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What does this have to do with ethnicity?


People trust those that look more like them. It’s just human nature. It’s why people say all all white jury is racist when defendants are black, or why cops are racist. Putnam’s diversity study also confirmed it. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/does-diversity-cr... the authors hand save the data with the usual ham fisted white people are racist retort. Sociologists aren't respected because of authors like them who have no basis in reality.

It isn’t the only factor; China does it through culture, or Sinofication. https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinicization “Han Chinese” isn’t based on genetics it’s many different races that call themselves Han because they share culture. This is historically what happened in China and is now happening in Africa and South America.


> “Han Chinese” isn’t based on genetics it’s many different races that call themselves Han because they share culture.

Not quite. Han Chinese is a specific ethnicity. But it is true that "Chinese” isn’t based on genetics, it’s many different races that call themselves "Chinese" because they share culture. Or to cover all cases, it's many different races that the Chinese government calls "Chinese" to push a facade of homogeneity, marginalize minority peoples like Uyghurs, and marginalize minority languages and cultures in China that aren't Han Chinese, though their current nationality is Chinese.


What do you mean about it being a specific ethnicity? From what Chinese people say and the history of it, "Han Chinese" is a recent concept and used like you said to push homogenuity. Its like calling people black, white or other nebulous terms. The Cantonese language is being removed in China but the people are still Han for instance.


I mean that Han Chinese is a specific ethnicity. It's a documented thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_history_of_East_Asians...

> the northern and southern Han Chinese are genetically closest to each other and it finds that the genetic characteristics of present-day northern Han Chinese were already formed as early as three thousand years ago in the Central Plain area.[22]


If you look at the history of Han Chinese, they called themselves many different names.

>Among some southern Han Chinese varieties such as Cantonese, Hakka and Minnan, a different term exists – Tang Chinese (Chinese: 唐人; pinyin: Táng Rén, literally "the people of Tang"), derived from the later Tang dynasty, regarded as another zenith of Chinese civilization.

>The term "Huaxia" was used by Confucius's contemporaries, during the Warring States era, to describe the shared ethnicity of all Chinese; Chinese people called themselves Hua Ren.

Regionally they called themselves people of the area they grew up in, the Baiyue who are now called "Han Chinese" did not call themselves Han. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baiyue When reading this section I noticed a "Han Chinese" bias.

>The Han Chinese referred to the various non-Han "barbarian" peoples of southern China as "Baiyue", saying they possessed habits like adapting to water, having their hair cropped short and tattooed. The Han also said their language was "animal shrieking" and that they lacked morals, modesty, civilization and culture.

The actual book linked calls them "citizens of Han" not "Han Chinese". https://books.google.com/books/content?id=Y3oSAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA...

Han Chinese is like Apple retronaming all of the OSes that run on iPhone as iOS, the same way the Chinese government is doing the same for all the people's historical names of what they called themselves.


I think we may agree on some level but be stuck on semantics. There is an ethnic group XYZ living in and historically originating from what is today China. This is documented and scientifically backed. This group's name is homonymous with a separate idea in everyday speech; let's call that other idea ABC. ABC is essentially the name of a nation, which as you know doesn't have to do with genetics.

When I say Han, I'm referring to the genetic group XYZ. I understand that some people say Han and mean the nation ABC. I also agree that calling all people from the modern country of China Han is propaganda and "Han"-washes (to make a parallel to white-wash) a number of different ethnicities and cultures.

To bring it back to the original points:

> (you) “Han Chinese” isn’t based on genetics it’s many different races that call themselves Han because they share culture

> (me) Not quite. Han Chinese is a specific ethnicity. But it is true that "Chinese” isn’t based on genetics, it’s many different races that call themselves "Chinese" because they share culture. Or to cover all cases, it's many different races that the Chinese government calls "Chinese" to push a facade of homogeneity, marginalize minority peoples like Uyghurs, and marginalize minority languages and cultures in China that aren't Han Chinese, though their current nationality is Chinese.

You were talking about the ABC Han, or Han as the name of the Han nation, while I was talking about the Han ethnicity. I don't think we really disagreed, just got tripped up on semantics. Although if you still disagree with the scientific belief that there is a Han ethnicity in spite of all the data, then I think we can't go much further here.


If you classify "Han" like "black people", "Hispanics" "Asian/Pacific Islander", or "white people" I would agree that there are "Han Chinese".

I don't think its a very useful classification, but I do not think its stictly scientific, its more cultural since ethnicity is a social heuristic, classifying races isn't scientific but its has uses. If we classify it as a group of Y-haplotypes it can have a scientific basis, but its still classified by social norms. https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Y-chromosome-haplotype...




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