Ethnicity of Zoochatters

What Ethnicity do you consider yourself to be?

  • White (European)

    Votes: 113 69.3%
  • Black (African)

    Votes: 4 2.5%
  • Latino/Latina

    Votes: 7 4.3%
  • East Asian (China, Japan, Etc)

    Votes: 13 8.0%
  • South Asian

    Votes: 7 4.3%
  • Native American/Alaska Native (Includes South America)

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Pacific Islander (Includes Australian Aborigines and Maori)

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Middle Eastern

    Votes: 5 3.1%
  • Two or More Ethnicities (please explain in text).

    Votes: 16 9.8%
  • Don't Know/Prefer not to respond

    Votes: 3 1.8%

  • Total voters
    163
Interesting thread. I'm Scottish, Welsh, English, Irish, and a tiny bit of Italian. My ancestors have been in the USA for a very long time so we're pretty far removed from the "old countries."
 
Interesting thread. I'm Scottish, Welsh, English, Irish, and a tiny bit of Italian. My ancestors have been in the USA for a very long time so we're pretty far removed from the "old countries."

Same way I am - Chandler obviously is English but also Scottish, Irish, "Scotch-Irish", French, Cherokee, and German. So both us are pretty much a melting pot ie American.
 
On my dad's side, my grandfather's heritage is Spanish and Portuguese with possible Italian and Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry. My grandmother is Syrian, Lebanese, Palestinian. If memory serves me right, my great grandfather was born in Ottoman Palestine.

On my mother's side, my grandfather is also Spanish, Portuguese, and I believe Balkan and Italian. My grandmother is English, Scottish, Irish, Swiss, and German.

My phenotype is more remeniscent to my northern and central European ancestry. I have brown hair, blue eyes, and relatively light skin. My mother had blonde hair, green eyes, and fair skin. My father has black hair, light brown skin, and blue eyes. The reason that I have the phenotype I do is because little did I know until recently, that Mediterranean genes are actually recessive. I will say however, that if you were to put a picture of my Palestinian great grandfather next to my face, you would see a lot of resemblence, but that might be because we both have shaved heads and wear similarly designed glasses.
 
Born and raised in the Southeast Asian country of Malaysia but my ethnicity is Chinese (East Asian) so i'm a Chinese Malaysian

My father's side is Hokkien while my mother's is Hakka both originated in Southern China,our ancestors were brought to British Malaya during the Qing Dynasty in the 19th Century when China was in turmoil with the Western Powers,they came to Southeast asia to make money and send it back to their homeland,some did went back while others stayed here and we've been through the colonial times,japanese invasion and communist insurgencies then independence in 1957 from the British

Despite being of East Asian descent i do not have the stererotypical slanty eyes most of my people have
 
Moroccan from both sides so I am an Arab-Berber (which I believe fits Middle-Eastern on the poll)
 
White with mostly Northwestern European (Belgian/Flemish) blood but also some Spanish blood mixed in some generations ago.

The Mediterranean blood does show though as I could easily be taken to be /mistaken for being Southern European or even North African.
 
I'm 1/4 African American, and the other 3/4 is a mix of European ancestry, including Irish, Swedish, and some others I can't name off the top of my head.
 
I'm white. Always identified with my Norwegian ancestry, since that's the only one I have any sort of connection to, but I took a DNA test (I know there's a lot of debate on how legit those are) and it said I was mostly British/Irish, then some Scandinavian, and 5% Asia Minor. (and only 1% Neanderthal. Really thought I'd have more Neanderthal) Really surprised by how few groups were in my results, I wonder if that means anything. But anyway, I still just tell people my ancestry is Norwegian cause I don't know anything about those other parts of my family history.
 
These things always strike me as a bit dodgy, personally I think that a persons cultural associations are far more relevant than their ancestry. The genetic variations that cause the differences of skin colour and physical features these sort of classifications rely on are so minute as to be negligible.

I am confused by this "Latino" thing though. Does it refer to South Americans of Spanish or Portuguese heritage, in which case they would be European, thus "white". Or does it refer to the product of a South American "melting pot" in which case reference to South American native Americans (and indeed black South Americans) would seem redundant. Just an observation from a confused outsider.

By the way it would be seen as extremely offensive to refer to an Aboriginal Australian as a "Pacific Islander" (who if we are to be technical belong to two distinct ethnic/cultural groups anyway).

Latino can refer to either a person from Spanish speaking Latin America or someone from Brazil and also includes the Latin American diaspora throughout the world. Conversely "Hispanic" is a term that refers only to Ibero-American people from Spanish speaking Latin America or the diaspora from these countries located in other parts of the world.

Brazilians on the other hand are also an Ibero-American people but whose father culture and language derives mostly from the other nation/culture of the Iberian penninsula , Portugal. As such, they are Latinos but not Hispanics.

Racially/ demographically things are ambiguous at best and trying to reach any generalization is almost impossible and extremely likely to induce a headache. Some countries of Hispanic Latin America such as Mexico , Peru , Bolivia, Colombia etc. have populations that are predominately mestizo meaning the mixed race descendants of white Iberian colonists and indigenous peoples with further admixture of African peoples brought to the Americas through the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. In Brazil it is vice versa with the predominate population being a racial mix of the descendents of largely white Iberian colonists and African peoples who were brought over as slaves, with indigenous descent being to a much lesser or diluted extent.

But then to add to this complexity there has been widespread immigration waves in the 19th /20th and 21st centuries from diverse countries and regions to Latin America such as : France, Scandinavia , England , Ireland , Italy, Greece , Russia , China , India , Belgium , Germany , Japan etc.

To give an example: Brazil has the largest population of the ethnically Japanese diaspora outside of Japan , the largest population of ethnically Lebanese people outside of Lebanon , the second largest population of ethnic Germans outside of Germany , the fourth largest population of ethnic Italians outside of Italy and the fifth largest population of Spaniards outside of Spain.

Are these people latinos ?

In a sense yes, because although they may not be of Ibero American stock nor strictly identify with the culture they are still born and raised to varying extents within the cultural region and within Brazilian culture.
 
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