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PaperclipPerfector  23d ago (text post)   32919 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 24, 2025

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One thing all the drama teaches me is that a less strict version of the one-drop rule is still very much real in American society.

Rachel Zegler, even though she is probably about 3/4ths European genetically, is viewed as a brown woman both by the left and the right.

Obama, even though he is 1/2 European genetically, is almost universally viewed as a black man both by the left and the right.

It really is sort of strange if you think about it.

To be fair, the fact that Zegler probably identifies as brown and Obama at least publicly tends to identify as black muddies the waters a bit. It's not just how American society defines people, it's also how they define themselves.

And to be extra fair, it's not like Obama ever had a real choice about publicly identifying himself as black. Realistically, given how American society views race, he never would have been able to pass himself off as a white man. 99% of Americans look at him and immediately think "that's a black guy", they don't think "that's a half white, half black guy".

Personally, I see Zegler as essentially racially white European. However, she's obviously not white enough for Snow White. The precise phenotype is important in this case. The apparent attempt to prove that actually the phenotype doesn't matter appears to have backfired on Disney. If Zegler had enough talent and charisma maybe it could of worked out.

Apparently, 19th-century Americans could tell mulattos, quadroons and octoroons apart by sight.

Apparently, 19th-century Americans could tell mulattos, quadroons and octoroons apart by sight.

Some of them thought they could, but the concept of "passing" goes back at least that far, so in fact most of them could not.

Conclusion does not follow from premise here. That's still consistent with most people being able to tell most of the time.

Rachel Zegler, even though she is probably about 3/4ths European genetically, is viewed as a brown woman both by the left and the right.

Isn't this the case for pretty much all Hispanics?

American racial categories have never made much sense to me, but taking 'Hispanic' as roughly coterminous with 'South and Central American', the vast majority of Hispanics are in fact significantly European in descent. I understand most South Americans to be mixtures of European and indigenous American, with the exact proportion changing from place to place and class to class; in general, the higher the social class the more European descent, but there are plenty of exceptions. There are also a lot of South Americans with partial or majority African descent, but the fact that we use terms like 'Afro-Hispanic' or 'black' for them suggests that we consider them slightly differently?

It does confuse me a little - as I understand it, all Brazilians, say, are Hispanic, even though they are ethnically diverse and include white, black, indigenous, and mixed-race people.

(Technically you could argue that Brazilians aren't Hispanic at all - sometimes I see 'Hispanic' as synonym for 'Hispanophone', and Brazilians are Lusophone - but American racial categories don't have a separate section for Brazilians. In general I get the sense that in America, Brazilians are lumped in with Hispanics, and Spanish people are not, even though in the literal sense Brazilians are not related to Hispania and the Spanish should be the central example.)

Anyway, Zegler is majority-European-descent, but isn't that quite common among Hispanics? Most Mexicans are mestizos, i.e. of partial but significant European descent, and then roughly a third of Mexicans are just European. I think that even white Mexicans would be considered 'Hispanic' in the United States? Or am I mistaken?

It does confuse me a little - as I understand it, all Brazilians, say, are Hispanic, even though they are ethnically diverse and include white, black, indigenous, and mixed-race people.

"Officially, Brazilians are not considered Hispanic or Latino because the federal government’s definition applies only to those of “Spanish culture or origin.” In most cases, people who report their Hispanic or Latino ethnicity as Brazilian in Census Bureau surveys are later recategorized – or “back coded” – as not Hispanic or Latino. The same is true for people with origins in Belize, the Philippines and Portugal. An error in how the Census Bureau processed data from a 2020 national survey omitted some of this coding and provided a rare window into how Brazilians (and other groups) living in the U.S. view their identity. In 2020, at least 416,000 Brazilians — more than two-thirds of Brazilians in the U.S. — described themselves as Hispanic or Latino on the ACS and were mistakenly counted that way. Only 14,000 Brazilians were counted as Hispanic in 2019, and 16,000 were in 2021. The large number of Brazilians who self-identified as Hispanic or Latino highlights how their view of their own identity does not necessarily align with official government definitions. It also underscores that being Hispanic or Latino means different things to different people."

That's about as organised and consistent as I expect racial identification in the Americas to be!

Many American government forms needlessly ask you for your race. Some have two categories of "white and Hispanic" and "white (not Hispanic)". Other forms have a yes or no Hispanic portion and a separate racial section. That is strictly speaking more correct since Hispanic is not a race. A Mexican whose ancestors immigrated from Japan are Hispanic and Asian.

According to the census bureau, Hispanic is an ethnicity, not a race, and is orthogonal to race. You can be a white Hispanic, a black Hispanic, Asian Hispanic, etc. So yes, Zegler is a white Hispanic.

But is she a Snow White Hispanic, that is the question?(!)

If they wanted that they would have used Ana-Taylor Joy. She white enough to glow.

Too old now.

True. Maybe in 10 years she can play the Queen.

Ana-Taylor Joy

I like the look of that one. Very unique face.

More of a Sandy Tan Hispanic, if you ask me.

The census bureau categories don't have great overlap with how people behave in real life, though, do they? For instance, the census categories include Middle Easterners as white.

And to be extra fair, it's not like Obama ever had a real choice about publicly identifying himself as black. Realistically, given how American society views race, he never would have been able to pass himself off as a white man. 99% of Americans look at him and immediately think "that's a black guy", they don't think "that's a half white, half black guy".

