That's exactly what I think is fucked up, you're completely right. The fact that people force this on others and don't just view them as just another human especially when it's on a government level is really awful. But also the Internet often is full of racist stereotypes. I hope there will be some bigger movement some day that will change this drastically at least in first world countries.

I give this a 50/50 being sea lioning. The reason being I thought this way when I was younger. I'm white and didn't understand why everything was so focused on race until I was an adult. I don't care about race that much, but everyone around me did and I thought it was weird. Once I was older and educated, I understood that it's FAR more complex than my kiddo brain could handle without some education.

Very interesting! I'm going to read into that.

I just want to say that ethnicity is not necessarily related to genetics in any way, it's about your heritage and upbringing. A person can be born and raised in Japan without having indigenous parents. In this way, they are ethnically Japanese if they choose to identify with the culture they were raised in.

So it's not suddenly racist to appreciate someone's ethnicity. It's racist to assume someone's ethnicity based on how they look.

And what you say about ethnicity being irrelevant to the government is quite controversial. For example, there are various treaties in effect between colonizers and indigenous peoples. Do you think such treaties are not valuable because they are based on ethnicity?

That's precisely accurate! Great points

I never understood why the N word is racist because of history, but then being black makes it fine to say.

Lol I had a Black teacher that would not be happy if her Black students used the N word. (USA btw)

People actually have done that, and by a decent but not landslide majority (upper 60s%, IIRC), the original inhabitants of North America like the catch-all term: 'American Indian'. Halfway alluding to the other guy's reply, they actually do like to call attention to the ignorance that was put upon them upon first meeting. It's hardly their blunder to be embarrassed by, and that moniker has become part of their history. Has it not?

If you want to be truly proper, you'd have to get down to the nitty-gritty & list every single tribe ever. By name. And that doesn't work very well on a form when you're making people check & sort themselves into boxes.

...which brings me to the final, and most ironic point of it all. People insisting on using Native American & African American often fail to realize those titles were put upon those people by the goddamn United States Government. Yes, the same one that enslaved the blacks. The same one that drove the American Indians from their lands, hunted them for sport, and rounded them up into camps. After the mistreatment, the USG said, "Hmm, what should we call these people? Oh, I know. 'Native Americans' & 'African-Americans'." Now it's been baked into the cake for so long nobody even stops to question it, they insist upon it. Even if it's technically inaccurate in niche cases (like Jamaican Americans), or insensitive (being labeled by your conquerors).

...idk. Call me a romantic bumpkin, but I work with black men & women who haven't stepped a single foot in Africa. They eat cheeseburgers like I do, we drink from the same water fountains & use the same toilets, we shake hands. There's nothing African about them besides their genetics; they are Americans just like I am an American. They happen to be black. Idk too many American Indians around here, only some with very diluted, distant heritage.

Even if a majority if indigenous folks didn't mind the label, it's still a label born of ignorance. It's not like it becomes just OK because the surviving oppressed minority incorrectly labelled that way by the colonists are OK with it.

Well I'm in my 20's and that's how many of us communicate