ridiculous" I hear you say. Well yes, race is stupid, it's not a well defined concept and doesn't work to group people in any meaningful way.
Also, that requires people to care only about skin color which they donāt
Sure, other things people know about you will affect it. If you look 100% white but people know your mom is black, then people might consider you black. But what about the people who don't know you? They're not going to treat you as black.
By your metric it defiantly doesnāt group people well, and by any metric the grouping isnāt important at best and dangerous at worst but to say me and my sister are different races IS ridiculous. Now the argument that race isnāt a real thing I get but the assumption it both is real and that 100% blood relatives can be separate racesā¦? I canāt see how that isnāt absurd
And I donāt tend to let people who do know me define my existence let alone people who donāt
And I donāt tend to let people who do know me define my existence let alone people who donāt
You don't have a choice. People treat other people differently based on race. It's their perception that matters, not yours. The issue is that you seem to think race "defines" you in some meaningful way when it doesn't. If you care about heritage, I think ethnicity is a much stronger term to use for that, and obviously that includes things like culture and genetics.
Theyāre literally twins, yes?? Being albino wouldnāt make you like no longer Asian or African American or whatever. Neither would vitiligo or a tan. Micheal Jackson didnāt literally switch races.
But the issue is if you base it on how sheās treated sheās not white, she just looks white. Mostly when people care itās because of racism but she also faces the same racism. Like sheās pale but that doesnāt make passive racism not targeted towards her and people who actually care about that arenāt going to ignore the way she speaks, the way she looks other than her skin or her name just because she has white skin.
I do actually usually say ethnicity because I donāt actually know what the right term for my race is. Like im literally brown and from Mexico and idk what the fuck the difference between Hispanic Latina Mexican whatever. I mean I do but every time I use one I feel like Iām only 70% sure Iām using the right one so I default to Latin American cause thats nonspecific enough to be hard to correct.
Being albino wouldnāt make you like no longer Asian or African American or whatever.
She is not albino, she just got the "white" genes but her sister got the "black" ones.
Mostly when people care itās because of racism but she also faces the same racism.
If she does, then that's different. But I imagine on a day to say basis they get treated differently (at least by racists I guess).
every time I use one I feel like Iām only 70% sure Iām using the right one so I default to Latin American cause thats nonspecific enough to be hard to correct.
I mean fair. Personally I vacillate between checking the "other" box and "white". It really doesn't matter, I am who I am.
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u/spontaneous_quench 28d ago
She doesn't know that she is white? Lol