ethnicity vs. nationality

[xyyz]

Originally posted by: ragazzo

Originally posted by: xyyz
alright... good point about the racial background.

elaborate on racial background juxaposed with ethnic background... how are these two different?

They are synonymous. If you were born in the states, you're an American by nationality. On surveys, applications, etc, when asked for background information (racial background/ethnic background), you enter "Asian", for example. There's no option for "American", but there is one for "White".

so then the term first term in the hypenated description should denote race and not ethnicity?

the thing... when i think of it, race is not synoymous with ethnicty. white, black, asian, etc... have ethnic subsets. there is a pretty sharp distinction from someone who is in afghanistan and someone who is in korea... who are both asian. :/

again... this becomes more complicated.

 

[xyyz]

Originally posted by: Marshallj
I think plain white people should start calling themselves "European Americans" to catch onto this craze.

i guess... but then there is a difference from someone who is from denmark and someone who is from greece... so this wouldn't fly too well either.

 

[xyyz]

you know... the core problem is this question...

them - "what are you...."
me - "i'm american"
them - "no i mean where are you from"

no... what does "no" mean...

the "no i mean where are you from" is what caused this entire hypenated BS to be created.

i dunno if anything can be done about it now. :/

 

[Cyberian]

Originally posted by: xyyz
you know... the core problem is this question...

them - "what are you...."
me - "i'm american"
them - "no i mean where are you from"

no... what does "no" mean...

the "no i mean where are you from" is what caused this entire hypenated BS to be created.

i dunno if anything can be done about it now. :/

Keep at this!
I agree with 99% of what you ar trying to say.

 

[Cuda1447]

Originally posted by: Moonbeam
I don't know what to say, maybe because I'm still pretty sleepy, or your post needed more penetration power.

Good post regardless...

 

[Marshallj]

Originally posted by: xyyz


i guess... but then there is a difference from someone who is from denmark and someone who is from greece... so this wouldn't fly too well either.

But a lot of black people call themselves "African American", and that's an entire continent also. An "African American" can be Egyptian, Ethiopian, Liberian, or even South African.

And some "Asian" people call themselves "Asian American", and that doesn't specify where they're from either. They could be Chinese, or they could be from Eastern Russia.

 

[reitz]

Originally posted by: xyyz
bloody hell i need to sleep...

but here take my example. i guess i can call myself pakistani-american. but i dont, because i don't feel this is correct. i am ethnically punjabi. i'm a natural born US citizen, and i have no nationalistic ties to the US. unfortuantely (or fortunately, depending on your view) punjab was split durring the partition. this only serves to futher complicate things as you will see.

so when someone asks what i am... i don't say that i am pakistani-american eventhough this would be the easy thing to say. i usually go off into a long schpeel about how i was born here which means i am american (which is usually the time most people stop paying attention) but that ethnically, i am punjabi,which is a region that is split between indian and pakistan in the northern eastern part of pakistan and the north western part of india.... however that my family comes from the western pakistani region.

yeah i know it's longwinded as hell and something simple like "punjabi-american" but then some people think that i'n Sikh, which i'm not. so i feel that a small geography lesson isn't harmful to anyone.

see the thing is that pakistan while it has a national language is a mixture or a few ethnic groups with their distinct culture, food and language. there is no core pakistani ethnicity... just like there is no single american ethnicity. so using the term "pakistani" to denote ethnic makeup is wrong.

does this better explain what i'm trying to debate?

I understand where you're going with this completely, though I'm horribly ignorant of the ethinic makeup of South Asia. As a white person, I don't have that dilemma since we're so mixed that very few people are even "pure" ethnic stock any longer, and the vast majority of us are multi-generation Americans.

Try this for an answer to that inevitable question: I was born an American, but my ethnic heritage is Punjabi. Then you can follow up with the geography lesson.

Completely OT: there's a very good chance I've got you mixed up with someone else, but I seem to remember you participating in a thread about the standoff between India and Pakistan when tensions were higher there. IIRC, you were fairly critical of the Pakistani position, and I had the impression that you were from India. Do you more closely identify with India, even though you're Pakistani? If you do, is it a result of your ethnic or your cultural heritage? Or am I completely mixing you up with someone else?

 

[AvesPKS]

My question is this. So, someone says they're English-American. However, if you go back far enough, the people in Briton had to come from somewhere...so can they consider themselves British? Because if you go far enough back anywhere, you find that the people who live there had to come from somewhere else...by that logic, I can say that I am ethnically American.

 

[Kadarin]

Sounds like the problem is that everyone wants to generalize ethnic groups for easier understanding, when in reality there are potentially thousands of ethnic groups. Generalization leads to imprecision.