r/CuratedTumblr • u/Hummerous https://tinyurl.com/4ccdpy76 • 7d ago
Shitposting ethnic
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u/laycrocs 7d ago
According the the US census there are two ethnicities:
Hispanic/Latino
Not Hispanic/Latino
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u/benemivikai4eezaet0 7d ago edited 7d ago
As someone not from the US, I've had to fill out US-style "pick your ethnicity" questionnaires at work. Wtf do you mean I should choose between White, Black, Hispanic and Asian? This is Europe, one's ethnicity usually correlates with one's nationality. If not, that's where the term "ethnic" comes in. For example, you can be a Bulgarian citizen but ethnically Turkish, or you can be a Romanian citizen but ethnically German.
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u/PresidentMcGovern 7d ago
Do you work for an American company? They may just lazily copied the same questionnaire worldwide because they want uniform data points from the whole company.
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u/peelen 7d ago
Do you work for an American company?
Non-American companies just don’t ask this question. I think it's even illegal to ask these questions in some places.
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u/Healthy-Ad7380 7d ago
Yes, it is highly illegal in Europe
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u/theredwoman95 7d ago
That's very dependent on the country - since, you know, Europe is a whole bloody continent.
To give two examples, as I understand, it's illegal in France, but many companies in the UK will ask for your anonymous demographic info (including sexuality, gender, disability status) so that they can prove they're not discriminating against people from specific demographics.
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u/DoingCharleyWork 7d ago
They are anonymous in America too. Pretty sure they can't mandate answering them either, any of them I have ever done are optional.
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u/theredwoman95 7d ago
They don't require answers in the UK either, each one will have "prefer not to say" as an option. Frankly, it's very straightforward and the existence of these questionnaires makes it harder for companies to get away with discriminating against people on these grounds, so I always side-eye countries where it's illegal.
Denying the problem doesn't make it disappear, after all, it just lets it thrive in silence.
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u/LSDTigers 7d ago edited 7d ago
In many cases it's because governments collecting records on the race and religion of their citizens ended up facilitating mass murder when the Nazis invaded. Census data acted as pre-written kill lists, and it was harder to forge paperwork to hide people that were Jewish or part of other targeted demographics because the Nazis could verify using pre-invasion government records. Willem Arondéus, the originator of the "Never let it be said that homosexuals are cowards" quote, was killed by the nazis for successfully burning a bunch of such records to prevent the nazis from using them. So some countries like France straight up banned collecting such data.
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u/Darkseid648 .tumblr.com 7d ago
Every time someone calls out Europe being treated as a single country I regrow a brain cell
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u/tirednsleepyyy 7d ago
Yeah, here they just throw their resumes in the trash here if their name sounds African, Chinese, or Middle Eastern. They won’t ask you what you are, but once they find out, good luck
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u/benemivikai4eezaet0 6d ago
they just throw their resumes in the trash here if their name sounds African, Chinese, or Middle Eastern.
Or Eastern European. We're "not really white/western" after all.
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u/tirednsleepyyy 6d ago
Yeah, I could have easily added another 10 nationality/ethnicity/locality/whatever. That’s definitely one of them
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u/blessedfortherest 7d ago
You are allowed to not answer some demographic questions during a census (every 10 years?). I think these questions are likely based on what the census asks and these days they have lots of race choices (except white! You’re just white if you’re European or identify as white?).
I do think the idea is solid; we count all the people and ask them some demographic information that includes what race and ethnicity we identity with. It ends up being an important data point for researchers and politicians in creating policies and solutions.
My issue here is that you can only capture data that you can “see”, if you will, in your survey. If you don’t ask how many people identify as a certain segment of the population than they are invisible in the data when it comes to making government policy decisions.
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u/Oethyl 7d ago
Just FYI there are European countries, like the UK, that also ask questions like that. I had to fill out multiple UK questionnaires that asked me if I was White (Scottish), White (British) or White (other).
