I like that so many of these posts are just white people making fun of each other.
Well it's not like it's safe to make fun of anyone else though.
Depends on the someone. There are plenty of minority people that I can joke around with. It doesn't take long to divine which people are the thin-skinned type. On a forum, however, I agree. The problem with posts, tweets, e-mails and such is the lack of anything other than words to divine the intent. Facial expressions, gestures, winks, body posture, and the like are at least as important as the words themselves...
Yeah, the real difference is whether it sounds like you're being serious or not. In the previous examples, it was clear the jokes weren't meant seriously--they were jokes at the expense of stereotypes rather than at the expense of people. It's sort of the difference between making fun of races and making fun of racism. The latter can be funny; the former is essentially always going to be offensive and nothing more.
Jokes about white people are more likely to sound un-serious, which is why they tend to get a pass more often. If the person making the joke did mean it seriously, however, then the reaction would be very different.
I think it should be noted that regardless how you put certain jokes, there are always will be people offended at them. Even if what you say isn't of malicious intent or personal, there are people who will treat what you say as such.
Depends on the someone. There are plenty of minority people that I can joke around with. It doesn't take long to divine which people are the thin-skinned type. On a forum, however, I agree. The problem with posts, tweets, e-mails and such is the lack of anything other than words to divine the intent. Facial expressions, gestures, winks, body posture, and the like are at least as important as the words themselves...
I don't quite think so, I hardly ever have trouble recognizing sarcastic remark on internet for what it is. It's hypersensitivity that is the real problem. Or maybe the presumption that if one isn't talking praise about some group, then he must be plotting to have its representatives sent to gas chambers. This is beyond absurd.
I do not feel included. I'm a transracial hamster who identifies as a gerbil. These US-American terms do not fit my ancestry or my chosen identity. They don't fit the European country in which my earthly host lives, either, altthough US-influenced leftist Identity Politics student groups are working hard to apply them to my society with no regards for or understanding of why these terms don't work well here.
If you can't tell without facial clues, I'm being facetious here, though the path of destruction created by zealous, thin-skinned identity politics is no laughing matter, really.
62.5% Hungarian, 25% russian and belarusian, 12.5% danube swabian. I guess that would make me 100% "caucasian" according to the U.S. demographics.
Yup. In America, anything European basically just means white. You'd be considered virtually identical to someone with majority-English descent, like me.
It used to be that people would distinguish between white groups in America. The Irish, notably, were viewed very differently from people of English descent, and were subject to violent persecution at certain periods in our history.
I don't know when we decided that every European group collapsed into white, but it kind of makes sense. When you've got a Korean, an Indian, three Hispanics, and an Arab in the same room, the difference between the eight white people don't seem that big by comparison. England is about 160 kilometers away from Ireland, but 8,880 kilometers away from Korea.
There is a centuries long history of animosity between the Irish and the English, much like the friendly neighbors of Turkey and Greece. It's not a surprise that Irishpeople were given "special" treatment by descendants of English settlers in the U.S.
I feel like this poll is going to be a little bit biased since it's in the English speaking section.
That said, I'm a mutt American. I'm mostly Danish, Swedish, German, and English, but I also have traces of Scottish, Norwegian, French, Welsh, and Italian. My family is pretty big into genealogy.
@Raduziel: I think the Portuguese and Italian would translate into "White" for this poll and "South American" for the nationality poll. Your genetics would be European, but your nationality would be Brazilian.
Depends on the someone. There are plenty of minority people that I can joke around with. It doesn't take long to divine which people are the thin-skinned type. On a forum, however, I agree. The problem with posts, tweets, e-mails and such is the lack of anything other than words to divine the intent. Facial expressions, gestures, winks, body posture, and the like are at least as important as the words themselves...
I don't quite think so, I hardly ever have trouble recognizing sarcastic remark on internet for what it is. It's hypersensitivity that is the real problem. Or maybe the presumption that if one isn't talking praise about some group, then he must be plotting to have its representatives sent to gas chambers. This is beyond absurd.
