@comrade_Comrade And added to that is that "race" doesn't exist except in people's minds, and people's minds sort out other people as "in-group" or "out-group" in any number of ways. Prejudice is a different matter, because everyone pre-judges other people based on what they know and what they've experienced. There is a certain kind of person I encounter in my neighborhood that I try to avoid, because I pre-judge from that persons looks and behavior that he's probably going to hit me up for spare change.
As I said, a hundred years ago in the US, Italians and Jews were considered "non-white" and treated as such. Now, Italians are like any other Europeans, and Jews are in a special category with a special kind of prejudice. This is why we distinguish between "racism" and "anti-Semitism" these days.
According to the government guidelines, people who came from, or whose ancestors came from, North Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia (Arabs, Persians, Turks, and the like) are in the same category as people from Europe. But I don't know too many Americans who would look at an Iranian and see a white guy. It used to be that there was a single category for "Asian or Pacific Islander", which included anyone from India to Hawaii, but I guess someone complained, because now it's two file folders: "Asian" (Far East, Southeast Asia, or Indian Subcontinent, it says right here) and "Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander". They still have a single category for "Native American or Alaskan Native", which doesn't make much sense, either.
At least the government is enlightened enough now to recognized mixed ethnicity, and most racial checkboxes allow one to check off more than one box, allowing a person with, say, a Chinese father and a Norwegian mother to check both "White" and "Asian", instead of having to chose just one.
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@comrade_Comrade And added to that is that "race" doesn't exist except in people's minds, and people's minds sort out other people as "in-group" or "out-group" in any number of ways. Prejudice is a different matter, because everyone pre-judges other people based on what they know and what they've experienced. There is a certain kind of person I encounter in my neighborhood that I try to avoid, because I pre-judge from that persons looks and behavior that he's probably going to hit me up for spare change.
As I said, a hundred years ago in the US, Italians and Jews were considered "non-white" and treated as such. Now, Italians are like any other Europeans, and Jews are in a special category with a special kind of prejudice. This is why we distinguish between "racism" and "anti-Semitism" these days.
According to the government guidelines, people who came from, or whose ancestors came from, North Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia (Arabs, Persians, Turks, and the like) are in the same category as people from Europe. But I don't know too many Americans who would look at an Iranian and see a white guy.
At least the government is enlightened enough now to recognized mixed ethnicity, and most racial checkboxes allow one to check off more than one box, allowing a person with, say, a Chinese father and a Norwegian mother to check both "White" and "Asian", instead of having to chose just one.