My Response to the Racism Ruckus

I'm glad you found this useful. You're welcome to use my description from that last paragraph, if you wish, or point people to it, or whatever.

I was going to say no, but the first examples I thought of aren't the same word or culture. "Metis" and "Mestizo" both refer to people of mixed descent, but the main focus there is Native American, where the Spanish-speaking Europeans mixed with locals. They often have some African heritage from slave days, but it wasn't the prime focus of the vocabulary, because the mixing started before that got into action.

Technically, biracial should be a combination of two sources, and multiracial three or more. Most Americans by this point have fairly mixed heritage. *ponder* I've heard "biracial marriage" or "mixed marriage" applied to a variety of situations where one partner is caucasion and the other conspicuously not: African-American, Hispanic, and Asian seem to the be main applications. The term "multiracial" as I've often heard it refers to people who are so mixed that they don't resemble a specific type: they're darker than caucasian, but their hair and eyes and bone structure all come from different backgrounds, so they don't look African or Chinese or Spanish or anything else. Just human.

So I think the use of the word varies by culture, and that might be based on region or class or racial attitude. When I think about it, the media and some other people do use it mainly when black is part of the mix.

>>By THAT standard, most American Blacks are actually biracial, and a considerable number of them could claim multiraciality by virtue of having one or more Native American ancestors. <<

Well, yeah.


>>I personally prefer to regard all the noticeable physiotype differences as the result of eddies in the human gene pool, <<

Same here. Just the other day, I spotted an article about how skin color could change in 100 generations, even without intermarrying with another group.