I'm a racist and antisemite

[ahousekeeper]

Well, at least according to some commenters hereThe reason: there was lots of whinning about "Russians taking over LJ", so I replied: "Actually Jews, not Russians", and then the heaven and hell broke on me, especially when I used the words "Italian mafia" and "Irish gangs" to illustrate the difference between the understanding of nationality in

Comments

Slight problem here.

[raidingparty]

There's no absolute way to identify ethnicity. Ethnicity has no absolute value, since every culture... and even people within the same culture... have different qualifiers for ethnicities.

In the U.S., "blacks" are the strongest example for this. Because of the lack of lineage bookkeeping, and the inclusion of any number of dalliances between slaves and masters, there was no way to distinguish the "mixed" blacks from the "pure" blacks. And because of the randomness inherent to genetics, a child of "white" and "black" parents could end up darker than a fresh-off-the-boat African. By now, both of them would probably be called black. The "mixed" children used to be called mulattoes, and were considered a separate ethnicity, but that category has ceased to exist.

Check out my most recent personal post if you're interested in learning more.

[denelian]

i just ran across this whole mess; i avoided LJ during finals week at school.

where, i just want to note for my own sense of pride, i got a B+ in post-soviet politics (it would have been an A, but i canNOT remember authors of papers to cite on exams.)

what everyone else has said seems to be true - you have a value system that is slighly different than that of most Americans (or Western Europeans) i saw, immedietly, that you were not being racist and were defining "Of Jewish etnicity" and "of Russian ethnicity" - but i'm pretty sure i would not have been able to tell the difference back in August.

of course, i'm damned odd m'self, especially for my time and place (white pagan girl in Ohio, U.S., whose best friend is jewish and whose boyfriend is black. and i HATE rap music. which isn't music).

you at all interested in a pen-pal who wants to mine you for information on what its like to be in Armenia? (wait. are you still IN Armenia, or are you somewhere else?)

[ahousekeeper]

> i got a B+ in post-soviet politics
I wish I could see those tests.

> what everyone else has said seems to be true
There were, actually, different opinions ;)

> pagan girl in Ohio
Christian in Yerevan, Armenia. My name is Karen (that's a male name in our region ;)

> i HATE rap music
Oh, I LOVE IT! (just kidding, but I'm sort of ok with some of the hip-hop stuff)

> you at all interested in a pen-pal who wants to mine
> you for information on what its like to be in Armenia?
I am not sure I will be able to response in timely manner, but I'll try. info [at] armenianhouse.org - is my e-mail address.