Is bad bunny not white? I thought Puerto Rico was colonized by the spanish wiping out the majority of the native population and he looks pretty spanish. I guess this is one of those “the Irish aren’t white” situations.
The reason for this is that race is a made-up concept.
Race is a pure “us-vs-them” term. That’s why the term “race” was roughly equivalent to “nationality” in most European languages before the term fell out of use after WW2.
If you read texts from 1920s Europe, they frequently talk about the “French race”, the “German race” or the “English race”. When the Nazis talked about the “uber race”, they didn’t mean white people, but instead meant German people. They saw the French, the English and so on as inferior races. (Which makes the concept of neonazis from other countries than Germany quite absurd.)
In the USA, there weren’t enough people of one nationality to dominate the area, so they had to band together and create a “shared white identity”, so their us-vs-them became roughly equivalent to the continent of origin.
Since “race” doesn’t have any actual definition apart from us-vs-them, it can be adapted to whatever makes sense right now.
A “white person” can be someone who looks vaguely white. It could be someone where the majority of their ancestors come from a certain part of the world (e.g., excluding Ireland, Eastern Europe, North Africa, … even though they might look indistinguishable from people from e.g. Western Europe). It could be someone where every single one of their ancestors come from a certain part of the world. It could even be just people of a certain socio-economic group. You could even define that “true whiteness” requires a certain political affiliation.
Side note: while the term “race” fell out of use in most of Europe after WW2 and is now being reimported from the US with US meaning, the same is not true for the word “racism” that stayed in use in most European languages and is stilm used with the old European definition.
So to someone from the US, a French man hating all Brits is not a racist, but to someone from Europe, he is a racist.
If you read texts from 1920s Europe, they frequently talk about the “French race”, the “German race” or the “English race”. When the Nazis talked about the “uber race”, they didn’t mean white people, but instead meant German people. They saw the French, the English and so on as inferior races. (Which makes the concept of neonazis from other countries than Germany quite absurd.)
Downton Abbey has at least one instance of this, referring to the “German race” just slightly post WW1. It caught me off guard but now makes sense in light of your comment.
most Puerto Ricans are tri-racial with their genetic makeup skewing towards towards African. the three groups that led us to now are the indigenous Taino who were enslaved by Christopher Columbus, enslaved Africans, and as you mentioned the Spanish. i don’t know a single boricua who identifies as white. i’m sure they’re out there, but they’re just not who i’m knowing. but either way, white supremacy guages whiteness by proximity to power within a color coded society. so like… even if Bad Bunny were 100 of spanish descent it’d be as you say, similar to how the Irish, Italians, Romani, Jews, and Ukrainians aren’t white under the framework of american white supremacy.
it’s also important to know that white supremacy isn’t a uniquely western European or so called united states thing. the all time promoting white supremacy champs are:
Is bad bunny not white? I thought Puerto Rico was colonized by the spanish wiping out the majority of the native population and he looks pretty spanish. I guess this is one of those “the Irish aren’t white” situations.
The reason for this is that race is a made-up concept.
Race is a pure “us-vs-them” term. That’s why the term “race” was roughly equivalent to “nationality” in most European languages before the term fell out of use after WW2.
If you read texts from 1920s Europe, they frequently talk about the “French race”, the “German race” or the “English race”. When the Nazis talked about the “uber race”, they didn’t mean white people, but instead meant German people. They saw the French, the English and so on as inferior races. (Which makes the concept of neonazis from other countries than Germany quite absurd.)
In the USA, there weren’t enough people of one nationality to dominate the area, so they had to band together and create a “shared white identity”, so their us-vs-them became roughly equivalent to the continent of origin.
Since “race” doesn’t have any actual definition apart from us-vs-them, it can be adapted to whatever makes sense right now.
A “white person” can be someone who looks vaguely white. It could be someone where the majority of their ancestors come from a certain part of the world (e.g., excluding Ireland, Eastern Europe, North Africa, … even though they might look indistinguishable from people from e.g. Western Europe). It could be someone where every single one of their ancestors come from a certain part of the world. It could even be just people of a certain socio-economic group. You could even define that “true whiteness” requires a certain political affiliation.
Side note: while the term “race” fell out of use in most of Europe after WW2 and is now being reimported from the US with US meaning, the same is not true for the word “racism” that stayed in use in most European languages and is stilm used with the old European definition.
So to someone from the US, a French man hating all Brits is not a racist, but to someone from Europe, he is a racist.
Downton Abbey has at least one instance of this, referring to the “German race” just slightly post WW1. It caught me off guard but now makes sense in light of your comment.
most Puerto Ricans are tri-racial with their genetic makeup skewing towards towards African. the three groups that led us to now are the indigenous Taino who were enslaved by Christopher Columbus, enslaved Africans, and as you mentioned the Spanish. i don’t know a single boricua who identifies as white. i’m sure they’re out there, but they’re just not who i’m knowing. but either way, white supremacy guages whiteness by proximity to power within a color coded society. so like… even if Bad Bunny were 100 of spanish descent it’d be as you say, similar to how the Irish, Italians, Romani, Jews, and Ukrainians aren’t white under the framework of american white supremacy.
it’s also important to know that white supremacy isn’t a uniquely western European or so called united states thing. the all time promoting white supremacy champs are:
“White” doesn’t actually mean anything real. Italians and Irish weren’t considered “white” until relatively recently.
The Irish are some of the most fair complexioned duckers I’ve ever seen excluding a Finn and an albino.
Are you sure racists aren’t just suffering from crippling cognitive disability?
They’re not rich enough to count as white, apparently.
Uh, not really. Puerto Ricans are mostly pretty squarely in the Latino category. There’s an entire play and movie about this called West Side Story.
But look at him, he’s whiter than Trump!