Are "Whites" an Ethnicity -- or in a convenient non-ethnic 'class' of their own?

I'm 'All-American'

reply to post by BiggerPicture


Unless you are an anthropologist, you shouldn't care. In this case, caring is what makes it a problem.

Ah yes, not accepting a non-truth, is the problem.

Makes perfect flouridated sense, indeed.

Originally posted by cuervo
reply to post by BiggerPicture

 

Unless you are an anthropologist, you shouldn't care. In this case, caring is what makes it a problem.

You're definitely white, aren't you?



(FTR, I'm white and I have a degree in Anthropology. Years ago. I don't use it. But I've got one.)

This thread isn't "racist"? Whites are a social construct? Are you flipping people for real????????

For starters caucasians/caucazoids encompass everything from europe/mid-east/and parts of asia. Whites today refers to all ethnic europeans, including the darkest to the lightest. Aryans along with other proto-whites mark the peoples of europe pre-migration and the people of eurasia that are white, though most europeans won't claim them after the age of islam.

Whites and some asians are a result of coping with the extreme cold weather that confronted them on their eastern and northern migration out of europe. What they lost in physical size they gained in cranial capacity. Whites have achieved countless, historical achievements that are nothing short of amazing throughout the ages. And though, yes, there was bad parts to that history as well for sure, whites have nothing to be ashamed of.

I look white.

But Great Grama Morning Star was 100% Choctaw. And Dad thinks we are part Irish.

It is no ones business what you are. If they ask tell them I said that it is none of their business.

Even if it were simple enough to describe in a one word answer, it does not matter. Those labels only cause trouble as generalizations that are neither accurate nor appropriate.

All of us are a mix, and completely original and unique.

Of course some of us are more unique than others, that one guy, you know who I mean...

The term "white" is the same as using the term "black" to describe the general appearance of people.

There are many of white ethnicities. I am half Eastern Slavic and half Iberian. There are Southern Slavic people (or are they just called Balkans?), Anglo-Saxons, Nordic, etc.

Like calling people "Asian". Someone is described as Asian if they have general characteristics of people of that region, but there is Chinese, and Vietnamese, for example, and they are different ethniticites. They even look different.

So it's just a very general term. More used I think in the USA, where your white people is not native, so it makes logic to refer them as just being like the one thing. I don't know if that makes sense.

Originally posted by wingsfan
Whites have achieved countless, historical achievements that are nothing short of amazing throughout the ages. And though, yes, there was bad parts to that history as well for sure, whites have nothing to be ashamed

So are whites a race ?

or a group of 'white' ethnicities with Fitzpatrick qualifier??

reply to post by wingsfan


Skin color and genetics don't matter so much as the social construct of perceived race. I dare you to go to Brazil, for example, and tell some middle class college kid (that looks like what we would call 'black' here in the US) that he/she is black to his/her face. They would likely think you were attempting to insult them. Race has a whole lot to do with culture.

reply to post by DeepThoughtCriminal


Our terms are all messed up lol. I know of a few black folk, that know their ancestors come from jamaica, but refer to themselves as african american? I have no idea why, they are cool people though.

If it were up to me, we would all ditch the labels, and all just call ourselves humans. But that's just me I think

reply to post by TKDRL


I always wondered about you calling them African Americans. Like, I have been to the USA once. Someone was kind of weird at me for calling them black. But I was thinking, what if they're actually not African? What if they're of African descent, but not American? What if they're, like, British?

So things like "black" and "white" and whatever are just usefull general terms for describing people's physical looks. But you're right, it should not matter at all what somebody looks like.

Fun fact, where I live, they get called that word starting with "n" (which I won't post in case I get banned, forced to put toothpicks under my toenails and kick a wall really hard, and sent to a gulag or something) but here that's not offensive at all here, we just have no idea of political correctness.

reply to post by DeepThoughtCriminal

In NY, it was only the generation before or older that would get upset at that word. The school I graduated from, I was one of two white kids. It was a really bad kids school, most of the other kids came from the ghetto, gangbanging etc. None of the kids had a problem with me saying "What up my nigga", one of their fathers heard me say it, after his son made the same greeting to me and tried to fight me. Things are weird, sometimes it feels like I am in some truman show, and the producers are just messing with my head. I don't understand the world at all most times.

Originally posted by LeSigh

Originally posted by cuervo
reply to post by BiggerPicture

 

Unless you are an anthropologist, you shouldn't care. In this case, caring is what makes it a problem.

