On Tue, 2008-07-01 at 13:33 -0400, Perry E. Metzger wrote: > My friends (both those with lots of melanin, and the melanin deficient > like myself) have taken to using the term "Brown" when speaking > ironically in the voice of bigots -- as in "Oh my God! The Supreme > Court is going to allow prisoners at Guantanamo to have access to the > courts! What horror is next, allowing brown people to vote?"
i joke about what happens to browns all the time. but i recognise that the melanin-deficient (oops, sorry, the differently melaninated) may not get away with that so easily. you used the greek word for earth. i actually find the dutch practise of differentiating between people who are "autochtoon" and "allochtoon" [1] more offensive than differentiating between skin colours. i don't know why... perhaps because a skin colour is innate and doesn't really relate to your connection to a country, but allochthonous while no less factual than "brown" seems to imply that you can never really be part of that country. that said, the netherlands does FAR better than pretty much any other country (including the US) at having non-indigenous ethnic minorities represented in parliament [2], with a share almost as much as their share in the population (8% vs 11%; the US is 16% vs 31%; france is a pitiful, racist, 0.4% vs 12%). -rishab 1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allochtoon 2. http://www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10024517
