For your consideration...

[madscience.livejournal.com]

Behold, the Poe-ing of queer theory:



Edit: should I restore deleted comments?

Comments

[madscience.livejournal.com]

You bring up a lot of interesting points. As I said in another comment... ethnicity is to race as sex is to gender. One is a biological fact, the other is socially constructed and a matter of perception.


"Is race merely the colour of your skin?"

Yes, when the perception is as shallow as it is in the US.


"Japanese, Koreans, Thais, Viets and Burmese look nothing alike, or at least, as alike as Swedes and Italians do"

You know how people who aren't familiar with a spoken language sometimes can't even hear its phonemes? I think there's an element of facial recognition analogous to a phoneme. Different Asian ethnicities look different to you because you're familiar with them, but people who aren't so familiar can't perceive the differences. On the other hand, I can perceive the ethnic background of a lot of white Europeans, but not so much Asians or blacks. After living in Arizona for two years, I'm only barely able to tell a Chicano from a Navajo without the help of obvious cues from their clothing.

Incidentally, Obama does have slave ancestry — ironically through his white mother.

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

I always say all white people look alike :P Because whilst I am very good at picking where someone is from based on facial features, this doesn't translate into being able to differentiate people very well. The Chinese, Thai and Burmese kids in my class all look very different from the other nationalities, but almost identical to each other. I pretty much rely on haircuts to know who is who, so I don't like people who change their hair :P

I've heard the phoneme thing before, apparently Japanese can't differentiate Rs and Ls.

It's definitely helpful to separate race and ethnicity, thanks for bringing up that distinction.