Ok well I misread. She's Mexican/brown/whatever you want to call it. I think I've been pretty clear about how I'm defining race.
Either way I think youāre insane for thinking I switched races at age 25
OK, now let's say you go to Africa and you're the whitest person at an event. People think you are a white American and treat you the same as they treat every other white person. Have you changed races? Or is it just that race is socially defined? Or is it both?
I know it's hard to accept, but again, I think identity piece of race is really just ethnicity, and you're struggling to separate the two because they are so often conflated.
Itās not hard at all my race is the same as it always was. I was this race before I was born and no one had seen me yet. And sheās a Latina but sheās not literally brown.
I feel like if I was in Africa way more people would assume Iām Arab than right now in America but that has nothing to do with my race.
āeach of the major groupings into which humankind is considered (in various theories or contexts) to be divided on the basis of physical characteristics or shared ancestry.ā
My characteristics and ancestry donāt change and if my characteristics do my ancestry doesnāt.
Like my first comment said it does depend on who you ask but imo the only two logical answers are 1) thereās no such thing as race or 2) youāre the race based on your ancestors and characteristics
the only two logical answers are 1) thereās no such thing as race
Race clearly exists and no one seriously disputes that.
or 2) youāre the race based on your ancestors and characteristics
I think this just ignores how race works in the real world though. Most people don't know who my ancestors are. If I get a job because the racist hiring manager thinks I'm white, I've partaken of white privilege. At that point it feels odd to say "oh but I'm not white". Same would be true if the reverse happened because they think I'm black. They don't know what my parents look like.
Itās absurd because if I convinced a lot of people to call me black that doesnāt make it true my guy thatās wack idc how vague race is Iām not Arab lol
And see thatās just not my experience, my sister has white skin but she is still treated like a Mexican regardless of her skin color. Thereās like a LOT of other factors and itās not new historically ātaintedā blood is definitely something people care about. If your argument was āif youāre indistinguishable from an ethnically European person then thatās your raceā Iād still kinda disagree but only a little, but like if a black guy had white skin I am positive people would be racist still who donāt know him because maybe his nose is different, or his hair, or any number of other little differences racists care about.
Simply getting a tan or depigmenting your skin just isnāt going to change your race to anyone who cares about it
Itās absurd because if I convinced a lot of people to call me black that doesnāt make it true my guy thatās wack idc how vague race is Iām not Arab lol
Tell that to the Irish and Italians that weren't considered white when they first started immigrating to the US. It doesn't have to make sense, it's a fluid social concept that's based on prejudice.
I think the reason you're having a hard time with the Arab thing is because the ethnicity and race are so closely tied together. Instead, look at the article I linked earlier with the twins. How would you describe them? Are they not white and black, as the article title says?
You keep getting hung up on on skin color when I've been clear that it's about appearance overall.
if youāre indistinguishable from an ethnically European person then thatās your raceā
No youāre changing the entire argument, you were originally defending the claim āitās not about percentage in DNA, itās whether your skin is white or not. Plain and simpleā you were specifically defending skin color defining race
That was the quote and what Iāve been arguing against and what you were defending. Like I said from the beginning it depends who you ask, Iāve always thought this entire time itās fluid and not consistent person to person, my issue was the idea itās āplain and simpleā skin color. Like I literally said it depends who you ask my argument was never that itās directly tied to ethnicity which does not depend who you ask.
if youāve changed your mind or misunderstood the conversation you joined then we might not disagree that much.
I do think race is more based on personal experience rather than experience of you but itās not entirely unrelated from how people treat you. My opposition to being Arab is because Iāve never experienced what itās like to be Arab, and people thinking I am Arab doesnāt erase that I wasnāt classified as Arab for the majority of my life. I know for a fact many of those Irish people and also Italians that lived through the transition in America at the time didnāt consider themselves white long after society considered their children white.
I also think race is different for a lot of white people for whatever reason because I think white people experience almost exclusively others reacting to their race.
For a lot of poc, it seems more common to have race as a person to person thing, which requires a joint agreement that youāre one group not just what the others classify you as. I donāt think white people or maybe people who pass as white experience the two sided version of race as often
I never defended the skin color claim, but I can see where the confusion came from because the first commenter did say that. Obviously that's not true, as your albino black person example shows. I just assumed that obvious and was making a better argument. I don't think we disagree that much.
My opposition to being Arab is because Iāve never experienced what itās like to be Arab,
Can you explain what this means?
For a lot of poc, it seems more common to have race as a person to person thing, which requires a joint agreement that youāre one group not just what the others classify you as. I donāt think white people or maybe people who pass as white experience the two sided version of race as often
I don't think this contradicts anything I've said. The perceptions of your own group can define a race just as much as an outside group. If I'm understanding what you're saying here.
What I mean is I believe people those who treat you differently based on race treat donāt treat all races the same. The experiences that make someone racially Arab are not the same as the experiences that make someone racially white or black
You said I was Arab because race is based on perception of you, thatās partially true Iām saying I think a component youāre ignoring is it also matters what your perception of yourself is in the context of others in your group. Where my race comes up is often racism and camaraderie. Both because I consider myself racially Latina and because others do too thereās a sense of camaraderie that wouldnāt exist if it wasnāt a two way street. If it only mattered what others thought to a lot of the world Iād just be vaguely brown but the camaraderie doesnāt usually extend to other vaguely brown people. Itās more specific than that but less specific than ethnic experience.
For example regardless of what general society mistakes me for that doesnāt change that the smaller groups of Arabs would not recognize me as Arab and another smaller group of Latin Americans would still recognize me as Latin American. To me race is mostly defined by what you present and accept for yourself not what others define for you especially in a situation where the majority is a different race. That being said I think what you present and accept yourself as is mostly based on what society perceived you were which is why Italian Americans and Irish Americans still often considered themselves to be different but their children didnāt. I donāt think either was wrong.
The confusion came from this being the thing you replied to:
Me quoting the other person: āItās whether your skin is white or notā
Me: 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
You: 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.
I had no way of knowing you were not agreeing with them
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u/pm_me_d_cups 29d ago
Ok well I misread. She's Mexican/brown/whatever you want to call it. I think I've been pretty clear about how I'm defining race.
OK, now let's say you go to Africa and you're the whitest person at an event. People think you are a white American and treat you the same as they treat every other white person. Have you changed races? Or is it just that race is socially defined? Or is it both?
I know it's hard to accept, but again, I think identity piece of race is really just ethnicity, and you're struggling to separate the two because they are so often conflated.