Thread: Another Post About McDonald's!

Originally Posted by Pravit

Friend, the next time you're an ethnic minority, you can call yourself whatever you would like. What's with this idea of "wrong kind of minorities"? What business is it of yours if a Hispanic wants to call himself Mexican? Out of curiosity, if you emigrated to China and became a Chinese citizen, would you call yourself a Chinese?

The wrong kind of minorities are the kind that don't want to pretend to be white, don't you know?

Originally Posted by Smartdude

I believe I have already posted the McDonald's based conversation...

"What nationality are you," "what ethnicity are you," and "what citizenship are you" are three different questions and potentially could have three different answers. If someone says, " I'm Mexican," he or she could be answering any one of those questions.

Well. If I moved to China, and became a Chinese citizen, i'd call myself 'American' but my children would call themselves Chinese. and thats what im talking about. The great-great-grandson of a guy that immigrated 200 years ago isn't mexican. He's American.

Линдзи - White, American, U.S.A (Citizenship is a country)

(FYI, I'm very conservative)

Hence, I don't like minorities getting special priviliges I am not afforded. (I hate Affirmative Action)
Pravit, statistics suggest you do to.
At my school, I am exposed to a very high percentage of minority. Therefore, I am more sensitive to these issues.

Originally Posted by smartdude

Well. If I moved to China, and became a Chinese citizen, i'd call myself 'American' but my children would call themselves Chinese. and thats what im talking about. The great-great-grandson of a guy that immigrated 200 years ago isn't mexican. He's American.

Линдзи - White, American, U.S.A (Citizenship is a country)

(FYI, I'm very conservative)

Hence, I don't like minorities getting special priviliges I am not afforded. (I hate Affirmative Action)
Pravit, statistics suggest you do to.
At my school, I am exposed to a very high percentage of minority. Therefore, I am more sensitive to these issues.

Uh, the hell? White isn't an ethnicity, nationality or citizenship category. You're not being conservative, you're being obtuse. And statistics suggest Pravit does what?

Sensitive, my left foot.

I'm sure you haven't realized yet, but I'm chasing you around the forums.

Statistics say that Whites and Asians are anti-Affirmative Action.

"In America, American means white, and white means American, everyone else has to hyphenate." -Anonymous.

And I have no idea where I'm lacking in perception. I look around, I read the newspaper, I watch the news. If anyone is obtuse, it is you.

Originally Posted by smartdude

Statistics say that Whites and Asians are anti-Affirmative Action.

Statistics say that women ovulate, yet I'm pretty sure you can easily track down quite a few infertile ladies of traditionally childbearing-age. Similarly, you can track down quite a lot of Caucasian folks (not Caucasian from the Caucuses, Caucasian-social-construct-meaning-Northern-European) who support affirmative action. I would, in fact, be one of them. However, that's not relevant to the fact that this quote:

"In America, American means white, and white means American, everyone else has to hyphenate." -Anonymous.

Is blatantly dumb. Whoever Anonymous is, he needs some careful education. Unless, of course, he is a KKK or other White Supremicist dickweed, in which case he needs to be moved to live in Sierra Leone, where they will teach him an important lesson about being a minority.

"White" is a name assigned to a skin color. It is not an ethnicity. My younger sister is Korean - is her ethnicity "yellow"?

The answer to that rhetorical question is "no," by the way.

I'm sorry, I was misinformed... the quote is...

"In this country American means white. Everybody else has to hyphenate." - Toni Morrison (Jan 29, 1992)

Fine, replace "White" with "Caucasian"

FYI: According to the collegeboard- My race/ethnicity is "White"
Your sister's ethnicity, as we all know, is "Asian/ Pacific Islander"

I won't debate affirmative action right now, but perhaps you have heard of the 'University of Michgan'?

Originally Posted by smartdude

I'm sorry, I was misinformed... the quote is...

"In this country American means white. Everybody else has to hyphenate." - Toni Morrison (Jan 29, 1992)

Fine, replace "White" with "Caucasian"

FYI: According to the collegeboard- My race/ethnicity is "White"
Your sister's ethnicity, as we all know, is "Asian/ Pacific Islander"

I won't debate affirmative action right now, but perhaps you have heard of the 'University of Michgan'?

"White" and "Caucasian" are not fully interchangable, for one thing. For another, ethnicity is an indistinct concept dependent not only on race, but also on cultural background and group affiliation, among other things. Therefore my sister's ethnicity is not really Asian/Pacific Islander, as she has no ties to Asian or Pacific Island culture and heritage. Given the (antropologically and biologically incorrect but commonly used) definition of race, her RACE could be categorized as Asian/Pacific Islander. The reason colleges and other groups call this choice grouping "Race/Ethnicity" is that they also often include such choices as "Latino/a" or "Chicano/a," which are not really racial groups, arising as they do from a combination of "races." They are ethnicities. Hence, the "Race/Ethnicity" header, encompassing both. White is not an ethnicity. It can be considered, according to the commonly used albeit biologically unfounded terminology, a race.

Also, I believe that I have read the article from which that Toni Morrison quote was taken. If you can locate the article and I am proven incorrect, I'll conceed that she's being dumb, but as I recall, she is saying that this state of affairs (that when one says "American," others assume they mean "white") is wrong. That it's a stupid assumption based on prejudiced cultural baggage.

Yeah, I tracked down that Toni Morrison speech. It's referenced in several of my texts. She's not advocating the position. She's criticizing it and trying to open the public's eyes to this lamentable de facto definition.

Using that quote undermines your point more than supports it, I think.