American Identity

[archibaldcrane]

btw if you're to see my family you would think we're polish.

If by looks you're Caucasian, how do you still experience such discrimination here in America?

I feel like I'm missing something.

[Rhinox]

awesome as long as you realize it.


There isn't some secret conspiracy agenda in Arizona.

[Yabby]

Because he's retarded?

[archibaldcrane]

awesome as long as you realize it.

Explain it to me. If you don't "look Hispanic", how do people discriminate against you for being hispanic? Do you have an accent? Manner of dress? Do you wear a sign that says "despite appearances to the contrary, I am, in fact, actually a Mexican!"

[Rhinox]

If by looks you're Caucasian, how do you still experience such discrimination here in America?

I feel like I'm missing something.

It has to do partly because of labels imposed on Hispanics including the term Hispanic and Latino.

For Census 2000, American Community Survey: People who identify with the terms "Hispanic" or "Latino" are those who classify themselves in one of the specific Hispanic or Latino categories listed on the Census 2000 or ACS questionnaire - "Mexican," "Puerto Rican," or "Cuban" - as well as those who indicate that they are "other Spanish, Hispanic, or Latino." Origin can be viewed as the heritage, nationality group, lineage, or country of birth of the person or the person's parents or ancestors before their arrival in the United States. People who identify their origin as Spanish, Hispanic, or Latino may be of any race

The fact that there is a separate categorization for Spaniard conquered land while English conquered territory gets defaulted to just white.

It makes it easier for people who describe themselves to be Hispanic to be discriminated against.

[Rhinox]

Because he's retarded?

nou

Explain it to me. If you don't "look Hispanic", how do people discriminate against you for being hispanic? Do you have an accent? Manner of dress? Do you wear a sign that says "despite appearances to the contrary, I am, in fact, actually a Mexican!"

I never said I was personally discriminated against. Although they can.

surname? Language? and yes accent. It may not be noticeable to anyone in my family but there is a distinct accent.


And when did I say I "looked Hispanic"? I've never said that considering its hard to look 'Hispanic' since Hispanic can mean many things.

Although people think they can just by driving by a majority hispanic neighborhoods and seeing someone of a darker shade of white on the corner or walking down the street..

[Beckwin]

Back to the Mexican vs. American thing for a bit:

Why do Americans seem to take all this pride in the countries their ancestors came from (at least sometimes), but Mexican-Americans only seem to look back to Mexico? Hispanic people are descended from European, African and Native American relatives too - why get all hardcore about being Mexican? There's an ancestry that exists before Mexico even became a country, but I've yet to meet a hispanic person who knows their roots like most white people do.

Donde Esta your Árbol genealógico, Mexico?

I think it has a lot to do with historically wealthy groups/families and those of lesser socioeconomic status. A lot of this probably falls along skin shades.

You're aware of the Spanish missions, right? After Spaniard and Natives started miscegnation resulting in Mestizos, there were broad efforts to eliminate native culture/heritage (similar to what we did with Native Americans in the boarding schools, etc). So there goes half of the ancestral awareness (not to mention that these great civilizations were completely wiped out. 100% gone). But the ruling class probably didn't want the Mestizos to claim proud, precise Spanish heritage either, so a lot of that knowledge went away too (think of how it's taken centuries and technological advances for African Americans to trace their roots to Jefferson).

When their history was pretty much wiped out, what they created in Mexico is all they had to look back to. Similar to African Americans. In later years there have been various degrees of renaissance among both groups in regards to their pre-colonial/slave pasts (don't tell me you live in SoCal and have never seen Aztec tatoos/window stickers, etc), but it only exists as a small glimmer of what was left behind.

[archibaldcrane]

I never said I was personally discriminated against. Although they can.

surname? Language? and yes accent. It may not be noticeable to anyone in my family but there is a distinct accent.

And when did I say I "looked Hispanic"? I've never said that considering its hard to look 'Hispanic' since Hispanic can mean many things.

Although people think they can just by driving by a majority hispanic neighborhoods and seeing someone of a darker shade of white on the corner or walking down the street..

Was mainly basing it off this:

As some of you might have surmised I'm Mexican-American. I might be American but its really in name only. I Identify myself as Chicano simply because I feel forced to it. I can go around saying I'm an American all I want but its not what people will see when they see me so fuck it.

You sounded like "no matter what I do, I'll just be a dirty spic to them so fuck it"...but it doesn't seem like that's the case for you personally.

Obviously I like to troll you about this because you're hilariously sensitive about it, but seriously - you don't feel discriminated against by your own admission, yet you want to rep "chicano pride" super hard and don't feel accepted as an American?

It's...


...weird.

[Rhinox]

Was mainly basing it off this:
You sounded like "no matter what I do, I'll just be a dirty spic to them so fuck it"...but it doesn't seem like that's the case for you personally.

Obviously I like to troll you about this because you're hilariously sensitive about it, but seriously - you don't feel discriminated against by your own admission, yet you want to rep "chicano pride" super hard and don't feel accepted as an American?

It's...


...weird.

Because I'm a Chicano. I'm not overly sensitive but I will call bullshit when I see it.

Language, Surname, and accent. Maybe I wasn't clear when I first said what I said in that first quote but its pretty obvious what I meant.

[BerenTebogo]

Relevant to this thread:

Actual science:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science...5a53e725192ffd

Summary of science:

Racial bias weakens our ability to feel someone else’s pain


You’re watching a video of a needle piercing an anonymous hand, sinking slowly into the web between the thumb and index finger. You wince as you imagine the pain that the other person must feel, and for good reason. As you watch, you nervous system essentially duplicates the experience, responding as if you were vicariously feeling the pain yourself. This is typical of what happens when people see others in pain, but Italian scientist Alessio Avenanti has found an important exception to the rule. Racial bias can negate this ability to feel the pain of someone from a different ethnic group.

