Re: OT Academia (was Re: Dr. Gunn)

On Wed, 2002-07-10 at 07:03, Nik Taylor wrote:
> J Y S Czhang wrote:
> >     BTW I am skeptical of racial categories like "White" and "Caucasian"...
> > these classifications have always been rather conveniently flexible
>
> I don't see how it's any less valid (or more valid for that matter) than
> "Black" or "African-American" or "Asian" or any other racial category.
> Racial categories are, by their very nature, arbitrary, and describe,
> not biology, but culture.  If a group sees themselves as a single racial
> group, then they are a single racial group.  As far as I can tell, there
> are only 3 semi-objective racial categories on Earth, Native American,
> Afro-Eurasian, and Australian, those being the three major land masses
> which have historically been mostly isolated from each other, but with
> interbreeding inside themselves.
I'm sorry. I'm Australian, but I would've thought I get classified more
as Afro-Eurasian. The (PC) term for Indigenous Australians is Indigenous
Australians (or Indigenous Australians and Torres Straight Islanders, if
you want to include the latter group). Just like you distinguished
between Americans and Native Americans there. Which group to the Oceanic
people---Maori and Tongans and so forth---fit in? But are you sure
Afro-Eurasian is *really* one group??

Tristan.