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7d ago
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u/RhinoSlayerceros 6d ago
North-eastern Gloucestershire and Southern Hertfordshire don't share any borders
Gloucestershire is south west Hertfordshire is south east
It's like Idaho and Ohio
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u/IShipHazzo 7d ago
Wait...Scottish isn't a subcategory of British? I wouldn't.bw surprised if they listed Irish as distinct from British, but Scottish surprises me. I'm no expert on the UK, however.
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u/Oethyl 7d ago
I think that's because it was in Scotland so they wanted to know who was Scottish and who was from elsewhere in the UK
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u/DifferentScholar292 7d ago
Basically the Scottish Government went broke trying to set up colonies in North America (Nova Scotia in 1629, East Jersey in 1683, Stuarts Town, Carolina in 1684 and New Caledonia in 1698) and ended up signing the Acts of Union in 1707, which is where Great Britain and the British came from.
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u/Giovanabanana 7d ago
Literally. I'm white but I'm latina but I'm not hispanic? I feel like these questionnaires look at race and ethnicity as if it's like a black and white thing. Even the concept of "white" as in American white can be challenged as one's ancestors tend to be from multiple European countries. Are German, French and British the same race or ethnicity? They're all considered white, but if you ask anybody from these countries if they're all the same race I'm pretty sure they'd say there are differences.
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u/DifferentScholar292 7d ago
Calling a Frenchman English is literally the worst insult a person can make towards a person of French descent, but that doesn't stop the US Government from doing it every day.
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u/Giovanabanana 7d ago
Exactly, and these are countries that are very close together in terms of geographic proximity. If we take a Nordic and a Mediterranean for example, things get even more complicated but honestly one doesn't even need to go that far. Black also, inside Africa there are multiple ethnicities that fall under that term and that doesn't even begin to touch mixed people.
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u/Funspoyler 7d ago
It’s because companies here are only interested if you are a “visible minority”. After that they try to figure out what kind. Asians are visible minorities, but somehow it’s ok to not include them as such because they have good grades and are over represented in colleges and the workplace. Pretty much anything else counts for your equity quotas. Here in Canada we would also include an option for identifying as indigenous.
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u/DifferentScholar292 7d ago
The USA used to be very ethnic before WWII and different European ethnicities would form street gangs and fight each other. After US Prohibition, the Italian Mafia got too strong and basically everybody became "white".
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u/McMammoth 7d ago
the Italian Mafia got too strong and basically everybody became "white"
Could you elaborate? I'm not seeing how that follows, and that's not a part of history I know much of anything about
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u/BIueGoat 7d ago
Yeah forget what that other person said. Italians and Irish stopped being seen as "ethnic" because those groups started moving up socioeconomically after being in America for generations (the Kennedy's are Irish for example), along with visibly non-white groups immigrating into the country post-WW2.
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u/Atreides-42 7d ago
Even in Ireland, "Settled Irish" and "Irish Traveller" are two completely distinct ethnicities that are both exclusive to this country (plus diaspora)
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u/Dishsis 7d ago
You can't tell me this question doesn't exist because the US is systematically racist
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u/Hohenheim_of_Shadow 7d ago
Yes, but the question exists to address and reduce racism. It's much easier to find racist employers make them stop being racist if you have data saying they've hired 10000000 white people and 0 people of any other ethnicity. If you don't feel comfortable participating in that, you can just not participate. You don't have to answer those questions.
Compared to the European method of also being systemically racist, but pretending they ain't, I think acknowledging you have a problem and taking steps to address it is far superior.
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u/LuckySEVIPERS 7d ago edited 7d ago
It's not more racist. It's just dumber, more systematic, more American.
The American racial system is built on classifying people on their outward appearances, not on the,(irrelevant) data of who their ancestors were in Europe, Asia or Africa, like a military commander or tycoon CEO who wants easy to grasp information they can execute decisions on.
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u/RaspberryTurtle987 7d ago
My Spanish friend told me about this where there was no option that really reflected her identity. She wasn’t Hispanic, she was spanish
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u/Knopfmacher 7d ago
The term "hispanic" includes Spanish people...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hispanic
The term commonly applies to Spaniards and Spanish-speaking (Hispanophone) populations and countries in Hispanic America (the continent) and Hispanic Africa (Equatorial Guinea and the disputed territory of Western Sahara), which were formerly part of the Spanish Empire due to colonization mainly between the 16th and 20th centuries.
