Why do you need a race?

Why do you need a name, a surname, a name for the place you come from,...? Because giving something a name helps us differentiate between things.

A name names an individual, a "race" doesn't name anything but an arbitrary set of genetic and cultural traits (opposed to an actual ethnicity.)

And why can't an arbitrary set of genetic and cultural traits have a name? Everything else in this universe can be broken down to an arbitrary set of something. Why for e.g. call somebody an American when it's only a person living withing arbitrary lines on map?

Because some such groups of people tend to actually have little in common and don't want to be lumped in with each other or be represented together.

> Because some such groups of people tend to actually have little in common and don't want to be lumped in with each other or be represented together.

Yeah. Like, often, Americans -- but we still have a name for those.

I'm sorry but that is a really weird argument. Who are those groups of people who want us to pretend there are no similarities or differences between them and other groups of people?

Calling it "pretend" is both dismissive and begs the question. The people you want to call "Hispanics" are ethnically rather diverse, far from homogeneous. The similarities you see originate in ignorance. Mexicans aren't Columbians, Brazillians aren't Portuguese and all of these countries are home to many different ethnic groups with their own histories, languages, cultures and genetics.

I'm not calling anyone anything. The GP of this post claims to be of Hispanic race. You claim he is not entitled to call himself that. Are you the the arbiter of what he is allowed to call him self? I'm must admit I do find it ironic when you simultaneously claim groups of people don't want to be named and then at the same time are trying to prevent somebody from such a group to call himself that.

It seems like you just want to be argumentative for the sake of it. If you review our comments, you'll find where you called it pretending and you'll not find where I said he couldn't call himself whatever he wants.

In the meantime, consider why many people don't want to be lumped in with people they have nothing in common with. If you take that thought seriously, you might learn to see the world somewhat differently.

Maybe I would learn something if you could actually provide some evidence besides being needlessly patronizing. Who are those people? What do their feelings have to do with a fact that there exist a set of traits which which could be used to subdivide us into groups?

I encourage you to look into that all of that in good faith if you ever do become genuinely interested.

Giving me a link to all those disgruntled people would help me get started.

At the very least, representation in government. People who share my ethnicity have unique social problems that don't apply to any other "race". I don't need a race, but the people who share my background need to be discernible on a census.

But you just said "people who share my ethnicity", which has nothing to do with race. People of any race can share your ethnicity. Is a black Mexican closer in culture to a Nigerian or to a Mexican?

I'm not sure you understand how governments work. That's ok. On a census, there's no box to check off every strain that makes up my ethnicity. There's a box that says "Hispanic". I'm being descriptive, not prescriptive.

I'm not sure I understand how the US government works. Your experience is far from universal.

You're right. My comment was uncharitable and US-centric. Sorry. I found it hard to not react because of the personal stake I feel I have in this sort of conversation. I'll try to do better.

That's OK, we're just used to different systems.

Interesting comment to get downvoted on...

> I otherwise would have no race, right?

Yes, you don't have a race. There are no human races.

> There are no human races.

That's mostly down to a weird quirk of English, which uses the word "race" for both ~"breed" and "species", so you can say "There are no 'races', we're all just the Human Race!". In most other languages, where "race" means only ~"breed" and not "species", that's as silly as saying "There are no 'breeds', all dogs are just the Dog Species!" Yeah, sure, but a Dachshund is quite different from a Great Dane in many ways (and, yes, of course quite similar in many more), so the statement is nonsense. They're both the Dog species, but different breeds.

Limit the word to mean only ~"breed" and it does kind of make sense for humans, too: There are definitely sub-groups of us, the members of which share many similar physical characteristics within the group and differ in these characteristics between the groups, because of long genetic isolation. If you look at it calmly you realise that's not a big problem in and of itself -- the problems come when you start claiming some of these groups are inherently superior or inferior to each other: One can admit that an African differs from an Asian, while still realising that a blanket statement saying an African is "better" than an Asian or vice versa is as silly as a blanket statement saying a Dachshund is "better" than a Great Dane or vice versa.

I'm not sure, but it often feels like this linguistic oddity makes the whole subject so much more inflamed and harder to discuss in the English-speaking world.