My vague recollection and also this bit by Trevor Noah is that Obama was referred to more often as mixed-race early in his campaign before he was properly accepted by the wider black community. It was certainly also a conscious decision on his part to lean into it, but not one he made as early as say Kamala Harris, who chose to attend an HBCU (the story told among Asian-Americans being that she was too dumb to get into a better school and realized that she could only achieve success by black standards and not Asian ones).

the story told among Asian-Americans being that she was too dumb to get into a better school and realized that she could only achieve success by black standards and not Asian ones

Can you give examples of Asian-Americans saying this?

Well, me for one, but mostly just anecdotes from my disproportionately male and either apolitical or tech right adjacent Indian-American peers. You can see similar opinions being downvoted in reddit threads like this one.

I checked the downvoted comments, but I couldn't find one saying this.

What they say there and in other threads is that Kamala downplayed her Indian identity, and it's a common attack by her opponents of any background that she's not very smart, but I've only heard the complete thought "she went to Howard and played up her blackness because she was dumb" in person.

There's an issue with HBCUs not getting higher performing black students. Those people go to regular colleges. The ones who can't settle for HBCUs.

There's an issue with HBCUs not getting higher performing black students. Those people go to regular colleges. The ones who can't settle for HBCUs.

This is a logical consequence of competing offers between schools optimizing for academics and schools optimizing for culture, but what evidence is there that it rises to the severity of "an issue?"

what evidence is there that it rises to the severity of "an issue?"

None at all, obviously. Was this a serious request for "evidence" of common speech terms being applicable?

None at all, obviously. Was this a serious request for "evidence" of common speech terms being applicable?

Yes, obviously. There's a difference between "Logically, one would expect this trade-off to exist" and "This trade-off exists, and it has notable consequences."

One thing all the drama teaches me is that a less strict version of the one-drop rule is still very much real in American society.

It's not the "one drop" rule if it isn't strict. That strictness is the defining characteristic of the "one drop" rule. It should not be surprising that percentage ancestry ("blood quantum") matters.

Rachel Zegler, even though she is probably about 3/4ths European genetically, is viewed as a brown woman both by the left and the right.

Mostly because she promotes herself that way. Zegler could have certainly downplayed her Colombian ancestry.

Obama, even though he is 1/2 European genetically, is almost universally viewed as a black man both by the left and the right.

The average African-American is only about 65% sub-Saharan African ancestry, and this figure varies considerably; Obama is not far off at all.

The average African-American is only about 65% sub-Saharan African ancestry

From my understanding it’s actually ~80%, going off this chart. (source)

It's not the "one drop" rule if it isn't strict. That strictness is the defining characteristic of the "one drop" rule.

See also: This Black woman's bone density scan results list her ethnicity as 'white.' Why that's a problem. I looked at the picture at the top of that article and went "...really??"

Mostly because she promotes herself that way. Zegler could have certainly downplayed her Colombian ancestry.

If you want a counter-example, look at Anya Taylor-Joy who despite being a double minority (Ayylmao-Latina) mostly just bills herself as white.

isn't she only latina on paper? Her dad is argentinian, but he's half scottish half english. Her mother is from zambia, but she's half english half spanish. So she's maybe a quarter spanish, the european sort. That's why she doesn't go for latina roles despite speaking spanish and growing up in a spanish country, doesn't want to risk the woke furiosa. Funny to think she's only American because her parents happened to be passing through though. If the birthright citizenship stuff gets undone she'd no longer be a citizen.

If the birthright citizenship stuff gets undone she'd no longer be a citizen.

How? Getting rid of jus soli is next to impossible in USA, and retroactively stripping citizenship is, well, even closer.

My favorite type of American critic: the carpetbagger

On the contrary, the HBD-curious faction of the right has a pretty sophisticated understanding of how to categorize people of various ancestries; many are bringing back old, but at one point widely used, terms like castiza, quadroon, mulatto, etc. Such people would see Zegler not as “brown” in some absolute sense, but rather as simply too brown to play a character named after how pale she’s supposed to be.

We can quibble about how “European” she is — although she apparently describes her paternal ancestry as “Polish”, “Zegler” doesn’t sound like a Polish surname to me, but rather like an Ashkenazi surname — but if she’d self-identified as basically white from an early age, and not made a big deal out of her partial Amerindian/Latino ancestry, I think most people would probably look at her, hear the name “Rachel Zegler” and think, “Yeah, that’s white enough for me.” If I knew nothing about her and you showed me a picture of her, I could imagine being persuaded that she’s Cypriot or Lebanese or something like that, which I would consider at least contingently white.

Obama is a tougher case because, as you note, people with African history have been set apart, legally, culturally, and otherwise, for so long in this country that Americans do still have a pretty keen eye for identifying who’s “black” and who isn’t. Obama’s not light enough to pass for “ethnically ambiguous”, let alone “white”, even though his level of European admixture is probably roughly the same as that of someone like, say, Rashida Jones, who is far more white- or -white-adjacent-passing.

That being said, Obama was not raised as black, did not have any connection or interaction at all with black culture until college (there were few black people in Hawaii, and none at all in Indonesia), and still decided that he was going to lean into his black identity. If he’d never gone to Occidental, never fallen in with black culture, and kept going by “Barry Obama”, I don’t think people would be very hung up on his African ancestry. He’d just be seen as some sort of “mixed” and people wouldn’t dwell on the specifics.

Zegler is a form of the common surname Ziegler, coming from German "Ziegel" (brick) and typically meaning "brickmaker"; it could be Jewish, but such surnames relating to common unskilled jobs were more common among ethnic Germans.

I recognized it as definitely Germanic in origin, but assumed it came to us in this case via Yiddish.

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