The classification of people into the categories Caucasoid, Mongoloid and Negroid was the bad idea of a 19th-century German. He based it off the shapes of human heads. What Fey probably meant more was that Afghans, generally speaking, are as white as guys like Abbott and Molina.
Well, are they? It is unclear whether Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett had ever met an Afghan, but he knew that they were noble people worth protecting from the Russian Empire. The United States took the same approach. They passed as white in Jim Crow America. On American census forms today, Afghans remain classified as white.
The Afghan mujahadeen were definitely the good guys. Still, census officials have said they need more research before committing to a change, citing feedback suggesting MENA should be treated as an option for ethnicity, not race — something the bureau has not researched.
Sarah Shabbar grew up in Santa Barbara feeling underrepresented. She was bullied because of her background. Her parents, like many older Iranian Americans, saw it differently. She was raised in a home that believed Iranians were white, she said. Experts say that generational divide is a common split within the Middle Eastern and North African community.
For some, it stems from the notion of being from the Caucasus region — and therefore, literally Caucasian — and for others, identifying as white became a means of survival in a new country. Some worry that in the current political climate, it may be dangerous to create a separate category. Beydoun, who is Egyptian and Lebanese, served on a committee of field experts that provided the Census Bureau with feedback on the idea of a MENA box on the census.
Arab immigrants from modern-day Syria and Lebanon, who were considered Asian, successfully fought to be classified as white and thus eligible for citizenship. That classification was cemented in the late s when the Office of Management and Budget listed all Middle Easterners as white. How outrageously insensitive. In fact, they are openly racist to these Mongoloids in their very own country. A few thousand suicides and protests have done nothing to change their mindset.
This is so interesting! We are all human. The social construct of race tries to divide people into sub-categories just because they look different. All these terms like mongoloids or caucasians etc.. You are not your race or skin color, you are what you make yourself to be. Race is only real because you acknowledge it. That last picture of the little blond girl is a Kalashi girl from Pakistan.
I know this was about your personal experience, but I can relate also. I wish Hazara people were more represented in the media so people could finally understand the diversity of Afghanistan. I always get mistaken for Filipino or Indonesian, which is understandable. Sorry for the rant. White is apparently a European classification. In Afghanistan people do not identify with colored categories so the point is moot.
Europeans can call themselves white and create whatever classifications they deem fit but these have no relevance to the whole rest of mankind, the vast majority of which have never had a tradition of color categorizing people. Afghans are simply Afghans, they may identify with their various tribes and as Afghans in general.
There is no tradition of identifying racially with other people in neighboring regions or with alien races of Europe. If westerners have uneducated stereotypes on what an Afghan looks like that is their own naivete and lack of awareness.
How do you know she is a Kalahi girl? You say she is from pakistan as if pakistan is some ancient land.
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