No, seriously now about race. This place confuses the hell out of me. I minored in, and just barely missed majoring in, Anthropology (both cultural and physical anth). Ok, classically (aka 1940s/50s/60s) there were considered to be three basic/major "racial" groups. Their labels were: Caucasians, Negro, and Mongol. (There were subgroups within each main category.) They were delineated as such by a number of morphological features. So, basically many persons who are of the Indian/Pakistani nationality were/are classified as Caucasian. A lot of the people in the Middle East were also Caucasian. The Native peoples of the Americas were lumped in with the Mongols. Etc., etc., etc. It has gone out of fashion to use those specific labels, which are considered insensitive/offensive in some circles, but, basically, there are slight morphological differences between the "races", in the physical anthropology side of things and people were grouped into "races" according to their physical characteristics. (Cultural Anthro is a whole 'nuther ball of wax. It deals with cultural/ethnic similarities.)
So, here I am, the out-of-date anthropologist, sitting down to fill out a demographic form here. And I get asked which "race" I am - English, Welsh, Irish, Scottish. (Uh, no, that would be "Caucasian".) They do mean "ethnicity", don't they? Or do they not? There are nutters parading around up here with fife and drum corps, banners, and lots of the color orange who are yelling things about the "Irish Race" and the "English Race". Which don't actually exist. Genetically, the groups are so interbred with each other that any real ancestral differences are indecipherable.
When I walk down the galleries in City Centre and see someone whose ancestors may have come from India or Pakistan and who has a certain look, I think: "Caucasian" (because that's where they would fit in the racial grid). The local with me calls them "Black". In the States the term "Black" was assigned specifically to persons of the "Negro/Negroid/Negritto" morphology. (Or, sadly, anyone who had an ancestor back several generations who also was, regardless of their physical appearance.) Now, if they've been here since the early days of Empire, if said Indian/Pakistani-ancestry person spoke to me they might sound more "East End Glasgow" than the local I was with, and be culturally as far from India as the Earth is from the Moon. So, Culturally they are East-End Glaswegian/Scottish/British, and on the racial grid they are Caucasian. But according to the prevailing unofficial system here they are "Black" and by the official system they are....South Asian? Even though they are "from" the East End?
It hurts my brain.
