Wikipedia talk:Categorizing articles about people/Ethnicity, gender, religion and sexuality/Archive 6

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Tagging controversial words and phrases

I can find no way to tag / flag or highlight controversial or inappropriate phrases so that the contributor or others can clear them up. Is there something equivalent to the "citation needed" note that can be inserted in the text? Currently the only options seem to be to add a comment on the talk page, rewriting the section or challenging the neutrality of the entire article. --Tediouspedant (talk) 02:31, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps {{Dubious}}? Debresser (talk) 12:42, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

Policy discussion relevant to this guideline

See explanation at Wikipedia_talk:Biographies_of_living_persons#Inconsistencies.2Fambiguities_in_categories_about_various_forms_of_bigotry. I'm proposing below.

Under Wikipedia:BLP#Categories.2C_lists_and_navigation_templates add to the first sentence which reads Category names do not carry disclaimers or modifiers, so the case for each category must be made clear by the article text and its reliable sources. Add a second sentence which reads If there is any ambiguity about inclusion in a category that might violate Biographies of Living People, individuals' names should be removed.

Any thoughts since readers here may be more concerned with this issue? Thanks. CarolMooreDC (talk) 17:54, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

Race vis a vis People

I have a concern about a change that was made some time ago to the wording of the "race" section of this guideline. Specifically,

“ the intersection of subcategories of Category:Race are never applied to subcategories of Category:People. ”

Can somebody clarify for me exactly what this means and why it was added to the guideline without any sort of consensus behind it?

The problem is that in a recent discussion I was involved in about a categorization matter, someone cited this phrase as implying that no racial subcategories should ever exist at all. Which is obviously not what this guideline was ever meant to suggest, given that many perfectly valid racial subcategories do exist and the "special subsections" part of this guideline explicitly allows for them. So what's the deal here? Bearcat (talk) 10:26, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

It would help if the policy was in plain English or at least had an example. I don't understand it so would never know whether I was complying with it. CarolMooreDC (talk) 21:29, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

It means that a sub-category of Category:Race (such as Category:Semitic peoples) should not be juxtaposed with a sub-category of Category:People (such as Musicians or Category:Music people). In other words, categories such as Category:Semitic musicians or Category:White musicians or Category:White Canadian musicians should not (and indeed, do not) exist. This obviously also means that a category such as "Black Canadian musicians" probably should not exist either, for there is no point in singling out blacks when none other of the so-called "races" have such race-based sub-categories; categories which could be (and are) easily covered by simple ethnicity-based categories such as Category:Syrian musicians or Category:Romanian musicians. This also neatly avoids subjective and ultimately needless discussions as to whether or not a given person "fits" into said arbitrary racial categories. I also disagree that the "Special subcategories" sub-section of this guideline allows for such categories since it clearly addresses ethnicity and sexuality, not race (African American is an ethnicity, not a race). The actual sub-section of this policy that pertains to race is the Race sub-section, and it clearly doesn't allow for such categories. It would also appear that consensus indeed was already formed on the issue, for the editor that added the material to begin with linked to in his/her edit summary a separate discussion on renaming or deleting People categories based on race, where it was decided to rename the categories to ethnicity rather than race-based ones. Middayexpress (talk) 21:56, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

OK, I understand when it is explained in more detail, as would others. Adding such an explanation and a couple of examples would be a big help. CarolMooreDC (talk) 22:39, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

Agreed. I'll contact the editor who added the material and see if he can add some concrete examples as shown above. Middayexpress (talk) 22:47, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

Firstly, how exactly do you figure that Category:Black Canadian musicians is one whit different than Category:African American musicians or Category:Black British musicians? It's the exact same thing, merely located in a different country's cultural context — so this guideline most certainly cannot be twisted to suggest that it's a valid "ethnicity" category in the U.S., but suddenly an invalid "race" category in Canada, when it's the exact same thing in both places.

And secondly, the onus is not on me to prove that there hasn't been a consensus behind adding the disputed statement to this guideline; that's the fallacy of "proving the negative". It's your responsibility to find evidence that there has been a consensus to support the statement if you want it to stay. A sensitive policy guideline such as this requires a very well-documented consensus before a blanket statement that dramatic can be added to it — so, in fact, the correct procedure as long as there's a dispute is that the disputed statement is removed from the guideline until such time as a consensus permitting it is found or established. It's not "in until proven wrong"; it's "out until proven right". Not because I'm involved in a discussion one way or the other, but because that's one of the very first basic rules about how policy disputes work.

Thirdly, the AFD discussion which was linked to in the edit summary does not say that race-nationality categories can't exist at all; it pertained only to the specific wording of the names of their top-level parents. It did not discuss or question the fundamental validity of categories such as Category:Black Canadian musicians in principle; it questioned and settled on a naming convention. So it does not demonstrate any consensus that "race" can never be intersected with "nationality" in a category name, because that's not what the discussion was about or what it established.

