Ethnicity and other things

[teaberryblue]

I had a really fascinating conversation with hymnicide last night. We talked about a variety of things, like alternative education, what it means to have career goals as a teenager, ethnic identification, and definition of 'whiteness'-- how some people are considered white in one geographic area and not considered white in another, or how some white-skinned ethnic groups are considered 'more white' than other white-skinned ethnic groups. We talked about how, growing up where we did, about half the people we know are Jewish, and most of the Christians we know are Catholic, not Protestant. We talked about some of the things arasan discussed in her post yesterday: about the real failure in the US to create pedestrian-friendly cities, as opposed to European cities that make it very easy to walk everywhere and to everything. We talked about the lack of a need for a car where we grew up in comparison to many places in the US. It was interesting.

Nora and I both grew up about ten-fifteen minutes away from each other, although she's more than ten years younger than I am. We had an interesting conversation about how college admissions have changed and how expectations of kids in high school have changed. Even how the reputations and demographics of certain top universities have changed: I don't want to name the school publicly, but she is looking at a school that I had a really hard time with when I went to visit. When I went there as a 16 year old bisexual kid looking at colleges, I was scared by new I heard about gay kids getting bullied on campus. She says that the same school now is reputed for being very open and liberal. Man, things change a lot.

Anyway, we started talking about whether being 'white' in New York is different from being 'white' in other parts of the country. For example, in some places, Jews and Italians are both definitely considered white, while in other places, they are definitely not. Growing up, I had a lot of friends whom I considered white who were not treated as white in other situations: Israelis, Iranians, Armenians, and so on. So I decided to make a poll about ethnicity. I would like to say that I had trouble wording some of these questions, so if you find the terminology limiting or in any way offensive, I apologize in advance, and please feel free to correct me or offer your own suggestions in the comments. I had a hard time deciding when to use 'white' as a label and when to use 'majority' as a label. Same goes for anything I might have overlooked.



[Poll #1172765]

Comments

[ninepointfivemm.livejournal.com]

My elementary and middle school made a huuuuge to-do about celebrating both Hanukkah and Christmas, too. I definitely remember learning to dreidel with chocolate coins, and I got a very thorough education on Hanukkah. In addition to that, we talked about the 5 million variations on the Christmas holidays. I'd say my schools were split 1/3 Jewish, 1/3 Catholic, and 1/3 Protestant. (Being the South, we weren't just Christian, we were either Catholic or Protestant.)

[hymnicide.livejournal.com]

We did the same thing with Hanukkah, but not with the variations of Christmas. Most people were Catholic, and if they weren't Catholic they were Baptist.

[ninepointfivemm.livejournal.com]

Oh, we totally talked about all the different Christmas traditions. I can't remember most of them to save my life, though.

We had soooo many protestant variations in my school, it wasn't funny. I was raised Southern Baptist (thankfully less fire-and-brimstone than stereotype), but almost none of my friends were Baptist. (Probably because I couldn't stand the cliqueyness of the girls at my church) They're all Methodist and Presbyterian and Lutheran and what-have-ye. We have so many churches and temples in my town that it cracks me up, actually.

[zia-narratora.livejournal.com]

In my school, we totally studied loads of Christmas traditions, but we studied them based on country and never based on denomination. I think there were only three or four Protestant kids in my whole school. We really weren't exposed to Protestantism at all.

[ninepointfivemm.livejournal.com]

Yeah, ours were studied by country and not denomination, too.

Huh, that's crazy. Probably because I'm used to Georgia being hardcore Protestant. I didn't know the difference between Catholicism and the various Protestant denomination for a long time, though, other than Catholicism had all the saints. I remember some girl in 4th grade, very nastily saying that "Catholics are idolatrous, because they WORSHIP MARY." And even when I was 10 years old that pinged my BS alert. God, I couldn't stand that girl.