Avenanti recruited white and black Italian volunteers and asked them to watch videos of a stranger’s hand being poked. When people watch such scenes, it’s actually possible to measure their brain’s empathic tendencies. By simulating how the prick would feel, the brain activates the neurons of the observer’s hand in roughly the same place. These neurons become less excitable in the future. By checking their sensitivity, Avenanti could measure the effect that the video had on his recruits

He found the hallmarks of an empathic response only when the hands in the videos were prodded by a needle rather than a blunt piece of plastic, and only when he took measurements at the same part of the hand. But most interestingly of all, he found that the recruits (both white and black) only responded empathetically when they saw hands that were the same skin tone as their own. If the hands belonged to a different ethnic group, the volunteers were unmoved by the pain they saw.

So are we all just naturally and worryingly prejudiced? Far from it – Avenanti actually thinks that empathy is the default state, which only later gets disrupted by racial biases. He repeated his experiment using brightly coloured violet hands, which clearly didn’t belong to any known ethnic group. Despite the hands’ weird hues, when they were poked with needles, the recruits all showed a strong empathic response, reacting as they would to hands of their own skin tone.

The purple-hand experiment is a vital part of Avenanti’s study. Other scientists have suggested that people are less responsive to the pain of other ethnic groups, simply because their skin tones are less familiar and harder to identify with. But what could be more unfamiliar and less identifiable than a violet hand? It’s strong evidence that the lack of empathy from the first experiment stems not from mere novelty, but from racial biases.

Avenanti also found that the stronger these biases are, the weaker their empathic response. Each of his recruits did an ‘Implicit Association Test’, which looks for hidden biases by measuring how easily people make positive or negative connections between different ethnic groups. For example, white Italians are typically quicker to associate positive words with the term “Italian” and negative ones with the term “African”. And the faster they make those connections, the greater the differences in their responses to the stabbed black and white hands.

The recruit’s bodies betrayed their prejudices in other ways. On seeing the penetrating needles, their skins became moist and better at conducting electricity, a reflexive sign of emotional arousal. The needles evoked the same effect regardless of the hand they pierced, but the response was longer in coming if the hand belonged to a different ethnic group.

All in all, Avenanti says when we see pain befall a person from our own racial group, it immediately triggers resonant activity in our own nervous system. When we see the same event happening to someone of a different race, these simulations are weaker and take longer to form.

It’s a sad state of affairs but probably not an unpredictable one. After all, other studies have found that racial prejudices can make us dehumanise members of a different ethnic group. But more promisingly, Avenanti’s experiments suggest that things don’t have to be this way. Our default reaction, freed from the shackles of prejudice, is empathy with our fellow people, even if they do have freaky violet hands.

Journal article publish in March. Interesting indeed.

[ghanima]

Why is that dreaded? It sounds like you are more than half caucasian by descent. Do you know your mother's side as well as your father's? Hispanic has nothing to do with race - it is not a race.

Like many Cubans are for example, you can be 100% white (caucasian) and hispanic at the same time.

Yeah I know both sides, I'm half caucasian for my dad's side (Polish, Russian, Irish, Yugoslav) and half hispanic (+native american) from my mom's side. I know more about my maternal grandmother's decent (Colombian, Panamanian) than my maternal grandfather (part native american and ...something else) because well, my grandfather is sexist and a good ole' southern boy. I don't really want anything to do with him, much less find out more about him.

It's just really shitty to have people say to you face "you don't look hispanic enough to be hispanic." It's like I'm not allowed to claim any other heritage other than "white," so f that I'll just be an american. :/

I dunno, I'm probably too sensitive about it. I just hate being shoved into a racial or ethnic box just because someone doesn't think I look enough like what they think I should look like.

[Tagus]

I've always felt that with America being the proverbial melting-pot society, it's natural that people will keep some sort of connection in their minds with where their family came from. I'm not really understanding how people could think that it isn't important to be mindful of your history as a human, remember where you came from, and at least pay some sort of respect to your roots by being conscious of such things.

I'm not advocating flying your ex-country's flag out of your car window as you drive down the highway or something, but there's nothing wrong with knowing your family's past.

[Francisco]

I'm a "mutt" - but mostly of Irish lineage.

If asked, I simply tell people I'm Irish. I don't call myself Irish-American. I have several friends who were born here and just refer to themselves as either Irish, French, Italian or Portuguese, etc, etc...

It never caused any confusion, until I told foreign born co-workers I am Irish. A few of them asked me if I ever planned on "going back to my country".

[Sagacious Sundi]

Dutch-Irish. My father was from Wales.

[Kiro]

Dad's side is:

Czech & Sicilian.

Mom's side is:

Black, Native American (Chippewa/Ojibwe/Cree), and Scottish (fucking random).

Mutt I am.


Edit: Don't consider myself an american, just a descendant of people who migrated here / were forced here.

[Linliel]

Australia's a similar thing, with 3rd generation immigrants usually identifying themselves as Australian, though 1st and 2nd gens usually identify themselves as wherever they came from. In Sydney there is the tendency for some communities to distinguish themselves (e.g. Lebanese, Vietnamese, Chinese), but most of the descendants of the migrants from the 50s/60s and earlier generally consider themselves Aussies (in my experience of growing up with a whole load of Aussies of various backgrounds). It seems to me though, that people are becoming more aware of their history and culture, so they want to have some grasp of where they came from. I've certainly felt that moving to Europe -- when I go to England it feels like "historical home" to me, far more than Australia feels to me with its 200ish year old history. Of course Australia still feels like real home to me, cos I love it very much! :D