Minor nitpick: Hispanic is really not a race, even in the American world where Caucasian (which is always hilarious to me because, you know, the Caucasus is a real place) and "black" are ( and they aren't).
And neither are really races as science says were all the human race, just if you were going to say genetic similarity is 'race' that would be the case because of the vast diversity in African genetics that happen to have dark skin (which isnt even necessary to be 'black' in the usa.)
Hence why Americans have to distinguish between white or non-white hispanics.
How is it any less meaningful than "black" that comprises ethnicities and mixes of ethnicities that vary far more than all(!) people outside of sub-Saharan Africa (in pre-globalization sense) taken together.
>Hence why Americans have to distinguish between white or non-white hispanics.
They also distinguish brown from black, African-American from black and god knows what else.
What, I thought that was just South Africa (under Apartheid)?
> African-American from black
I thought those were synonyms?
> and god knows what else.
Yeah, for a country ostensibly attempting to get away from its old racist ways, the USA seems remarkably fixated on the minutiae of distinguishing and registering "race".
> I thought those were synonyms?
No, despite what the staff of my then-college’s newspaper apparently were thinking when writing about a visit by Winnie Mandela to the US, “African-American” and “black” are not synonyms.
But what I (must have) meant to write was, "African-American" is pretty much the mandatory term to use for American Blacks, right? (<-- And should "Blacks" really be capitalised there?)
The term Hispanic just refers to anyone with heritage from a Spanish speaking country in the Americas. It is neither a race nor an ethnicity.
>It is neither a race nor an ethnicity.
I wonder what you think race and ethnicity refer to if not heritage.
There are two dictionary definitions of race: people sharing common biological features, and people in the same ethnic group. The biological features one clearly doesn't work.
An ethnic group is a group of people who share a common cultural background or descent, but the cultures and descents of these people are very different.
Does it not depend on the intent? The word "racism" implies some kind of bad intent if I am not mistaken. You might have a useless or uninformed piece of conversation around race (whatever the word "race" is supposed to mean; I really do not exactly know nor do I care) but this does not imply that there is racism involved.
In the meantime, consider why many people don't want to be lumped in with people they have nothing in common with. If you take that thought seriously, you might learn to see the world somewhat differently.
Yeah. Like, often, Americans -- but we still have a name for those.
Yes, you don't have a race. There are no human races.
That's mostly down to a weird quirk of English, which uses the word "race" for both ~"breed" and "species", so you can say "There are no 'races', we're all just the Human Race!". In most other languages, where "race" means only ~"breed" and not "species", that's as silly as saying "There are no 'breeds', all dogs are just the Dog Species!" Yeah, sure, but a Dachshund is quite different from a Great Dane in many ways (and, yes, of course quite similar in many more), so the statement is nonsense. They're both the Dog species, but different breeds.
Limit the word to mean only ~"breed" and it does kind of make sense for humans, too: There are definitely sub-groups of us, the members of which share many similar physical characteristics within the group and differ in these characteristics between the groups, because of long genetic isolation. If you look at it calmly you realise that's not a big problem in and of itself -- the problems come when you start claiming some of these groups are inherently superior or inferior to each other: One can admit that an African differs from an Asian, while still realising that a blanket statement saying an African is "better" than an Asian or vice versa is as silly as a blanket statement saying a Dachshund is "better" than a Great Dane or vice versa.
I'm not sure, but it often feels like this linguistic oddity makes the whole subject so much more inflamed and harder to discuss in the English-speaking world.
I always laugh at the term cockasian. Hehe. Who comes up with this stuff?
Pliny the Elder's Natural History (77–79 AD) derives the name of the Caucasus from Scythian kroy-khasis ("ice-shining, white with snow").[9] German linguist Paul Kretschmer notes that the Latvian word Kruvesis also means "ice".[10][11]
In the Tale of Past Years (1113 AD), it is stated that Old East Slavic Кавкасийскыѣ горы (Kavkasijskyě gory) came from Ancient Greek Καύκασος (Kaúkasos; later Greek pronunciation Káfkasos)),[12] which, according to M. A. Yuyukin, is a compound word that can be interpreted as the "Seagull's Mountain" (καύ-: καύαξ, καύηξ, ηκος ο, κήξ, κηϋξ "a kind of seagull" + the reconstructed \*κάσος η "mountain" or "rock" richly attested both in place and personal names).[13]
In Georgian tradition, the term Caucasus is derived from Caucas (Georgian: კავკასოსი Kawḳasosi), the son of the Biblical Togarmah and legendary forefather of Nakh peoples.[14][15]
According to German philologists Otto Schrader and Alfons A. Nehring, the Ancient Greek word Καύκασος (Kaukasos) is connected to Gothic Hauhs ("high") as well as Lithuanian Kaũkas ("hillock") and Kaukarà ("hill, top").[12][16] British linguist Adrian Room points out that Kau- also means "mountain" in Pelasgian.[17]