Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2019 October 2

= October 2 =

Vindabona
Vindabona redirects to Vienna. Should the redirect target be changed to Vindobona, the ancient Celtic settlement located where Vienna is now? Question is basically about what readers are likely to be looking for. I just happened across the term and hadn't seen it before. 173.228.123.207 (talk) 07:44, 2 October 2019 (UTC)
 * yes. done. don't hesitate to do it yourself without asking if it seems straightforward for you, in any case it can be undone even more easily if wrong Gem fr (talk) 11:45, 2 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I asked here because it didn't seem straightforward to me. 173.228.123.207 (talk) 10:43, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

Sweden and lingonberry juice
I was recently in Sweden and went to a Thai restaurant serving a lunch buffet. The drinks machine had lingonberry juice available. I've also seen lingonberry juice available in other restaurants in Sweden. It doesn't happen in Finland, except at IKEA, which is a Swedish company. Why do Swedes love lingonberry juice so much when Finns don't? J I P  &#124; Talk 14:01, 2 October 2019 (UTC)
 * The article titled Vaccinium vitis-idaea disagrees with you. To note, in several places in the "culinary uses" it notes several ways in which the berry is used in Finnish cuisine.  However, your question is basically unanswerable.  "Why doesn't this random thing I thought of not happen" is not really something we can find references that answer.  There's millions of kinds of foods that Finns don't regularly eat.  There's not a printed reference I can refer you to for telling you why each one isn't eaten there.  -- Jayron 32 14:49, 2 October 2019 (UTC)


 * Well, if it was native to one region and not another, then possibly those who grew up with it would be more accustomed to it and have more of a preference for it. This doesn't work so well for wildly popular items, like bananas, which are shipped around the world, but for more marginal items, like paw paw fruit, unlikely to be shipped far, it's all about location. SinisterLefty (talk) 17:05, 2 October 2019 (UTC)


 * According to the article, right at the top, it is " native to boreal forest and Arctic tundra throughout the Northern Hemisphere from Eurasia to North America" which includes both Sweden and Finland. So it is absolutely native to Finland.  It also mentions that it grows wild in Baltoscandia, a region that includes both Sweden and Finland.  -- Jayron 32 17:31, 2 October 2019 (UTC)


 * I'm not arguing about the lingonberry, I'm making a general comment that there can be reasons to say why one fruit might be preferred by one group. My example was availability. Another reason (which doesn't apply to lingonberries) is genetics. For example, Asians are less likely to use dairy products, since a higher portion of them are lactose-intolerant. SinisterLefty (talk) 18:19, 2 October 2019 (UTC)


 * The lingonberry is as native to Finland as it is to Sweden. However, I've only ever seen lingonberry juice offered at restaurants in Sweden, not in Finland. Except for IKEA, but that's a Swedish company. J I P  &#124; Talk 06:56, 3 October 2019 (UTC)


 * I don't think anybody is going to find a reference for you, but it may be just fashion. In the UK, somebody suggested that blueberries were a superfood (it turns out to be not really true) but now every supermarket here has stacks of blueberries flown in from the US. I had never seen one before about 15 years ago. Our native and very similar bilberry has not been commercially exploited here since the 19th century (perhaps funeral pie put people off). A Google search for lingonberry brings up numerous pages like this one extolling their health-giving properties. Alansplodge (talk) 21:35, 3 October 2019 (UTC)


 * Pretty much all edible berries are healthy, so I'd encourage everyone to grow them and eat them. No need to import rare, expensive berries from the other side of the world, though, just buy whatever's cheapest there and eat up. SinisterLefty (talk) 22:37, 3 October 2019 (UTC)

Barack Obama
How comes he is considered African American instead of transnational capitalist class? His mother was white, his Kenyan, father came into USA only in 1960, both were high class and they met in Hawaii, so his personal history has just nothing to do with slavery, Jim crow, poverty, and such, the major characteristics African Americans, but a lot more to do with global ruling class. Is that just because of the color of his skin? Would the son of some African president and a white wife, or the daughter of some Ivy league white lawyer and a rich African business woman also be considered "African American"? Gem fr (talk) 17:40, 2 October 2019 (UTC)
 * There's no reason he cannot be all of those things. Also, he self-identifies as African American because modern American society, which is the social context where he exists within, treats him that way.  You don't get to assign another person to a different racial classification based on some definition you came up with.  That's not how it works.  A person's various sociocultural classifications are determined by earnest self-identification based on how a person interacts with their own socio-cultural systems and those systems define classes in certain ways.  He is African American largely because of his African-American physical features, which for much of American history, was the only necessary classification (indeed, today it is still the primary means of definition).  There's a long history of this in the U.S., see one drop rule for example.  You're also confusing several different types of classification: racial (which is a socially defined classification based on local context; in the U.S. the broad racial classifications of black/African American, white/European/Caucasian, East Asian, etc. do not necessarily translate worldwide), ethnic (which is distinct from race), social class, economics, etc.  The complex stew of these contributes to a person's overall sociocultural "place" in the world, but that Obama rightly identifies as African American is invalidated by nothing else you say.  Literally nothing else you had to say invalidates the normal definition of African American.  -- Jayron 32 17:50, 2 October 2019 (UTC)


