Well, maybe the pendulum from the Dept of Justice is starting to swing to the middle... In reading the article it stated that a civil rights violation investigation has been opened. That would be looking into this as a hate crime, and it would not be a hate crime if the victims were black. So I don't know what race the victims were, I assume mostly white based on the area, but they were not black. Steve

I identify as Briish(Welsh)

And I identify as "American"

But neither is "race"

Well, maybe the pendulum from the Dept of Justice is starting to swing to the middle... In reading the article it stated that a civil rights violation investigation has been opened. That would be looking into this as a hate crime, and it would not be a hate crime if the victims were black.

I noticed that too and thought it interesting.  Of course, it isn't just intimidation, it was an attack, so I don't know why it would matter what the motivation is, just that the crime took place.

So I don't know what race the victims were, I assume mostly white based on the area, but they were not black. Steve

Your assumption is correct.

And I identify as "American"

But neither is "race"

Race refers to a person's physical characteristics, such as bone structure and skin, hair, or eye color. Ethnicity, however, refers to cultural factors, including nationality, regional culture, ancestry, and language. ... You can have more than one ethnicities but you are said to have one race, even if it's "mixed race".

So as a "Race" it is possible to identify as French, Portugese etc as there are certain characteristics that they have


Welsh is a race ( of Celtic Origins if you want to be pedantic) whilst my nationality is British.


Your Nationality is American, but what would you describe your racial heritage as?

I identify as beige.

I do not think that is right Mike, at least not in the US. Or at least not what I learned, back when humans still came in races, which seems to be entirely gone today.

Race is the grouping of humans below the 'species' level; all humans are of the same species but can be of different races. When I was a kid, there were three: Caucasian, Mongoloid and Negroid, in alphabetical order. I believe another was added before the entire concept became 'non- P.C.' in the U.S. entirely, and it was the Aboriginal peoples (not sure of the name of that race).

I think what you are describing is nationality, which is defined by a combination of national borders as well as linguistic and common heritage (learned heritage, not inherited heritage). For example, Germans and Austrians are different nationalities but generally have the same race, although of course an Asian person born or possibly raised in, say, Germany would still be of German nationality and yet of Mongoloid race.

But the great majority of, say, Dutch and German people are of the same race but different nationalities. Ethnicity becomes a little bit more blurred; I think of it as a matter of how far away one stands (from 1,000 meters, Dutch and Germans <are> the same, but speaking with each one yields a different ethnicity of course).

Just to show you how off- kilter things have become in the US regarding issues such as these, my oldest son (34 yrs. old) told me w/in the last year that 'all humans have identical DNA'. Absolutely amazing that he said that, and he really believed it. So I asked him what he thought the chances of he and his significant other (also American, she is of European extraction as is he) of having an Asian child..... and he stuttered and stammered for a while. Then he realized that his initial statement was just plain wrong, our DNA is different.

None of which makes me or anyone else a racist of course, no more than thinking a Dachshund and a German Shepherd Dog are different makes one hate dogs. But we have moved so far away from anything even remotely potentially offensive to anyone that we cannot even state obvious facts anymore.

Brian (to the best of my knowledge: race, Caucasian. Ethnicity, Western European (mostly). Nationality: American. See sig. line for species information.)

Race refers to a person's physical characteristics, such as bone structure and skin, hair, or eye color. Ethnicity, however, refers to cultural factors, including nationality, regional culture, ancestry, and language. ... You can have more than one ethnicities but you are said to have one race, even if it's "mixed race".

So as a "Race" it is possible to identify as French, Portugese etc as there are certain characteristics that they have


Welsh is a race ( of Celtic Origins if you want to be pedantic) whilst my nationality is British.


Your Nationality is American, but what would you describe your racial heritage as?

Race refers to a person's physical characteristics, such as bone structure and skin, hair, or eye color. Ethnicity, however, refers to cultural factors, including nationality, regional culture, ancestry, and language. ... You can have more than one ethnicities but you are said to have one race, even if it's "mixed race".

