Re: Racial Classification & credit line

Quoting Joe <joe@...>:

> Andreas Johansson wrote:
>
> >
> >>>Another victim of lacking racial classification scheme was an Iranian guy
> >>>I used to know; he had some fairly terrible views about black people, so
> >>>imagine his discomfort at coming to Sweden and realize that to many
> Swedish
> >>>racists, _he_ is black!
> >>>
> >>>
> >>    I have an Aussie friend with a very similar identity problem. He never
> >>thought much of African-Americans, but when he moved to Sydney he found
> >>himself
> >>being labelled Black even tho' he is only "partly Abo" (1/2).
> >>
> >>
> >
> >I was told as a kid that you was supposed to use "black" for Negroes, with
> the
> >result I cannot think of Australian Aboriginals (or Veddas or other dark-
> >skinned peoples of southern Asia) as "black". I tend to exclude Khoisan,
> too.
> >
> >
>
> Really?  To me, Aborigines and Africans both count as black.
Herearounds, political correctness won a fairly pyrrhic victory over common
sense. Not that my usage is ubiquitous in Sweden; as I've already indicated,
you can find Swedes who consider Mideasterners "black".

> I'm not
> sure about Asians, though.  Basically, a person is Black if he has a
> dark skin colour, probably.
The Veddas' skin colour is about as black as you can ask for among human
beings, IIRC. But skin colour is not, for me, the basis for classing people
as "blacks".

                                                     Andreas

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