Fourthly, the onus is also on you to establish that "Black Canadian" is fundamentally a "race" category rather than an "ethnicity" category. The community uses a different term for itself than its counterpart in the United States does, because the demographic balance of direct-from-Africa to Africa-by-way-of-the-Caribbean is very different in Canada than it is in the US — but that doesn't mean that it represents anything less "ethnic" and more "racial" than Category:African American musicians does. Would you understand better if the category were named "African Canadian musicians" or "African Canadian and Afro-Caribbean Canadian musicians" instead? Because those would still be the same thing, ethnically and/or racially speaking; the problem is that the first would violate criterion G1 of this very same guideline, and the second would be excessively wordy (and still violate criterion G1, to boot.) But that fact still doesn't make the term in actual use, which is "Black Canadian" whether you like it or not, any less "ethnic" or more "racial" than "African American" is. So you can't arbitrarily decide that "African American" is ethnic, and therefore valid, while "Black Canadian" is racial, and therefore invalid — they're the same thing, sitting at the same spot along the ethnicity-vs.-race scale, so they're either both appropriate or both inappropriate. For that matter, we also have numerous other tricky semi-ethnic/semi-racial categories — such as Category:Indigenous Australian musicians, Category:Native American musicians, Category:First Nations musicians and Category:American musicians of Asian descent, to name just four — so how is it that they're acceptably "ethnic-not-racial" categories, but Category:Black Canadian musicians is unacceptably "racial-not-ethnic"?

And again: while it's been added to and expanded (and screwed up) by writers too numerous to mention since its adoption, I'm the person who codified and wrote down the original consensus around what this guideline should allow and/or disallow in the first place. If you'd like to make a case that the phrase should be part of the guideline, you're certainly more than free to do so — but you're not free to tell me that there was already an established consensus around it, because not one single solitary pixel of the actual consensus around what belongs or doesn't belong in here has ever taken place without my direct knowledge or participation. Bearcat (talk) 02:54, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

Unless you are under the misimpression that you somehow own this page (in which case, please refer to WP:OWN), it makes no difference at all whether or not you were aware that consensus has been established, regardless of how much you may or may not have contributed to writing this guideline. The fact remains that it has. The nominator in that AFD discussion clearly states in plain terms that "this is a nomination about removing "race" from the ethnicity category names", and the verdict was of course to rename all such categories to ethnicity rather than race-based ones per nominator. Like it or not, the racial (not ethnic) category "Black Canadian musicians" most certainly falls under that rubric. It's the racial term "Black" that makes it so, for there is no such ethnic group as "Blacks"; there's only a putative "race". You suggest that the onus is on me "to establish that "Black Canadian" is fundamentally a "race" category rather than an "ethnicity" category", but this is not particularly necessary since you yourself have already indicated elsewhere that "belonging to "Black Canadian" is a question of skin colour" and "a question of "is this a person who's running the risk of being arrested for DWB if they're driving an expensive car?"". You also suggest above that Black Canadian is actually simply the Canadian equivalent of "African American". Actually, the American counterpart to "Black Canadian" is the antiquated term "Black American", not the incumbent term "African American". This is because the latter term refers to one particular ethnicity with no racial terminology attached, while the former, like "Black Canadian", does the opposite. In fact, the entire purpose of changing the name from "Black American" to "African American" was so that African Americans would not be singled out for their race, whereas other American communities (such as Mexican Americans and Irish Americans) were identified by their respective ethnicities; refer to [1]. That analogy to Category:Indigenous Australian musicians, Category:Native American musicians, Category:First Nations musicians and Category:American musicians of Asian descent is also completely out-of-place since none of those categories are racial categories like "Black Canadian musicians" clearly is. They all refer to ethnicities ("Indigenous Australians", "Native Americans", "First Nations"), except for the last one which refers to continental origins (which is why Indians are also included in it). That indeed obviously also means that a category such as "Black Canadian musicians" probably should not exist either, for there is no point in singling out blacks when none of the other so-called "races" have such race-based sub-categories (i.e. there is no Category:White Canadian musicians); categories which could be (and are) easily covered by simple ethnicity-based categories such as the ones you yourself have just cited. Middayexpress (talk) 20:45, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

I am under no such "misimpression" that I own this guideline; I didn't say I did. What I said was that because I'm one of the people who's been most intimately involved in crafting this guideline in the first place, I'm aware of and familiar with all of the actual consensus discussions that have actually taken place around what does or doesn't belong here — which is not at all the same thing as claiming ownership.

Secondly: again, the AFD discussion you cite established a consensus to remove the word "race" from a small handful of top-level parent categories. It did not establish any consensus that "racial" categorization is always and invariably forbidden regardless of context, and it did not establish any consensus around how to determine whether any given category is "racial" or "ethnic" in nature.

Thirdly: the only substantive difference between "African American" and "Black Canadian" is that the Canadian community is subject to a different set of demographic issues, pressing on how the community is named, than the American one is; those whose origins are not directly African, but instead detour through the Caribbean before arriving here, expressly object to being labelled as "African" — the only thing that makes them different is that percentagewise, "Caribbean Canadians" form a much larger (50%+) proportion of the overall "African" community in Canada than "Caribbean Americans" do in the US. So the construction "African Canadian" hasn't been able to supplant "Black Canadian" as the broad ethnocultural term for the community as a whole, because more than half of the people covered by the label refuse to accept the term.