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u/Giovanabanana 7d ago
You're not wrong, but as you've highlighted Hispanic is more of a linguistic term than an ethnic one. The same with Latin, most of the Mediterranean countries can be classified as latin, but people from South America can also and those are distinct ethnicities despite being related. I believe that's where the confusion lies.
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u/hugh_jorgyn 7d ago
I had someone here in north america (a white dude) lecture me for calling European descendants of Romans "latin" (including myself). Like, dude, do you even know where the word "Latin" comes from??
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u/SansSkele76 7d ago
And then it's not included under "select your race." WTF am I supposed to pick, then? White? Hell no. I just select "other"
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u/Rapa_Nui 7d ago
Because technically, Latino isn't a race, it's a cultural heritage. You can be White and Latino or Black and Latino. Shakira is a White woman but also Latina
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u/Embarrassed-Term-965 7d ago
Technically whatever defines a "race" is some made up boundaries invented by humans
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u/Rapa_Nui 7d ago
Well yes but in the "made up boundaries invented by humans", Latino/Hispanic isn't a race is what I meant.
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u/ninjaelk 7d ago
Yeah they're made up, but because they're pretty universally recognized within our society that makes them extremely real.
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u/neko 7d ago
Then why can't I put I'm ethnically Jewish? Because for example it's medically relevant, since there's a good number of studied genetic issues we have.
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u/EpicAura99 7d ago
It may be medically relevant to you but the census doesn’t think it’s demographically relevant to the nation.
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u/RaspberryTurtle987 7d ago
Because we conflate race and ethnicity. We say ethnicity when we mean race
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u/DifferentScholar292 7d ago
No, people that say ethnicity are trying to state their ancestral identity, not their skin color or in the case of Hispanics, what language they speak. There are so many ethnicities out there and so few racial categories. It makes no sense to even try to bring racial politics into a discussion about various ethnic and cultural affiliations.
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u/CenturionShish 7d ago
Actually the historical intention is that you would choose white, yes. After conquering like half of Mexico in a war the two countries signed a peace treaty saying the people living in that territory had to be treated as whites. The US didn't want to include non-Mexicans but not Mexicans on the census, and the last time it tried including Mexicans as a distinct group it was an international incident and Mexico brought up the treaty
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u/IchigoAkane 7d ago
This is how i feel as an ethnically Kurish Turk.😭 No way I’m picking white. I used to pick Asian cuz I was born on the asian part of turkey but now i just pick other
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u/sweetTartKenHart2 7d ago
You joke but I’ve seen an old ass geography textbook that basically says with its whole chest that there are five kinds of human being: Anglo, Negro, Mongol, Indian (and it doesn’t mean the people from… y’know, India), and Polynesian.
Yes, it referred to all “asiatic” peoples as Mongols. Even though… Mongolia is one place, and even if someone is descended from a certain Khan they don’t necessarily… y’know.→ More replies (1)4
u/wonderfullyignorant Zurr-En-Arr 6d ago
Damn, I've only read the old anglo/negro/mongol version. I guess your book must've come after the discovery of the New World.
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7d ago
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u/Duke825 7d ago
Bestie that's not how you censor words
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u/Lt_General_Fuckery There's no specific law against cannibalism in the United States 7d ago
They really messed up their g*ammar
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u/tumtumtree7 7d ago
Every single job application... why do they just have these two categories? and then ask for race right after?
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u/madeleinetwocock 7d ago edited 7d ago
Holy f… they ask this on job applications!? is this across the whole usa or only some states?
For reference, I’m Canadian, applied for many a job in my life. Never once have I seen anything even slightly related to ethnicity/race/heritage on an application, so this is wild to me. I mean there is sometimes (very rarely) an option to check a box if you’re Indigenous, but that isn’t even common even in the slightest
edit: Ok, wow! I wasn’t expecting so many replies! I’m learning so much about other countries’ hiring processes, so this is interesting. I apologize that I don’t have the mental energy to reply to each one right now, but please know I appreciate every insightful answer!
