Phenotypes of the Greeks

[EV13SON]

I know I know But lets face it there is a clear divide, even the DNA testing companies distinguish between "Northern" and "Southern" Europe. I don't like racism but obviously there does exist clear phenotypical differences between those that share more ancestry with N.Africa and the Middle East should there be a separate designation for those that share this ancestry? You have your "White Pride" should we deny others from having a "Mediterranean Pride"? The question is how would Middle Easterners feel, would they want to be classified as Mediterranean?

Perhaps we could settle on Anatolian..."Anatolian Pride" baby!

"Breaker 1-9 we have a robbery in progress suspect is an Anatolian male..." hey it kinda works :)

[Angela]

Don't be surprised if you get banned. Just saying...

He knew he would and he didn't care, because I'm sure he's still here under another sock.

Banning still serves a purpose, though, in signaling to academics, for instance, that we don't tolerate racism here. It also serves a purpose in that newbies will know that the rules will be enforced.


Unfortunately, the mentally ill and racists are an ever present part of the population genetics underbelly. I've had to make my peace with it.

@EV13SON,

It's not enough to "walk the line", here, buddy. You have to stay well away from it.

[EV13SON]

Yes I know, as a guy that resembles Adam Sandler... I understand the dangers to where that sort of thinking can lead to. I just wanted to pose the question to those of us who share more of a "Southern European" phenotype should we have our own separate designation. You have these extremes on the "White" and "Black" spectrum who want to claim they are the originators of all things civilized...I beg to differ...

Who gave you beer and wine...? Yeah that's what I thought...

[bigsnake49]

Yes I know, as a guy that resembles Adam Sandler... I understand the dangers to where that sort of thinking can lead to. I just wanted to pose the question to those of us who share more of a "Southern European" phenotype should we have our own separate designation. You have these extremes on the "White" and "Black" spectrum who want to claim they are the originators of all things civilized...I beg to differ...

Who gave you beer and wine...? Yeah that's what I thought...

There are scientific designations for phenotypes that are well known.

[EV13SON]

There are scientific designations for phenotypes that are well known.

Well those are outdated now... according to census reporting all N.Europeans, S.Europeans, North Africans and Middle Easterners are simply "white" no need to distinguish... I guess it's better that way, perhaps it was decided that way to avoid trouble... I just want to make sure the Keltoi-Scyths understand they would still be drinking fermented horse milk aka "Kumis" if it wasn't for your Mesopotamian-Egyptians introducing you to beer and your Greco-Romans introducing you to wine Yes I know that's not quite right but you get what I'm saying...

[Duarte]

Well those are outdated now... according to census reporting all N.Europeans, S.Europeans, North Africans and Middle Easterners are simply "white" no need to distinguish... I guess it's better that way, perhaps it was decided that way to avoid trouble... I just want to make sure the Keltoi-Scyths understand they would still be drinking fermented horse milk aka "Kumis" if it wasn't for your Mesopotamian-Egyptians introducing you to beer and your Greco-Romans introducing you to wine Yes I know that's not quite right but you get what I'm saying...

I don't know much about the criteria that define races in the US census. It seems, and I learned this right here on Eupedia, that West Eurasians and North Africans can self-identify as white. However, it seems that American society, that is, the common citizen, has a more strict understanding of what a 'white' individual is. It seems that, culturally, in the United States, whites are only the WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestants) and those who have a biotype similar to them. Please correct me if I'm wrong, because this reminds me of the racial debate at the 2020 Oscars where the magazine ‘Vanity Fair' depicts Spanish (Andalusian) actor Antonio Banderas as one of two non-white actors nominated for the statuette. For me, this shows the fragility of ethnic labels in the US because here in Brazil I would have no doubts about classifying him as white.

[Palermo Trapani]

I don't know much about the criteria that define races in the US census. It seems, and I learned this right here on Eupedia, that West Eurasians and North Africans can self-identify as white. However, it seems that American society, that is, the common citizen, has a more strict understanding of what a 'white' individual is. It seems that, culturally, in the United States, whites are only the WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestants) and those who have a biotype similar to them. Please correct me if I'm wrong, because this reminds me of the racial debate at the 2020 Oscars where the magazine ‘Vanity Fair' depicts Spanish (Andalusian) actor Antonio Banderas as one of two non-white actors nominated for the statuette. For me, this shows the fragility of ethnic labels in the US because here in Brazil I would have no doubts about classifying him as white.

