Ethnicity Is NOT Race
Media and politicians have gone over the top with claims that Donald Trump's attacks on Gonzalo Curiel, a judge of Mexican ancestry who is in charge of lawsuits against The Donald over his fraudulent "Trump University", are "racist". No. Trump's attacks may be dopy, ugly, mean-spirited, misguided, and irrelevant to the issues of his court case, but they are assuredly not "racist".
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What does "race", and its derivatives "racist" and "racism", mean?
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In discussing issues of language, a dictionary, or more than one dictionary, seems a good place to start. So let's consult some dictionaries as to "race", starting with the Miscrosoft Encarta World English Dictionary:

group of humans: one of the groups into which the world's population can be divided on the basis of physical characteristics such as skin or hair color[.]

Now, The American Heritage Dictionary:

1. A local geographic or global human population distinguished as a more or less distinct group by genetically transmitted physical characteristics.

OK, so these first two dictionaries make plain that physical characteristics are quintessential to the concept of race.
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Dictionary.com shows how absurdly vague and meaningless political correctness has in recent decades made the term "race":

a. (no longer in technical use) any of the traditional divisions of humankind, the commonest being the Caucasian, Mongoloid, and Negro, characterized by supposedly distinctive and universal physical characteristics.

b. an arbitrary classification of modern humans, sometimes, especially formerly, based on any or a combination of various physical characteristics, as skin color, facial form, or eye shape, and now frequently based on such genetic markers as blood groups.

Merriam-Webster.com has various definitions but does get back to physical characteristics:

c : a category of humankind that shares certain distinctive physical traits[.]

OxfordDictionaries.com also speaks of physical characteristics:

Each of the major divisions of humankind, having distinct physical characteristics[.]

And the Cambridge online dictionary says, first:

a group, especially of people, with particular similar physical characteristics, who are considered as belonging to the same type, or the fact of belonging to such a group[.]

But Cambridge then fuzzes away the clarity of its initial definition in adding another definition, with a dopy sample sentence:

a group of people who share the same language, history, characteristics, etc.:
The British are an island race.

Most people have the good sense to reject the notion that race is artificial, and accept that there is indeed such a thing as "race", that a person's race is ordinarily very easy to determine, on sight, and that blurred lines are the result of interracial reproduction. So let's forget about the idiotic politically-correct refusal to categorize people by inherited physical traits, and speak to what race is, and is not.
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Donald Trump has been criticized for "racism" in attacking a judge of Mexican ancestry. But Mexican is not a race. There are white Mexicans, Indian Mexicans, mestizo Mexicans, and even a few black Mexicans. Thus, Mexicans are no more a "race" than are Americans.
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As to the politically-correct rejection of "race", how can someone be "racist" if we (pretend to) no longer believe in distinct races? — when, indeed, the very concept of race is forbidden to be discussed? If we are not talking about race, what are we talking about that the media call "racism"? That is both very hard to say rationally and very easy to see upon examination. Clue: it's not race.
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Ethnicity is not race. Language is not race. Religion is not race. Nationality is not race. Citizenship is not race.