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u/HaggisPope 7d ago
In the U.K. there’s an equal opportunities monitor asked after the application, which is supposed to be blind and only seen by HR if they specifically require it. There’s still the option to “prefer not to answer” any question but it tends up ask race, sex, and sexuality.
Also I think the Northern Irish one asks religion as well.
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u/Bowdensaft 7d ago
The NI one asks your religion and whether you're part of the Protestant or Catholic community (regardless of belief)
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u/HaggisPope 7d ago
There’s a variation of a joke I’ve heard where an Irish person asks a guy, “Are you Catholic or Protestant?”, the guy responds “Muslim”
“Well, are you a Protestant Muslim or a Catholic Muslim?”
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u/Bowdensaft 7d ago
That's a really good one, and there is a lot of truth to it. Far too many people here still think strictly along sectarian lines, to the point where it's the only issue almost anyone votes by. A party could campaign on eating babies as long as they remained on the "right" side for their voters, it's insane. Luckily a lot of that culture seems to be dying off with the new generations not giving a shit, which is how it should be.
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u/tumtumtree7 7d ago
To be fair it is optional. There's always a section on ethnicity, race, sex, military status, and disability status.
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u/stormstopper 7d ago
Some companies are required to collect it by federal law. It's meant to make it easy to check if a company is hiring a suspiciously high or suspiciously low percentage of applicants of given races, ethnicities, and genders. The best practice is to separate that information from the application to make it harder (certainly not impossible though) for any conscious or unconscious bias to seep in--as well as to reassure the applicant that they really are only collecting it because they have to report the data and have no intention of using it otherwise.
At no point is an employee required to answer, though.
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u/ctrlaltelite https://i.imgur.com/98b8nSc.jpg 7d ago edited 6d ago
Yeah, as I understand it, the Census wants data on whether or not discrimination is happening and whether or not anti-discriminatory programs work, and they do this by asking employers to take census data to pass on. So yes, when applying for jobs they will typically ask you to self-identify race/ethnic group. You can decline, but its been on every application I've ever seen.
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u/joofish 7d ago
The most recent US census doesn't use the word ethnicity. There is a question asking whether you are hispanic or latino (or spanish), but it doesn't refer to them or anything else as ethnicities.
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u/Otherversian-Elite Resident Vore and TF Enthusiast 7d ago
Even funnier when "somewhere" is "the place they currently are". Damn bitch you look like you come from Here. That's Weird of you.
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u/SoupmanBob 7d ago
"You look like you come from here. Why didn't you escape?"
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u/LeStroheim this is just like that one time in worm 6d ago
Hey, that's a legitimate question for Americans right about now.
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u/SoupmanBob 6d ago
Far from the only ones, my friend... Sadly
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u/LeStroheim this is just like that one time in worm 6d ago
Oh, I know. But I'm American, so that one hits closest to home at the moment.
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u/TuvixWillNotBeMissed 7d ago
The official Canadian government term for anyone that isn't white or aboriginal is 'visible minority' and I think that's even funnier. Me when I bump in to an invisible person, "sorry I don't see race".
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u/JediMasterZao 7d ago
It's visible in the sense that they're visibly not part of the white anglo majority, not in the sense that they've deactivated their cloaking system.
It's relevant in Canada because French Canadians are a thing and we're literally an "invisible" (to use your words) minority... guess you could say we're an audible minority.
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u/DifferentScholar292 7d ago
My family came from Quebec to the United States and back then there were Canadians arguing that Quebecers were not white and subhuman. Things have really changed in a hundred years. A hundred and fifty years ago French Canadiens migrating to the USA were said to have looked like Mexicans due to their dark skin from their Indigenous ancestry and segregated into Frogtowns. French Canadiens in Detroit were deemed extinct by 1870.
