[Unthinking Majority]

And nowadays, consider how many people in Congress and in the White House have graduated from prestigious universities. I'm sure quite a few went to Georgetown or Yale.

What's dumb is that you learn mostly the same stuff no matter what school you go to. It's not like they're reading different textbooks.

Only thing is people get impressed when they see where you went on your resume because you have to be smart to be admitted there and get good enough grades to stay there since those places basically grade on a curve, otherwise all those keeners would be getting A's.

[MadMonk]

Just treat him as a human being, which is what the state or government should do as well.

I think he was being sarcastic.

[Beren]

I think he was being sarcastic.

Yeah, it was a rhetoric question, my answer was rhetoric too.

[Rancid]

Indeed.

A minor correction, indigenous persons from Latin America would in theory count as Native American under the federal government's definitions (1997 OMB's revision) - but they should be able to name their tribe of origin, and I don't think those are federally recognized since they're in the US. For the average Joe though I'm pretty sure indigenous Latin American persons would just be Latinos while those Latinos with a fair skin could be plausibly considered to be both (same for Spaniards to some extent, they could be confused for Latinos).

Some Latin nations have basically 0 indigenous populations. The DR is one of them. The Taino were wiped out completely (they were the first to endure European colonization/deseases/war/etc.). Oh yea.. I'm 5% Taino too.

[Rancid]

Indeed, although it's also not like you'd ever publicly admit if I'm right. However, I sense the difference between you and Tainari88, who's not white at all or she's rather anti-white.

In order to be a "true" Latino, you have to be anti-white? BTW, I've railed against white people shit all the time here.

That's besides the point. I'd like for you to define your rubric for what makes a person Latino. Please.... Feel free to set up a points system if you'd like.

There is a weird arbitrary rules set being applied by funny of all, white people that's probably stupid. Feels like Beren is applying such a rules set on me..but anyway, people (especially white people) are silly like that.

@Tainari88, este Beren es un come mierda.

[Beren]

In order to be a "true" Latino, you have to be anti-white? BTW, I've railed against white people shit all the time here.

By being anti-white I mean opposing the ways of thinking or lifestyles mostly associated with white people rather than being against white people themselves. Refusing whiteness, which is quite stereotypical, at least to some extent seems to be part of being an authentic minority person, although I haven't thrown myself into that neither do I have a general theory on it. As far as I can judge Latino culture is supposed to be pretty much distinguished from White culture anyways.

[Rancid]

authentic minority

lol....

[wat0n]

By being anti-white I mean opposing the ways of thinking or lifestyles mostly associated with white people rather than being against white people themselves. Refusing whiteness, which is quite stereotypical, at least to some extent seems to be part of being an authentic minority person, although I haven't thrown myself into that neither do I have a general theory on it. As far as I can judge Latino culture is supposed to be pretty much distinguished from White culture anyways.

Highly arguable, particularly in Latin America itself.

[Tainari88]

You pretty much are, actually.


Your skin-colour may not be white but your mind-colour rather is. And I don't mean you're innocent.

Mind colour? Lol. That is crazy Beren. In Africa you got nations that are all African Black nations, that means the president of the nation, and the middle class, the ruling class and the underclass are all Black people. Top to bottom, the elite are snobby and discriminate against the lower classes. Does this mean they become white due to their discriminatory by default like white European ex colonizers? Or that ghetto dwelling white English underclass people in London become automatically dark skinned Latinos? No it does not mean any of that. It means that class consciousness is a problem in almost all organized human societies. It is far more pernicious and difficult to change than color coding and superficial forms of racism. Institutional racism and laws backing institutional forms of racism are hard to change in class conscious societies, but the superficial types of racism is easier to modify than the class discrimination by far. India has a terrible class system. They are a democracy and a very large one. But they got caste problems and class based problems. Brahmins are the top, and untouchables at the bottom. All of them are Asian people and not Europeans versus Africans or some category based on colonialism and European imperialism. It is hard to change. But I saw some documentaries that took untouchable kids and raised them in a boarding school and made them professionals like lawyers, doctors, engineers, and proved that the untouchables had the ability and potential to be like Brahmins. Basically class conscious shit is really shit Beren. But? The greater issue became that their biological families, felt distanced and disconnected from their own children because the entire culture of the untouchables was about an identity based on centuries of doing the same jobs and living with common values related to their place in society for a long time.