That still does not mean that "Black Canadian" represents a different thing than "African American" does — even though they're subject to different issues around how to properly name them in an NPOV manner, they're still the same thing, defined by the same inclusion criteria. The fact that there's a Caribbean aspect in Canada doesn't make it different, as the "African American" community is inclusive of Caribbean peoples too (just not proportionally as many.) So "African American" and "Black Canadian", in fact, encompass the exact same groups of people, defined in exactly the same way — the only substantive difference between the two is the words that are used to name them.

Fourthly: "indigenous Australians" and "Asian Americans" and "First Nations/Native Americans" are not single ethnicities; each of them is a broad umbrella term that encompasses multiple different ethnicities in exactly the same way as "African Americans" and "Black Canadians" do. The article on Australian Aborigines, for example, explicitly describes its topic as a race which encompasses over 400 different ethnicities (Anmatyerre, Miriwung, Nukunu, etc.), not as a single ethnicity. "Asians" (and therefore "Asian Americans" as well) are a "race" that encompasses a number of different ethnicities (Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Burmese, etc.), not a single ethnicity. "Native Americans" and/or "First Nations" are a "race" that encompasses many different ethnicities (Cree, Anishinaabe, Cherokee, Nuuchahnulth, Navajo, Mi'kmaq, etc.), not a single ethnicity. Even "African Americans" are not all of one single ethnicity — it's an umbrella term that encompasses dozens of distinct ethnicities (Kpelle, Xhosa, Bantu, Khoisan, Jamaican, Haitian, Guyanese, etc.), not a single ethnicity.

Which is precisely why "Black Canadians" is no less "ethnic" and more "racial" than any of the others I cited — they're all broad umbrella terms that have both racial and ethnic aspects, and none of them is purely one or the other. The fact that you don't happen to like the word that's used in Category:Black Canadian people doesn't make it more "racial" than Category:African Americans — to which it's precisely equivalent in scope and in purpose and in meaning and in how it's determined whether any individual person belongs in it or not — because there's an actual WP:NPOV/WP:RS reason why the category can't just be renamed "African Canadians" instead. Bearcat (talk) 21:57, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

Actually, the verdict of the Afd discussion was to "rename all per nominator". And per the nominator himself, the purpose of the Afd itself was to serve as guide on what to do with all such race-named categories:

"Note that this nomination does not "eliminate all ethnic categories" from Wikipedia, as this is a nomination about removing "race" from the ethnicity category names."

The term "African Americans" is, again, not at all the American analogue to "Black Canadians" because the latter -- judging by your own comments and references to skin color, Driving While Black, etc. -- refers specifically to persons of the so-called "Black race" in Canada, whereas the former is a term that deliberately attempts to avoid labeling people by race and only pertains to descendants of New World blacks in that country. Here is how the term African American actually came about [2]:

"But in the following decades Afro-American lost some of its popularity, especially in referring to people, so that today a phrase such as the election of new Afro-Americans to Congress sounds somewhat dated. To a large degree its place has been taken by the similar term African American, popularized in the late 1980s by Jesse Jackson and other black leaders and quickly adopted by many columnists and commentators, black and white alike. African American has the virture of conforming to the standard model of ethnic American names such as Asian American, Irish American, and Italian American. Like Native American, it is most appropriatedly used by outsiders in public discourse, as in articles, broadcasts, and speeches, where it communicates respect by emphasizing ethnicity over race. It has the further advantage that, unlike black, its use as a noun in referring to a particular person or persons is unproblematic; you can say My teacher is an African American where you probably would not say My teacher is black."

It's therefore obviously Black Americans (another racial term) that is the true analogue to the racial term "Black Canadians".

It also makes no difference whether or not terms such as "indigenous Australians" and "Asian Americans" and "First Nations/Native Americans" are not single ethnicities, nor did I even indicate they were. I quite clearly wrote that they all refer to ethnicities in plural form ("Indigenous Australians", "Native Americans", "First Nations"), except for Category:American musicians of Asian descent which refers to continental origins (which is why Indians are also included in it). The fact remains that "Black Canadian musicians", etc. singles out blacks when none of the other so-called "races" have such race-based sub-categories (i.e. there is no Category:White Canadian musicians, the true counterpart to "Black Canadian musicians" -- not ethnicity-based categories such as "Native American musicians"); categories which could be and indeed are easily covered by simple ethnicity-based categories such as the ones you yourself have just cited again. Middayexpress (talk) 22:53, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

Note that this nomination does not "eliminate all ethnic categories" from Wikipedia, as this is a nomination about removing "race" from the ethnicity category names. Which is exactly what I said: it removes the word "race" from a set of category names. It doesn't create a policy; it just clarifies a naming convention.