Yes, the standard by which all peoples were measured against in the USA were the "WASPS". This is largely similar to what you find in the likes of Careleton Coon's writings, who picked it up from earlier writers from Northern Europe and particularly England on why they were the standard of how all other groups are defined. Of course England was the dominate power on Earth from pretty much the 16th century to WW1. The WASP is the standard of in the pecking order. Those that are in terms of phenotypes close to them, are higher in the order but don't share the "WASP" culture of England, you are sort of next in line, so to speak.

But world powers change. Who knows, in 100 years if China is the dominate power on earth and Chinese Geneticist and Anthropologist are dominate in that space, maybe a Chinese version of Coon will write a book and the WASP will be put somewhere lower in that pecking order!

Of course I am being tongue and cheek and I don't believe in any of that who is where on the pecking order. I don't blindly trust anything that Chinese scholars publish since some research on anthropology and genetics has a Chinese nationalistic angle or feel to it. However, when Chinese scholars have Western Scientist corroborate their findings (Which Chris Springer did on these recent findings regarding Homo Longi), I do trust it. Furthermore, I do see more and more research being done by Chinese scholars and they are not letting the DNA and genetics discussion and Anthropology research being dominated by Western Academics any longer.

So the days of those like Careleton Coon and the like and their writings being used as the baseline for all discussion about genetics and anthropology are long gone, except for those at some of these other sites where the Nordicist and neo ...... types hang out.

[Angela]

I have a slightly different take on this.

I'd point out, for example, that the people who were speaking of Antonio Banderas probably assumed he was Hispanic, not Spanish. The ignorance of people in Hollywood is not to be underestimated.

Yes, the WASP was, at first, the standard for "whiteness" in the U.S., but many people who were not Anglo-Saxon Protestants were accepted as "white" fairly early. The settlers of Maryland were English Catholics, but no one ever doubted their "whiteness". That was the case, as well, with the German speakers from the Palatine who were apparently too dark for William Penn's liking when they arrived in Pennsylvania as well as being largely "Swiss", not Anglo-Saxon. They were quickly assimilated as were Catholic German immigrants.

"Colonial Americans" couldn't deny the Irish were "white" even if they were neither Anglo-Saxon nor Protestant. Didn't stop them from being mistreated in the mid-nineteenth century, but they were still allowed to vote etc, so much so that they quickly took political control in a lot of major U.S. cities by the end of the 19th century.

The few Italians who migrated before about 1880 (about 25,000 of them) were certainly considered white. They included the craftsmen and artists who oversaw much of the building of Washington D.C., like Constantino Brumidi, and Lorenzo Da Ponte, who built the first opera house in the U.S., and the vineyard owners and bankers of California, like A.P. Giannini, who founded The Bank of America, at one time the largest commercial bank in the world.

Many of our Portuguese migrants were from the Azores, and noticeably darker than "Anglo-Saxons", yet I don't think they faced major problems. The fact that they spoke a foreign language and were Christian and lived in the North and California insulated them from racial prejudice.

In an extreme case, the Melungeons, a group of people from the southern United States who were noticeably darker than most southerners were sometimes brought to court in the 1800s to strip them of their voting rights. They retained them in a lot of cases by claiming to be the descendants of the Portuguese sailors who worked on the ships bringing slaves to the south. In reality, modern dna testing showed they were the descendants of black male slaves and white female indentured servants from the early days of the colonial south.

As for the mainly Southern Italians and Greeks who arrived in the great wave of migration which started at the end of the 19th century, they faced their share of discrimination, but they were still considered to be on the "right" side of the color line for purposes of inter-marriage, for example, except for a few pockets in the deep south. The only West Eurasians of whom I'm aware who had to petition to be considered "white" back before the passage of the civil rights laws were the Lebanese. The fact that they were Christians and didn't look SSA admixed got them over the line. There was no Muslim migration so that was never tested.

Of course, everything has changed now. If you're not visibly SSA admixed, you still have "white privilege".

[Jovialis]

I have a slightly different take on this.

I'd point out, for example, that the people who were speaking of Antonio Banderas probably assumed he was Hispanic, not Spanish. The ignorance of people in Hollywood is not to be underestimated.

Yes, the WASP was, at first, the standard for "whiteness" in the U.S., but many people who were not Anglo-Saxon Protestants were accepted as "white" fairly early. The settlers of Maryland were English Catholics, but no one ever doubted their "whiteness". That was the case, as well, with the German speakers from the Palatine who were apparently too dark for William Penn's liking when they arrived in Pennsylvania as well as being largely "Swiss", not Anglo-Saxon. They were quickly assimilated as were Catholic German immigrants.