You're definitely white, aren't you?

(FTR, I'm white and I have a degree in Anthropology. Years ago. I don't use it. But I've got one.)

White? Who knows anymore? I have African, Cherokee, Irish, and about ten different flavors of Eurasian blood in me so I'm one of those mutt types. My wife is largely Latino so my daughter is just about everything. Maybe it's my inability to identify with anybody else on an ethnic level that keeps me from empathizing with those who want to make it an actual quality to apply value to.

Originally posted by BiggerPicture
As references above, the map of CAUCASIA does not even touch about northern Europe,

where 90% of "white" Americans claim to be originated from.

This is extremely complicated.

People go to college for years to understand it.

The whole deal started thousands of years ago.

The "Caucasian" DNA haplogroup somehow formed in the region.

People migrated all over the place just like all other original humans.

Over 90% of all Caucasoids – people native to Europe, North Africa and the Middle East – are descendants of the same 6 women who lived 20,000 to 30,000 years ago.

Their mtDNA (maternal line) haplogroups are H, J, K, T, V and U. All of them came from haplogroup R, which originated somewhere between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. That region is known as Caucasus, which is why white people are referred to as Caucasians.

East Asian haplogroups B and F, as well as the Pacific haplogroup P also derived from R, but due to the vast geographic separation from the above 6 haplogroups, they became vastly different.

There’re also some white people belonging to haplogroup X (and a small number of I and W), which is why Bryan Sykes referred to Caucasoid mtDNA as having descended from the 7 daughters of Eve.
mtDNA: ‘Caucasian Eve’ Had Only Six Daughters

see a map here (1/4 way down page)



AND, don't forget these guys !!

How closely are Neanderthals related to us?

They are so closely related that some researchers group them and us as a single species. "I would see them as a form of humans that are bit more different than humans are today, but not much," says Svante Pääbo, a palaeogeneticist at the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig, Germany, whose team sequenced the Neanderthal genome.

The common ancestor of humans and Neanderthals lived in Africa around half a million years ago. After that, the ancestors of Neanderthals moved north and eventually made it to Europe and Asia. Our ancestors, meanwhile, stuck around Africa until about 100,000 years ago before eventually conquering the globe. Neanderthals died out around 28,000 years ago.
Neanderthal genome reveals interbreeding with humans

Some scholars have reluctantly talked about the possibility of a "drone hybrid" mix of Cro Magnon and Neanderthal that may have existed 10's of thousands of years ago in Europe and Asia. Some think these were the first "military" breed !!
(not much in writing however - way to controversial as to who the descendants would be today!!)

I wonder how many people today have a high percentage of Neanderthal ?


goggle search haplogroup:
goggle search haplogroup

Originally posted by xuenchen

It seems so complicated to research the topic cause for Europe they so blatantly cut off the haplogroups coming out of Africa/Caucasia for some reason, it just seems so Nazi of them to do so

And again defeats the whole purpose of connecting Caucausus region with Northern Europe...

reply to post by BiggerPicture


A lot of migrations took place because of the ancient trade routes.

Many land and sea routes existed thousands of years ago.

Originally posted by TimesUp
Yes whites are an ethnicity.
However, whites are another level of the genetic update that our creators made.

Some of us were hoping that we'd be able to leave this kind of thinking back in the last century, where it belongs. Maybe you didn't get the memo.

Research your ancestry like I did and go back about a thousand years and you'll see how mixed your family's ethnicity really is.

I was under the impression that my mother's side had Native American blood, only to find out that our Blackfoot relative was actually a white woman from New Jersey! Going a little further back to our tobacco growing ancestors from Jamestown, I found they didn't fool around with the "help". So far in my family research, I'm about as white as I can be, but ethnically diverse with respect to Eastern and Western Europe. So I'd say "white" and "black" refers to ethnicity, but covers a lot of gray.

Who cares about race/culture?

Be happy to be human.

Especially Americans that try to claim an ethnic background when they have never lived in that country, never been to that country, and their parents aren't even from it. You're American, that is it.

Originally posted by RealSpoke
Who cares about race/culture?

Be happy to be human.

Especially Americans that try to claim an ethnic background when they have never lived in that country, never been to that country, and their parents aren't even from it. You're American, that is it.

edit on 10-3-2012 by RealSpoke because: (no reason given)

I guess it doesn't matter.
If dominate traits have their way, one day the entire human race will be brown skinned with brownish black hair and brown to black eyes.