What is ethnicity?

That’s what the Spanish sailor said, seriously hoping that at least some didn’t get the chop @mad_masala??

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I think not, assuming you are speaking of the majority of modern day people. In any case, genetics had little to do with culture and/or ethnicity in the period when Celtic culture moved west. The Picts, unless they were wiped out without leaving genetic evidence, were genetically related to West Europeans. They were culturally and linguistically related, though distinct, from other Celtic peoples. Of course the Romans called most of the Celts Gauls and Gaullia Celtica referred to a group they specified as Celts, but Romans were very impressionistic in their naming of things.

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I think that a more important question is, how relevant is ethnicity in modern nation states (aka countries). It is a tendency of more ethnically homogeneous nation states to equate “purity” of closeness to the dominant ethnicity to being a more, well , “real” citizen. Many countries of the homogeneous variety even goes as far as limiting naturalized citizens to those of the same ethnicity.

The problem is that the concept of the modern nation was initially formed by pure immigrant states as a reaction against colonial imperialism … which comes with its own baggage, for sure. However, it generally includes a certain freedom for all to come and be a citizen, regardless of ethnicity … now the extent to which Asian countries follow this model varies, and is ultimately in flux and a creative process really, depending on the history and character of the state itself.

Not to mention the problem of ethnicity itself … When it is examined carefully, you must go more and more microscopic. Think about it, even if you ask someone where they are from, say Taipei, it then becomes, where in Taipei? Oh, Neihu? Where in Neihu? Etc., etc… The same is true with ethnicity as was seen with the Celt example above.

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Mate, I’ve got you on ignore but your previous post popped up for some reason and I wasted time replying to it. I’ve no idea what you’re on about now. If you’re disagreeing, and I can’t tell, do your own research, or just think what you like as most do. If you’re just raving, rave on.

I don’t know about that, but the concept of nation, especially a nation based on genetics or other ethnic markers, is a very recent concept and a big part of the reason the world is in the mess it’s in. Maybe. There’s always something to fight about.

2 posts were merged into an existing topic: From ethnicity

Anyway I got a like from @crusher on this thread so I am done already :laughing:

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One of my relatives sent me a couple of books about some of this stuff, but all I’ve done so far is flip through them a little bit:

Stephen Oppenheimer, The Origins of the British

Alistair Moffat, The Scots: A Genetic Journey

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Aha! In zat case, Hanna might qvalify as Cherman. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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Assuming you’re right about that last part, it means people are self-identifying, and the government is accepting it at face value. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but it’s not equivalent to a DNA test like you seem to think it is.

All citizens of Canada are classified as “Canadians” as defined by Canada’s nationality laws. However, “Canadian” as an ethnic group has since 1996 been added to census questionnaires for possible ancestry. “Canadian” was included as an example on the English questionnaire and “Canadien” as an example on the French questionnaire. "The majority of respondents to this selection are from the eastern part of the country that was first settled. Respondents generally are visibly European (Anglophones and Francophones), however no-longer self identify with their ethnic ancestral origins. This response is attributed to a multitude or generational distance from ancestral lineage.
Source 1: Jack Jedwab (April 2008). “Our ‘Cense’ of Self: the 2006 Census saw 1.6 million ‘Canadian’” (PDF). Association for Canadian Studies. Archived from the original (PDF) on October 2, 2011. Retrieved March 7, 2011.
Source 2: Don Kerr (2007). The Changing Face of Canada: Essential Readings in Population . Canadian Scholars’ Press. pp. 313–317. ISBN 978-1-55130-322-2.

:+1: :wink:

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Like I said when Rowland was trying to sell Anglo-Saxon supremacy… :cactus:

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Where did I say a census form was equivalent to a DNA test?

I said ethnicity exists.

That’s it.

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The census map is ridiculously irrelevant to the purposes of this discussion.
It’s a matter of record, for example, that somewhere close to 20% of all Canadians are of direct Scottish ancestry.
Self identification?
Doesn’t usually end up holding much water…

image

Yes.

All I’ve really said is that: (1) ethnicity exists; (2) English (or Irish) is an ethnicity.

It’s OK to be English (or Irish).

More likely to be that mysterious naval empire which included the Basque country, Brittany, Wales, Cornwall, Eastern Ireland, and Western Scotland.

I didn’t say you said it. I said you seem to think it. (To be clear, not that you seem to think the form itself is equivalent to a DNA test, but that if the categories and numbers are published in a list, that means we can believe them, whether they came from actual DNA tests or not.)

Sure, and it’s okay to be lots of things. But is it okay to be Canadian? That ethnicity officially exists. The people who identify as it don’t necessarily have as much DNA in common as you would expect people of the “same ethnicity” to have. Yet the government takes their self identification at face value exactly the same way it does the self identification of English, Irish, Chinese, and what have you.

And yet, here we are. You look, act, and probably taste like a raccoon, and yet you would have us believe you’re not a raccoon. :idunno:

Official Canadian policy refers to its citizens as being of Canadian nationality and multiple ethnicities.

ETA The census classification is just there as an option for those who choose to, as it says distance themselves from their actual ethnicity.

Then why the Canadian ethnicity option on the census?

Whenever I tell Taiwanese who ask what kind of foreigner I am I say Canadian, but my wife always switches it to British.

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Like I said