"Colonial Americans" couldn't deny the Irish were "white" even if they were neither Anglo-Saxon nor Protestant. Didn't stop them from being mistreated in the mid-nineteenth century, but they were still allowed to vote etc, so much so that they quickly took political control in a lot of major U.S. cities by the end of the 19th century.

The few Italians who migrated before about 1880 (about 25,000 of them) were certainly considered white. They included the craftsmen and artists who oversaw much of the building of Washington D.C., like Constantino Brumidi, and Lorenzo Da Ponte, who built the first opera house in the U.S., and the vineyard owners and bankers of California, like A.P. Giannini, who founded The Bank of America, at one time the largest commercial bank in the world.

Many of our Portuguese migrants were from the Azores, and noticeably darker than "Anglo-Saxons", yet I don't think they faced major problems. The fact that they spoke a foreign language and were Christian and lived in the North and California insulated them from racial prejudice.

In an extreme case, the Melungeons, a group of people from the southern United States who were noticeably darker than most southerners were sometimes brought to court in the 1800s to strip them of their voting rights. They retained them in a lot of cases by claiming to be the descendants of the Portuguese sailors who worked on the ships bringing slaves to the south. In reality, modern dna testing showed they were the descendants of black male slaves and white female indentured servants from the early days of the colonial south.

As for the mainly Southern Italians and Greeks who arrived in the great wave of migration which started at the end of the 19th century, they faced their share of discrimination, but they were still considered to be on the "right" side of the color line for purposes of inter-marriage, for example, except for a few pockets in the deep south. The only West Eurasians of whom I'm aware who had to petition to be considered "white" back before the passage of the civil rights laws were the Lebanese. The fact that they were Christians and didn't look SSA admixed got them over the line. There was no Muslim migration so that was never tested.

Of course, everything has changed now. If you're not visibly SSA admixed, you still have "white privilege".

I never knew that, but it totally makes sense. I guess the people who hired them strove for authenticity when emulating classical antiquity.

[italouruguayan]

I don't know much about the criteria that define races in the US census. It seems, and I learned this right here on Eupedia, that West Eurasians and North Africans can self-identify as white. However, it seems that American society, that is, the common citizen, has a more strict understanding of what a 'white' individual is. It seems that, culturally, in the United States, whites are only the WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestants) and those who have a biotype similar to them. Please correct me if I'm wrong, because this reminds me of the racial debate at the 2020 Oscars where the magazine ‘Vanity Fair' depicts Spanish (Andalusian) actor Antonio Banderas as one of two non-white actors nominated for the statuette. For me, this shows the fragility of ethnic labels in the US because here in Brazil I would have no doubts about classifying him as white.

There´s a word whose original meaning is glorious, but whose current meaning given in the USA I learned to hate. That word is "Latino". And they surely classified Antonio Banderas as "people of color" for the simple fact of speaking Spanish and therefore being "Latino". In the USA "Latino" is a stereotype that means: a person with brown skin, with Native American features and who speaks Spanish, who likes spicy food, dancing and scandalous music, with little attachment to work , little culture and suspicious links to drug trafficking. When in Hollywood movies the police are looking for someone "of Latino appearance", they are not looking for someone who looks Italian, French or Spanish,but someone who fits the previous description. "Latino" is a big bag, where Mexicans and Argentinians fit, although they have less in common with each other than a Texan and an Australian from Queensland. Not to mention the Brazilians, who speak Portuguese and have their own culture. We call the inhabitants of our neighboring countries Brazilians, Argentinians, Paraguayans, Chileans, etc. Not "Latinos". I consider myself Uruguayan first, and then South American. Culturally I am Ibero American, and ethnically I am basically Italian with a mix of Native American. . Nothing "latino" (at least in the American meaning of that word).

[Angela]

Young Americans get indoctrinated with this stuff. My children habitually call Puerto Ricans, Central Americans, Cubans and Mexicans, Spanish. Some of that is because that's what people with that ancestry themselves claim.

There's nothing wrong with being any of those things, but they're not Spanish. They're admixed people with some Iberian ancestry, but also, in the vast majority of cases, at least a bit of indigenous and SSA ancestry.

Then lately I'm seeing you tube videos by young self-described Afro-LatinX people crying when they find out that in some case they're 40% or more "colonizer" in ancestry.

Whatever happened to being accepting of all your ancestors? Take one group out and you're no longer you.

Well, enough ranting. It's just I increasingly feel alienated from the world around me.