A Lesson on Ethnicity and Language

Let's hit these points real quick:

1. Africa is not a country.
2. Spanish is not what you call people...unless of course they are from Spain.
3. All Latinos are not fair skinned with fine hair.
4. All Africans are not darker skinned with kinky hair.
5. People are not oriental, rugs are...and Ramen noodles too.

Let's start with Africa. You know what I loathe with every fiber of my being?? When people say "In Africa etc etc etc..." What?? In Africa?? Because you just said those two words I will probably disregard everything else you say because it will be so general that even thinking about it will give me a headache. Africa is not a country. You don't get to say "In Africa they wear..." ... "In Africa they eat..." Like come on! Do you know how big Africa is??? I'll show you how big Africa is ...

Depending on what source you use there are 46 to 55 countries in Africa and there are anywhere from 1800-3000 unique languages spoken. 1800-3000 is a big gap. I know lol. I just find the numbers, I don't do the counting. All of these people are African ...

 

  

Am I getting my point across? There is so much diversity in Africa. Africa is a continent. Not a country or a small city with a homogenous population. Treat it as such. Stop generalizing. 

2. This one really grinds my gears. Stop calling people Spanish when they are not from Spain. If you live in America and are talking about the person you saw at the grocery store, it is unlikely that they were Spanish. And don't just assume they are Mexican either (but we'll get to that later). Spanish is a language. In 2009 nearly 47,000,000 people lived in Spain. Now once again, depending on the source, you've got roughly 400 million Spanish speakers in the world. So as you can see, the odds that that person you met at the grocery store is Spanish is slim. There was a trending topic on Twitter one day: #spanishgirls. Ugh! I'm sure you can imagine how annoyed I was that day. Latinos speak Spanish. That is the language. Not their ethnicity. Also, every Spanish speaker living in America is not Mexican or Guatemalan. Just a quick fact in case you didn't know ... -___- Oh! Another thing that blew my mind this weekend ...  This comment: Yeah, she got hair like them Spanish girls...I won't even start with the grammatical breakdown of that sentence, and we've already discussed that Spanish is the language, not the person in the majority of cases...but here we go again with generalizations. All Latin@s are not fair-skinned with fine wavy hair. Just like there are African Americans, there are Afro-Latin@s. Case in point:

 Colombia 

 Honduras

 Dominican Republic

 And my boo Zoe, Dominicana y Boricua (Puerto Rican)

3. And I conclude with this: Stop calling people "Orientals." Also, stop calling all Asian people you see with almond-shaped eyes Chinese. Every person of Asian descent living in America is not Chinese. Oh, and stop getting offended when the women doing your nails are speaking in their native language. It is highly unlikely that they are talking about you. They don't care enough to talk about you. I promise. They are discussing their own personal lives and it's much easier to do it in their native language than in broken English to make YOU feel more comfortable. Get over yourself. Lastly, below you will find a map of Asia. Every Asian person does not look like Lucy Liu (who is Taiwanese by the way. Yes, Taiwan. I didn't mean to say Thailand. They are two different countries). Indians are Asians. Indonesians are Asians. Now some consider the Middle East to be a part of Asia, some Africa. For the purposes of this blog post, I don't really care either way LOL. The point is that you should be more aware and less general when speaking and thinking. 

And that is my lesson for today,

D

PS: Race is fake. It is not real. It was made up during slavery to separate people. It is a social and political, man-made construct. Can we please stop talking about it. Before we decided to start calling folks black and white they were British, Dutch, Irish etc etc. Then they put race on a Census and now it's a stupid little thing that we put entirely too much emphasis on. If you are really that interested in ethnic heritage (like I am) then go for it. Be curious and talk about ethnicity. But black and white? Race? Let.It.Go.

Now I'm not referring to the policy, socioeconomic, etc. implications of race. The effects of the race are real. I'm more so thinking about an idealistic view of race where everyone should be treated equally regardless of what racial category you choose to put them in. And stop looking sideways at "mixed-race" couples. Let them live!