People are calling to write in Taiwanese in the next census, something I remember doing back in the day. Similar petitions have been going for almost 30 years and this time we are on the verge of getting it passed.
Meanwhile, in Canada, people already can choose Taiwanese of Hong Konger as an ethnicity option.
Fully support that. Especially given Chinese is a nationality, aka a country. Thus, differentiation is fully justified if other countries have the fortitude to write single words of text on pollsā¦tough day at the office, jeeze!
I didnt know Canada had the balls to write words on polls though. Pleasantly surprised.
I remember when i used to fill in ethnicity in the us it was under asian. Have times changed???
Wouldnāt āTaiwaneseā as an ethnicity imply indigenous Taiwanese?
No, any more than thereās a line for Sami or Ainu
Does that mean those of us with European women ancestors that fought in the US Revolutionary War should demand there be a āDARā or even plain old āAmericanā option?
I love pushing back against China, but if youāre not aboriginal Taiwanese but born in Taiwan/to Taiwanese parents, youāre probably ethnically Han, and therefore āChineseā. Unless Iām not ethnically Irish/German/Italian/Welsh/French/Russian/ a bunch of other places that werenāt even countries when my ancestors arrived in North America, and I am, in fact, āAmericanā? Which would be rude AF to the less than 1% of the US population that remains of Native Americans. Yeah, wanting to be not Chinese makes sense, but thatās really opening a new can of wormsā¦
Would the term American outside of the US imply only Native Americans?
Do you mean ethnically or nationally? When people here ask me what I am, I tell them āAmericanā. When they tell me āyou donāt look Americanā I tell them āthatās because My ancestors came from Europe, like every other white person on this planet.ā This confuses Taiwanese people, who donāt seem to understand that white people havenāt been in the Americas for very long. (Or I just tell them āęęÆå°ēäŗŗā and they donāt have anything to say)
The problem is that ethnicity is what you and the people around you make of a group. In my case, Iām white. What does that mean? A lot of things that Iām not getting into here. Nationality is what your documents say you are. In my case, Iām American because I have a birth certificate showing I was born in the US and a US passport. At what point does my ethnicity cross over into my nationality though? Iām not ethnically American, Iām ethnically a mash-up of European. If I continue to live here and raise children who are born here, does that make me Taiwanese? If I became a Taiwanese citizen, my nationality would be āTaiwaneseā, but Iām still not ethnically Taiwanese. Iām ethnically āEuropeanā, and ethnically from every country on that continent to boot. Iām not ethnically āAmericanā, even though I have ancestors who lived in America for centuries before I was born.
TLDR: ethnicity and nationality are not the same thing.
In an US census, most peopleās nationality would be American.
what do you mean by American? North Americans also get āconfusedā with South American Europeans.
The US census doesnāt ask what your nationality is. It asks what your race is, and depending on racial category, you can write in, or choose an option listed. For me I suppose if i took it I would write Italy/France.
Sure, but the term for someone from The United States of America is āAmericanā. Unless I missed something, people from anywhere else in North and South America are not called āAmericanā, unless they were born in a US territory and hold a US passport
I think nowadays ethnic groups can comprise any shared identity. Which, when combined with race being a social construct, makes any categorising a nonsense. Unfortunately, the scientists got hijacked by people with a political agenda for whom race means everything and nothing simultaneously.
Actually, most scientists agree there is no race within modern humans, as we are all just one human race. What separates people are cultural and linguistic identity divisions, which is what we mean by ethnicity.
I agree, except that ethnicity could also be a shared nationhood.
Usually that evolves a cultural difference and how they prioritize cultural identity and other values such as democracy, rule of law, or whether or not to embrace diversity.
Perhaps, but nationality and ethnicity can be the same thing. Mad as that sounds.
I wouldnāt describe myself as āethnically Canadianā, nor would I expect a Taiwanese descended Canadian to say the same. Americans have been around long enough and the white folk are mixed enough that it makes more sense for them to say āAmericanā. I suppose I might feel differently if I were a sixth-generation Irish-Italian-Anglo-French-Norwegian-Portuguese from southern Ontario.
I do get annoyed when Iām meeting Taiwanese and I tell them Iām Canadian, and my wife always adds āHeās really English.ā
This is really stupid. Ethnicity like nationality is a social construct. Thereās no rule that prohibits naming Taiwanese a new ethnicity. Before WWII German was just an ethnicity but Austrians disassociated themselves from Germany after the war, and now Austrians are just called Austrian, not Germans in Austria. The same goes for a bunch of different groups of people in Europe where the DNA is essentially the same but people call them something else like Flemings and Walloons. I doubt any Austrian/Swiss/Belgian would cross the German/French/Dutch box on a form.
Taiwanese aborigines have a different name: Formosans and their languages are called Formosan languages.
Not to mention race.