 * Re: "A person's various sociocultural classifications are determined by earnest self-identification based on how a person interacts with their own socio-cultural systems and those systems define classes in certain ways." That's not always true. For various purposes, like Affirmative Action, susceptibility to diseases more common in certain gene pools, such as sickle-cell anemia, and membership in Native American tribes (especially those with casinos), there are actual objective measures which are used, it's not just left up to each individual to define themselves. And, in the case of politicians, defining their ethnic background completely differently than the evidence would indicate can get them in trouble with the voters. Trump keeps calling Elizabeth Warren "Pocohontas" to make fun of her thin claim to be Native American, and this may hold some traction with the voters. See Elizabeth_Warren. Rachel Dolezal also got in trouble for claiming to be black, with no actual evidence to back up that claim. SinisterLefty (talk) 18:10, 2 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Well, that's not the context that the OP was discussing, but rather those definitions are used in the contexts of those legal concepts. For just one example, the law defines what it means for a person to claim legal rights granted by the U.S. government to certain Native American people groups by defining what it (the law) requires to qualify for the legal rights themselves.  That's a different context from the general concepts of race or ethnicity, as a sociological construct, which is what the OP is talking about.  You're confusing two different contexts, which isn't helpful towards resolving the issues.  In terms of whether Obama should be identified as African American, the main test is earnest self-identification based on how one interacts with their own society at large, and American society has produced a definition of African American that is based much on outward physical characteristics including, but not limited to, skin color, hair type, etc.  Also, the definition requires earnest self-identification, not cynical or self-serving self-identification, and that self-identification is predicated on how one interacts with their society at large, not on checking some box based on one's list of ancestors.  It's not "do I state out loud that I want to be a member of this group".  It's "do my life experiences influence my psyche and social context in a way that make it clear I am a member of this group".  In the U.S., race is a HUGE way in which a person interacts with the society at large, and as such cannot be dismissed.  Choice has little to do with self-identification in this way.  The issue with the Dolezal case was the lack of earnestness.  You don't get to choose to be part of a group.  You just are part of that group based on how your life experiences have shaped your psyche.  -- Jayron 32 18:25, 2 October 2019 (UTC)
 * I just looked at "one drop rule", I was unaware of. And found Rachel Dolezal: Wow and LOL. Your answer do help, but actually muddies the water: it seems that lots of Americans think, and US racial classification works as, race is not a matter of, well, ... actual race (that is, real, genetic and ancestry stuff), and you don't even need to trace back your ancestry through the stock back in time the name implies (that is, slaves, when speaking of African American), provided you do have a dark enough skin (or a white enough skin, in another context, if you want to be, well, latino or caucasian... Which reminds me of a film -- I don't remember the title, only that it screen Antony Hopkins --, I think based on a real story, of a real African American, white enough to pass for white and become a tenured professor pre-civil rights movement, and then ironically accused of racism post-civil rights). So some people may actually choose, like the son and the daughter I used as examples could be African American or not depending on the choice of their parents: you will have to take their earnest self-identification at face-value, with no way to know if it was cynical or self-serving (It would definitely help them enter Harvard...). Other may not have such choice, like Dolezal or "Pocahontas". Pfff. The thing is so mad, I understand why Americans are so mad at it...Gem fr (talk) 22:21, 2 October 2019 (UTC)
 * During at least the early days of the Obama administration, Limbaugh condescendingly labeled him "Halfrican", pretending that the old one-drop rule and other such things never existed. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 02:36, 3 October 2019 (UTC)


 * See wigger. SinisterLefty (talk) 22:59, 2 October 2019 (UTC)