My point from before still holds.  A country isn't a race or even an ethnicity.  Saying "African American", "Asian American", or "European American" is a very broad term, not at all equal with something like "French American" which is extremely narrow (and small).

So as a "Race" it is possible to identify as French, Portugese etc as there are certain characteristics that they have

Yes, but it is also pretty useless for third-parties trying to identify or describe someone based primarily on just a few physical traits.  Unless one is some type of scientific super-Sociologist/Biologist, one won't know someone's historical (and certainly not recent) country background by just looking at someone.  This is especially true for mixes.  Almost everyone is a mix at one point or another and things are mixing faster and faster each generation due to modern transportation, wealth allowing such movement, and the fortunate breakdown of old taboos.

Your Nationality is American, but what would you describe your racial heritage as?

It depends on how far back one goes.  Last few hundred years- mixed European of some unknown proportions and locations.  Probably British, German, and Dutch; but just a guess (Should I then be "British-German-Dutch-American?").  Several rings on the latter from that, who knows.  Most everyone came from somewhere else.  Native Americans came from Asia.  Asians came from Europe.  Britons came from other places in Europe.   Everyone from Europe came from Africa.  And there have been lots of migrations and movements that overlap and change and lead to some pockets of isolation and others with constant mixing at various points.  So perhaps everyone in the USA are "African Americans"? 

Now that right there is true; all Americans are African- Americans, just like all other humans on the planet, because all homo sapiens sapiens originated in Africa.

Fun fact: the Neanderthals walked out of Africa before Home Sapiens and for a long time were though to have gone extinct. But through modern DNA analysis we know that is not correct; Neanderthals did not die out, they were 'bred- out' by mixing with a much larger group of Homo Sapiens. The really interesting part is that how much of present day man (Homo Sapiens Sapiens) is made up of Neanderthal depends entirely when that race walked out of Eurasia: Caucasian man has between 2% and 4% Neanderthal, Mongoloid man is around 1% and native Africans have NO Neanderthal content at all because they left Africa after Neanderthal was already gone, about 30,000 to 40,000 years ago.

But yeah, all of our ethnicity and historical anchor points depend entirely on when one chooses to fix the time of origin, otherwise "we all" walked out of Africa with one root ancestor.

At least for those who follow the evolution side of things. Not sure how or even if any of this applies to the Intelligent Design school of thought. ??

Brian

<snip>

It depends on how far back one goes.  Last few hundred years- mixed European of some unknown proportions and locations.  Probably British, German, and Dutch; but just a guess (Should I then be "British-German-Dutch-American?").  Several rings on the latter from that, who knows.  Most everyone came from somewhere else.  Native Americans came from Asia.  Asians came from Europe.  Britons came from other places in Europe.   Everyone from Europe came from Africa.  And there have been lots of migrations and movements that overlap and change and lead to some pockets of isolation and others with constant mixing at various points.  So perhaps everyone in the USA are "African Americans"? 

At least for those who follow the evolution side of things.  Not sure how or even if any of this applies to the Intelligent Design school of thought. ??

Oh, lots of ways one can fit in the fact of evolution:

God created matter, energy, physics.
God created the universe with the big bang.
God created the beginnings of life/cells/DNA.

All while perhaps knowing how things would generally, or even specifically, eventually work itself out.

Stuff like that.  It is easy to make God fit into whatever we discover or learn or hypothesize... such is the nature of God- that realm of which we can't define or prove.  And that is fine (works for me, anyway).

Of course, for those who think that God suddenly created modern humans a few tens of thousands of years ago, along with other animals, just "poof" there they are... well, not much fits with that.

Now THAT is topic drift!

I identify as beige.

Get with the program, Rhino.   Get with the program...