Also, living in their communities and following traditions. Traditions that were no longer followed by their own children raised to be doctors, lawyers and engineers, etc. They were outcasts within their own biological families. Not really belonging to the new elite class in India, and not belonging to the roots of their own caste families. In an in between and emotionally painful world of not belonging.

There was a sociologist trained and whom graduated from Harvard, who did a study about Boston low income neighborhoods and followed kids who were able to leave the ghetto and become middle class and even wealthy, and kids who stayed in the hood and never changed their social and economic ranking in their lives. The interesting thing the ones who stayed in the hood said to him? 'The price of becoming middle class meant leaving my friends whom grew up with me in my neighborhood behind. I had to give up my sense of being me and part of my family and go and become some snooty snob person that would never understand what I have gone through.' They were unwilling to kill their ethnic identity that brought them a lot of meaning and sense of place and belonging and they did not want to kill their socioeconomic class identity to take up the mantle of a new identity to be successful in a conventional sense. It was not about their lack of intelligence or abilities. Many were very intelligent and had a lotof abilities. They just had a sense of loyalty to those people who witnessed their growing up and who composed their social environment. Being outcast is severe punishment in many cultures around the world Beren. To pull the trigger on that? For making more money in the end? And being a person who is willing to kill an identity for a lifetime and adopting values of a class that might reject you in the end anyway? Is not an attractive trade off. For anyone.

They say the same thing to us Puerto Ricans. Just shake off your Puerto Rican identity. It is not going to be useful to you if you want to integrate and assimilate into US society. Drop the Spanish. Drop the traditions. Drop your history. Your values. And hope the white elitists accept you in the end. They even told my father in 1958 to drop his last name, and since he looked white he might go up the ranks. He had to stop hanging around with the black (n words) who were his friends and all would go well for him.

Who the hell wants to be a part of that value system unless you are a worthless sellout?

I will never do it. You can be successful like Rancid and not be hiding who you are. Why should he be filling out boxes all damn day because the society is so retarded that they do not understand that as human beings we are not pure and easy to categorize. We are fluid and complex. All the time. Diverse and complex.

The society has to change its stupid value system. Not @Rancid and not I. My little boy asked me today if he was white. We were discussing racist histories and he asked why the Nazis had to categorize everyone as gypsies, communists, jews, gays, etc in order to place them as enemies of the state and put them in forced labor camps. I told him, 'they had to do it because they justified differences as offenses. If you are different you were an enemy. They also did not like Down Syndrome people or people with disabilities of any sort, missing legs or blind or in wheelchairs. Anyone that was not whole, sound, white and so on.' He then asked, 'were they perfect?'. No, they were not. Hitler had one testicle that was not descended properly. He was not particularly tall or athletic. He was not perfect by any means physically. He then retorted, 'then why were they requiring the rest of society to be perfect by their standards?' and I replied, 'Because they were living in denial of their own defective selves. They were worse than the people they condemned. They wanted to judge everyone and never judge the horror of their own actions. Their lack of respect, their lack of humanity, their destruction, their murderous tendencies their lack of being able to make a better society through civilized means. They were using barbaric means. Which meant they were barbarians. Something they accused their victims of being from cultures of barbarism. When it was they who were barbarians with their inhumane and horrible regime.' End of story.

This legacy admission is not far off that mentality. Really.

[Tainari88]

Highly arguable, particularly in Latin America itself.

Beren is not really educated on Latin American categories and so on. He thinks the world categorizes people by what? European or American USA standards? He needs some cultural anthropology classes.

Latin Americans go along the lines of cultural assimilation to European cultural norms and that person can look Black or Indian and be considered mestizo or not black. It is not about somatic looks for the European origin Latin Americans but by customs, traditions, language you speak, values you hold.

For many Latin Americans who are middle class you are white. But white in terms of a Spanish culture. Not an English or German culture. It has nothing to do with any of that.

Chileans are by the way according to a cultural spectrum far more collectivist thinkers than in the USA or Germany. Which makes them more amenable to socialism than other societies Wat0n. Lol. Many Chileans are of European immigrant roots. Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and German and English etc roots. They assimilated into a Spanish speaking culture that also has some Indian influences and it is definitely Latin American in culture. But unique. Something hard to grasp for people who throw all of the Latin American cultures into one pot. Mexican, Cuban, Chilean, Guatemalan, Colombian, etc. All the same. NO they are not.

