So what do y'all think of Rachel Dolezal?

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If they really want to be fair when it comes to AA what they need to do is ask specific questions, as in, what color is your natural (not processed) hair. On a scale of 1 (very light) to 10 (very dark), what number would you assign to your natural (untanned) skin tone, and finally, most important of all, what kind of income did your parents have? That would be the fairest. Then you can take the results and have a little bit of everything, people from various backgrounds and with different hair, eye colors and skin tones because that's what we are dealing with it. People with dark skin are having trouble getting hired so make them hire a certain amount with dark skin. Soooo much more sensible if they are going to use AA to ensure variation in employee physical characteristics.

It may or may not be true. You make a good case for why it might not be but what I was actually trying to show is how little public reaction there is to these celebrity lies (or alleged lies) about their past. That allegation went onto the internet but nobody cares. But this one went out onto the internet and its' facebook shares, tweets, blog posts, threads, and many articles in mainstream news including CNN, New York Times, Washington Post etc. The links I gave have something in common in that they are all celeb sites. Nobody else cares. But this just went atomic. People really, really care. And I find that interesting, that people care about this but other lies (or allegations that might be to drum up buzz) don't cause a ripple. So it isn't the lie as such. It's that it's about race.

I see what you mean but think about this: what if tomorrow you get online and read how Oprah suddenly declares her parents are/were both white and she was never black and shows photos she claims are her as a teenager and light complected with straight or barely wavy, light brown, baby fine hair! Or Katy declares she is actually black and only disguised herself as white, although I doubt many people would care about that but if Oprah dropped that bombshell, it would definitely be the end of her public life as a celebrity.


Seems some lies are more forgivable than others!

That would not be fair because it leaves out any black people who are light skinned and really leaves out any with albinism (although you could put in an albinism exception). At the same time it brings in white people who have darkish skin. It asks the question "what is race?" and then answers it with "race is what color your hair and skin are". But should affirmative action be based on that?
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For scholarships that surely would be fairest.

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You will wind up with a lot of people from Pakistan and India. Which is fine with me but are they actually having trouble getting hired?

Those stories would be even more explosive than the Dolezal one. The only angle the Dolezal story is missing is that she was never famous.

Janissy, if you think of what I posted in terms of race being non existent, the skin tone chart is right on target! it would truly reflect what people really look like. It would help the darkest people get hired when there might be some true discrimination against them. Let's say you have a couple of dark complected workers already, you would hire someone with lighter skin tone. It wouldn't matter what their parents looked like, only how much money they made. That way you can hire a mix of upper, middle and lower classes, help end classism.

If you are dark complected yourself and are doing the hiring, it would help you hire a variety of skin tones, from the very lightest to the very darkest. Suppose an albino fills out an application and marks the lightest category as his skin tone and you have no employees that marked the lightest. Assuming he's qualified in all other areas, and you have more than one candidate but one is medium complected but you already have several of those, you can hire based on the fact he is very light complected, maybe too light, and is having trouble finding work because of it.

There is one problem though. Tans. This would need to be based on what the tanned skin tone is like too, because the person with the tan can look darker than they are without the tan and they can decide to suddenly either start or stop tanning themselves and alter their skin tone. Tans are problematic. I would still go with hiring someone based on their natural skin tone as opposed to the shade they are when tanned and if they get a tan while working, so be it.

As far as race being a social construct is concerned: it should be remembered that as late as the late nineteenth century/early twentieth century, most considered Italians, especially Sicilians, to be non-white. But today, no one is going to even entertain that notion, even though it's widely known that the Moors who had invaded and colonized Sicily during the Dark Ages included many black Africans. Back further in American history, Benjamin Franklin said that mostly whites should only settle in America, excluding most Germans, and even Swedes - by today's standards, the whitest people on earth(!) - from his definition of white. So yes, assigning certain people to one race, and others to another, certainly does seem to be a matter of social and political opinion, and is hardly scientific.
In a few decades when we whites lose our majority in America, Latinos will probably be welcomed into the white family just so whites can still call America a white country.

I generally like Franklin but he was narrow minded when it came to humans. By white he meant WASP who speaks English. No Popes.
He might have thought Germans were mixed with Jewish.

Already done. Think back to that last U.S. census which divided 'white' into two subcategories: hispanic and non-hispanic.

Plus this:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/22/upshot/more-hispanics-declaring-themselves-white.html?_r=0&abt=0002&abg=1



same historical trajectory as in your post

Beyond the number of residents in a household, all other census questions are unconstitutional (despite being a boon to genealogists).

And yet you don't see white divided into Anglo Saxon and Everyone Else that isn't Anglo Saxon or Hispanic. When will it stop?

http://www.census.gov/topics/population/race.html

This is interesting, bet RD has seen this! It says census data about race is based on self identification! What the hell does that mean, lol? Even the government is using vague terms here. Self identification? Does that mean I can mark African American even if I am not 100% sure (along with other categories I am more sure of?)

Actually, most of the Germans Franklin was familiar with were from the Rhine country, specifically the Rhineland Palatinate, and the Kraichgau (which is today part of Baden-Wurttemberg), where the Germanic population had long ago blended with the descendants of Romanized provincials in the region, making them dark haired and deep ruddy complected. My dad was very much of this physical appearance, and I'm starting to lean that way as I get older. He gave Germans of Saxon stock a pass, though (as they were kin to the English), though I fail to understand why he thought Swedes weren't white.

The actual Romans were very fair skinned, blue eyed, blond hair. Most of the emperors were blue eyed with blond hair with a couple of exceptions.

The Ptolemys whom were of Greek descent were the same.
Even Ahenobarbus (Emperor Nero) had blond hair even though his ancestor was named Ahenobarbus due to the color of his beard. According to legend he is descended from a man who heard Castor and Pollux announced the victory of the Romans at Lake Regillus. They touched his beard as proof and it changed from black to a bronze color. Some of the Ahenobarbi did have red beards and hair but not Nero.

It's interesting to watch movies and television shows featuring reenactments of life with Roman emperors because I get a sense of what the producers, directors and writers actually know about them. Have they done their research? They portray them at times as swarthy. Emperor Augustus was not swarthy. People assume Italians, therefore Romans, are all dark haired, with dark brown eyes and olive complexions, like Al Pacino.

So when you say Romanized, it might not necessarily mean someone will look like a forerunner of Al Pacino, hehe. However, I can picture such a person as you described in my mind because I knew a guy who always had extremely ruddy cheeks and dark hair. I always wondered why his cheeks were always so flushed. Maybe his ancestors are from the same region?

The Romans were probably much more cosmopolitan and multi-ethnic than they are given credit for. Sure, the Roman leadership were described as blond - though in Romance languages today, blond today tends to include any hair color that wasn't black - and I see no reason why that rule wouldn't include the oldest Romance culture. It must be remembered, while blonds were among the Roman populace, they themselves tended to take note of northern populations, such as the Germans and Celts, for their fair hair, implying that fair hair was not so common a Roman trait and so noteworthy.