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Black people’s accent | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| DaisyMaisy Senior Member United States Joined 5167 days ago 115 posts - 178 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish Studies: Swedish, Finnish | Message 57 of 63 31 December 2013 at 2:16am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I don't believe the Negroid, etc terms are used any longer, at least not in common usage.
That was a good idea to post the census bureau, Kanewai. "Latino" is usually indicating a connection to the Latino culture more than a race per se. Most forms I've filled out have a "white/non Hispanic" and a "white, Hispanic" option. Don't ask me why, but the point of filling out the forms are for demographics so they want to be specific I suppose. My sister's children are European descent White on our side of the family, and Hispanic/Native American on my brother in law's side. They identify themselves as "Latino" or sometimes Latino/Swedish (really more Scots Irish but there was a Swedish great grandfather which I think my nephew finds interesting!) Every country's racial and ethnic history is somewhat different. I think people tend to self identify with what culture they come from. There are people of mixed race who may "look" one way or another, but they identify as white, black, latino, etc. The US unfortunately has a history of slavery and legal segregation which have left echoes in modern society. In the early days, they found it necessary to strictly define who was which race so that the social rules could be enforced. Horrifying really.....ever heard of the 3/5ths rule? I just hope we are moving in the right direction. Certainly there is always room for improvement. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5013 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese | Message 58 of 63 31 December 2013 at 6:35am | IP Logged | ||||||||
It gets even better. To add insult to injury, he didn't even speak an iota of Spanish before leaving the US (I just said his mother is Mexican, but she may be half-Mexican, I don't remember exactly) -- I met him when he came to Spain to learn the language.
I don't know, maybe my friend is too open about his mother descent -- maybe all you need to be considered white if you look white is merely omitting anything that may sound Spanish / Hispanic / whatever. There's been lots of people passing off as white / black / native American, etc. for different reason in the US in the last century, so we know it can be done and apparently there's not much interest in checking it either. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| gRodriguez Triglot Groupie BrazilRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 3815 days ago 44 posts - 56 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, EnglishC2, Galician Studies: Spanish, Japanese | Message 59 of 63 31 December 2013 at 8:35am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Are you sure that's exactly what he meant? Did all (or almost all) people that knew about his mother didn't consider him white? Or did he say something like: "People say I am not white because my mother is Mexican" without adding much detail? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5013 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese | Message 60 of 63 31 December 2013 at 5:45pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
The whole thing was quite innocent, and I didn't dig much deeper. We met at the school where he was studying Spanish and I knew there were some black students in the centre so I asked if all students in his group were white. He said that he wasn't white. He looked perfectly white so I imagined he might have some black grandparent(s) or something and I asked him how so. Then he told me about his mother being Mexican. He seemed happy with that state of things so I thought it was funny and left it at that. Back to the thread, I assumed that if somebody says "I'm not white", then he's generally not considered white. Reality can be of course more complex, sorry if I did mislead you. BTW my friend is a Californian with no remarkable accent in English that I could perceive, but he would always crack up jokes about "Valley girls" and their accent and ways of speaking. He even made an impersonation so I could see the difference -- boy was he right. I asked him about Mexican accents but he couldn't do it :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| gRodriguez Triglot Groupie BrazilRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 3815 days ago 44 posts - 56 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, EnglishC2, Galician Studies: Spanish, Japanese | Message 61 of 63 01 January 2014 at 1:44am | IP Logged | ||||||||
I can see you are in Spain right now, are you Spanish? Because if you are I think your friend's "problem" had more to do with the fact that his mother is mixed (like 95% of all Mexicans) than with the fact she speaks Spanish. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| DaisyMaisy Senior Member United States Joined 5167 days ago 115 posts - 178 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish Studies: Swedish, Finnish | Message 62 of 63 01 January 2014 at 4:18am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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"White" can also be a cultural reference to being not just white but part of mainstream, non minority, American culture. So your friend may have been making more of a statement about his cultural identity than actually measuring how pale his skin was. A person who identifies as Latino/Hispanic, Black, Asian, Native, etc might very well say, "oh no, I'm not white - my mother is Mexican".
4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| vonPeterhof Tetraglot Senior Member Russian FederationRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4559 days ago 715 posts - 1527 votes Speaks: Russian*, EnglishC2, Japanese, German Studies: Kazakh, Korean, Norwegian, Turkish | Message 63 of 63 01 January 2014 at 10:36am | IP Logged | ||||||||
3 persons have voted this message useful |
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