[parineum]

You seem to be taking ethnicity pretty serious for a guy who says it should be avoided in serious debate.

Ethnicity is entirely arbitrary, that's why it should be avoided.

For example, the genetic line of what your calling the clearly Native Americans traces back to Asia. You've arbitrarily decided that their ethnicity is defined at a certain time in their lineage. Ehy aren't they Asians or even Africans?

There is culture that you can tie to a group of people at a certain time and that group frequently has similar lineage. That's usually what people mean by ethnicity. They're using physical characteristics due to lineage that is associated with a culture and they call that ethnicity.

In this context of of Romans, there is really no ethnicity that should map to the cultural identity of "Ancient Roman" as the empire had many subjects across it's empire.

[trashb]

  You seem to be taking ethnicity pretty serious for a guy who says it should be avoided in serious debate.

I take language and debate serious.

  For example, the genetic line of what your calling the clearly Native Americans traces back to Asia. You've arbitrarily decided that their ethnicity is defined at a certain time in their lineage. Why aren't they Asians or even Africans?

Yes I have arbitrarily decided, based on the later influx of people (in my view) other ethnicity from other continents. It is a divide I used as an example, there are more divides.

Ethnicity is arbitrary precisely because it is not clear what the boundaries of it are. I used Native Americans as an example, we all trace back to a few individuals in Africa. However Ethnicity is not just the genetics, it also includes culture, language, history, traditions and more. and it includes a component over time for example: "They have been living like this for x amount of years"(since after a war or similar displacement event) can be a divide in ethnicity.

You could subdivide ethnicity all the way until you reach the lineage and environment of a single individual. There are lots of ethnic differences between Native American tribes for example.

[8note]

you havent stated it directly, but you are asserting that "ethnicity" is equivalent to "a set of humans with a membership rule" with the most important part being legibility

and that you can create subsets and most importantly, union any two ethnicities together to get a subset.

ethnicity does not have that latter property though, so starting from the largest group and subdividing does not work.

"the americas is really big" is actually describing "there are many ethnicities in the americas that cannot be unioned together"

the union rule for ethnicities is that you can union two ethnicities and get an ethnicity only if there's significant overlap in genetics, language, culture, traditions, geography, etc.

there arbitrariness in setting that line, but its not approximately zero, as you've been suggesting, and we can tease that out with sniff tests. You maybe just dont know much about native americans, but you'd never put inuit and maya in the same ethnicity.

seriousness in debate and language would be to take curiosity in why the critiques think that size does matter, rather than asserting that it doesnt.

[liveoneggs]

are you an alt account for benj111?

[trashb]

No i don't know who that is.