JackSlater
Registered User
- Apr 27, 2010
- 18,147
- 12,831
I like your post.
I must say, I find this kind of thread (which is more about identity politics than biology) a bit uncomfortable. I just don't think we, the disconnected fan, should be applying culturally-loaded identity labels to people not involved in the conversation.
I mean, I get that the thread is well intended and everything, but people should decide for themselves what "race" they are. The public does not decide.
Let's take Dirk Graham, for example. If he said, publicly, "I'm black," then, okay, I guess it's fair enough to call him black. But if he didn't, then I don't think we get to decide it.
Since race doesn't biologically exist, it is really an identity marker and nothing else. So if Patrick Laine announces tomorrow that he's black, then he's black.
The parameters for inclusion in the thread were already laid out in post 31. It's fairly obvious what the vast majority of people mean by "black" in this context, and though the term is imprecise it obviously does carry a primarily ethnic connotation. Dirk Graham is of (relatively recent in the human sense) African descent and thus will be considered to be at least partially black by most people. Patrik Laine presumably is not of African descent (in the last several thousand years anyway) and thus regardless of what he says is not.