Images of Judge Curiel, esp. close-ups, are nearly impossible to find on the Internet, but such views of him as I have seen, mainly on television, suggest that he is a WHITE man of Mexican ancestry. But here, "ancestry" does not mean "race", but only PLACE. People have lived in what is now called "Mexico" who were not racially changed by residing in that area. Indeed, that in turn suggests that Judge Curiel might very well be of unmixed SPANISH ancestry, that is, of (Caucasian) people from EUROPE who held themselves apart from the bulk of the population of "New Spain" (Mexico's colonial name) and did not participate in the general tendency in New Spain to interbreed with Indians, the pre-Conquest indigenous people of the region that was renamed after the Conquest, "New Spain". These wholly, or almost wholly unmixed Spaniards in New Spain comprised two groups, "criollos" (born in New Spain) and the Peninsulares (born in European ("old") Spain. I don't know if Judge Curiel belonged to either of those early immigrant groups from Spain, but if he is as white as he looks, he might well have.
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The tendency of people of European ancestry to keep to themselves wherever their role as colonizers or officers in colonial enterprises or governments is a commonplace in the New World. The great preponderance of Americans (us) did not have much of anything to do with the Amerindians / natives / aboriginals we encountered once we arrived from Europe, and almost no one of European ancestry even entertained so much as the THOUGHT of marrying / interbreeding with "Injuns", which was barred by powerful racial taboos wherever there were European women sufficient to permit Europeans to keep to themselves yet have children.
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Nowadays people like to talk about a romance between Pocahontas and John Smith and her later marriage to John Rolfe, and to claim they are, say, 1/64th Indian, but thru the bulk of our history, such things were a source NOT of pride, but of shame. We didn't even have to pass laws against such race-mixing because almost nobody would ever think of such entanglements, and the "half-breed" children of such unions faced a very hard life that no responsible parent would wish upon their beloved progeny, often being rejected by both communities. I know, thru the Schoonmaker Family Association in the Lower Hudson Valley of New York State, the entire 10-generation history of my ancestors on my father's side, and there was never, since the arrival on this continent in 1653 of the first Schoonmaker and his first wife (tho he was her second husband; she had arrived in about 1640) so much as one child who was not 100% European. The Schoonmakers and the bulk of the related families in my father's direct line were Dutch, tho there were also other European nationalities present in that history, including Huguenots, from France. But no Indians. Ever, down to me, the 11th generation in America.
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Thus might it be with Judge Curiel's ancestry: 100% European (white). So how is Donald Trump, a white man (can the bulk of us agree he is white, even if that be regarded by some politically-correct loons as "racist"?), being "racist" when he attacks a white man? People have got to stop using ridiculous language in attacking Donald Trump. There is plenty to criticize in Trump's politics and egotism without using false argumentation.
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I speculated in this blog on February 25th, that Donald Trump does not really want to be President, because it is a crushing job that does not fit his personality, and I wondered aloud how he could manage to lose, first, the Republican nomination and then the Presidential contest. Nothing he said up to that time, no matter how outrageous, seemed to disqualify him to the yahoos who are the core of his support — indeed, the overwhelming percentage of his support. Trump has had many chances to throw the election, but he didn't rise to any of the obvious opportunities, including a chance to attack "Muhammad Ali" as the Communist-sympathizer and serial adulterer he was. Now, Trump may have found a way to get himself trounced, not with anything blatant, but with something more nuanced, an attack upon a Hispanic judge from Indiana. Presidential candidates have been knocked out of the box by far less. Remember Howard Dean's dopy scream? It was a matter of no ideological importance that should have had no impact on his campaign, but it made him seem ridiculous and unpresidential, so destroyed his chances of winning the Democratic nomination because he could not find a way to back away from it and return to matters of importance.
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Howard Dean was a man of substance, but his campaign was destroyed by a matter of no substance because he was not able to get people to forget one 3-second(?) whoop. Donald Trump has managed to weasel out of DOZENS of comparable goofs, because he is NOT a man of substance, so the people who favor him hold him to NO standard. He can say one thing one day and the exact opposite the very next day, and he is not held to account — because his supporters do not THINK about what he says but only FEEL that he speaks their rage at how wrong things have gone in this country in recent decades. As long as Trump continues to embolden racists and Radical Rightwingers in their insanely antisocial behavior, he will always have their support. Whether there are enuf angry white men facing financial difficulties that they can blame on "Them" (their Liberal enemies who are turning this country over to blacks, women, and immigrants), to defeat the trends of decades, remains to be seen,
