Hmmm, racial categories as used by your government:
"White. A person having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa. It includes people who indicate their race as "White" or report entries such as Irish, German, Scottish, Italian, Lebanese, Near Easterner, Arab, or Polish.
But millions of rabid conservatives insisted the Tsarnaevs were not "white." They have a slightly Middle Eastern cast to their features, and though the melanin level in their skin is no higher than many "white" Americans, they insisted that these muslims couldn't possibly be white.
St. Nicholas was from Patara, in what is now Turkey, on the Mediterranean. That's several hundred miles south of Chechnya, which means natives of the area would have darker skin than Chechens.
Palestinian Jews from the time of Jesus would have had even darker skin tone than the Tsarnaev brothers, and being outside all the time preaching and doing carpentry would have given Jesus a very dark tan on top of that. He would have also had typical Semitic features. It is sheer sophistry to pretend that the average conservative American would look at Jesus and instantly tag him as white. He would branded a Muslim or a Jew at best, or a "sand n*****" at worst.
There was a time, not so long ago, that Irish and Italians, and even Poles and Hungarians, were not considered "white" by your average Republican Protestant. The only "real" whites were Anglo-Saxons, and maybe Northern Europeans (after they'd been integrated).
The fact of the matter is that skin color is only about how long your ancestors lived at a particular latitude. It takes about 10,000 years for natural selection to work its magic and change a population's melanin level. That obviously can be manipulated by clothing and technological level.
The whole concept of race is nonsensical, which should be immediately obvious as soon as you understand that a Swede can be perfect match for donating a kidney to a Xhosa from South Africa (though they're more likely to be compatible with another Swede). Terms like white and black are completely meaningless because there are so many variables of geography, migration and history. And intermarriage is making it more irrelevant every year.
But the Right is completely wedded to the idea of race, so much so that it's a simple matter of fact to Megyn Kelley that Saint Nicolas and Jesus have to be white. It's about emotional investment, and the inability to respect and integrate with someone that isn't just like you.
The Right, because it's so totally dominated by the white Southern mindset, is still hung up over slavery. Starting about 1900, racism was binary because there are only two races: white and black. Black is African (former slave or an ancestor), and white is everything else. Jesus wasn't African, so therefore he's white. That is, until we have a beef with an Arab or Chechen, and then they're not white anymore. And then there's the problem with Asians, during WWII, and the wars in Korea and Viet Nam, but now they're sort of white if they're smart and hard-working. And what do we think about Chinese and Indians, now that they're totally eating our lunch?
So, while you, GuardDuck, may pretend for the sake of argument on this blog that you think Yassir Arafat and Muammar Gaddafi were white, I don't think the people who host and watch Fox News really hold that opinion.
And N posted a whole lot of stuff that had nothing to do with the topic.
The topic started with this - should Santa be black?
That's not 'slightly darker complexion'. That's black as in 'features and complexion similar to that of what would be generally recognized as sub-Saharan African.'
So no, Nikto, that's not even comparable to Turkish....
And yes, Jesus was white.... because while you both seem to ignore repeated calls in the past for a similar sub-Saharan African model of Jesus - that was the reference of similarity.
And what both of you, in your repeated assumptions that the 'right' can't get race out of their mind, seem to ignore is this entire topic was started by a person on the 'left' who won't get race out of their mind.
5 comments:
Hmmm, racial categories as used by your government:
"White. A person having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa. It includes people who indicate their race as "White" or report entries such as Irish, German, Scottish, Italian, Lebanese, Near Easterner, Arab, or Polish.
So, yup - Jesus was white.
Gee, how quickly they forget...
Remember the uproar when it came out that the Tsarnaev brothers turned out to be the Marathon bombers? They are ethnically Chechen, from the Caucasus region, and are therefore caucasian, and therefore the very definition of "white."
But millions of rabid conservatives insisted the Tsarnaevs were not "white." They have a slightly Middle Eastern cast to their features, and though the melanin level in their skin is no higher than many "white" Americans, they insisted that these muslims couldn't possibly be white.
St. Nicholas was from Patara, in what is now Turkey, on the Mediterranean. That's several hundred miles south of Chechnya, which means natives of the area would have darker skin than Chechens.
Palestinian Jews from the time of Jesus would have had even darker skin tone than the Tsarnaev brothers, and being outside all the time preaching and doing carpentry would have given Jesus a very dark tan on top of that. He would have also had typical Semitic features. It is sheer sophistry to pretend that the average conservative American would look at Jesus and instantly tag him as white. He would branded a Muslim or a Jew at best, or a "sand n*****" at worst.
There was a time, not so long ago, that Irish and Italians, and even Poles and Hungarians, were not considered "white" by your average Republican Protestant. The only "real" whites were Anglo-Saxons, and maybe Northern Europeans (after they'd been integrated).
The fact of the matter is that skin color is only about how long your ancestors lived at a particular latitude. It takes about 10,000 years for natural selection to work its magic and change a population's melanin level. That obviously can be manipulated by clothing and technological level.
The whole concept of race is nonsensical, which should be immediately obvious as soon as you understand that a Swede can be perfect match for donating a kidney to a Xhosa from South Africa (though they're more likely to be compatible with another Swede). Terms like white and black are completely meaningless because there are so many variables of geography, migration and history. And intermarriage is making it more irrelevant every year.
But the Right is completely wedded to the idea of race, so much so that it's a simple matter of fact to Megyn Kelley that Saint Nicolas and Jesus have to be white. It's about emotional investment, and the inability to respect and integrate with someone that isn't just like you.
The Right, because it's so totally dominated by the white Southern mindset, is still hung up over slavery. Starting about 1900, racism was binary because there are only two races: white and black. Black is African (former slave or an ancestor), and white is everything else. Jesus wasn't African, so therefore he's white. That is, until we have a beef with an Arab or Chechen, and then they're not white anymore. And then there's the problem with Asians, during WWII, and the wars in Korea and Viet Nam, but now they're sort of white if they're smart and hard-working. And what do we think about Chinese and Indians, now that they're totally eating our lunch?
So, while you, GuardDuck, may pretend for the sake of argument on this blog that you think Yassir Arafat and Muammar Gaddafi were white, I don't think the people who host and watch Fox News really hold that opinion.
Well, that's way better than anything I would have posted. Great comment, Nikto!
Now all that remains is for GD to answer this question....did Jesus look like this?
http://jesus.christ.org/files/2011/11/mormon-jesus-christ7.jpg
Or like this...
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/health/forensics/1282186
And N posted a whole lot of stuff that had nothing to do with the topic.
The topic started with this - should Santa be black?
That's not 'slightly darker complexion'. That's black as in 'features and complexion similar to that of what would be generally recognized as sub-Saharan African.'
So no, Nikto, that's not even comparable to Turkish....
And yes, Jesus was white.... because while you both seem to ignore repeated calls in the past for a similar sub-Saharan African model of Jesus - that was the reference of similarity.
And what both of you, in your repeated assumptions that the 'right' can't get race out of their mind, seem to ignore is this entire topic was started by a person on the 'left' who won't get race out of their mind.
So that's a yes to #1 and a no to #2? I didn't quite catch your drift. Then again, your entire comment made no sense.
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