When is a citizen not a citizen?

[pErvinalia]

It's like "Sweden." It's people are "Swedish." Now, a Somali who becomes a Swedish citizen can call himself a "Swede." But, that Somali is ethnically Somalian and not Swedish. So, it wouldn't be really all that weird or nefarious for an ethnic Swede to not consider the Somali person "Swedish" even if he is a Swedish citizen. He'd be a Somali-Swede, or an African-Swede, whereas if you say "Swede" it paints a picture an ethnic Swede.

Relate that to African-Americans, if you please. Will they never be regarded simply as American citizens? Skin colour precludes them? Condemned to remain ethnically African? Even those whose ancestors have been born and raised in the USA for many more generations than your ethnically German president?

They are, because America - the United States - doesn't have an "ethnicity" associated with it to the same extent as Sweden or Germany or France or Saudi Arabia.

The US has always been an amalgam of ethnicities, not just one ethnicity. Native Americans, plus then the French, English, Dutch, Spanish, etc., all settled. So, you'd have Swedes settling in Minnesota, etc., and they became American, and so did Nigerians who went to Alabama.

That's different than in homogeneous countries, like, say, Nigeria, where you'd be hard pressed to consider a WASP a "Nigerian." That's one of the reasons why it's not generally considered appropriate to call a white South African an "African American" if they move to the United States. A black American who has ancestry 400 years here in the US is called an African American, but my friend whose parents were South African does not call himself African American -- he's not ethnically African. He's ethnically Dutch.

Nigeria is not ethnically homogeneous - unless of course you lump all brownies together in the same bucket.

And there we have our answer.

[pErvinalia]

Here we have the descendants of the first-fleeters proudly proclaiming their British ancestry. I really don't know why. Not only were most of them shoved off because they were convicted criminals, but according to the original settlers they have done nothing since then to be proud about.



Doesn't prevent the Johnny-come-latelies from treating today's asylum seekers like shit, though.

Australia is the biggest cover-up going. It never actually existed EVER at all and was just made up by the government as some distant sounding place for sending criminals to BUT in REALITY they just chucked the buggers overboard in the Bay of Biscay and went to the CARIBBEAN and to hide their GUILT and stop the TRUTH coming out they had to maintain the fabrication and now when YOU think you're going on holiday to Australia they just fly you round for ages before landing on a SPECIALLY CONSTRUCTED reef in the Mediterranean populated with actors with prepared back stories and SHIT anecdotes and none of the Australians on THIS FORUM OR ANY FORM are real people BUT they're just the likes Barry humphries and Guy Pierce working for THE GOVERMENT and the sheeple don't want to HEAR THE TRUTH because they can't handle the truth. This is the REAL reason why Mel Gibson went MAD.

/Galaxian

There is an actual conspiracy theory that Australia doesn't exist. Not sure how Galaxian squares that one in his "brain"...

[Brian Peacock]

Oh shit - fact is stranger than fiction.

[JimC]

I am an imaginary maths teacher...

[Hermit]

Oh shit - fact is stranger than fiction.

Our Third Life is a YouTube channel featuring satirical confession vlogs by hosts Pupinia Stewart, Schmitty Winkleson and Steven Skyhard. Some videos on the channel have been widely circulated online under the misconception that they are not satirical.

I wonder if 15 million views of the channel's 192 video clips generates enough clicks to make a living from. Or maybe the videos are just the kids' idea of having fun.

[JimC]

Nobody cares what imaginary Australian posters think...

[Tyrannical]

When their parents are Somali?

I think the point you're trying to make is that US children born of Somali stock are not real Minnesota Americans.

Well, they aren't.

For the context to this bollocks see here: http://www.rationalia.com/forum/viewtop ... 5#p1709712

So what qualifies a personal as being American, British, French, Dutch, Australian, or even Somali? Clearly, one's nationality is more that a simple matter of being born in a particular geo-social-political region or fulfilling some kind of official nationality test if born beyond the borders of that region.

