Some people have an out dated and very American view of race and racism. To them it’s about skin color. They think races are linked to skin tone differentiation and that racism is about judging people based on skin color. Obviously that’s a narrow and wrong headed approach to the subject, but the view still persists in the less progressive corners of the U.S.
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Mod note: Not sure if it’s even possible at this point, but bring back on topic. Cheers!
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Sure. But black people can’t swap passports and avoid discrimination that way, which is why being identifiable based on your appearance is an important factor in a lot of racism.
I didn’t say it had to be skin colour: I said that at its core it’s about “readily identifiable and distinguishable group[s] of people.” Obviously skin colour is an easy way distinguish groups of people, but it’s not the only way. With traits that are less obvious, however, there is a greater chance to make an impression on grounds other than your membership in that particular group.
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If you insist:
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We didn’t sing that at my father’s funeral (or my Grandfathers), but we did shots over their graves…
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Taxonomy is always controversial.Meta-taxonomy even more so.
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Then you should have known better than to use that example. When residents of a country fight over many generations for the right to be acknowledged as a separate group – whether Basque, Kurd, Saami, First Nations, or Quebecois – they’re not appropriate examples of ethnicity no longer being an important component just because a country has become diverse.
Neither are the Jews. Or the Roma. Or black people. Or white people.
It turns out that genetic variation among humans doesn’t fit into the traditional racial classifications, or any racial classifications.
It also turns out that racists have never been limited by reality. Consider that the Nazis slaughtered the Roma in the name of Aryan racial purity, when Aryan/Iranian is a linguistic category closer to Romani than to German.
It is also pretty likely that the term bigot comes from a French Catholic/Trinitarian religious slur against non-Catholic and non-Trinitarian Christians.
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There are more than three ethnicities in Canada, and I didn’t say that ethnicity was no longer important. But even in Quebec, the concept of pure laine Quebecois becomes less relevant by the year, and it is exactly this trend of increasing multiculturalism and cross-culturalism that I was explicitly referring to. Families, individuals, and communities are increasingly mixed, old ethnic identities are being eroded, and previously uncommon ethnic mixtures and identities are becoming increasingly common. This doesn’t mean that Quebec is not a distinct society or that First Nations identities are different again.
I think we’re more or less on the same page there and I certainly wouldn’t want to claim that anything I experienced was comparable to racism against black people. However, my point was that racism is not insignificant when you feel discouraged from being proud of your culture or even speaking because your accent will give you away, even if you can hide it because you don’t necessarily look any different. In my case a lot had to do with the fact that I was new and a bit shy; there was another Irish guy who was more confident and had been in the school for longer and didn’t seem to have too much trouble.
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