Proposal: four-item cultural/geopolitical categorization for people.

I propose this, for categorizing/profiling people:

• Nationality: Your home country, which should be your country of citizenship. Or, at least, your preferred home country.
• Race: Your skin color. White, yellow, red, brown, black.
• Religion: Your belief system. Valid entries include "atheist", "agnostic", "nonreligious", "spiritual but not religious", "generic [major religion]", and so forth.
• Ethnicity: Your cultural background. Your lifestyle background. Etc.. What culture you identify with.

So, basically, this will allow us to address Aondeug's "Buddhist Catholic" character, whose religion is Catholic but whose ethnicity is Japanese Buddhist.

This will also allow us to address people who self-identify as "non-practicing Jews"—they are ethnically, but not religiously, Jewish.

Proposal to whom?

And what is this good for?

edited 17th Nov '10 2:21:55 PM by DasAuto

Because Aondeug brought this up with her avatar, and that reminded me of how annoyed I am at having to differentiate between ethnic Jews and religious Jews. And on a more subtle note, indirectly reminding people that the United States is not a "Christian nation", no matter what they'd like to believe.

Your system won't be any better than any existing system. As soon as you go to classify people, you discover that people refuse to fit into classifications.

Wait. Are yellow and red still accepted as skin colors? I thougt those designations fell out of favour.

I'm out of the loop of all this race crap.

Well, I needed terms that were not attached to particular areas of the world. Geopolitically "neutral" terms, if you will.

Oh, I forgot "tan".

Yeah, I would probably pick "Decline to Answer" on all of these.

• Nationality: British, prefer Japanese
• Race: White, prefer Asian
• Religion: Deist, prefer Shinto
• Ethnicity: Anglo-Scottish, prefer Yamato

Diagnosis: Terminal Weeaboo/ Chronic Japanophilia

/troll

edited 17th Nov '10 9:15:55 PM by Shichibukai

Actually, I wasn't expecting people to profile themselves. I was just looking for commentary on whether this is a nice system for writing up profiles, such as character profiles, or if there's a better system and why.

I was trying to make a self-evident point. Shouldn't you ask for peoples' actual rather than preferred status? The only exception is religion, which is a matter of internal decision.

There is also the matter of many people confusing race and ethnicity. Big time.

edited 17th Nov '10 9:35:26 PM by Shichibukai

Well, I needed terms that were not attached to particular areas of the world. Geopolitically "neutral" terms, if you will.

Except that absent the geopolitical/ethnic connections, it would end up conflating completely different things.

And without the cultural connections, who even cares? Why classify people by skin color rather than by hair or eye color, or just throwing the whole classification-based-on-appearance thing out the window?

Well, people also categorize others by hair color. It's just that skin is the most obvious feature, second hair, and eye color is barely noticeable unless you look closely enough.

Right, but if you were using this information for identifying people, you'd need more information (height, weight, etc), and if you aren't, then it doesn't tell you anything particularly useful.

No, this is just for categorizing.

Mainly because it's ALWAYS bugged me when people use inconsistent data organization. For example, having as the album info for one mp3 "Final Fantasy IV OST" and another "Final Fantasy IV". Either change them all to be "[game name]" or change them all to be "official soundtrack name". And if you choose the latter, you'd better have a backup algorithm for when there is no official soundtrack name.

Similarly, it bugs me to see people calling themselves "atheist Jews".

Well there's issues of multiple tagging, people who don't have a definition for some of those things and differing methods of classifying people within just those categories.

Take Tibetans for instance. Who is a Tibetan? People in Llhasa only? People just outside of it? Everyone in the plateau region? People in the surrounding areas? People that cut through 3 of the 5 major land areas in China? Do people born in the main Tibetan province count as Tibetan? Like if a Han family moved there, learned the local language and culture, had children brought up in the Tibetan school system, are they Tibetan now or not? If they marry and intermingle, so genetically they're completely mixed, are they "racially" Tibetan or not?

Everything has its problematic nuances no matter what you want to use because these are all completely arbitrary.

edited 19th Nov '10 8:07:16 AM by breadloaf

I'd say that I'd leave people's choice of ethnicity up to them. If they self-identify as Tibetan when they ask themselves what their cultural background is, then they count as ethnic Tibetans.

Ethnicity IS race. Japanse Buddhist isn't an ethnicity, its a race then cultural description.

How about this: (me as example)

Physical Gender (Don't care for orientation, very blurry lines and conplex issues): Male

Ethnicity: North European (Be more specfic then just white plz)

Religious Beliefs: Agnostic (Norse Mythology for the win though)

Culutre/Nationality: English-speaking Canadian

Stuff like physical atrributes and nerdiness could be add.

edited 19th Nov '10 4:18:13 PM by Erock

"Ethnicity IS race"

You have fun persuading the entire anthropological and sociological establishment of the English-speaking world that they're even connected.

We'll wait.

Black people is a big group, ethnicity is like Ethiopian. To make it really general for the sake of the thread.

edited 19th Nov '10 6:59:31 PM by Erock

Ethnicity is not race. Race is skin color and other genetic features. Ethnicity is cultural background.,

edited 20th Nov '10 12:13:45 AM by GlennMagusHarvey

No, ethnictiy is what you called race. It used to be like you said until globalization led to third generation ethnically Chinese people are cultrally British/Canadian. I was born in an English-speaking country and culture, but I'm more ethnicly Dansih then Anglo.

edited 20th Nov '10 7:07:59 AM by Erock

Ethnicity is cultural. Race is genetic. What you called "ethnicity" above, all sociologists and anthropologists (hence my earlier comment) would call "race".

I now wish to invoke the Appeal to Authority (!soundeffect!thunderclap): my first degree was in anthropology.

edited 21st Nov '10 7:33:48 AM by Jinren

FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

Ethnictiy is which ethnic group you belong to. That doesn't mean you share the culture, especially if you assimilate into another country.

edited 21st Nov '10 7:58:54 AM by Erock

And which ethnic group you belong to is defined by what culture/lifestyle you follow.

For example:

• an American-Born Chinese kid who grows up in a big city's Chinatown and who is heavily immersed in first- and second-gen immigrant and expatriate culture and who regularly observes cultural holidays and is probably fluent in either Cantonese or Mandarin (if not both)

• an American-Born Chinese kid who grows up in suburbs, attends a predominantly white school system, speaks one dialect of Chinese with his/her parents but can't read/write the language, feels little personal connection to the motherland issues involving China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, but is heavily involved in U.S. politics.

I'd say the first one is ethnically Chinese and the second one is ethnically American. Perhaps ethnically Chinese-American, depending on his/her grasp of Chinese and how much he/she cares about or follows Chinese traditions.

Now, the second one does have a Chinese ethnic background, but that doesn't mean he/she is really all that "Chinese", y'know.

edited 21st Nov '10 12:29:03 PM by GlennMagusHarvey