Not that it matters, mostly, but I do want to get the words right. So we are reading a book on someone who is mixed Native American Ojibwe and white.
Some people in my class, let’s say, are Indian (from India) and white. We agreed that would be mixed, but for example, someone who is English and Swedish would not be because they are just white.
Would they not be mixed race, mixed ethnicity, or be neither?
This is really misleading. Races don’t exist out there. They are categories we invented. White is one of those categories. We don’t put races into racial categories. We don’t put some races in the white category. We put people in the racial categories. Race is ONLY the category. There’s no other reality to it other than the choice to categorize.
You’re giving a more ‘modern take’ which is irrelevant to what we’re talking about. We’re not talking about current race relations. This is a conversation about which country people’s grandparents are from.
No, old man. I am describing our current understanding of the history. It has always been this way, but the stories we used to tell about it were lies as well.
“Our current understanding” based on genetic testing. Something we didn’t have in the time of our grandparents. It hasn’t “always been this way.” Opinions about this topic have changed dramatically over time.
Race was invented centuries before Darwin even considered that animals evolved from anything. Genetics doesn’t factor into it at all. The Europeans believed peoples were formed wholly from God’s will. They thought God made black people to be dominated by white people. That is to say, they made it all up without any hint of any adherence to truth.