their small sample size. “Over-sampling,” or seeking out Asians, raises the expense of the survey and delays its completion. However, their exclusion in a large opinion poll (e.g. all of Milwaukee) should be noted.
To help the reader, include a phonetic rendering of possibly unfamiliar words.(e.g., “Tagalog, pronounced tuh-GAW-lug, is the leading language spoken in the Philippines”).
PROVERBS, Chinese fondness for:
In China, a facility with proverbs reflects a pride in ancient Chinese culture, a way to appear superior to other Chinese, as well as a softening of unpleasant realities with pat homilies. Chinese proverbs may seem cryptic to outsiders, instructive to those in the know. Example: “The sky is high; the emperor is far away.’’ Meaning: “Far from central authority, one enjoys freedom.” A rough English approximation is: “When the cat’s away, the mice will play.” See CHARLIE CHAN; CHINAMAN; INSCRUTABLE; FU MANCHU; YELLOW PERIL; YELLOW SKIN.
RACE, biological basis of:
The human genome, (the genetic information that determines a human being) differs from the chimpanzee genome by about 3 percent. Therefore, all of the information that makes a human being distinct from other primates is contained in that fraction. The portion of that information that distinguishes the familiar human races – Asian, black, and white – will be, by any measure, tiny. Variation within races for eyes, hair, face and other characteristics find their counterparts in other races. (In other words, twins or near-twins can find their counterparts within races and in other races.) Genotype, or specific information, of human beings is virtually identical in all races. The phenotype, or how the genotype is expressed in hair, skin and eyes after interaction with the environment (including climate and the mother’s womb), can vary. But race is not immutable. Thus, there can be very tall Asians with “Caucasian” eyes and very short Africans with “Asian” eyes.
RACE, sociological construct of:
There is a growing school of thought that race is “a sociological construct,” i.e., it is what people think it is. Thus, in the American South and elsewhere, there was the “one-drop rule.” It meant that if you were 99 percent white and 1 percent black, then you were treated as black; yet, 99 percent black and 1 percent white did not mean you were treated as white.)
DNA, or deoxyribonucleic acid, was discovered and understood in the mid-20th century. Before then, there was “scientific” interest in an inherited basis for white superiority, i.e., a racial basis for advantageous differences such as intelligence. In the 18th century, the botanist Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778) helped lead such interest (Linnaeus invented the taxonomic system that yielded names like “homo sapiens”). European imperialism during the 19th century helped strengthen that intellectual pursuit, which led eventually to the Nazi theories that supported the Holocaust. See ARYAN; CAUCASIAN; RACISM, history of; YELLOW PERIL; YELLOW SKIN.
RACISM, history of:
“Racism,” or at least the word, is a recent coinage. It was invented in the 1930s to describe the anti-Semitic theories used by the Nazis to persecute Jews. The ancient Greeks and Romans enslaved any ethnic group, including other whites. George M. Fredrickson, a history professor at Stanford, wrote “Racism: A Short History” (Princeton University Press, 2003). He argued that Western racism has two main ancestors, one anti-Semitic and the other white supremacist, and that anti-Semitism came first. Modern racism, he contended, began in Spain in the 15th century, when antipathy toward Jews as nonbelievers was replaced by a hatred that “made getting rid of Jews seem preferable to trying to convert them.” Jews were once thought to only hold false beliefs but were then seen as intrinsically inferior. Similarly, when the Atlantic slave trade began, also in the 15th century, Europeans did not necessarily believe Africans to be inferior but only nonbelievers who could be cured by conversion to Christianity. With the rise of the Enlightenment and scientific racism, s