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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   27882 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 30, 2025

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Zohran Mamdani, who claimed to be black to get into Columbia and is probably going to face zero consequences for it.

Ironically, this could be called a lie. Per the NYT article

But as a high school senior in 2009, Mr. Mamdani, the Democratic nominee, claimed another label when he applied to Columbia University. Asked to identify his race, he checked a box that he was “Asian” but also “Black or African American,” according to internal data derived from a hack of Columbia University that was shared with The New York Times.

This is a man born in Uganda, and lived in South Africa through his early life.

Whether or not he's African American, and likewise with similar non-black Africa > America immigrants is a difficult question given that he literally is an African who became an American, and it's really hard to even think of an alternate term to call them along the lines of what we would call other groups! Like do we say "African-place Americans" instead to make the distinction clear? I'm not sure what the alternative even is here, we clearly don't have an established alternative.

This is realistically more the fault of terrible and misleading categories that are culturally outdated. It is weird, unintuitive and often nonsensical nowadays that Black people who have been living in South America or Europe for generations are considered "African" but someone literally from Africa isn't. And it makes for an interesting question, why do we call them African until they move then?

And if we want to say "well that's because they were originally African" or something, then it's a rather arbitrary cutoff that originally only applies to the great grandparent or great great grandparent or great great great grandparent (depending on the person's particular heritage) but is also a moving definition that applies to the great(x4).grandparent next and so on and so forth to where you could be great(x20) grandparent heritage now and be African but someone with great(X2) heritage now isn't, and also doesn't include we're all from Africa originally so why is there a cutoff to begin with then? Does that mean a black person in the year 300000 will no longer be considered African anymore because we've hit the time limit on African heritage? It doesn't make things much less confusing or weird.

I'm not sure what the alternative even is here, we clearly don't have an established alternative.

The alternative is exceedingly simple. "African-American" is commonly understood to mean American Descendants of Slavery, not Elon Musk. If the majority of your ancestors weren't enslaved Americans, you're not "African-American" and thus not entitled to any of the affirmative action schemes intended to benefit that group. You're just "African", and that's how it will be until race/ethnicity-based affirmative action schemes are totally abolished.

The alternative is exceedingly simple. "African-American" is commonly understood to mean American Descendants of Slavery, not Elon Musk.

We can not expect every single person to have been exposed to everything and culturally absorbed this in their life, especially when it is so unintuitive. Like that XKCD comic that's pretty famous, there are a lot of people out there who don't have or never experienced "everyone knows" situations.

So if your category is unclear and inconsistent, and other more intuitive interpretations clash with the culturally accepted one, then you are inevitably going to land on a bunch of people who use it "wrong".

You're just "African", and that's how it will be until race/ethnicity-based affirmative action schemes are totally abolished.

So he's an African, and he's an American, but he's not an African American? Certainly you can understand how that at face value looks incredibly stupid right?

Certainly you can understand how that at face value looks incredibly stupid right?

The more obviously stupid the thing is, the greater the power flex it is to do it. This is why it only works in one direction.

Humorously, Westerners also tend to say 'African-American' even when the subject is not American- because the American propaganda (which they all consume) all says "but describing someone in the most obvious way is Bad, Actually". Capitalizing 'black' is the same thing.

"African-American" is commonly understood to mean American Descendants of Slavery, not Elon Musk.

No, it means "Black" (implication: description + privilege). As a bonus, this works on the entire West, since you can't be ADOS without being A (and it's a great way to tar cultures that were never racist with the same brush they use domestically).

We can expect it when it comes to the social justice issue that Americans are beaten over the head with more or less continuously. Being allegedly so "out of the loop" that you don't understand what "black American" is typically understood to mean should be an automatic disqualifier for college admission.

Torturing definitions for "face value" to pursue personal gain is undesirable behavior, as is the widespread acceptance of this in elite institutions because they'd rather dole out patronage to like-minded individuals even if it makes a mockery of the patronage's alleged purpose. Yes, "African-American" is an arbitrary definition if one is sufficiently pedantic, but a naturalized citizen born in Africa and a black American from Alabama are obviously not the same thing. Eric Adams is a son of black Americans from Alabama. Ask a high-school educated adult from Mississippi which one is "African American". That's the intuitive interpretation.

I guarantee you that every progressive, and Zohran Mamdani especially, 100% understands the "rules" for calling yourself African American.