There's a difference between empathy and "hypersensitivity" but that difference is often overlooked when someone is part of a norm and/or a majority, whether it's regarding politics, ethnics, religion etc.
Meh. I don't see the big problem with hypersensitivity. Insensitivity is a lot more prone to causing problems than hypersensitivity.
It's kind of hard to pin down, though, since "hypersensitivity" is such a vague, abstract term. It's hard to establish how important it is without concrete examples.
I'm mostly Austrian, German, Scottish and Irish (pretty much in that order), but nearly as much as those more recent/majority bits I'm British (possibly Welsh? that Brit and/or Welsh part's a little unclear), Magyar/Hungarian and Rromani (specifically magyarországi romák hence that bit of both, this is up that primary Austrian side so it might edge out the mystery Brit/Welsh bit idk I haven't taken a DNA test to find out and it doesn't usually get that granular anyway) and I suppose if you go far enough back since the Scottish is from the Shetlands there's quite a bit of Norse there.
Aside from the Magyar bit of it, all of them speak languages derived from Proto-Indo-European, which I think is neat considering the migration of Rromani folks from South Asia originally, but magyar nyelv derives from Proto-Uralic despite a shorter trek from the Urals to Europe! Neat stuff, the history of migration and proto-languages. It's interesting tho, since Rromani folks have been in Europe for centuries and centuries and the Magyar for even longer, but both are from different parts of Asia originally (and the Magyar are from a part of Asia that isn't even listed in the poll, and have related cultures speaking related Ugric languages, the Khanty and Mansi, still dwelling there and in other parts of Central and North Asia).
I selected the first option despite my mutt heritage because it's MOSTLY a mutt of white Europeans and the two bits that kinda aren't also mostly are at this point (altho ask a racist white fascist and I bet they'd have some choice words about whether Magyar or Rromani, much less a mingling of both, count as white lmao)
My parents got DNA results and it seems that it's basically just half British and half other Western European stuff. I had speculated that I might have some other DNA since my ancestors were in America for so long (the family name dates back to the 1630s; some ancestors were apparently on the Mayflower), but it seems that my family most stuck to the East Coast over the course of the generations. Native Americans didn't stick around that area for very long after contact.
generic pink color skin guy here. my skin is certainly not white and the color of the skin is not the only thing that matters about ethnicity, so i refuse to be considered of white race. i would say also that some choices of the poll are imho quite biased by the fact that the OP is belonging to a country that has a well documented story of racism, slavery, segregation, KKK and all the rest. i fail to understand why a spanish should be more latin than a french, italian or romanian, they all speak languages derivate from the latin, and even in english language probably the 50% of the vocabulary comes from latin. and surely a latin american with a lot of genes from the populations that lived there before the conquer by europeans is less latin than almost every south european. i fail to understand it if i forgot that mexico is right at the south of usa and that wasp people shaped the usa culture and dominated the usa politics, if i am not wrong only obama and jfk was not wasp presidents in the whole usa story. @semiticgod, nothing wrong about what you did, it is like the world is going and at now the usa derived culture is prevalent in much of the world and considering the hispanics a race and white europeans an other race is a consequence of that.
Hispanic/Latino is a bit of an arbitrary distinction. Genetically, it's a mishmash of European, Native American, and African. The term is used instead of Native American is because even Hispanic/Latino people have very little Native American ancestry (few people do; the tribes mostly went extinct). "Multi-racial" would also fit, but "Hispanic/Latino" is used instead because it's linked to a geographic range, South America, and a language, Spanish, both of which are more or less historical flukes: the whites who settled in North America were more often English speakers, and seldom interbred with blacks and Native Americans, and the whites who settled in South American were more often Spanish speakers, and frequently interbred with blacks and Native Americans.