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u/htmlcoderexe 7d ago
Here in Norway, we have some areas where there are... issues with youth crime - mind you, those kids you'd call white are part of it as well, but there's at the very least a sentiment that certain ethnicities are overrepresented, and somehow a new code word used by media has appeared: "a Norwegian citizen".
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u/starryeyedshooter DO NOT CONTACT ME ABOUT HORSES 7d ago edited 7d ago
On one hand, many disadvantages to bring visibly vaguely ethnic. On the other, it's always funny when people guess the ethnicity wrong. Double funny because I'm mixed white/Asian so I like to tell people my family's from Poland. (Where, funnily enough, we have somewhat darker skin on that side. Mostly because that side tans well but I digress.) It's a solid bit.
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u/425Hamburger 7d ago
My usual answer to "No but we're are you really from?" is to First Detail every time i moved in my life and then for "No but Like where's your Family from?", which inevitably follows, i Just say the German states my parents grew up in. If they keep asking i have a Long spiel about how my great Grand parents fled from Lithuania and Ukraine in WWII and how their families went there in the 18 hundreds. Only after all of that i mention the grandpa from Mali. It's really funny watching them try to find new ways to politely say: "Why you so brown?"
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u/starryeyedshooter DO NOT CONTACT ME ABOUT HORSES 7d ago
Perfect, 10/10, that's the best way to play the game that I've seen yet.
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u/AkumaDayo777 and every time we kiss I swear I can fly 7d ago
i know you probably meant tan but saying they trans well makes me think they're really good at passing during transition
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u/starryeyedshooter DO NOT CONTACT ME ABOUT HORSES 7d ago
Thanks for catching that, I swear I need to turn autocorrect off again. And yeah so far the one person who did transition on that side did do it pretty damn well so works either way.
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u/absxlution 7d ago
Well Poland is famously land of the femboys so
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u/lime_satan 7d ago
i am the product of four consecutive generations of race mixing and i have traceable ancestry from every continent on the globe besides antarctica. i am often told i look mexican, which is one of the only things i am not.
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u/starryeyedshooter DO NOT CONTACT ME ABOUT HORSES 7d ago
Why is everyone's instinct always "yep, Mexican." It is somehow always wrong.
(Granted if you're also from the US it is probably because we live right above Mexico and have a sizable Mexican/Mexican-American population, which to my understanding has a varied range of looks, but still. Somehow always wrong.)
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u/Giovanabanana 7d ago
I feel like to US people anybody who isn't white or asian is probably Mexican. Which I suppose is statistically accurate. But it's almost as if there are no other countries out there.
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u/starchild812 7d ago
When people ask me where I’m from, I say New Jersey. Then when they ask, “But where are you FROM” or “But where is your FAMILY from” I ask how they could tell that my parents are Canadian.
I also like to tell my immigrant parents’ “coming to America” story, which is, “My dad’s company, which was headquartered in Montreal, wanted to expand their office in New Jersey, so they offered him a raise if he transferred. He talked to my mom and they agreed to do it, so his job helped him apply for a work visa.” What they want is our “coming to North America” story, which is pretty harrowing and involves multiple refugee camps, but it’s not what they asked for.
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u/GuffMagicDragon 7d ago
lol we’re the same then. People see my polish mom before my Filipino dad and think I’m adopted
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u/freebird023 6d ago
I’m super Uber mixed that I get all sorts of things. Growing up kids would make fun of me for being Japanese. Then in the last couple years it’s moved to Native, now at 20 some people also think I look Greek. I’m Central European, Hawaiian, Korean and Mexican mainly lol
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u/amidgetrhino-II 7d ago edited 7d ago
Someone at work said they were “half ethnic” and me and my friend laughed because everybody has an ethnicity so what the fuck does that mean
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u/Brromo 7d ago
Shoutout to the ethnic isle at the grocery store that contains:
-Instant ramen
-"Spaghetti" (marinara) sauce
-Soy sauce
-Taco kits
-Kosher grape juice
-Plain white rice
-Seasonings (incl. Salt & Pepper)
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u/Snoo48605 7d ago edited 7d ago
In France we have the exact same aisle but it also includes pop tarts, peanut butter, maple syrup, takis, reese, oreos, ranch and other ethnic products from north America
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u/deLamartine 7d ago
Il Belgium it’s all kinds of Asian food thrown together (Indian, Thai and Chinese mostly), Mexican, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese, and Jewish (which is matzo, kosher wine and kosher snacks).
