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

> >J Y S Czhang scripsit:
> >Hmm, some of the first Cantonese to encounter "White-skinned", Pigment-
> >Impaired Folk thought these so-call "Caucasians" were ghosts, too...
> John Jotted;
> If Alex Haley is to be believed, so did his African ancestors.
Barbara Babbles;
Most Black Africans called "white" folk "the skinless ones". Now Ghosts
I could understand as dead bodies go lighter as the blood pools and get
a pasty grey - not far off white, but "Skinless" I'd associate with a
LOT of blood (yuk). The Japanese however saw europeans as cat-like, and
both they and the Chinese thought all europeans were red-heads! Although
these were the least derogatory of the names they had for europeans.
"Big Noses" was the chinese favourite when they singled out europeans
from all the other "foreign devils".
> > Do "of European ancestry" or "Eurogen" sound like reasonable
> > alternatives in order to describe ancestral origins/biocultural
> > background (instead of so-call "racial categories")?
Ditch ancestry altogether; it still implies "breeding" and thus carries
all the inferiority/superiority baggage with it. In the ancient world no
one would have understood "race" as we do today. Culture was much more
important; eg; if one grew up in ancient egypt it was where you grew up,
what culture you practised, and what language you spoke as a first
language that mattered. eg; you might have been born a Libyan, minoan,
bedu, etc, etc, but if you fulfilled the above conditions you were an
egyptian. In other words your ancestry had nothing to do with it.

As someone who's lived on both sides of the pond I find americans *much*
more preoccupied with "race" than other folk in the world (this is not
to say the preoccupation does not exist elsewhere, just not as
strongly). In the 50s "American" was a valid identity, for various
reasons this has become less so and americans have turned to their
ancestry or skin colour for a valid identity. Perhaps, just perhaps, the
solidarity the american people showed in the wake of 9/11, will once
again reinstate American as something to aspire to for the residents of
the USA. Who Knows. I for one would be glad to see the proliferation of
politically correct ****-american-isms vanish into oblivion they
deserve. A british fortean researcher quipped about a US dominated
poltergeist research list he was on "It's getting so you can not say
anything without *someone* being insulted, pretty soon we'll have to
stop saying poltergeist and have to say apparition americans!"

Barbara
(retiring to lead/concrete bunker to avoid flack <g>)



>
> Sounds good to me.  In Grandmother Little Bear Woman's latest story suite,
> _Birthday of the World and Other Stories_, the term "Chi-An" is used for
> people of Chinese ancestry.
>
> > Hanuman Zhang, Sinogen and sympathetic supporter of the Beige Race Liberation
> > Front and their tongue-firmly-in-cheek struggle to have a
> > "Beige/Multi-Racial" category in/on US census polls and all other public
> > documents
>
> Sounds good to me, as father of an "Other" (a brown-skinned person of
> Hispanic descent who has no Spanish language or culture).
>
> Avery Brooks, the actor who played Sisko on ST:DS9, insists on being
> called brown rather than black.
>
> --
> One art / There is                      John Cowan <jcowan@...>
> No less / No more                       http://www.reutershealth.com
> All things / To do                      http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
> With sparks / Galore                     -- Douglas Hofstadter