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Originally Posted by Carn
Yeah, but being Irish or Scottish doesn't have anything to do with race. Those are nationalities.
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Exactly. They are, in addition to being nationalities, ethnicities, or sub-cultures.
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Caucasians aren't a race?
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I never said anything about caucasians. Caucasians are one specific sub group of whites. My post referred specifically to "white people". Whites vary so greatly in skin tone, facial features, hair, height, eye color, and other physical features that to designate us as all being the same based on some superficial characteristic that varies so greatly is specious at best.
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Using your logic, there isn't any "black race" either. Merely a group of people from Africa or Australia who share a common skin tone. Being Asian isn't a race then either.. It just means that you happen to have skin tone similarities to other people from that region of the world.
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Exactly. There's only one race of homo sapiens, and that's human. African Americans are an ethnicity or a group of related ethnicities. Because they are a minority with a common history and have consistently in our history been the subject of systematic discrimination, it makes sense for them to work to gain equality with the white majority, and celebrating the contributions of others of their ethnic group as a way of promoting the idea that they were responsible for contributing to our nation's history and development makes perfect sense to me.
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I'd say being from Europe is an ethnic heritage. Or in my case, being of Russian descent.
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European, I'd disagree. Europeans form a wide variety of ethnicities. Russian, certainly, and I see absolutely nothing wrong with celebrating your Russian heritage. The different cultures that formed this country are all part of what makes it a wonderful place.