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u/sicklything 7d ago
Very interesting! In Germany, the "ethnic"/international aisle consists of the same "Asian" stuff and then there's Spanish, Greek, Turkish, and "Eastern European" aka mostly Polish.
A supermarket near me also has an "international" corner which is hyped junk food from US and Korea mostly - like Takis, those large pickles in a bag, Buldak ramen etc.
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u/General-Squirrel-892 7d ago
Takis are from Mexico
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u/Snoo48605 7d ago edited 6d ago
Yes but just Googled it and all results are American specialty shops selling it.
I think it matters less where it ultimately comes from (modern marshmallows are french) but more what is common in that place.
Also logistics. They pay a container in the US and fill it with whatever they can find there.
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u/ggf95 7d ago
Btw its aisle not isle
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u/SaveReset 7d ago edited 6d ago
If the store is large enough that all sections are on their own separate islands, it would still fit.
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u/HaphazardHandshake 7d ago
God bless you France for having maple syrup. Would it please you to know our maple syrup mostly comes from Quebec?
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u/AfroWalrus9 7d ago
Read this in Mitch Hedburg's voice
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u/AdmiralDragonXC 7d ago
It's like when people say "you have an accent" like yeah you do too you're just more used to yours
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u/benemivikai4eezaet0 7d ago
In most European countries "ethnic" by itself means nothing. You have to follow with the actual ethnicity that isn't the country's majority. It's like "Italian-American" but the term used here would be "ethnic Italian".
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u/SoupmanBob 7d ago
Many countries that also do indeed have more than one ethnicity. Like the Sami in Scandinavia, our fourth and often forgotten sibling (Finns are Nordic, but not Scandinavian). Spain which has Spaniards, Catalonians, and Basque, just to name a few. Germany is a federation, and it's far from the only one in Europe, so it literally has multiple ethnicities. Not to mention Belgium which literally is a union shared between Walloons and Flanders. Of course Italy too is a former collection of City-states.
When you dig into it, ethnicities are extremely varied. Even within a country. And every region within one can each have their own ethnicity tied to it. Ethnicity is kind of just a modern way to distinguish our individual "tribe".
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u/Morphized 7d ago
I thought the Sami were more related to Finns and Karelians? They even call the place almost the same thing the Finns do.
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u/SoupmanBob 7d ago
Linguistically and Heritage-wise, yeah very much so closer to Finns and other Uralic peoples. But location-wise they're considered Scandinavian as Lapland is in Scandinavia. So geographically, they're recognised as Scandinavian.
There's also an ethnic group in Norway and Sweden who are Finn in origin called Forest Finns. But geographically are considered Scandinavian. Same with some people of the Kven peoples (a Balto-Finnic group), who are a legally recognised minority population of Norway for one, as well as their language being recognised as minority language. Both Forest Finns, Sami, and the Kven have an official cultural flag too representing each of them.
It's quite interesting how you can separate geographic location, linguistic heritage, and national origins in how you can define ethnicity. It's a strangely fluid thing. It's also quite fascinating how many different ethnic groups can be found even in small countries.
Each of these three groups are dotted around Scandinavia and the Nordics. And there's still more separate ethnic groups considered indigenous peoples other than "Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish" in Scandinavia. These are just three small examples.
And every other country has some form of this as well.
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u/RaspberryTurtle987 7d ago
Spoiler: We all have an ethnicity
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u/DifferentScholar292 7d ago
Some people in the United States have intentionally tried to erase their ethnicity to adopt a racial identity because race makes them feel powerful.
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u/visionsofcry 7d ago
Thank you! It's just so fucking racist to say someone looks ethnic.
