Chinese are Black!…Race is wack!

16 July, 2008 | 3 comments | Category: I.dentity, i.mmigration, madness!

Race, ethnicity, nationalism…are all social creations with gooey slimy fluidity. All are… Whaaaack, frankly…:)

Waaack (n.) = Completely transient cultural construct with the utility of making sense of the world around us. Such waackdom is usually on the quest to emulate another mindboggler – ‘truth’. Said wackdom aspires, at times succeeds to appear heavy enough to stand as ground for years and years of suffering, conflict, tension and chaos! Said waackdom is gooey, fluid, ridiculous madness …but never silly and flimsy given its powerfully divisive and instrumental ability to ignite perplexing flames of suffering!

Recently, in a humorous turn of decision-making by the Pretoria High Court/south african government, the race farce was exposed!

Brace yourself to drive off into some utter madness!….these turn of events get beyond intriguing in light of the history of apartheid, and some iffy history with worker immigrants in Africa (read: Indians in Eastern Africa). Lo and behold, SA pulls that RACE card! And the racers are off….

The High Court in South Africa has ruled that Chinese South Africans are to be reclassified as black people.

It made the order so that ethnic Chinese can benefit from government policies aimed at ending white domination in the private sector. The Chinese Association of South Africa took the government to court, saying its members had been discriminated against.

An estimated 200,000 ethnic Chinese live in South Africa. more

In a landmark ruling the Pretoria High Court accepted the Chinese as a “previously disadvantaged” group. This means that – at least in legal terms – Chinese South Africans will now be included in the definition of black people in legislation covering lucrative black economic empowerment (BEE) deals.

The controversial BEE policy, under which large companies have to surrender a percentage of their equity to black-run entities, is aimed at reversing decades of apartheid bias. It covers Africans, Coloureds (mixed-race people) and Indians but has been criticized widely as a politically correct form of theft by ruling party cronies.

Under white minority rule the Chinese were classified as Coloureds. In a decision that illustrated the difficulty of applying racial segregation Japanese people were given “honorary white” status – partly because they were wealthier and fewer in number than the Chinese.

*gasp* |stunned|…what money doesn’t do, eh? money can probably even turn me into a blue eyed blond haired white ice princess barbie…*batting eyelashes*

Interesting thing is only SA citizens before 1994 and their descendants are eligible; making about 10,000-12,000 Chinese people BLACK! and Japanese – NOT!

Race is a social concept without valid basis in biology, say our beloved geneticists. Group differences between races are so minuscule as to be relatively insignificant, and have little or no biological validity.

~ Scientists estimate that 99.9 percent of the human genome is the same in everyone.
~ The proportion of a human’s genes reflected in external appearance seems to be in the range of .01 percent.
~ By contrast, traits like intelligence, artistic talent and social skills are likely to be shaped by thousands, if not tens of thousands, of the 80,000 or so genes in the human genome.
~ Human genomic history indicates modern Homo sapiens originated in Africa 200,000 to 100,000 years ago, at which point a relatively small number of them began migrating into Europe, the Middle East, Asia and across the Bering land masses into the Americas.

Since the African emigrations began, a mere 7,000 generations have passed. Because of the limited founder population and the short time since dispersal, humans are strikingly homogeneous — differing from one another only once in a thousand sub-units, called bases, out three billion. And of the differences between individuals, 88 to 90 percent can be found within a local population, while only about 10 to 12 percent distinguish one race from another. read more…

Ethnicity is a social construct, though geneticists can track it. But in all finality, we are all intermixed immigrants ..Unless our ancestors were the genius inventors of human affection or toothpicks!!

nations are social constructs in flux….nuff said.

Possibly Related Posts:

• A Saturday at the Wharton Africa Business Forum
• The Graying of these here Pink Shades
• When I’m Back
• Opposite Sides of the Border
• Murky

3 comments to “Chinese are Black!…Race is wack!”

embrt, July 16th, 2008 at 11:53 pm:

• “nations are social constructs in flux”
  perfectly put.

nyalasmoke, July 17th, 2008 at 10:25 am:

• yet another gem! excellent job shading light on another futile exercise in legalistic and linguistic charades human beings like to play and then showing the ridiculousness of it all using findings in science. Maybe general genetics must be a required class for all.

Spacefog, July 22nd, 2008 at 5:32 am:

• I hope its as easy as they thought it would be.
  But, its not, I think Its so difficult for humans not to think hierarchy of class and Ethnicity. Its what makes us feel good about ourselves , I guess.
  In the S.A case , I think it should have been a personal choice of people to identify themselves as chinese or blacks or greens. It will come back to haunt them down.

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