How Homogeneous Is Japan?

I detest this attempt to deny historical people of their creative capacity. You are acting as if the cultures of modern times are simple antecedents of cultures from the fall of the Roman Empire.

To back up your claim of jazz being "European", please source a European that composed with blues scale, jazz chords, and swing before African Americans.

I can't count then number of articles I've read since January 6 characterizing conservatism generally as basically racism.

Which is fine. Progressives are hurtling toward an Ibram Kendi definition of "racism" and under that definition, pretty much all of conservatism is "racist" in the sense that it's not anti-racist. You're probably not going to correct the structural economic differences between Black and white people without some sort of big-government intervention, large-scale redistribution, etc. (The Black-white income gap has not changed in decades, while e.g. Latino incomes have converged to white incomes within a few generations.) You can redefine pretty much every conservative policy a racist in that framing: gun rights--Black people disproportionately suffer from gun violence, etc. Kendi specifically uses the capital gains preference as an example of a "racist" policy. And based on his axioms, he's not wrong. As I've said before, while I don't share Kendi's premises, I don't really disagree with his reasoning within the framework he's constructed.

Now, I think only a minority of rank-and-file Democrats actually view "racism" that expansively. But (1) these people are disproportionately represented in policy-making circles, media, and academia; and (2) Democrats have no institutional reason to push back on that since they control the media and academia.

So I expect these definitions to continue to gain purchase. When Don Lemon called all Trump voters racists, at least Chris Cuomo pushed back: https://twitter.com/tomselliott/status/1349672644455575554?s.... I don't think that will be the case in 10 years. I'll be pleasantly surprised if it is.

> At the end, they speak English, practice Anglo-Saxon religions, practice Anglo-Saxon traditions, eat Anglo-Saxon food, have Anglo-Saxon sensibilities on gender relationships, social hierarchies, criminal justice, parent–child relationships, personal privacy, nudity, and all the other quintessential Anglo-Saxon sensibilities and cultural norms that make it unique in the world.

Hard disagree. African-Americans speak a very distinct English language, and while they follow "Anglo-Saxon" religion, many still retain roots to African elements in their rites (ever been to a black funeral in some parts of the South?). Their cultural food is also heavily distinct, although it is partly influenced by Anglo-Saxon food. They don't have the same sensibilities as Anglo-Saxons because of their culture, but more because of religion, just like many Southerners. "Anglo-Saxon sensibilities and cultural norms on.... " is also something that's very distinct across the US and the world - there's a lot of difficulty in breaking down the barriers of race and sexual orientation in the US, while all other Anglo-Saxon countries broke them down way back. Latin countries such as France or Spain have broken down many strict rules many years ago, while they still continue in most of Latin America.

Honestly you sound like someone who has had very little interaction with the African American community, while doing a lot of grandstanding for them from your plantation home. There are just so many things you'll find different right in upon interaction. As a simple question, why are African American names so unique and not Anglo-Saxon names or African names?

The Hui are definitely suffering, in the public mind, from conceptual association with the Uyghurs. As long as the Uyghurs claim to represent "Islam", it's somewhat unavoidable for the Hui to be dragged down with them.

Nevertheless, it is quite plainly the case that oppression of the Uyghurs targets them for being culturally distinct (and, to a certain extent, seditious), not for being Muslims. It baffles me that Western media are so monomaniacally focused on criticizing this in terms of "oppressing people because of their religion" when (1) that is obviously not what's going on, and (2) "oppressing people because of their race", which is going on, is at least as bad in the eyes of Western media consumers as "oppressing people because of their religion" is.

Every time this happens, it signals as loudly as possible that the reporter has absolutely no clue what they're purporting to talk about. And it is fascinating that it seems to be so important to so many of them to talk about it anyway.

> But then, China has an awful lot of other misleading advertising and false claims (in particular around TCM and efficacy of folk remedies) that the government ignores or promotes. Why only target halal?

Well, from the article:

>> The Ningxia government has taken measures against the pan-halal tendency and Islamic thought influenced by theologies common in Arab nations, which is referred to as Arabization.

>> The Ningxia Ethnic Affairs Commission vowed in May 2017 to properly handle the pan-halal and Arabization tendencies, promoting socialist core values and placing national flags at religious sites, read a statement on the website of the Ningxia government.

I feel pretty sure that what they really care about is the Arabization. The two aren't totally unrelated; a marketplace that bifurcates everything into "halal haircuts" and "haram haircuts", "halal art lessons" and "haram art lessons" is providing space for (or, depending on your point of view, expressing) the idea that what's most important is to be a Muslim first and Chinese second.

> As a french person I object to this. It's all about culture, not face features.

I mean... yes? "Ethnicity" is a cultural category, not a genetic one. Specifically, its boundaries are socially-constructed, and the US is unusual in constructing said boundaries mostly around blood-quantum and hypodescent rules. e.g. the distinction between "Arab", "Jewish", "Circassian", &c ethnicities in Israeli identity documents is based on the specific criteria of those groups.