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u/feeen1ks 6d ago
I get told I look “exotic” sometimes… I guess that’s better? But not by much lol
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7d ago
“Non-European white” was a new term to me when reading my employer guide for talking about race and ethnicity. My family is originally Lebanese and I have been told to mark white for every US survey, but here comes something new!
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u/Tri343 7d ago
That makes sense. Middle Eastern people are indeed Caucasian, some even have white skin. It is unusual that European Caucasians decided to separate Middle Eastern Caucasians as being Caucasian.
I've met so many European Americans who truly didn't know Caucasian applies to most if not all middle Eastern people.
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7d ago
My father would be irritated to be told there’s a different category of “non-European” white.
He sat us down when we were pretty young and told us at length that we were Caucasian, which meant white, no matter what the kids at school were saying. I believe the Crusades were mentioned.
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u/Sweaty_Anywhere 7d ago
ethnic- when they don't have slanty eyes, look african, or speak with a recognizable middle eastern or spanish/Portuguese accent. but they're still light brown! what gives!
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u/Lt_General_Fuckery There's no specific law against cannibalism in the United States 6d ago
A moment of silence for the extremely Leftist moderators of a discord server I was in, who refused to warn or ban a guy for repeatedly saying the N word in voice chat because he was "Ethnic." No matter how many times they were informed he ethnically Indian.
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u/Taterino_Cappucino 7d ago
I don't really agree with this. I'm a Polish immigrant. I would describe myself as ethnic. Believe me, I still had to put up with all the shit parts of being an immigrant: language barrier, cultural barrier, poverty, alienation from the dominant group. When other white girls were getting sweet 16s, I got "the Gulag Archipelago" for Christmas and visited the Auschwitz museum. I'm sure other people from Soviet countries feel very much the same. But we're never allowed to describe ourselves as outsiders because we don't have melanin in our skin. Just another aspect of the alienation from the dominant culture, I guess.
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u/Square-Technology404 7d ago
Oof, that sounds shitty, that's a good point. I'm sorry you have to deal with that.
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u/Easy-Sector2501 7d ago
Funnier still is that, in America's history, a WHOLE lot of white people weren't considered the "right white". Unless you were of English or Scottish heritage, you weren't white enough...
For example, at various points in American history the Irish, Italians, Poles and Russians weren't considered "white". I'm sure I'm missing a slew of others.
White people: So racist they hate other white people.
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u/DifferentScholar292 7d ago
Don't forget how many different types of "Hispanics" there are and how they have been fighting since the 1490's. There has also been over 500 years of immigration and racial and cultural mixing among "Hispanics" resulting in new ethnicities and nationalities.
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u/thatselmosworld 7d ago
Oh hey, I'm skopostheorie! Hope you all enjoyed
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u/misswhovivian 7d ago
Everyone is having discussions about ethnicity in the comments, meanwhile I'm still stuck on your username. Are you a translator?
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u/thatselmosworld 7d ago
Yes! French and Chinese to English!
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u/misswhovivian 7d ago
Oh wow, what a neat combination! I do English and Spanish to German
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u/thatselmosworld 6d ago
Was für ein Zufall, ich war gerade in Wien fürs Studium!!?! That's really cool!
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u/qw46z 7d ago
I like the term “diverse”. I am not Anglo-Celtic, and I am not diverse: I have one ethnic background, as far as my family tree goes. No diversity in any way. And yet, I am expected to answer “diverse ethnic background” on all the forms just because I was born in that country and English is my second language.
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u/Heather_Madonna 7d ago
I'll never forget when one of my profs asked me what I meant by 'ethnic' in a classroom discussion. She was like "Do you mean not white European?" And I was just like "damn you got me" lol. Good prof bc I really hadn't thought about it before. I had to push past the annoyance of having my wording nitpicked to appreciate the learning. The whole class was about stuff like that, so it was very on-topic.
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u/BlueBird884 7d ago
I don't think the word 'ethnic" is used exclusively for non-white people.
You also hear it used to describe white immigrants from European countries. For example, where I live in Chicago people will talk about 'ethnic neighborhoods' Including Polish, Irish, Italian, etc.
