In the US, white births still make up 75% of all births. Wikipedia
Even just these are dubious quantities most seem to take for granted. The âwestâ tends to refer to Western Europe. The Americas are west of Europe, but then again, so is much of West Africa.
And âwhiteâ is, as US census uses it, a fiction of lumping together disparate groups. If your ancestors are from Spain, you are supposedly a distinct ethnicity - but if they are from France or Holland, you are not. There is too much internal inconsistency in the US census categories to warrant using them as meaningful data.
Why not categorize people based upon hair color? It would be equally pointless.
2 Likes
Yes, race as we know and use the concept is a fiction, obvs.
Whatâs more worthy of attention is the reality that it nevertheless has real effects.
1 Like
The style you refer to is ably utilized by Morgana Robinson as Zeb, seen in Charlie Brookerâs Weekly Wipe.
I learned something today. While I had seen the water melon imagery before, and was aware of the Coons Chicken stores, I didnât really know where the stereotype of fried chicken came from. I thought it was more of a class thing, as many poor people packed it for lunch, as it would keep fine from the night before.
Though I guess I have to ask - at what point does the baggage that comes with this start to disappear? I consider myself fairly well educated, and didnât know where half of the stereotype came from. I canât imagine most people under 20 have any clue where this sort of thing comes from. At some point I would think itâs power as a hurtful stereotype more or less goes away when both the perpetrators and the victims are ignorant to its roots.
1 Like
Sounds simple, yet oh-so complicated. But thank you for clarifying.
1 Like
The â50% lineâ is misleading, though âtellingâ in its invocation. It hasnât happened yet, but it only describes the ratio between âWhitesâ and âall the other minorities together.â
1 Like
Very correct that âWhiteâ is a fiction as you described. At the beginning of the 20th Century the fiction of âWhitenessâ was encapsulated within the notion of being âAnglo-Saxon.â As recently as the late 1970s and early 1980s, I recall some elder non-minority friends using that term, though within the more illuminating notion of White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP). Basically, WASP = Oppressor. Nowadays, the notion of âWhiteâ includes the former minorities of the Irish and the Southern and Eastern European nationalities.
2 Likes
Thatâs only because the bright line between âwhiteâ and âminorityâ has shifted greatly over the years. If you included everyone who would have been considered a minority in 1900 or even 1950, the 50% threshold has already been breached.
3 Likes
I see weâre on the same page!
Hasnât a similar thing happened with the concept of being a christian, at least in the U.S.? Used to be categorized in loads of different sects, catholic, orthodox, lutheran, etc. Now they are all just âchristianâ.
I donât think so.
The sects always already were âChristianâ â theyâre Christian sects. And while ânon-denominationalâ churches do exist, Iâd bet that the majority still self-identify instead as particular sects, not simply, and instead, as âChristian.â
1 Like
Possibly needs the qualifier âin US politicsâ? At least I have a vague recollection of someone making such a claim in the past.
1 Like
When someone in the U.S. refers to themselves as âChristianâ now, it means they arenât Catholic, Mormon, Protestant, Lutheran, Episcopal, Presbyterian, Methodist, Quaker, etc. Itâs a form of code. Those other people arenât ârealâ Christians, you see.
2 Likes
Maybe think about it this way - the word racism can refer to âhateful bigotryâ and it can also refer to âinstitutionalized discrimination that oppressesâ (which need not be intentional), and each type of racism spawns and reinforces the other type. You heard of a way to test for one type, but that test does not cover the other type, so when trying to avoid all kinds of racism and its effects, broader tests are needed.
Iâm still playing catch-up on this, so⌠maybe this isnât quite on the nail, but it makes sense to me 
1 Like
My understanding, as a southerner, is that a large percentage of African Americans migrated to their present locations from the southern USA. Both fried chicken and watermelon are very common southern foods. I donât think the stereotype works in the south because everyone here eats those things. It would seem to me that the connection between African Americans and Fried chicken is nothing more than people migrating and taking their chosen diet with them. Indian Americans eat more curry than is average. Japanese Americans eat rice frequently. It should not be considered an insult to associate a group of people with their regional diet, especially when that diet is wonderful. When traveling up north, and I want to eat food that tastes like home, my best bet is a soul food place. I think that if you look at the distribution of chicken restaurants, you will quickly see that there are many such places in areas where the population is of African origin. I doubt very much that the owners of those places located there to further a stereotype, but rather because that is where their customers live.
3 Likes
How many marxists does it take? None- the power of illumination comes from within!
Thereâs a piss poor article on wikipedia, with some cynical quotes.
Latin Americans arenât a specially discriminated against group in America because their ancestors came from Spain - itâs because theyâre part Native American (and in some areas, also African.) (There are exceptions, such as much of Argentina and a few other areas that are primarily European.) Theyâre also a special group because most of them speak Spanish instead of English, or did a few generations ago (again, with major exceptions, such as parts of California where the first language was Oaxacan and Spanish was a second language), and enough of them still do that itâs easy for them to speak Spanish most of the time. And theyâve been treated specially because they were a colony of Spain and shortly after that much of Latin America became semi-colonies of the US.
2 Likes
I find the watermelon thing frustrating because not only are some of the stereotypes just appalling, but for me, having grown up in a nearly-all-white area, watermelons arenât about black people, theyâre about summer, and picnics, and fit into categories along with sweet corn and grilled hot dogs, and if Iâm around black people and picnics in the summer, I donât want to trigger anybodyâs ethnic stereotypes but I do want some watermelon, especially because I donât eat meat these days. (As it is, if I go to BBQ joints, Iâm mostly there for the okra and the sauces.)
And almost all the watermelons in the stores are tasteless pink seedless ones, instead of bright red ripe ones full of seeds.
1 Like
