Holy mother of Jew! You could've at least wikipedia'd Tatars before unveiling your theories of racial revisionism! And even with that this doesn't describe how you and I are of different races. Yes, I bet the Canucks are also desperately trying to segregate themselves into official ethnical categories in order to properly determine those of them who can be properly termed as "the titular nation". I wonder how many seats in the Canadian parliament are held by a party that runs entirely on the platform of agressive anti-Semitism and bigotry. So... Care to provide me, finally, with the exact qualifications that would be used to diffrentiate that "single ethnicity"? So far, you've mentioned the following: * baby blues * last names * having descended from people who lived in and around Moscow for the past 20 centuries * nuances of the skin complexion * being born in the geographical boundaries of the former RSFSR Is this a comprehensive* and definite** list? If so, I will be very amused by the fact that 80% of the country's population call themselves "Russian". ---------- * comprehensive = 1) complete and entire collection of conditions that must be met by each and every Russian; 2) a list that excludes such trivialities as language and culture ** definite = 1) not meeting any condition on this list will be grounds for automatic disqualification; 2) ... regardless of such trivialities as language and culture
You and I may be of different ethnicities (not determined yet), but of the same race. That was merely to point out that some of USA's segregation is ethnic as well as racial. Thats not the full list and some points on your list are extraneous. The list is neither comprehensive nor definite... think of it as a point system. Its not pass or fail either for each category. You attain a certain score out of 100 in each category... and you need to get a combined score the value of which yet to determined on a presently undetermined number of categories. Some categories carry alot of weight, and some very little as well. The final scores of the population are normally distributed with a high standard deviation. The range defined as "Russian" is also yet to be determined.
Sorry Shurik, your eyes are one shade too far off baby blue on the scale, that's 5 points off for you that brings you under the threshold for being Russian i'm afraid. Slitty, I find it surreal that you have managed to walk all over yourself in your arguments so much. You keep banging on about your Marat Izmailovs and your Hispanic/Asian/African-Americans etc. without realising you're just proving the counterpoint to your argument. Sure your Vsevolod Holovko of Chicago or your Pedro Garcia from LA may have come over speaking no English, and not understanding the culture, but what about little Volodya/Ramon, they were born in America, brought up speaking English, taught in American schools, with American friends of different ethnic backgrounds. They are American - Hispanic American or Ukrainian American are just adjectives put onto American like Conservative American, Fat American, just because they are of different ancestry doesn't make them un-American. Now let's take all your wrestler examples, or the Tatar Loko boys, you try to draw the distinction between Russian and Rossiyan basing it on a bunch of bullshit physical and ancestral conditions, labouring under the massive misapprehension that the "Russian ethnicity" is as pure as Disney movie child character. Leaving out the Mongol invasions, do you seriously think that any wide-ranging Empire can keep its original ethnicity pure? It is the instinct of animals, and of people throughout history, to consumate the control of one nation over the other through interbreeding. I'm sorry to inform you that the Russian ethnicity is not as pure as mr. half-Jewish Zhirinovsky would like you to think. In Britain, at least trying to sidestep the Muslim situation of the past few years, people, at least to me and my friends/family, have never been seen as "Indian-British" if they have been brought up in the British culture, with English language and a good understanding of the ideals of the nation. Sure there are Indians, first generation immigrants for instance, who don't have full command of the language or understanding of the culture, but their descendents are just British if brought up in the ways i have said, no qualifiers. Same goes for those of Caribbean descent for instance. Thus, there is no way to describe an ethnic British person (or English person, i wouldn't draw any different distinctions between the two) based on physical appearance or place of birth (I'm not saying that these British 2nd, 3rd generation people would have to be born here, just raised in the culture: if they came over as 2 year olds it would be no different). Sure, there are bigots in every country who try to ensure racial purity, and won't consider anyone to be a true member of their nation or ethnicity who doesn't look like they do. Now, i don't think you are a racist, but your arguments come very close to those used by racists to justify their opinions - "if he doesn't look like me, wasn't born where i was born, has any differences to me that i can use to make him out to be different, then i will use them in that way as a justifictation for excluding him from my society." It's a dangerous way to go, and i think you should look carefully at what you are saying or you will have Rodina Party officials banging on your door asking for help. If a family moves to a new country with a young child, the family may well not be seen as part of the ethnic makeup of the nation, but the child, who looks the same, has the same ancestry, is a part of it, because he has grown up in it, is made a part of it by close interaction with it. To go back to Pushkin, to say that he is less Russian than any of these Neo-Nazi thugs, who are probably of Jewish or Caucasian/Central Asian ancestry anyway, marching the streets of Russian cities these days is truely ridiculous. They are less Russian than Pushkin, they are even less Russian than Marat Izmailov, because though they may have the Russian language, but they clearly have no Russian culture. Where in history has defining nationhood or ethnicity on physical grounds ever done any good? Be it Rwanda, Kosovo, the Holocaust, or whatever other racist violence perpetrated in recent times, it's a disgrace and it goes to show that such ideas can't be used to define people in a world desiring any kind of peace. You may say 'same race, different ethnicity', but the distinction you make between race and ethnicity means that someone from a different ethnicity cannot be Russian, only Rossiyan. I'm afraid that's akin to saying that a black man or a hispanic can't aspire to being a real American, just some kind of pseudo-American not on the exhaulted level of the average redneck. If you're American, you're American. If English, English. If Russian, Russian. You can't be 'more American,' 'more English,' 'more Russian.' You're both Russians, and should stop bickering with each other over who is more so. I may speak better (or worse) English than the next guy, or know more (or less) about English culture and history than the next guy, but that doesn't make me more (or less) English than him, it just means i have a different level of knowledge.
This is still the stupidest ********ing argument ever. I thought Shurik was right on this one, but I am not sure anymore. Both sides are so blurred and stupid.