At any rate, you're still missing my point. Regardless of whether the US categories were named "Black American" or "African American", they would still encompass the same group of people either way, by the same inclusion criteria. There has been a shift in which terminology is preferred in the current context, but they don't actually represent different things, or different sets of people — they merely represent two different ways of defining and naming the same set of people. White South Africans living in the United States (e.g. Dave Matthews) are not labelled as "African American", even though they could quite legitimately claim the term — and people whose ancestors arrived in the United States via the Caribbean rather than directly from Africa (e.g. Wyclef Jean) are considered to be "African American". In actual practice, "Black American" and "African American" mean the same thing, but for perfectly valid reasons there's been a consensus that the latter term is now preferred.

As I've pointed out more than once, for very concrete and specific reasons that same terminology shift has not occurred in Canada. "Black Canadian" and "African Canadian" still mean the same thing, in the exact same way as their American equivalents do, and would still encompass the same set of people via the same ethnic and cultural relationships. However, because those whose ancestors arrived here via the Caribbean form a much larger percentage of the community than they do in the United States, they have much more power than to dictate that they do not consider "African Canadian" to be appropriate or acceptable in reference to them than Caribbean Americans do. So whether you like it or not, "Black Canadian" is still the term seen in actual usage in Canada to denote what "African American" denotes in the United States, precisely because more than half of Canada's "black" community explicitly rejects being labelled as "African" — and therefore it's the term that we're stuck with here under Wikipedia's rules around not inventing arbitrary alternative names for things just because we don't like the names they actually have. It doesn't make the category more "racial" and less "ethnic" than "African American" or "Indigenous Australian" or "First Nations", no matter how many times you assert it so — all of those categories have both ethnic and racial aspects.

So for the moment, let's just call them "brown-skinned people of African and/or Caribbean heritage". You can't arbitrarily decide that "American brown-skinned people of African and/or Caribbean heritage" constitute an ethnic grouping in the US, but "Canadian brown-skinned people of African and/or Caribbean heritage" only constitute a racial one in Canada. They form the same type of distinct and identifiable ethnocultural grouping, with the same type of cultural context, in both countries. Because of different cultural pressures in their respective countries, the communities happen to be named differently from each other in actual usage — and we're obligated to follow those established usages whether we agree with them or not — but the fact that they're named differently doesn't change the fact that they're still the same thing as each other.

categories which could be and indeed are easily covered by simple ethnicity-based categories such as the ones you yourself have just cited again. Instead of just hammering on the same claims over and over again, why don't you tell me exactly what you do view as the "ethnicity-based" alternative to Category:Black Canadian people? We can't rename it Category:African Canadian people, but we also can't deem it completely unacceptable to have any grouping at all for Canadians if Category:African American people is allowed to exist. Either Canada and the United States can both have categories for their brown-skinned people of African and/or Caribbean heritage, or neither of them can; "the US can but Canada cannot" is simply not on. So what naming alternative would you propose to make the Canadian category "ethnic" instead of "racial", while not imposing usages that are inappropriate and/or unattested in the Canadian context? What's the "ethnic" alternative? Is it Category:Canadian brown-skinned people of African and/or Caribbean heritage? Bearcat (talk) 23:39, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

Okay, I'll make this simple. The Afd discussion was not just to remove the word "race" from category names, as you have suggested ("it removes the word "race" from a set of category names"). It was to remove all reference to the combination of race and people in category names. This is why the nominator added the following text to the guideline in the first place, and linked to the Afd discussion as a justification:

the intersection of subcategories of Category:Race are never applied to subcategories of Category:People.

Also note that this is hardly the first time such marriages of race-related topics and people topics have been deleted (exmpl. [3]); it is only the latest.

I understand quite well what you are trying to say about "Black Canadian" being the Canadian analogue to "African American". They both consist of the descendants of people who were forcibly brought to North America a couple of centuries ago from West Africa and/or the Mozambique area (i.e. New World blacks). Got it. However, the fact remains that the old term "Black Americans" for African Americans is the actual analogue of "Black Canadians" in the sense that both terms refer to more or less the same group of New World blacks (albeit in different countries) and both via the same racial terminology (i.e. the "Black" race). The terms "Indigenous Australian", "Native American", etc., like the term "African American", on the other hand, do not refer to race; they simply refer to ethnicity. The non-existent Category:White Canadian musicians is thus obviously a true counterpart to Category:Black Canadian musicians in the sense that "White" is an actual so-called "race" like "Black" is.