Is someone who's parents were born in a different country not actually a citizen of the country they themselves were born in? What about the grandchildren of immigrants, are they proper citizens, and if not: how many generations have to be born in a country before the last of them can be considered a proper citizen? Is it like the Bible says; the nationality of the father shall fall upon the backs of their children, yea, unto the seventh generation?

When is a horse not a horse? When it's parents were sheep

Somalians are an ethnic group and they are Somalian no matter where they are born.

[NineBerry]

Somalia didn't even exist as a construct until 1960. Several colonial areas before that. It is a completely artificial construct. Just notice the many straight lines in the Somalian border. Created by Britons on a drawing board. Meaning: Any Somalian above the age of 57 wasn't born Somalian. The same is true for most countries, even for Europe: Nations are in flux all the time and until recently, borders of nation states in Europe changed more frequently than some Europeans changed their underwear.

[Svartalf]

but the Somali people existed long before they had a country named for them.

[Scot Dutchy]

Germany pinched a bit of the Netherlands after WW2. We still have a motorway travelling through maintained by us. Before Schengen you were not allowed to stop.

[Forty Two]

It's like "Sweden." It's people are "Swedish." Now, a Somali who becomes a Swedish citizen can call himself a "Swede." But, that Somali is ethnically Somalian and not Swedish. So, it wouldn't be really all that weird or nefarious for an ethnic Swede to not consider the Somali person "Swedish" even if he is a Swedish citizen. He'd be a Somali-Swede, or an African-Swede, whereas if you say "Swede" it paints a picture an ethnic Swede.

Relate that to African-Americans, if you please. Will they never be regarded simply as American citizens? Skin colour precludes them? Condemned to remain ethnically African? Even those whose ancestors have been born and raised in the USA for many more generations than your ethnically German president?

They are, because America - the United States - doesn't have an "ethnicity" associated with it to the same extent as Sweden or Germany or France or Saudi Arabia.

The US has always been an amalgam of ethnicities, not just one ethnicity. Native Americans, plus then the French, English, Dutch, Spanish, etc., all settled. So, you'd have Swedes settling in Minnesota, etc., and they became American, and so did Nigerians who went to Alabama.

That's different than in homogeneous countries, like, say, Nigeria, where you'd be hard pressed to consider a WASP a "Nigerian." That's one of the reasons why it's not generally considered appropriate to call a white South African an "African American" if they move to the United States. A black American who has ancestry 400 years here in the US is called an African American, but my friend whose parents were South African does not call himself African American -- he's not ethnically African. He's ethnically Dutch.

Nigeria is not ethnically homogeneous - unless of course you lump all brownies together in the same bucket. If you don't, you'll notice many ethnically differentiated populations among its 188 million inhabitants. The Hausa, Yoruba, Igbo and Fulani account for 70% of them and the Urhobo-Isoko, Edo, Ijaw, Kanuri, Ibibio, Ebira, Nupe, Gwari, Jukun, Igala, Idoma and Tiv for most of the rest. Even Somalia's population is only 85% Somali.

Not that any of this matters. You have neatly sidestepped the question why African-American still has currency while German-American has not. I put it down to skin colour. White or orange - good. Other - bad. Collector fairly obviously goes along with that, and you pretend to be blissfully unaware.

Sidestepped the issue? That wasn't the issue. The issue I was addressing was the difference between being a national of X and being ethnically X. I.e., that there is such a thing as being, for example, a Swede in the sense of a Swedish national, which is not the same as being ethnically Swedish.

Also, "German-American" has currency. The US is a land of hyphens. Italian-American. German-American. Ukrainian-American, Irish-American. These are very common terms with "currency." It's not just African-American.

[Hermit]

The issue I was addressing was the difference between being a national of X and being ethnically X. I.e., that there is such a thing as being, for example, a Swede in the sense of a Swedish national, which is not the same as being ethnically Swedish.

Yeah, and I addressed that by way of your idiotic reference to Nigerian homogeneity. Then I turned to the real issue underlying your idiocy.

Also, "German-American" has currency. The US is a land of hyphens. Italian-American. German-American. Ukrainian-American, Irish-American. These are very common terms with "currency." It's not just African-American.

