(08-25-2017, 11:35 AM)Kinser79 Wrote: (08-25-2017, 02:21 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: I have no use for PC shackles upon language. If I use PC language, then it is in an effort to be polite.
"Not-PC" is often a euphemism for grossly-crude and deliberately offensive.
Really? Do you realize that the SJW types are trying to say that milk is racist? Yes milk apparently is racist, it has something to do with lactose intolerance being more common in non-whites than whites. Yet all races have a copy of the lactase persistence gene. But then again these same types also say that the late solar eclipse is racist...so there is little that can be said in their defense.
Being Not-PC is not the same as being grossly crude or deliberately offensive. That being said sometimes being grossly crude and deliberately offensive is required. As for me I can think of nothing more offensive than calling a black American an African-American. I you disbelieve that call a Jamacian-American an African-American sometime. He might explain to you the difference after he is done "whoopin' yo ass".
Here, for genetic or genealogical shorthand, "African" implies ancestry from populations from sub-Saharan ancestry. It excludes Caucasoid population of North Africa (such as Arabs and Berbers) and descendants of recent non-African immigrants to Africa. Thus a South African citizen whose ancestors are from the UK, Netherlands, India, and China is not black.
"Black" in America does not mean some homogenized monolith. The legal limit may be the one-drop rule, in which I (and I have no obvious connection to any African-American population) suddenly find myself 'legally' black should I discover an African ancestor either through genetic disclosure or through genealogical discovery. I have two ancestors who I suspect may have African ancestors because of surnames associated with people secretive about their ancestry but who merged into the white population in the late 18th or early 19th century. A more practical definition is that one is black if one is easily confused with being black. Someone successful at passing as anything other than black is not black. But this includes people on an ancestral spectrum from entirely of African origin to persons as little as 1/16 African origin. Someone like Ms. Unmentionable who is cosmetically black is black if she has denounced the ethnicity in which she has been born.
Without question, Harry Belafonte, Barack Obama, Tiger Woods, the late Celia Cruz, Rashida Jones, and Paula Patton all identify as 'black'.
"Cuban black" may suggest that one has more in common culturally with a Cuban identified as white, like the late Desi Arnaz, than with some African immigrant, a Haitian-American, or with "Jamaican black". What distinguishes blacks of slave origin in America from other blacks is the complete obliteration of any African culture. Any attempt by someone descended from enslaved Africans in America to Africa is artificial and even potentially fraudulent.
No achievement makes one "white" other than successfully identifying oneself as "white" -- not even being President or winning a Nobel Prize. In America, 'biracial' means black if an obvious part of that ancestry is black, no matter what else one is. Derek Jeter is thus black.
But I am likely telling you nothing that you don't know already. Were I to take one of those genetic tests and find out that I am about 1/16 of African ancestry I would not deny the result; I would simply recognize its practical insignificance. It would not give me cause to quit listening to Beethoven and start listening to rhythm-and-blues. Race is not culture. A black child can be raised as a typical German-American by German-American parents.
Lactose intolerance is a medical reality associated heavily with ethnic origin. Basically, add dairy to Chinese cuisine and you have... Italian cuisine. Lactose intolerance is rare among Italians, but normal among Chinese. And, yes, it is best to make sure that organ transplants and even blood transfusions are made to compatible people to avoid great risks of rejection. Genetic difference goes far beyond the superficial characteristics of 'race'.
And, yes, the only people who have a valid role in discussing race except as a personal or sociological function are geneticists and anthropologists -- and as a rule they recognize the great ambiguities of 'race'. Most of those who discuss 'race' do so with malice. 'Race' is the most superficial of human characteristics, and I assume practically nothing from the highly-visible markers of 'race'. Not ability and not character, and not even taste in music.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
