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is he mixed race?
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Bit of an odd one, mainly just curious as to peoples opinions and also what I should select of forms.
I'm white British, with many other ethnicities in my background. My partner is half Indian, whilst i was pregnant with our son the hospital arranged all the tests and jabs that black and Asian babies have. But I'm just wondering whether my son is technically mixed race, even though he is a quarter indian?
I'm white British, with many other ethnicities in my background. My partner is half Indian, whilst i was pregnant with our son the hospital arranged all the tests and jabs that black and Asian babies have. But I'm just wondering whether my son is technically mixed race, even though he is a quarter indian?
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Edit I've just seen your new post that he had TB jab. I'm not sure about testing for sickle cell but there's no harm in finding out if he has it I suppose
I totally agree with this sentiment. 'Race' implies that there is some real difference between people from different parts of the world and in reality we are all the same. There are variations of skin colour, eye colour, build etc. but we are all human beings and 'race' only exists in the minds of people who want to create a difference.
Well on all fairness Sickle cell disease is only a problem in certain groups of people so screening for it in babys of those groups is a good idea
All pregnant women and newborns are offered testing for for sickle cell and thalassaemia (sp?)
White people can be carriers of and have sickle cell. People with Mediterranean heritage have a higher chance of being carriers than northern Europeans.
Granted, its much more prevalent in black and Asian people but its not restricted purely to those groups.
I agree, though I'd have said "All people in the UK.....". Okay, there may be a small tribe in West Scotland descended from the original Picts (or whatever) but I'm sure even those have cross-bred by now.
My son isn't mixed race [well not as far back as 3 generations] and I was tested for sickle cell in pregnancy and he had his BCG at 6 weeks?
I think the BCG is more to do with where you live, as there has been outbreaks of TB in big cities in recent and I think they test everyone for sickle cell when you have your booking bloods.
So neither was done because of your son's heritage.
Sorry Yes , you are right . Didnt realise all pregnant women were being offered screening now .
I would use the term dual heritage to indicate that he has a recent mixed ethnic heritage.
At the risk of getting shot down, this to me is part of the problem with being politically correct. We sometimes get ourselves so worked up on terminology that the whole thing becomes a joke and the focus becomes on terminology and ideology instead of equality.
I completely empathise with the sentiment but I have yet to hear anyone quote an 'ethnically biased' slur yet I have heard enough people say 'that's racist'. And 'dual heritage'?! Come on!
I wasnt being 'politically correct' (whatever that means), I was explaining that the term ethnicity is more accurate than the term race. So when you talk about someone's colour and heritage in the way we used to use the word race for, we now say ethnicity.
Because looks wise, I might look the same as a white polish person, but in fact I am of a different ethnicity to them.
Of course people use the term racist to mean racist because thats what the word means. It means if you are discriminating against someone in a negative way (we call positive racism positive discrimination) based on their ethnicity/heritage/origin.
Dual heritage is a long used term, I dont know what you mean by 'come on'.
I think you know exactly what I mean.
I have never, ever heard a person quote dual heritage to me, I cannot remember seeing it on any equality monitoring I have come across, and it does come across to me that you are getting caught up in terminology rather than equality.
I have read enough of your posts to know you're a smart person and you are likely to know exactly what I mean by being politically correct in this context.
And the 'come on' is my way of expressing despair that we are focussing on terminology that detracts from the real issue which is racism.
What I mean by politically correct, is that this is not a thread about equality. Someone mentioned further above in the thread that the child cannot be mixed 'race' because we are the same race and that the original query about the child being mixed race is affected by that because his parents are the same 'race'.
My point was that he does have a mixed ethnicity, he has a dual heritage, which as far as I have known is a common term.
The query was, is my child categorised as mixed race because of his mum and dad for the purpose of form filling and needing various jabs (which became clear are applicable to all children not just particular ethnicities). Perhaps I should have prefaced my answer with 'yes, he is', he has a mixed recent ethnicity - previously known a mixed race.
It takes nothing away from notions of or the fight for equality to use a slightly more accurate terminology.
Why dont we say spastic or deaf and dumb anymore?
You're better than a comment like that, you know perfectly well why we don't.
There is nothing intrinsically offensive about describing one's race, I do not feel offended when I describe myself using that terminology and I do not think it denigrates others.
Case in point. Over the past 10 years an organisation I have worked with tied itself up in exactly the same way you're describing over terminology for disabled people. They had disabled people, people with disabilities, less able person, person with accessibility requirements and so on. You'd hear phrases that people should be seen as an individual, not defined by a disability and so on.
All falling over themselves to get terminology right.
Last month for the first time a wheelchair user started work. Despite the building being fully accessible, the same people who spouted all these phrases left their chairs in walkways, boxes and paperwork stacked at the side of desks, day one the person crashed into a fan that had been placed stupidly around a corner.
Clearly all the work on terminology over the years meant nothing as that person encountered real problems that words would not solve, and the words did not change the ignorance that if you sat back and thought about a wheelchair user's barriers all those things should not have happened when they started work.
Just sometimes we need to remember asking a person to define how they view their race is a million miles away from you quoting a term of 'spastic' to a disabled person.
Well I would say that looking at terminology does not preclude an organisation or person from looking at physical and actual problems either, they can exist together.
Race, or notions of race can be used to say that one person is a race and another is a different 'race', but thats not accurate, thats why the terminology is changing. We are still learning about what is more accurate, or less offensive or more equal. Its not a static situation is it?
So yes, thats why its relevant to ask why we dont use terms like deaf and dumb (spastic was a bad example to use as for particular disabilities spasticated is the medical term for what happens to the body, but it started to get used as an insult against all people with disabilities), it insinuates that if someone is deaf, they are also dumb (mute) and dumb is used as a word for stupid.
So its similar, I would say, to say we need to move away from notions of race because it presents a belief that different ethnicities are different races. But they're not.
I dont by the way walk around 'correcting' people, I just said originally what term I would use, I dont say that one is right and another is wrong because Im not like that. But you seemed to jump on me for that, I didnt jump on anyone else!
The point about race/ethnicity is a good one. We are all the same race, with small variations.
However conflating ethnicity and heritage is not. It's devisive (heritage) and continues the notion of difference based on skin colour rather than culture, which is at the root of racism.
Well we are physically different to each other based on ethnicity. You can tell for instance if someone is Celtish compared to someone who is from Sudan. Heritage I take to be the culture of someone. So my ethnicity is white British, my culture is English. (although there is some doubt over that)
I think racism is not just based on skin colour otherwise people would not have been racist to the Irish in the 60s.