Re: Whiteness?

On Mon, 4 Sep 2000, Raymond Brown wrote:

> But tho terms like European-American, African-American (and, presumably
> Asian-American, which IMHO is pretty vague) are obviously used - whether
> rightly or wrongly - I can't help thinking that there seems to be a greater
> concern with the "pluribus" and too little with "unum" in "e pluribus
> unum".
A temporary overcorrection, I think.  We spent a lot of time emphasizing
the "unum" to the point of persecuting people who didn't fit.
The "melting pot" metaphor did a lot of damage.  Me, I like the
Canadian "mosaic" metaphor.

> Would someone whose family has lived in the UK for three or more
> generations but whose skin happened to be blackish get classified as
> European-American if s/he settled in the US and got US citizenship?
Officially there is no such classification: the term the Census Bureau
uses is "white".

> Similarly would a 'white' Zimbabwean get classified as African-American.
> IF NOT, WHY NOT?
A group of Jews once sued in this country to have Jewishness treated
as a racial classification (i.e. no legal justification for using it
in hiring, promotion, etc.) *not* because there is a Jewish race,
but because Antisemites *acted* as if there were.  They lost on the
merits, but not because of their theoretical standpoint.

--
John Cowan                                   cowan@ccil.org
"[O]n the whole I'd rather make love than shoot guns [...]"
        --Eric Raymond