What makes a Han a Han?

[ananda]

Some times later, after Euro League becomes United States of Europe,

the Euro will be equal to Han, if the lovely Turky could join the USE, no

matter, they were 'Han' too, 'cause in the very beginning, there're some

'non-Han' in china and long time later, there's no difference between them

and Han people. And there's big possibility that some chinese or some

african would ask what makes an Euro an Euro? so many dialects and

so many different customs and even different skin colors! With the

magnifying glass, even many different genes between eastern and western

Euro-es, oh, what a hybrid ethnic group! yes, all of them believe in God,

sorry, except some in Allah.

[Claw]

To throw more confusion into the conversation... don't southern Chinese like to refer to themselves more often as Tang (唐人) than Han (漢人)?

[davesgonechina]

Actually, Ananda, your post makes me think about the whole traditional/modern thing in terms of Europe. As you say:

yes, all of them believe in God,

sorry, except some in Allah.

But the fact is that lots of Europeans don't believe in either. Yeah, something all Western Europeans countries share is the heavy influence of Christianity, but over time Western Europe as a whole has become more secular, as modern influences have changed values. In the U.S., some people get complete freaked out by the idea that traditional values are disappearing in the face of modernity. Likewise for China - while Confucianism/Taoism/Buddhism are critical to a historical identity for Han Chinese, do they have the same influence today? Are these values disappearing or changing or adapting? Does that mean the notion of what means to be "Han" is changing?

[Outofin]

Calligraphy is an important art form in China. It's no less or even more important than painting. It maybe hard to understand for foreigners. But when you see the Chinese characters...

I still feel it's too late to define the culture in the diversified world. We're centuries late, because Japan and Korean learned calligraphy centuries ago. They have some great calligraphists too. It's no longer unique to Chinese.

Let alone WeiQi, Korean beat us badly every time! How shameful! And some think this is a Japan board game.

Many foreigners think Confucianism is a religion. (I'm not including you, daves. ) It's not. The creators of religions all declare he is or he saw god. (I'm sorry. This maybe offensive to those who believe in a religion.) But Confucius didn't.

[Pravit]

The answer, Pravit, is yes, Hungarian immigrants would be classified as "white", unless they are actually not. Sound weird? It's literally a distinction based on color, nothing else. So unless those Hungarians are of, say, Indian descent or any other ancestry that might result in dark skin, they can, as we say, "pass". Some people, however, may single them out as Eastern Europeans or Slavs, again, based on appearance not fact.

So to be white in the US you just have to look like it? What if the Hungarian immigrants spoke with really thick accents and did, I don't know, traditional Hungarian things?

[davesgonechina]

As far as the U.S. definition goes, we've got two for "white". First is the man on the street definition, which basically goes like this: if the person is not brown, black or yellow, they're white. White is the absence of color (just like in physics, except one concept is scientific demonstrable and the other isn't).

The other definition for "white" is the official government one, as in when the Census asks you what race you are, or college loans, or practically any government document (though it's not required - just ubiqituous). They give you the following choices and you can mix and match them as you like: White, Black (or African-American), American Indian and Alaskan Native, Asian, Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander, or if you're not satisfied with that, they provide an "other" selection with a blank space to write whatever you want. This definition of "white" I guess means people of European ancestry, but it's really a terrible category. I was, in fact, a Census 2000 worker in the U.S. and I encouraged everyone who couldn't decide or found the question offensive to use the blank box and write "human".

A Hungarian would, in both cases, be considered "white". On the street they would be pale enough (at least all the people of Hungarian descent I'm familiar with) and in the U.S. Census definition, if you take away the write-in option, they'd be forced into the "white" category, and they are of European descent anyway so it's actually not so bad for them. It is ridiculously stupid when you consider someone Hispanic, who may be a shade of brown - they can check all the things that make up their mixed heritage, but the idea that Hispanic = White + Black and/or + Indian (I can't believe they use that word, since it's based on a mistake) is to miss the point.

[davesgonechina]

Just to expound a little more on Pravit's question:

What if the Hungarian immigrants spoke with really thick accents and did, I don't know, traditional Hungarian things?

Nowadays, there's no distinction to be made here. The white thing is purely on looks... though that's not necessarily true of other categories. But in the past, there was plenty of discrimination between different European groups in the U.S. and sometimes they weren't considered "white". My ancestors, for example, immigrated to New York from Ireland in the 1860s, when there was immense discrimination against the Irish - they were considered one small step above blacks, and as a result the two groups competed for terrible jobs and that led to riots and murder (as dramatized in the movie Gangs of New York - watch it again, in the riot scene the Irish attack blacks across the city as well as the upper class "white" population). In later years, the Irish were accepted as "white" as new immigrants came from other places - this has always been the case in New York. After the Irish came the Italians, the Poles, etc. etc. and each was eventually incorporated into "white". The other reason they are all white now is because U.S. racial ideas have polarized around the binary opposition of white/black. Even today, when people discuss racism in the U.S., it's usually just white and black and everybody else is forgotten.

[djwebb2004]

This discussion has become really dumb lefty bullshit. Get back to UCLA for more of the same....

[Quest]

If you got time and you can read Chinese, try reading this page:

http://www.1840cn.com/Article/lishi/zhongguo/200501/3616.html

to find out what makes a Han a Han -- Hanzu is a mixture of n^n races, somewhat like an ancient version of the "American race".