Moving on, that analogy between Category:African American musicians and Category:Black Canadian musicians is also out-of-place because the former category's title does not emphasize race while the latter category's title clearly does. Extant policy and various Afd consensuses make it clear that race and people should not be meddled in category names (i.e. no Category:White musicians, etc.), and this includes the race-based category "Black Canadian musicians". There's absolutely no reason at all why an exception should be made when none of the other so-called "races" have such race-based sub-categories reserved for them, and when the people that presently populate the category in question could easily be reassigned to other more specific categories. For instance, the Canadian musicians with Jamaican heritage could be reassigned to Category:Jamaican musicians and Category:Canadian musicians since they are Jamaican Canadian, and the Haitian musicians could similarly be reassigned to Category:Haitian musicians and Category:Canadian musicians since they are Haitian Canadian. Anything more than that is unnecessary since no Canadian musicians with European, East Asian, etc. heritage have such race-specific categories reserved for them; they're all simply classified as "Canadian musicians" or sometimes by their ethnicity as well. The people in Category:African American musicians, by comparison, cannot be reassigned to any other ethnic category because "African American" is their primary identification. Of course, there are such people in Canada too, but not many; and these folks, like the Canadian musicians with European, etc. heritage, are already subsumed under the heading Category:Canadian musicians. In short, there are many possible alternatives; needlessly emphasizing race is by no means the only option, especially given existing consensus on the issue. Middayexpress (talk) 02:50, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

I'm going to make myself very clear here: if Category:African American musicians gets to exist, then a Canadian analogue, containing all Canadian musicians who would have been categorized as "African American" if they'd lived in the United States, gets to exist too. You can question how it should be named, and you can propose an alternative name, but the existence of a category for "brown-skinned Canadian musicians of African and/or Caribbean descent" is not up for debate if Category:African American musicians isn't. So simply uploading everybody to "Canadian musicians" + "Haitian musicians", or "Canadian musicians" + "Jamaican musicians", fails to serve that purpose — and would be inappropriate in many cases, as a musician of Haitian descent who was born in Canada and has never lived in Haiti (e.g. Olivier Jarda) does not belong in Category:Haitian musicians.

And you're still wrong about the other categories I brought up. According to its very own head article, "Indigenous Australian" is a race that encompasses over 400 distinct ethnicities. "Native American/First Nations" are a race. Asian people, taken as a whole, are a race. As near as I can figure, in fact, your only criterion for distinguishing whether a category is "ethnic" or "racial" is whether you personally approve or disapprove of how the group in question has chosen to name itself.

So, I'm back to my original question: what is the "ethnic" alternative to "Black Canadian" that could be used to create a category that would pass your litmus test? It is necessary for there to be a single category which includes each and every Canadian musician who would be filed in "African American musicians" if they lived in the United States — because whether we agree on how it's named or not, an equivalent and analogous community to the African Americans does exist in Canada, and that community is entitled to equivalent and analogous treatment within the category system. So what's the appropriate and acceptable "ethnic" name for it? Bearcat (talk) 03:26, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

Indigenous Australian is not a racial term nor are any of those other terms you cited earlier. They are all ethnicities or references to continental origin. It is also not indicated anywhere on the Indigenous Australian article that it constitutes a racial term. You are perhaps confusing the term with Australoid, which is indeed a racial term as indicated in that same article ("Though Indigenous Australians are seen as being broadly related as part of what has been called the Australoid race, there are significant differences in social, cultural and linguistic customs between the various Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander groups."). Just so it's clear, I also do not mind if a category grouping Canadian musicians from the appropriate background exists; it just needs to be named without racial terminology, like every other category of its kind and per extant policy & consensus. If the already existing ethnicity or nationality categories for certain peoples (i.e. "Jamaican musicians" + "Canadian musicians", etc.) leave out "indigenous" Black Canadians from Nova Scotia, etc., then a new category titled Category:Canadian musicians of African heritage should do since the term "African heritage" is often used specifically in reference to New World black communities [4]. Middayexpress (talk) 19:14, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

Which would be fine except for the problem I've pointed out before — which is that the Caribbean Canadians, who are almost 70 per cent of the entire community, reject being labelled as "African". One of the core rules of this guideline is that category names have to be reflective of real world usage and of the cultural sensibilities and identities that are actually used and accepted by the community being so labelled; you cannot impose a term that the community in question doesn't accept for itself.

And that's why this discussion isn't going to resolve, because we're talking about two different things. You're making pronouncements on the appropriateness of a word, while I'm pointing out that the word itself can't be separated from the legitimacy of the community as a whole — because there simply is not another word available that serves the same purpose while still being reflective of how that community identifies itself. Whether you think it should be the word that the community of African/Caribbean Canadians — who are no less valid an ethnic grouping than African Americans are — uses to identify itself or not, it is the word that the community uses to identify itself. Due to demographic differences, the American "black" community's preferred alternative does not work; as a result, the Canadian "black" community still identifies itself as capital-b "Black" whether you think they should or not.

And as a result, Wikipedia has an obligation to use the term that the community in question uses for itself — we cannot arbitrarily rename them with an original research invention or a neologistic convolution just because the analogous grouping in another country has chosen to name itself differently. The community has the right to choose its own words for itself.

So, once more with feeling. The conditions are:

1. One single, unified category,
2. which can directly include the entire set of "Canadian musicians who would be categorized as African American if they lived in the United States", with no exceptions,
3. while simultaneously satisfying your criteria for distinguishing "ethnicity" from "race",
4. and remaining fully consistent with the way that the community in question identifies itself.

