Am I the only one who thinks Black / White needs to go?

[vincent_vega_lives]

These terms were devised by separatists who wanted to accentuate differences. No one is "black" or "white" even the darkest or the lightest people.

We are all different shades of the same pigment.

African American is good term for American descendants for Africans, but can be misused. Not all African Americans are "Black" nor ar all Blacks in the US African Americans. Those US Citizens from Northern African states (Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria) and descendant from "White" South Africans can legitimately be refereed to as "African Americans".

I understand that many Americans of African Decent do not know the exact location of their origins as they were brought over as slaves. The same however goes for "Black" Jamaicans, Haitians, Cape Verdians, aDominicans, ect. All descendants of slaves brought to the islands by the British.

Do we really need to officially differentiate people by "race" anymore?

Thoughts for discussion.

[rock]

1. Police find it useful

Same for male/female.

[vincent_vega_lives]

3. Gender is hardly the same thing

While I can see that "Black Male" or "White female" is a lot easier than "Dark skinned male with short black curley hair" as oposed to say "light skinned male with black straight hair", They both say the same thing.

[Missy M]

2. We really don't need to but for some reason people feel the need to...

differentiate. We also do it with Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Hispanic yet there is no reason for it. Most times it makes no difference in what you are talking about.

[vincent_vega_lives]

4. Well now

Chinese, Japanese, Indian are all Nationalities, but not races, and specifically denote where they are from. Hispanic is someone who is decendant from Spain.

That National line, however is now being blurred. For instance...there are now literally "Black Irish" people. African Immigrants to Ireland who's children grow up with Irish accents.

[Missy M]

6. I am talking about Chinese, Japanese etc.....

who live in this country and were even born here. I hear people say it all the time. The Chinese family down the street and so forth. I realize it's a nationality but I'm talking about Americans.

[vincent_vega_lives]

9. Ah missunderstood.

But I think that, if used correctly, may be more accurate regarding their decent, but may or may not be accurate about their "race".

[necklace]

19. Your nationality is what is stated in your passport

If you are born in this country, your nationality is American. Period. When you go abroad that is how we are viewed, regardless of one's race.

All this race/ethnicity crap is a mechanism to keep people divided. At the end of the day, we are all Americans, and we should begin to define ourselves as such. As Whoopi Goldberg once said, "I'm not an African-American; I'm an American!"

The sooner we recognize this, the sooner our race issue will begin to resolve.

[waiting for hope]

5. I agree...

We haven't even mentioned "the differences" with my so who is 5 and in Kindergarten - the ratio is about 50/50 and he has about two good friends he has made - one boy is white and the other is black. I'm hoping that it will be his generation that will become more color blind, more so than now. I think we still live in a culture of fear and hate - now it's gearing more toward religious affiliations.

[Captain Hilts]

7. 'White' and 'Black' are good because they make no cultural assumptions.

'White' and 'African-American' are not comparable terms. And many from the Caribbean and Latin America don't think of themselves as 'African' at all.

So, keep 'white' and 'black'. They're culturally neutral.

[vincent_vega_lives]

8. Hmmm culturally neutral?

How would you define the terms black and white?

[murray hill farm]

10. I like the idea of..

bringing back the term "people of color"...only this time it means all of us...cause we all have some color to us.

[vincent_vega_lives]

12. For some reason "Dark people" has negative connotations

If so why does the tanning industry do so well? B-)

[AtheistInBabylon]

11. Agreed

Totally agree with your original message Vincent. I think it would probably be the most effective way of defeating the problem as a whole. If we put much less stock in symbolically laden words and took them as value free instead, we probably wouldn´t feel so compelled to use them all the time. "That guy over there" or "that Eritrean girl at the office" works better than "He´s white" and "She´s black", merely because of the forced divide that black and white suggest. Better just to call people what they call themselves. Similarly, there´s nothing loaded about someone from Eritrea or, for that matter, Kentucky, unless of course one really is racist or prejudiced.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

13. Whether we want them to or not the terms will change; I see no need to accelerate the process.

50 years ago the word most commonly used where we'd (at least if "we" means people in the UK) use "black" was "negro"; 150 years ago it was "nigger"; I think there was a period when "coloured" was; I believe that in America black is now being replaced by African-American.

Interestingly, so far as I know "white" has been standard usage more or less all along.

The terminology changes. I don't see any compelling reasons why one word is superior or inferior to another, except inasmuch as it causes offence. Unless "black" and "white" start causing offence, I see no need to change them, but I think it probable that they will.

[vincent_vega_lives]

14. What is the purpose of the terminology?

Its original purpose was to divide. To accentuate differences. To catagorize for the purposes of discrimination.

People are not black nor white nor yellow nor red.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

15. I think that's mistaken.

It's purpose is to enable to communication. People had different skin colours before they even had language.

I've heard the argument that "race is a social construct" several times; I think it's a foolish one based on wishful thinking rather than evidence.

Categorising things is *good*, because it enables you to discuss them. If you don't have words for something, you can't talk about it.

[vincent_vega_lives]

16. black and white are colors

that don't exist in the human skin tone.

Race in terms of "color" is a social construct. Race in terms decendancy is not.

[jcrew2001]

17. america

Despite america's diversity and accepting immigrants from all countries, there has been an institutional culture of anti-miscegenation that has preserved racial lines between americans.

But with the growing influx of hispanic immigrants, there is a growing acceptance among the younger generation of inter-racial relationships and this will hopefully end the white/black class wars, but create one American race.

[Dean Martin]

18. I don't know

I think it depends solely upon whether the people in question object to using the terms.