Outside of the Americas, the term is largely meaningless, because very few people just happen to be part-white and part-black, and part-Native American is almost nonexistent outside the Americas. Basically, it's just used to distinguish between an extremely common group in the Americas with a common origin, and the extremely uncommon groups outside of the Americas with little common history.
the whites who settled in North America were more often English speakers.......... and the whites who settled in South American were more often Spanish speakers
i would say instead that the conquerors of north america was english speaking and the conquerors of south america was spanish speakers, then the people of other ethnicity and languages that joined them adopted the language of the conquerors. a lot of italians in argentina and uruguay, but they speak spanish, and in the usa a lot of polish, german, scandinavian, italian people and "white" people of other ethnicity but they speak english, as well as the black people that was originally brought there in slavery. but i agree with what you say.
I'm confused. I'm as white as white can be (see my picture), but having been born and spent most of my life in Spain, I'm as hispanic as hispanic can be. So what's my race?!!!
Comments
Jokes about white people are more likely to sound un-serious, which is why they tend to get a pass more often. If the person making the joke did mean it seriously, however, then the reaction would be very different.
I'm from Kolkata, where are you from?
If you can't tell without facial clues, I'm being facetious here, though the path of destruction created by zealous, thin-skinned identity politics is no laughing matter, really.
Hungarians themselves are a mixture between austrians, croats, serbs, slovaks, and others within centraleuropa.
It used to be that people would distinguish between white groups in America. The Irish, notably, were viewed very differently from people of English descent, and were subject to violent persecution at certain periods in our history.
I don't know when we decided that every European group collapsed into white, but it kind of makes sense. When you've got a Korean, an Indian, three Hispanics, and an Arab in the same room, the difference between the eight white people don't seem that big by comparison. England is about 160 kilometers away from Ireland, but 8,880 kilometers away from Korea.
That said, I'm a mutt American. I'm mostly Danish, Swedish, German, and English, but I also have traces of Scottish, Norwegian, French, Welsh, and Italian. My family is pretty big into genealogy.
Being a Brazilian that descends from Portuguese and Italian, where would I fit?
It's kind of hard to pin down, though, since "hypersensitivity" is such a vague, abstract term. It's hard to establish how important it is without concrete examples.
Aside from the Magyar bit of it, all of them speak languages derived from Proto-Indo-European, which I think is neat considering the migration of Rromani folks from South Asia originally, but magyar nyelv derives from Proto-Uralic despite a shorter trek from the Urals to Europe! Neat stuff, the history of migration and proto-languages. It's interesting tho, since Rromani folks have been in Europe for centuries and centuries and the Magyar for even longer, but both are from different parts of Asia originally (and the Magyar are from a part of Asia that isn't even listed in the poll, and have related cultures speaking related Ugric languages, the Khanty and Mansi, still dwelling there and in other parts of Central and North Asia).
I selected the first option despite my mutt heritage because it's MOSTLY a mutt of white Europeans and the two bits that kinda aren't also mostly are at this point (altho ask a racist white fascist and I bet they'd have some choice words about whether Magyar or Rromani, much less a mingling of both, count as white lmao)
i would say also that some choices of the poll are imho quite biased by the fact that the OP is belonging to a country that has a well documented story of racism, slavery, segregation, KKK and all the rest. i fail to understand why a spanish should be more latin than a french, italian or romanian, they all speak languages derivate from the latin, and even in english language probably the 50% of the vocabulary comes from latin.
and surely a latin american with a lot of genes from the populations that lived there before the conquer by europeans is less latin than almost every south european.
i fail to understand it if i forgot that mexico is right at the south of usa and that wasp people shaped the usa culture and dominated the usa politics, if i am not wrong only obama and jfk was not wasp presidents in the whole usa story.
@semiticgod, nothing wrong about what you did, it is like the world is going and at now the usa derived culture is prevalent in much of the world and considering the hispanics a race and white europeans an other race is a consequence of that.
Outside of the Americas, the term is largely meaningless, because very few people just happen to be part-white and part-black, and part-Native American is almost nonexistent outside the Americas. Basically, it's just used to distinguish between an extremely common group in the Americas with a common origin, and the extremely uncommon groups outside of the Americas with little common history.
but i agree with what you say.
Hang on a minute.
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