Any solution which does not completely meet all four of those criteria is not an option. So what's the appropriate "ethnic" name for that set? Bearcat (talk) 19:58, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

Actually, we're both quite clearly making pronouncements about the appropriateness of terms. You indicate that Afro-Caribbean Canadians constitute the majority of so-called "Black Canadians" and that they reject being identified with a term denoting the continent that their primary ancestry is obviously derived from (which is odd since the Black Canadians article has the term "African Canadian" in bold and indicates that "the term African Canadian is also used synonymously by some"). This is, of course, their prerogative, but I don't see any evidence of this. The passages in the Black Canadian article that claim that this is the case are not sourced to anything; in fact, at least one of them is tagged as unsourced. If you can produce evidence (i.e. a quote from a reliable source) that this is indeed the case, then I shall propose a new category title to accommodate these concerns. Until then, I'll just say that a title like Category:Canadian musicians of African and/or Caribbean heritage won't work because there are no New World blacks that exclusively trace their ancestry to the Caribbean rather than obviously first and foremost West Africa & the Mozambique area and because not all people in the Caribbean are Afro-Caribbeans with ancestors from West Africa/Mozambique (Indo-Caribbeans, Chinese Caribbeans, etc.). Middayexpress (talk) 21:21, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

Yes, and the same article also has the term "Caribbean Canadian" in bold and indicates that the terms aren't viewed as interchangeable, as well as being titled with — and also featuring in bold text — the only term that's actually considered to be fully inclusive of both "African Canadians" and "Caribbean Canadians". I know, for example, that I once had a coworker who would travel halfway across town to get her hair done, instead of going to the Black hair salon just down the street, because her family was from Dominica and she consequently felt excluded by the fact that the closer salon advertised itself to an "African Canadian" clientele (while the farther one stuck with "Black".) Which is not to suggest that my own personal experience constitutes a reliable source or anything — merely that I do happen to have a clue or three what I'm talking about. Bearcat (talk) 21:50, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

Interesting. However, the key assertion that Afro-Caribbean Canadians reject being identified with a term denoting the continent that their primary ancestry is obviously derived from is still very much unsourced. If you can produce evidence in the form of a quote from or link to a reliable source indicating that this is indeed the case, then we can proceed from there. Otherwise, there is no reason at all not to rename the category to Category:Canadian musicians of African heritage since it has yet to be proven that the label "African" is objectionable to most Afro-Caribbean Canadians. Middayexpress (talk) 22:15, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

I also love the assertion that "Caribbean Canadian" is problematic because not all Caribbeans are black but instead some of them are Chinese, Arabic, etc. too — but the fact that the very same thing is also true of "African American" isn't a knock against that term?

For what it's worth, I am tracking down sources as we speak. I'm not going to cite this, given that it's a blog and all, but it does give a good introductory overview of the tensions that do exist around naming the community. Bearcat (talk) 22:36, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

If you love the assertion that "Caribbean Canadian" is problematic because not all people in the Caribbean are Afro-Caribbeans with ancestors from West Africa/Mozambique (Indo-Caribbeans, Chinese Caribbeans, etc.), then you have that informative Black Canadians article again to thank since that is where I got it from. Thanks for the blog link (which you are correct in noting isn't a reliable source), as it appears to confirm what I had already suspected; namely, that the Afro-Caribbeans who reject being associated with the term "African" are trying to distance/distinguish themselves from their West African relatives (which is still their prerogative, imho): "most black Canadians reject the term “African Canadian” just as slaves did early on, hoping to separate their identities from Africa and gain recognition as Americans". This begs the question as to why a single, unified category was even necessary to begin with. At any rate, take your time looking for that right source; there is, after all, no WP:DEADLINE. Middayexpress (talk) 23:07, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

I didn't say that I didn't understand where it came from; I'm just pointing out the fundamental irony in the reasoning. And again, the reason a single, unified category is necessary is that it's the exact same damn thing as the "African American" community in the United States. If they constitute a unified community in the US, despite the various internal tensions that may happen to exist, then they constitute a unified community in Canada too, despite the various internal tensions that may happen to exist. There's no valid basis for claiming that the grouping represents an ethnic grouping rather than a racial one in the United States, but then turning around and claiming that the exact same analogous group in Canada, defined by the exact same inclusion criteria, is suddenly a racial grouping rather than an ethnic one. They're either both valid or both invalid, period. You're certainly free to propose alternate suggestions for how the group should be named — but having a category, by some name or other, which serves as the exact Canadian analogue to "African American musicians" is simply not up for debate. Bearcat (talk) 05:37, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

Looking past the strawmen above, what are you even arguing with me for? Aren't you supposed to be searching for reliable sources to support your claim that Afro-Caribbean Canadians reject being identified with a term denoting the continent that their primary ancestry is obviously derived from, and that the term "African" in the Category:Canadian musicians of African heritage that I proposed is therefore inadequate? Or were you perhaps expecting me to take your word for it? And shouldn't these sources be relatively easy to find if what you claim is indeed the case? Because the source you did actually produce so far (an opinion piece on a blog, not a reliable source) actually pokes a big hole in your argument, but not in the way you have suggested in your latest response. That blog explicitly indicates that Afro-Caribbean Canadians actively try and disassociate themselves from their West African relatives ("most black Canadians reject the term “African Canadian” just as slaves did early on, hoping to separate their identities from Africa and gain recognition as Americans"), whereas you are proposing we associate them via a "single, unified category". As I already indicated, I do not mind if a category grouping Canadian musicians from the appropriate background exists; it just needs to be named without racial terminology, like every other category of its kind and per extant policy & consensus. So either you produce actually reliable sources to support your claims, or there is no legitimate reason at all not to rename the category to Category:Canadian musicians of African heritage since it has yet to be proven that the label "African" is objectionable to most Afro-Caribbean Canadians. Middayexpress (talk) 21:03, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