So, how often was Trump referred to as a German-American? And I do wonder why Obama's Kenyan ancestry was such a perennial issue, while Ted Cruz's actual Canadian birth place did not disqualify him from running as a candidate in the primaries.

[Brian Peacock]

Somalians are an ethnic group and they are Somalian no matter where they are born.

Nobody is disputing their ethnicity. Mr C was disputing the nationality of US-born children of Somali stock living in Minnesota - he said they are not real Minnesota Americans.

[Forty Two]

The issue I was addressing was the difference between being a national of X and being ethnically X. I.e., that there is such a thing as being, for example, a Swede in the sense of a Swedish national, which is not the same as being ethnically Swedish.

Yeah, and I addressed that by way of your idiotic reference to Nigerian homogeneity. Then I turned to the real issue underlying your idiocy.

Idiocy? Calm down, Sunshine. My point isn't idiotic, and this isn't mathematics. Ethnicity is not mathematics. There are different subgroups of, say, Swedes, too, but yet there is an ethnic Swedishness. Same thing with German and Polish, etc. No country is 100% homogeneous.

The point remains that a person can be a national of X without being ethnically X. You haven't "refuted" that, because you can't.

Also, "German-American" has currency. The US is a land of hyphens. Italian-American. German-American. Ukrainian-American, Irish-American. These are very common terms with "currency." It's not just African-American.

So, how often was Trump referred to as a German-American?

Not often. I would say that's a function of European ancestry not being considered (by people of European descent) as important as African ancestry. However, many German-Americans like to stay in touch with their ethnic background, and there are German-American clubs and societies. I'm Scandinavian, and I belong to a club for Norwegian, Swedish and Danish Americans.

And I do wonder why Obama's Kenyan ancestry was such a perennial issue, while Ted Cruz's actual Canadian birth place did not disqualify him from running as a candidate in the primaries.

I argued very strenuously that Ted Cruz was and is ineligible to run, and the argument was made. The reason why it was not a huge issue in the media was that the media was caught in a difficult spot with that one. They had gone all in with selling the notion that where a person was born was not relevant, and that challenging a person's citizenship was dirty pool, something only done to the African-American guy. So, they erred on the side of accepting the "he is eligible" side of the argument. The reality is, he isn't eligible. He was born in Canada, and he was not a citizen of the US when he was born. At the time, he could have only one citizenship, and he was a citizen of Canada. He could not have been a citizen of the US. Thus, he's illegal, a permanent resident or naturalized. In any case, he's ineligible. The point was brought up, but the media won't cover that kind of issue.

The issue with Obama was not his "ancestry," but rather his birthplace. If he was born in Hawaii, he was eligible. If he was born in Kenya, or somewhere else, then whether his mother was a US citizen or not is irrelevant. Just like Ted Cruz.

The pro Ted Cruz folks were really hypocritical on this issue, because they would argue that if Ted was born in Canada, which he was, then he was still a Natural Born Citizen because his mother was an American citizen. However, they did not seem to apply that same argument to Obama, who -- even if we credit the absurd notion that he was born in Kenya -- had a US citizen mother too.

CNN addressed the issue - http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/24/politics/ ... elections/ Therein, Cruz made the argument that anyone born abroad with an American parent was a US citizen from birth. That's not true. It's SOMETIMES true. And even in those cases ,that doesn't mean the person is a "Natural Born Citizen." The argument about natural born citizen has been whether it means only born in the US, or if it includes those born abroad but temporarily, so they never got another country's citizenship - like John McCain who was born in Panama. John McCain's argument for eligibility was that he was born in the Canal Zone to military parents, so he was born and was never a Panamanian citizen and always an American citizen. Much better argument than Cruz. Cruz was a Canadian citizen. At the time ,the US did not have dual citizenship, and if you were a Canadian citizen you could not be an American citizen.

[Forty Two]

Somalians are an ethnic group and they are Somalian no matter where they are born.

Nobody is disputing their ethnicity. Mr C was disputing the nationality of US-born children of Somali stock living in Minnesota - he said they are not real Minnesota Americans.

US born children of Somali parents are "real" Americans.