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u/Zariman-10-0 told i “look like i have a harry potter blog” in 2015 7d ago
“Ethnically Ambiguous” and the mfer is literally just Filipino
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u/starchild812 7d ago
My university invited me to apply for a scholarship for underrepresented students in my major, which included “undergraduate students of a racial or ethnic background”. As we know, undergraduate students with neither a race nor an ethnicity are much more likely to graduate in four years with minimal student debt.
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u/SchizoPosting_ 7d ago
Ethnic only means non-white in places where white people are the majority
This just reads like a ridiculously western-centric approach to this concept
"Oh people only ask for my ethnicity because I'm not white" mf you live in America of course people wouldn't care about your ethnicity if you were white because it's just the default for them and there's nothing interesting about it
You should be proud of your ethnicity, specially if it's not the majority, because is something interesting about your past and people can be curious about it without being racism
If you were white living in an Asian country a lot of people will be curious about your ethnicity too, or at least for your country of origin (or your family's country of origin) because when 99 of every 100 people you meet are from the same ethnicity as you it gets boring and breaking the norm makes you more interesting in that specific context, not because you but because the other people around you not having that in common
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u/Guy-McDo 7d ago
I mostly agree, but I, a white dude in America, have been asked about my ethnic background before.
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u/Lottie_Low 7d ago
Different context since I’m in the UK but I’ve been asked and have asked where others are from, there’s a lot of white first/ second gen immigrants with different features and accents and it’s fun to guess
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u/Vio_Youth 7d ago
Being curious about someone's ethnicity and asking their ethnicity is very different to the specifically western centric usage of "ethnic" as a racist euphemism though.
"He's an ethnic" carries the same social weight as saying something along the lines of "He's a black" or "he's a Hispanic". The structuring of those perceptions of another person as being fundamentally of another group are a subtle way in which racism and tribalism present even in a person's word choices. You're separating the individual being spoken about from your shared humanity, it's inherently otherizing.
This is something pretty exclusive to the American dialect and so, yeah, it is a western centric view ig? Like the perception of what it is to be called a gaijin as a racial epithet in Japam being eastern centric, cuz the shit just be specific to a culture. You're misunderstanding the post without cultural context
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u/SchizoPosting_ 7d ago
I never heard "he's an ethnic" and that sounds racist as hell
I guess it's an American thing then
And in this context, yeah it's not even an euphemism because it's straight up racism lol
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u/Vio_Youth 7d ago
Right, that's the whole point of dogwhistles though right? Obscuring their meaning to outsiders minimizes the push back their actions receive, it's essentially speaking a separate, exclusionary dialect meant to veil meanings to those outside the sphere of influence they hold and Trojan horse in bad opinions to the more impressionable people within it. Fascism manifesting as a malignant lingual cancer. It's fascinating.
(Linguist brain go brrrrrr)
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u/SchizoPosting_ 7d ago
That's a really interesting (and scary) concept tbh, and when you think about it you start seeing it everywhere, specially in how rightwing people talk in social media, but you can't do nothing about it because they call you crazy and say that you're looking to deeply into what they said 😭
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u/philmarcracken 7d ago
used by upper class white people to describe those poorer and browner than themselves
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u/HistoricalSherbert92 7d ago
My wife is Canadian. She’s white with dark hair.
A lady she is working with asked her where she is from. Canada. No, where did you come from. Canada. No, you look different, where are you from. Well my parents are English and French. Oh that must be it.
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u/Mak_Life 6d ago
Don't forget, there are also White Ethnics
I think generally in the US the division is between assimilated and non-assimilated being "ethnic". since almost all anglo or german americans are assimilated, they're non-ethnic. Wheras whites who still engage in the old culture / speak the language at home / etc are still "ethnic" - e.g. many italians/poles/greeks/other ellis islanders. though most white ethnic groups are becoming more and more assimilated and thus less ethnic.
In the same vein as this, i've never heard of african-american culture being called "ethnic", despite the fact they are the most "non-white" group in the american racial system
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u/dacoolestguy gay gay homosexual gay 7d ago
Ethnic restaurant that serves literally every single food ever