Yes and they understand identifying as African American or native when you aren't really is consequence-free. Conservatives can mock Elizabeth Warren all they want, her progressive supporters don't care that she is a fake Indian.

The category "African-American" is neither limited to American Descendants of Slavery nor does it include Elon Musk. The Census definition is "A person having origins in any of the Black [sic] racial groups of Africa."

So it's pretty clear that neither Mamdani nor Musk is "African-American", but Obama (regardless of whether there's really a slave in the family on the white side) is.

IMO the census definition should be made more specific to include ADOS and ADOS alone, but "Obama, not Mamdani or Musk" is close enough.

The category "African-American" is neither limited to American Descendants of Slavery nor does it include Elon Musk. The Census definition is "A person having origins in any of the Black [sic] racial groups of Africa."

Not only is this silly in that it declares government to be the final arbiter and definer of race, it doesn't even work out well when governments themselves disagree on these types of definitions.

Check out the status of groups like the Brazilian or Portuguese Americans for instance.

For the Portuguese, whether or not they are officially Hispanic depends in part on the state they live in.

Some states, such as Florida, categorize Portuguese Americans as Hispanic, while others, such as California, do not. In a few places, including Massachusetts, laws and regulations treat them as a disadvantaged group for at least some purposes.

Is ethnicity really a concept that is state defined? Does a person's ethnicity really change if they move from California to Florida?

Brazilians are even more confusing, they aren't officially considered Hispanic or Latino either, and yet it seems more than two-thirds of them define their identity that way

This is more people than some traditional Hispanic groups!

In fact, enough Brazilians identified as Latino in 2020 that they would fall in the middle of rankings of U.S. Hispanic or Latino origin groups by size, if they were officially counted as one. In 2020, Brazil would have been the 14th-largest Latino origin group with 416,000 who identified as Latino, ahead of Nicaragua (395,000) and below Venezuela (619,000).

It even changes constantly in this list of racial prerequisite cases on who is determined white

Syrians, Asian Indians and Arabians are both white and not-white. Mexicans btw in the single case for them are white.

Chinese aren't white, but they do get a pass in Jim Crow Era Mississippi to attend the white only schools and join the White Citizens Council so it seems even that isn't fully clear!

Throwing up a lot of words as a smokescreen doesn't change that Mamdani's claim was well out-of-bounds. The category "Black or African-American" isn't nearly as ambiguous as "Hispanic", and neither extends to people of Indian ethnicity born in Africa. Historical changes in the meaning of the term "white" don't matter either, because none of them would make a person of Indian ethnicity born in Africa "Black or African-American" either.

Throwing up a lot of words as a smokescreen doesn't change that Mamdani's claim was well out-of-bounds.

There are people who have called Elon Musk, who is much pastier in skin color an African American before!

The category "Black or African-American" isn't nearly as ambiguous as "Hispanic", and neither extends to people of Indian ethnicity born in Africa. Historical changes in the meaning of the term "white" don't matter either, because none of them would make a person of Indian ethnicity born in Africa "Black or African-American" either.

If every other category we use for ethnicity and race is fuzzy and ambiguous, how is that not relevant?

This argument still doesn't address the elephant in the room, it is patently obvious that the term "African American" for darker skinned people doesn't make sense when a light skinned person whose family has lived for generations in Africa and practices local traditions does not count when they move to the US but a dark skin person whose family has lived in France for generations and has no African cultural identity does.

If there's a major discrepancy between category and reality, what does that suggest? The problem is categories.

There are people who have called Elon Musk, who is much pastier in skin color an African American before!

Yes, it's a common joke. But everyone knows it's a joke, and Musk didn't fill out any official forms claiming to be African American, at least not that anyone knows.

If every other category we use for ethnicity and race is fuzzy and ambiguous, how is that not relevant?

Because the existence of ambiguities at the edges of categories does not mean there aren't unambiguous cases. Especially ambiguities in DIFFERENT categories.

This argument still doesn't address the elephant in the room, it is patently obvious that the term "African American" for darker skinned people doesn't make sense when a light skinned person whose family has lived for generations in Africa and practices local traditions does not count when they move to the US but a dark skin person whose family has lived in France for generations and has no African cultural identity does.

There's no elephant. Mere darkness of the skin is not sufficient. Culture has relevance to Hispanic ethnicity, but not the racial categories. And Mamdani's family hasn't lived for generations in Africa; both his parents were born in India, and his mother grew up in India.

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