When the meaning of a word has legal effects, it has to be defined as precisely as possible, and that needs to be very precise. If it can't, then the idea of linking legal considerations to very undefinable words is a big mistake and should be avoided at all costs.

That should be the take away re ethnicity (and many other things), to remove it from "protected classes" (in the law, and in forum moderation) unless the vast majority of adults can agree it obviously mean the same thing for all of them.

Or, you want the law to be this extremely uncertain set of rules determined by a clerical class to which you basically want to give the keys of the kingdom.

It's not a problem if me an al-jalfrezi disagree on the meaning of ethnicity. It becomes a problem when people want to "protect" ethnicity without having a clear, objective, transparent, shared definition of it.

I was pretty unhappy one time when I ordered a "mushroom burger" at a restaurant and didn't get the hamburger with mushrooms that I have been served at every other restaurant at which I have ordered one. Instead I was served a huge cooked mushroom on a bun. I do love mushrooms so I went ahead and ate it, but I still thought it was false advertising. That wasn't a burger! I mean, even when something says "veggie burger", they don't just serve you some random vegetables on a bun! They give you a burger patty of which the primary ingredient is vegetables. So I should have at least expected to receive a burger patty made of ground mushroom.

I thought the classic edge case about sandwiches was a hot dog (on bun) - sandwich or not?

So, wait. Are you saying Buddy wasn't an elf despite Papa Elf being his adoptive father? What about after he, Buddy Jr. and Jovie move to the North Pole?

This argument has been debunked now and it’s accepted that Palestinians are an ethnicity and therefore protected from the sort of racism that some might want to make against them.

It might have been funny the first time but after many repetitions it becomes abuse.

Weren't you just basically making the argument that ethnicity has nothing to do with race?

Jfc. Race doesn’t exist as a bunch of genes. It’s a social construct.

You wouldn’t say a native of southern Spain was black yet his skin is often darker than Africans who would be regarded as black.

"Or similar"


If I were to make an objection based on the definition this would be it though.

So you think that ethnicity is real, but race isn't? Then shouldn't you come up with a different word than 'racism'?

I certainly never said anything about defining race by skin color or by anything else in particular. But obviously race means something to most people, and it has nothing to do with where someone lives or what religion they practice. I would have previously considered ethnicity to be related to race, but you just came very close to proving to me that it is not (I'm still not certain what to think about that relationship).

The definition including that phrase was not introduced here until after your comment about ravioli (and I hadn't read it before making that post).

But I don't think pasta is that similar to bread.

Yeah I agree the word racism is unhelpful but it and its predecessor racialism predate our understanding of genetics and it’s too late to replace it with something less confusing.

Race is one form of ethnicity and the one most people conflate with it but as per the definitions posted there are others too.

I don’t think it would be reasonable to say that one African tribe with a set of customs are the same ethnicity as another tribe with different customs.

I had never heard the term 'racism' be confusing or misleading until the past 15 years or so, when some people suddenly decided that being against many common practices of followers of Islam is a form of racism. Even when most of those practices would seem to be hated by those same people.