I am reminded of a friend of mine (Canadian/American) who was a student at Duke University in the sixties and when asked on the registration form his race, he replied "used to". He was accepted. Others I know, when asked about race, answered, "human". Which of course is the essense of the only biologically correct position that there is only one race, though a multitude of ethnicities. Ethnicity, of course, is defined, not by physical characteristics (colour of skin, hair, body shape, etc.) but by cultural aspects and by self-identification. It needs not, of course, culminate in ethnic conflict. It is said that the English "invented racism", originally to characterize the Irish as an inferior race in order to justify the expropriation (ethnic cleansing) of Ireland. That is, the whole concept of racism is a form of capitalist imperialism. As I come from an equally imperialized ethnic group by the English (the Welsh), I sympathize with all other minority ethnic groups. The interesting point is, to what extent can one maintain ethnic identification (including all the music, dance, language, etc.) that define ethnic groups in the midst of homogenizing capitalist society. For Canadians that is just as much an issue of fending off American culture/homogenization as it is trying to maintain an, admittedly tenuous and perhaps artificial, multicultural and multilingual society.
Paul P Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
Interestingly, the questionnaire that Rui asked about gives you only two choices for ethnicity and five choices for race, though you might think that it is easier to divide and subdivide ethnicity than race, the way people commonly understand these two terms. Maybe the idea is that the only ethnicity that will matter in the USA is Latino/Hispanic, for Latinos/Hispanics may be the only group who are sizable and growing and therefore are capable of maintaining their language, culture, etc. in the USA, all other groups and their descendants -- Brazilians included -- already or soon to be mulched into generic Anglo-American culture. -- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>
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