You really do think I'm stupid, don't you? Try noticing the fact that I added five or six sources to the article before I even posted my last comment. And even if I hadn't, you yourself pointed to the fact that there's no WP:DEADLINE for this stuff in your previous comment, which would mean I'm not required to magically produce them at your immediate command anyway — so the only thing I'm "supposed" to be doing is "whatever the hell I want whether it conforms to your agenda or not".

Additionally, you're missing the fact that the precise reason why a blog isn't a reliable source is that it's a statement of one individual's personal opinion, not a researched and reliably sourced publication — so if you're claiming that his statement that "Afro-Caribbean Canadians actively try and disassociate themselves from their West African relatives" inherently pokes a hole in my argument, then you're missing both the fact that it's a statement of personal opinion that may or may not jibe with the sourceable facts, and the fact that the piece as a whole explicitly demonstrates that while "Afro-Caribbean Canadians" and "African-American or direct-from-Africa African-Canadians" aren't associated with each other under the specific term "African-Canadian", they still are associated with each other under other terminologies.

"African" isn't the word that's generally accepted as the proper term for the association, but that doesn't mean that the association itself doesn't exist. That specific word just isn't the name that their historic and cultural and genetic and social relationship is given — but the association itself still exists, and it exists under the term that the blogger himself actually uses for it. Bearcat (talk) 22:07, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

What "article"? We are talking about categories here. If you are referring to your edits from yesterday to the Black Canadians page (which I only just noticed, fyi), while you have added a source for the assertion that Afro-Caribbean Canadians reject the label "African", you have not provided an exact page number for this. At any rate, I suspect you may be right, since I found a reliable source [5] that indicates that Afro-Caribbean Canadians are actually likely to reject being labeled as "black" altogether and that they do not wish to be associated with "historic black" Canadians as well:

• "Clearly first generation Caribbean immigrants will identify themselves either by the island from which they come or by the region Caribbean or West Indian. But, whites see them only in accordance with the racial category black which the West Indian is likely to reject largely because they have not been accustomed to thinking of themselves in racialized terms. Further, since they come from countries where the majority of citizens are black and are visible at all levels of civil society, their attitudes of themselves differ from those of historic blacks in America and Canada whose experience has ranged from slavery to oppressed racial minorities and only recently protected by the law as first class citizens."
• "Historic blacks often complain that West Indian immigrants are aloof and do not wish to associate with them."

Similarly, a book exclusively on the topic, albeit in the United States, indicates that Afro-Caribbeans there do not like to be associated with the African Americans [6]. Since many Afro-Caribbeans apparently reject being labeled "African" and "black" and being associated with both "historic blacks" and Black African immigrants, that doesn't exactly leave much room for such a category to begin with since, as you say, they make up most Black Canadians. I would propose Category:Canadians of African and West Indian heritage, but as with the simple term "Caribbean", not all people labeled "West Indian" trace their origins to West Africa/Mozambique. Middayexpress (talk) 22:44, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

You can assert that it's an inherently invalid grouping under any name all you want — but what you still haven't answered is the fact that there's not a single argument against it that isn't also 100 per cent true of Category:African American musicians as well. They're either both valid or both invalid, because they're the same thing, with the same set of arguments in favour vs. against in both cases — but there simply isn't any valid basis for claiming that Category:African American musicians is just fine and dandy, while an analogous grouping for Canadians is uniquely inappropriate.

What I will acknowledge is that in my search for sources, I discovered that the number of useful source hits for the double-barrelled "African and Caribbean Canadian" (or "African-Canadian and Caribbean-Canadian" or other similar variations) has increased significantly over just a couple of years ago, which suggests that maybe there is a new consensus emerging. I don't know whether it's really reached critical mass yet, but I'll certainly be looking into that.

However, you will also find that there are exceedingly few cultural/social/media institutions in Canada that explicitly describe their target audience as only African, or only Caribbean. The institutional infrastructure of the community is overwhelmingly inclusive of both groups; even groups which do use only one word or the other in their names still don't actually reject the other group from their service mandates. There are certainly tensions at a more personal level as to who feels included or excluded by any individual institution — but at the institutional level, which is the level that actually determines whether there's a properly sourceable argument for the validity or invalidity of a common cultural grouping, the vast majority of institutions are formally inclusive of both — hell, even Caribana officially considers its mandate to be inclusive of African cultural participation (even if the Africans don't always feel like it's really theirs.)

