Not that it matters, mostly, but I do want to get the words right. So we are reading a book on someone who is mixed Native American Ojibwe and white.
Some people in my class, let’s say, are Indian (from India) and white. We agreed that would be mixed, but for example, someone who is English and Swedish would not be because they are just white.
Would they not be mixed race, mixed ethnicity, or be neither?
Racial categorization (a.k.a. race) is defined by a system, so the answer to your question is always relative to the system you are referring to. In the USA today, there are exactly 5 racial categories: white, black, Asian, Native American/Alaskan Native, Pacific Islander/Hawaiian Native.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_ethnicity_in_the_United_States
There was a time when there were three racial categories. Other systems have other categories.
In your example, under today’s rules in the USA and indeed under most systems of racial categorization, someone with Swedish and English parentage would be categorized under the white racial category and be of mixed ethnicity.
Ohhhh, that makes sense!
Am I the only person that’s extremely put off (and in a way intrigued) by Americans hang up with “race”. Like, even the fact that there are “official” races is very strange to me. In my country we absolutely operate with a concept of “ethnicity”, but that’s not set in stone, and is a kind of mix of “where do your ancestors come from”, “what is your phenotype”, and “what culture do you identify with”. The idea of having a “race” that is set in stone and that people actually care about is pretty absurd to me.
It’s not a hang up. It’s a tool. It was created in Portugal and adopted by the Catholic Church and spread across the colonies because it was an effective tool for dividing the poor and working class against itself by creating privilege for whites and harm for the non-whites. It got baked into every structure in colonial society over centuries.
It’s not a psychological problem. It’s a structural power problem. It will ultimately only end when the colonial states are dismantled by a rainbow coalition and new structures are built from healthier foundations.
No you’re not the only one.
The US has an obsession with race which is understandable but deeply unhealthy. It will never heal as a country until it can get over it’s obsession.