[lbo-talk] the plasticity of "race"

[Chris Doss]

Yes. I never really appreciated how arbitrary the concept of "race" is until 
I came to Russia, where there is no concept of "race" per se. Instead, there 
is "nationality," which is understood in terms of cultural background, not 
skin color of all weird things. Whereas Americans divide people into White, 
Black, Latino, Asian and "other," Russian citizens have about 150 or so 
distinct groups, which again can be regrouped into the more-inclusive 
categories of Slav, Caucasian, Siberian (Buryat, Chukchi), Asian (Tatar, 
Tajik, Bashkir etc.) and Central Russian (Chuvash etc.), plus I guess Jewish 
would be a category unto itself, and then if you want to talk about 
non-Russian citizens you would have "Westerners" and "everybody else," i.e. 
Africans, non-rossiskiye Asians etc. Really foreigners don't fit into 
people's conceptual framework at all; they are almost like 
extra-terrestrials.

After all "race" is a Western conceptual construct deriving mostly from 
rationalizing the slavery and subjugation of non-European peoples. The 
Russian Empire didn't import slaves; it had its own in the form of serfs.


>From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com>
>Reply-To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
>To: lbo-talk <lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org>
>Subject: [lbo-talk] the plasticity of "race"
>Date: Wed, 7 Jan 2004 18:05:09 -0500
>
>This is from a query posted to the AAPOR listserv by a pollster looking to 
>do a survey in the UK. He wanted to know if there were "standard" 
>classifications, having come across these two pre-existing templates. 
>Amazing how many categories there can be, and how they look rather 
>unfamiliar to an American.
>
>>White
>>Mixed
>>Indian
>>Pakistani
>>Bangladeshi
>>Other Asian
>>Black Caribbean
>>Black African
>>Black other
>>Chinese
>>Other
>>
>>English
>>Scottish
>>Irish
>>Welsh
>>Ulster
>>West Indian
>>Indian
>>Pakistani
>>Other
>___________________________________
>http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk

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