So while there are certainly tensions within the "black" Canadian community, you've already acknowledged that the same tensions exist within the African American community as well — and while those tensions may be more prominent in Canada due to demographics, they still aren't so significant or so insurmountable that the community actually divides itself into two independent and mutually exclusive camps with duplicate cultural infrastructures. The groups do still act in concert as a larger ethnocultural community with mostly shared cultural institutions and apparati. Which, in and of itself, demonstrates that even if there isn't a universal consensus on how to name them, those all-important cultural and social associations that define whether they are considered a community or not do still exist. Bearcat (talk) 23:29, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

As I have repeatedly indicated, I do not mind if a category grouping Canadian musicians from the appropriate background exists; it just needs to be named without racial terminology, like every other category of its kind and per extant policy & consensus. If I had wanted to delete the category, I would've simply nominated it for deletion by now like the many other race-based people categories that have been deleted before it. And there's very little you could have done about it too, aside from perhaps participating in the ensuing Afd discussion and hoping for the best. But I've chosen to be diplomatic and actually hear you out, so work with me here, okay?

It makes no difference what is or is not acceptable at the institutional level. The categories in question deal with individuals, not institutions. And per this very guideline, it's what is acceptable at the personal and cultural group level that matters: "neutral terminology is not necessarily the most common term — a term that the person or their cultural group does not accept for themselves is not neutral even if it remains the most widely used term among outsiders. (For example, labels such as "AIDS victim" for an HIV+ person or "Eskimo" for an Inuit are not appropriate terms. When in doubt, err on the side of respect and the right of people to define themselves.)". It has already been seen that Afro-Caribbeans reject the terms "African American", "Black American" and even "Black", as they feel these terms either 'racialize' them or lump them in with "historic blacks", who they apparently also believe themselves to be distinct from. This leaves us with a very limited set of options with which to name the categories. Your suggestion that the terms "African and Caribbean Canadian" and "African-Canadian and Caribbean-Canadian" have had an increasing number of hits over the years is not really reflected in a Google search ([7], [8]). But even if it had been, it wouldn't really matter since the terms "Caribbean" and "Caribbean Canadian" of course do not at all only apply to people in the Caribbean with ancestors from West Africa/Mozambique (i.e. Afro-Caribbeans vs. Indo-Caribbeans, Chinese Caribbeans, etc.); the same goes for the term "West Indian". Via their juxtaposing of the terms "African" and "Caribbean", category names such as "African and Caribbean Canadian" or "African Canadian and Caribbean Canadian" also create the obviously absurd impression that said Afro-Caribbeans have no "African" in them, when of course, West Africa/Mozambique is where their primary ancestry is derived from in the first place. Such category names are therefore out of the question.

I have also had the opportunity to have a closer look at that book that you indicated on the Black Canadians article supports the assertion that "many Blacks of Caribbean origin in Canada reject the term African Canadian as an elision of the uniquely Caribbean aspects of their heritage". The book mentions the term "African Canadian" on 12 pages [9], and only one of those pages deals with the actual naming issue. However, the author here too says nothing about Afro-Caribbean Canadians rejecting the term; he only talks about why he personally does not like the term [10]. This brings us back to where we were the day before yesterday, where the key assertion that Afro-Caribbean Canadians reject being identified with the term "African" is still very much unsourced. If you can produce evidence in the form of a quote from or link to a reliable source indicating that this is indeed the case, then we can proceed from there. Otherwise, there is no reason at all not to rename the category to Category:Canadian musicians of African heritage since it has yet to be proven that the label "African" is objectionable to most Afro-Caribbean Canadians. Middayexpress (talk) 20:15, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

Race versus Ethnicity

At the time, it seemed this was a consensus wording change. It certainly was heavily discussed!

Since then, some doofus has added Ethnicity as a subcategory of Race. This contravenes all the long term effort to separate the two concepts in categorization. I'll remove it.

I firmly disagree with Bearcat as to the existence of the "Asian" race. Indeed, Asian means something different depending on the speaker. In the US, it means certain parts of the pacific rim. In Britain, it means Indian subcontinent. Etc. Genetically, Amerinds are all "Asian", as they migrated within the past 6,000-12,000 years and are most closely related to Koreans. But they don't call themselves "Asian"....

Likewise, "Black" is not a race. "African" is not a race. "White" is not a race. "Caucasian" never even existed, other than in the fantasies of white supremacist racists.

As to the advisability of various ethnic labels, the usual practice for many years was to use the labels that they call themselves. In the specifics, I usually defer to Bearcat, as he has far more experience. Proper sourcing is good!
--William Allen Simpson (talk) 17:57, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for clarifying things; that's pretty much what I had figured the situation was. I agree that consensus has clearly already been established, and that the Ethnicity category definitely does not belong as a sub-category of the Race category. I also agree that so-called "race" is a dubious concept to begin with, and that, given proper sourcing, populations/individuals should have the right to define themselves rather than have some extraneous label(s) imposed on them. Much obliged! Middayexpress (talk) 20:23, 11 September 2010 (UTC)