 * Gem fr—you say "his personal history has just nothing to do with slavery, Jim crow, poverty, and such, the major characteristics African Americans" but how do you know what "the major characteristics African Americans" are? Maybe the major characteristic of African Americans are problems arising from babysitting white children or problems that arise when shopping in upscale stores. Bus stop (talk) 23:44, 2 October 2019 (UTC)
 * hum...The first story is from Mississippi, so I guess it DOES have to do with slavery, Jim Crow, and such, including a white woman entitled to feel uncomfortable about a black man acting normally (I guess if he were acting slave-like to the children she would had been OK). The second story is just one of those where everything becomes a matter of skin color, even when it is not. I mean, I myself had plenty of experience in stores, from "man, you do not belong here, it obviously is to expensive for you" to "you belong so much, you must be an employee", and it never occurred to me to get mad at it and blame racism (I just found these funny) Gem fr (talk) 06:35, 3 October 2019 (UTC)
 * I mean, as a social construct, race is not about genetics either. It is related to genetics insofar as racial classifications correlate with ancestry and allelic distributions, but it is not a genetic classification. You can certainly argue to define 'African Americans' as those people who identify as Black and are descended (via ancestors who also identified as Black) from American slaves. Ostensibly this type of definition is meant to exclude both people who live as white but have some Black ancestry, as well as recent Black immigrants and their children. However, this definition is typically motivated by a flawed assumption that there is some social/cultural bond that uniquely links those it defines as African American from those it does not. One might point to the obvious achievement gap between Black Americans descended from slaves and Black Americans descended from recent immigrants to conclude that one is not like the other. But this denies the experiences of individuals. For one, it ignores the broad section of society that judges people on the color of their skin regardless of the recentness of their ancestors' arrival to the Western Hemisphere. Is racism directed against the son of a Kenyan immigrant necessarily something different from the racism directed against the great-grandson of a freed slave? Are dark-skinned descendants of slaves who make it through life without seeing the ugly face of racism less African American? Indeed, there are people who argue for the importance of descent from slavery, as well as people who argue for the importance of an adverse life or childhood. And regardless, why should descent from slavery or growing up with adversity be necessary components at all - is there nothing else to being an African American? Can someone who does not so identify even have an informed opinion on the subject? Ultimately, unless there is some particularly important need to state a definition, civilized society has mostly accepted that disputing someone's sincere self-identification is inherently offensive and should be avoided. Someguy1221 (talk) 23:55, 2 October 2019 (UTC)
 * I think you've just amply demonstrated that pretty much all such "racial" labels are fairly pointless. HiLo48 (talk) 01:05, 3 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Indeed. Actually, it seems more like a caste system than really racial Gem fr (talk) 06:35, 3 October 2019 (UTC)
 * On the notion of pointless racial labels, I have been absolutely gobsmacked at how quickly the definition of "white" has been changing, and even more so at the idea that some people actually believe that Europe is and has been a single homogeneous culture. Someguy1221 (talk) 09:09, 3 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Lester Holt is an interesting example. He is of mixed race, some white, some black, some from India, but he identifies as African-American despite not particularly looking black (he looks like a white guy with a tan). Some of his ancestors are from Jamaica. SinisterLefty (talk) 01:26, 3 October 2019 (UTC)
 * A good comparison is between Barack Obama and Michelle Obama. She is African American. But that does not mean that Barack Obama is not African American. Bus stop (talk) 03:01, 3 October 2019 (UTC)
 * As I recall, Obama has an early slave among his maternal lineage, which means he's slightly more than half-African American. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 05:02, 3 October 2019 (UTC)


 * An interesting example (not from the USA) is Anthony Lennon, who looks as though he is of mixed race, identifies as black, but has "unknown African heritage", in other words he assumes it must be in his family somewhere. -- Q Chris (talk) 13:01, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

One relevant question is "Would whites in the U.S. South before the 1970s have considered Obama anything other than black?", and the answer is clearly "No". Traditionally, the black community in the U.S. was fairly accepting of various mixed ancestries, while whites were not (see the "one-drop rule" mentioned above). The idea of Rush Limbaugh as a supposed authority on who is and isn't black is beyond ludicrous... AnonMoos (talk) 08:26, 3 October 2019 (UTC)
 * good point Gem fr (talk) 09:45, 3 October 2019 (UTC)

thanks all, enough of this, I have the answer to my question Gem fr (talk) 09:45, 3 October 2019 (UTC)


 * Next question... can Obama accurately be described as being part of the Transnational capitalist class? Blueboar (talk) 11:48, 3 October 2019 (UTC)
 * How much control did Obama have? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 12:11, 3 October 2019 (UTC)