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Seven months ago, all the bets would have been on Trump becoming so Johnny-One-Note tedious that he would stand no chance against a serious candidate. But decades of frustration on the part of the people who feel that everyone is favored over them, have produced an enormous backlog of rage that they have not yet been able fully to vent. To this day, they are so angry they can't think straight, as to ask how Trump could possibly undo all the harm that they feel they have suffered. Will they ever stop to think, before the November election, that Trump speaks RAGE but not coherent POLICY that could actually solve the problems and make good changes without throwing away all the progress and programs that have become so interwoven with everything in the Nation's economy and culture? Will they accept what would seem to them the sad reality that there are no quick fixes, and the only way we can stop the Ship of State from following much the course it has been on for decades is by SINKING it? We can hope that the (barely) sane among Trump's furious white men, would rather slow the Ship to turn it around, to the extent possible, in a reasonable time, without sinking it. But some people are doubtless so angry that if they cannot have their way, RIGHT away, they WOULD rather sink it. Sane people will do anything to avoid suicide. But there are lots of suicides, aren't there? — because some people really would rather die than wait for a satisfactory outcome to present difficulties that they do not believe will ever happen.
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The Most Bizarre Election Ever. I am 71 years old, and have probably been following Presidential politics since, at latest, age 11. Indeed, by age 13 I had already decided I would like to BE President myself. Alas, I knew by then that I was gay, and the only way I could become President was if social attitudes toward homosexuality were to change. My first task, then, would have to be to change those antihomosexual attitudes, which I did manage to do, in coining, in spring 1970, the term "Gay Pride" as it is now used. Over the course of decades, the idea that gay people could properly be proud because they were normal to themselves and decent to others, and thus deserved respect, ground down mindless bigotry, to the point where an openly gay man might very well be able to run for President now.
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Unfortunately, that change took over four decades out of my life, and started when I was 25 years old. 25 + 46 = 71, my current age, and a man of my age has a life expectancy of only 13.4 years. When other people my age who had high political ambitions could have been working in the trenches, ingratiating himself with key constituencies, making useful contacts and alliances, and taking low-level jobs, then working his way up to political prominence, I was barred by stereotypes and discrimination from doing any of that preparatory work. Further, I cannot expect to be mentally sharp thru the entire (+ or -) 13.4 years I might still live, so cannot realistically hold myself out as a candidate for President.
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The loathsome Bernie Sanders is 74 years old now, but has for decades been doing all that prep work that I was barred from. He hasn't even been a Democrat for much of that time, but "an independent who caucuses with Democrats" in Congress. Why hasn't anyone during this campaign pointed out that he has NOT been a faithful Democrat all along, but held himself aloof from the party whose nomination he now seeks? This is just one of the many unprecedented grostequeries of this most astonishingly appalling of all Presidential campaigns in U.S. history.
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Now that same arrogant, self-important piece of sh* is adamant that he will fite for the nomination no matter how many more millions of people vote for Hillary Clinton, and challenge the right of "super-delegates" to vote as they WANT to vote — because only Sanders is worthy of their vote, so democracy doesn't matter. Super-delegates must vote as he tells them to. It's all part of the "God's Chosen People" thing that Jews are raised to believe in. Jews are meant to control the world, and non-Jews are obligated by God's law to hand over control over everything to "God's Chosen". Anyone who doesn't accept that the Jews are "God's Chosen" are "anti-Semites", to be condemned by all decent people (i.e., people who believe that the Jews really are "God's Chosen People"). Never mind that Jews are only 2.2% of the U.S. population — a fact that will astonish many Americans, who know that Jews control movies and television, and are everywhere seen on TV talk shows, so assume that something like half or more of all Americans are Jewish.
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God votes for Jews, and that's all you need to know. Do your duty to God. Vote for a complete takeover of Government and society by God, and everything will then be wonderful. ISIS would be proud of Bernie Sanders' certitude of the righteousness of his cause, except that ISIS would completely reject his unspoken assertion that God is a Jew, and, thus, to serve God, Americans must serve the Jews and put one particular Jew in the White House. Of course, such idiot nonsense loses all influence as soon as everyone agrees that there IS NO GOD, and thus no "Chosen People of God". But Bernie Sanders appears to believe that God is a Jew and Bernie Sanders is God's candidate. Why else would he not accept the verdict of the Democratic electorate, which plainly prefers Hillary, by millions of votes? Is it a personal quirk, a grotesquely, unsupported belief in his superiority to everyone else in this country? Or is it Radical Judaism, the mirror image of Radical Islam?
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As I write, the major media have already reported, before polls open in June 7th's primaries, that Hillary Clinton has already cinched the Democratic nomination. A sane opponent would concede defeat, and work to unite all decent people in defeating the monster Donald Trump. If Bernie Sanders does not do that if today's primaries, including in my state, New Jersey, hand Hillary an impressive triumph to months of state-by-state primaries, everyone must accept that Bernie Sanders is out of his mind, an enemy of democracy who believes that he knows better than the people. God, apart from not existing, is not a citizen of the United States, so cannot vote in our elections. So, Bernie, count the votes of people who really do exist and really are citizens, accept defeat with grace, and move on.
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 7:38 AM