This will probably get locked, deleted or moved to the arena, and all of that is fine but I still am going to say (type) this anyway:

Has anyone else noticed the blatant double- standard of the mass media in reporting about the perpetrators and victims' races in news events? )

There is probably a lot of truth in what has been said so far about being P.C. etc etc......but I think that maybe the left leaning media ( which in my opinion doesn't do much fake news {Dan Rather; Brian Williams not withstanding} but definitely slants things by the words they use and the emphasis on certain stories...but that's another thing) had a conscious crisis when it was pointed that they had racial bias when they showed Katrina white survivalist scroungers taking food, and black criminal looters doing the exact same thing as the white survivalists. It's not easy to look in the mirror and see the enemy staring back at you. It may have well been on Fox news too (I don't know as I don't watch it) but it happened a lot in the rest of the media. I don't think they have fully recovered from that, and their persistent embarrassment is effecting their current reporting. ..but then I'm frequently wrong about a lot of things. 

Marty, I do not recall the incident of which you are referring (Katrina of course, but not the black/white food/looting).  Of course, a major reason might be that I very rarely watch the news because it disgusts me so much (sensationalistic, slanted, incomplete, petty, and/or just plain not interesting).  Perhaps your wording is confusing me, would you might elaborating about what happened?  If they were doing the same thing and both were being reported about, what was the bias?

  If they were doing the same thing and both were being reported about, what was the bias?

The labels were the bias, the whites were labeled survivors (i.e. tough, tenacious), the blacks were looters (i.e. thieves and criminals).
Like I said, I don't know if Fox news did it as well, but there were several instances of it called out in the mainstream media at the time.
If I recall correctly it was repeated by several mainstream news outlets just the same way, and none of them changed the captions or even questioned them.
Again, I could be wrong, but I think they are still embarrassed that they didn't catch it and simply accepted it and passed it on.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/05/business/whos-a-looter-in-storms-aftermath-pictures-kick-up-a-different.html
http://www.snopes.com/katrina/photos/looters.asp

To be clear, (I hope?) I'm agreeing with what Brian said, I was just offering what I thought was another factor in the why of how things are being currently reported.

Is this the pic you're talking about?....

The labels were the bias, the whites were labeled survivors (i.e. tough, tenacious), the blacks were looters (i.e. thieves and criminals).

Oh!  OK.  Yeah, that would be wrong to use different labels.  Both were stealing to survive.  During a crisis, "looting" to me is different, a far worse crime because it is stealing but not for survival (things like TV's and computers) in a time of crisis.  Thanks for the additional information.

Is this the pic you're talking about?....

Ah yes the old days, when it was much easier to recognize faked photos and fake news.

Not related to the threads topic directly, but I think how the media and the public take note of whether the President attends
disaster sites is fairly silly. Their presence on scene is all just for show, whether in the air looking down (Bush Jr.) or on site
like Trump....why does it matter?...nothing gets done differently other than local police now have one additional task to perform.
Looking forward to the day when a candidate says " If I'm elected, I promise not to show up at a disaster site for photo ops, but rather
I do plan on picking the right people for the job to report back to me and take charge of the  situation, and to fire them if they can't perform.
I really think photo ops are ridiculous and simply take away from the work at hand. Like the yearly pardoning of the turkeys at Thanksgiving,
lighting Christmas trees, sitting in uncomfortable chairs while shaking hands in front of the cameras etc. Just cut out all the BS and do the job.
I guess more importantly, I hope there comes a day when the public recognizes that such an attitude would be better than continuing the BS
photo ops. Doubtful in my lifetime, with constant tweeting, selfies, facebook photos showing every little mundane detail of peoples lives (i.e.
I made cookies today, there's corn in my poop, etc) it would seem we are headed for even more BS .

OK, I should get out of this thread before I end up in the arena, where I don't want to be. Thanks for listening ...er... reading.

The more they keep it up, the further it divides us.  I'm not sure we'll recover from this. If you're so different, and need such special treatment, find it elsewhere. I'm done playing this game.

My friend used to date an African-American girl. She was white South African who is now a US citizen. That must really confuse people when reviewing an application.