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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   31233 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 9, 2023

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Do you consider Lionel Messi white?

I was answering the survey on slatestarcodex and wasn't sure how to answer the ethnicity/race question: "what race do you consider yourself?" or something like that, having anwserer "Other".

I had always pattern matched the skin color and that's it for "black" and "white". But recently I heard two comments form an American and a Russian considering themselves "white" and people from Latam as white as Messi or the Pope, not white. Maybe "Latino"? but I don't think this means anything else than the geographical place of origin, why not both?

I'm supposed the label have a different connotation for them but I also have the suspicion it's a status mark for many (just from what a Russian friend said, but not sure)

I consider both Haile Selassie and Narendra Modi White, so Lionel Messi is White.

I am intrigued by your definition of white, have you written more about it elsewhere?

If you come from an ethnic group that historically speaks an Indo-Aryan or an Afro-Asiatic language, you are probably White. There are lots of some obvious exceptions to this rule, like the Hausa, the Somalians, the Basque, the Finns and the Hungarians and the various tiny Caucasian language families.

Nilo-Saharan or Niger-Congo? You're Black.

Yes, the definition is kinda like the Cube Rule in being deliberately provocative and tongue-in-cheek, but at least it answers the question better than Potter Stewart ever could.

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