Pero dígáselo a @Beren

[wat0n]

Beren is not really educated on Latin American categories and so on. He thinks the world categorizes people by what? European or American USA standards? He needs some cultural anthropology classes.

Latin Americans go along the lines of cultural assimilation to European cultural norms and that person can look Black or Indian and be considered mestizo or not black. It is not about somatic looks for the European origin Latin Americans but by customs, traditions, language you speak, values you hold.

For many Latin Americans who are middle class you are white. But white in terms of a Spanish culture. Not an English or German culture. It has nothing to do with any of that.

Indeed, it's not so much about looks to the point that my girlfriend has a whiter skin than I do but counts as fully mestiza and is legally recognized as being indigenous. Go figure.

Chileans are by the way according to a cultural spectrum far more collectivist thinkers than in the USA or Germany. Which makes them more amenable to socialism than other societies Wat0n. Lol. Many Chileans are of European immigrant roots. Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and German and English etc roots. They assimilated into a Spanish speaking culture that also has some Indian influences and it is definitely Latin American in culture. But unique. Something hard to grasp for people who throw all of the Latin American cultures into one pot. Mexican, Cuban, Chilean, Guatemalan, Colombian, etc. All the same. NO they are not.

Pero dígáselo a @Beren

Yes, to the point that Chile is currently experiencing tensions with immigrants (from Venezuela, Haiti and Colombia to a lesser extent) partly because of the cultural differences, partly because they are poorer than the earlier arrivals, being regarded as a social burden and prone to criminal behavior. They actually remind me to the tensions you can see here in the US with Latin Americans, sans the language issue in the case of Venezuelan and Colombians.

Chile has always received immigrants but, due to its geography, it's been rare in Chilean history to receive a wave as large as the one we've seen during the last few years. I've seen a lot of ugly stuff both in social media and real life when I went there last time, there's a lot of xenophobia going on unfortunately that, too, reminds me of what one can see in the US and Europe.

[Beren]

Highly arguable, particularly in Latin America itself.

Whites are not a majority and Latinos are not a minority in Latin America. Do such categories even exist there?

[wat0n]

Whites are not a majority and Latinos are not a minority in Latin America. Does such a category as Latino even exist there?

My point is that for many Latin Americans, Latinos are culturally white.

[Beren]

My point is that for many Latin Americans, Latinos are culturally white.

Isn't the whole distinction between Whites and Latinos meaningless or incomprehensible in Latin America?

[wat0n]

Isn't the whole distinction between Whites and Latinos meaningless or incomprehensible in Latin America?

For many, yes.

There others who regard Latin American culture as being a different thing, a hybrid of sorts between Southern European and indigenous cultures. But I would say they're in the minority because, well, there's a reason why we speak romance languages after all.

This is also not the same as a Latino identity, which can be and indeed is separate from e.g. Anglos, French, Germans, even Spaniards themselves, etc. And the national identities are also extremely relevant, for many one is a Chilean, Peruvian or Argentinian first, Latin American second.

[Beren]

For many, yes.

There others who regard Latin American culture as being a different thing, a hybrid of sorts between Southern European and indigenous cultures. But I would say they're in the minority because, well, there's a reason why we speak romance languages after all.

This is also not the same as a Latino identity, which can be and indeed is separate from e.g. Anglos, French, Germans, even Spaniards themselves, etc. And the national identities are also extremely relevant, for many one is a Chilean, Peruvian or Argentinian first, Latin American second.

What were Pinochet, Allende, and Peron considered in Latin America? They all would be Latinos in the US, wouldn't they?

[wat0n]

What were Pinochet, Allende, and Peron considered in Latin America? They all would be Latinos in the US, wouldn't they?

Yes. But they could also pass as white.

[Beren]

Yes. But they could also pass as white.

But they were just Chileans and Argentinian in Latin America?

What would John Leguizamo be considered if he lived in Latin America?

[wat0n]

But they were just Chileans and Argentinian in Latin America?

Yes. Upper class ones, because class matters just as much, but in the end just Chileans and Argentinian.

What would John Leguizamo be considered if he lived in Latin America?

It seems he's a Colombian-American, is he?

Many would say something like that. If he doesn't speak Spanish he may even be considered to just be American.

[Beren]

It seems he's a Colombian-American, is he?

He was born in Colombia. So what would he be considered in Colombia if he had always lived there? White? Latino? Or just Colombian?