Arab-Americans Tell Census, 'We're Not White'

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

I don 't like being called white, either.  The last time I tried to put "Hispanic" (on account of my Portuguese heritage), I was kinda called out on it.  Understandable for me, but for an Arab-American... Yea, they don't seem anything like your typical white.

But that's just silly. I mean that's the same ridiculous logic krazen tried to use to pass Pat Toomey off as an example of a minority Republican Senator (as he's half-Portuguese) and was laughed at by just about everyone. And anyone trying to pass themselves off as not white in Brazil on those grounds would be considered just as ridiculous as say someone descended from white South Africans trying to pass themselves off as black in the US...and Brazil is plurality white under its Census.

But perhaps most importantly, you'd still be considered White by the Census anyway since Hispanic is not a separate category.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

But perhaps most importantly, you'd still be considered White by the Census anyway since Hispanic is not a separate category.

That's the thing though. The Census shouldn't be trying to force people into a category they don't want to be in. Not all Hispanics are as 'white' as Toomey, or whatever the most European Hispanics out there are. If they want to identify as non-white mestizo, it's a legitimate ethnicity as much as say, Chinese is. And yes, 'Asian' is not a race either, but a continent. This is why we should stop categorizing people by race and just use ethnicity instead. In the real world ethnicity is what matters, to the extent that such things matter.

But there is such a category. They mostly check "Hispanic" and "Other race". No one is trying to argue that mestizos are "white", but the idea that anyone with 100% European ancestry is not "white" is downright absurd and a pretty literal example of Insane Troll Logic.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

And if you want to distance yourself from "whiteness" because of the awful history of whites you can't exactly exclude the Portuguese. They got quite the history of colonialism and genocide too.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

And if you want to distance yourself from "whiteness" because of the awful history of whites you can't exactly exclude the Portuguese. They got quite the history of colonialism and genocide too.

Which is why I went with the blanket term "Hispanic".   

But you're still white with that. Hispanic isn't a separate category.

And if you want to distance yourself from "whiteness" because of the awful history of whites you can't exactly exclude the Portuguese. They got quite the history of colonialism and genocide too.

Well what about the Scottish, the Slovaks, the Czechs, the Irish, the Sicillians, the Serbs, European Jewry in general, the Poles, and the myriad of other "white" ethnic groups who were themselves very much oppressed and had what would easily be considered "crimes against humanity" committed against them by other "white" groups?  Should they bother to identify with a census designation that has such horrible and politically incorrect connotations?

Or should we just scrap the whole damn thing?  Is that the point you're trying to make?

Racial categories are not good or bad. It's not just silly but also with really Unfortunate Implications to argue there's anything positive or negative about the white designation (and I say this as someone who trashes white people all the time.) All the groups you mention are unquestionably "White" in the modern day US. Arabs are more of a gray area obviously, but not any of the above.

And those don't exactly have spotless histories either, see Scottish colonial empire, Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Great Northern War, Italian colonialism in northern Africa, plenty of actions of Israel and the Bosnia war.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

People who are from the literal "Land of the Aryans" are most certainly white.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

You mean Caucasians? Obviously white.