 Sat Dec 09, 2006 7:11 am Does it require any comma? or any other modification |
|
|
| Dr. R. Saroj wrote: | | A very pleasant somewhat overweight white female in no apparent distress. |
Yes, it does need a comma.
A very pleasant, somewhat overweight white female in no apparent distress. |
|
Jamie (K)
I'm a Communicator ;-)
Joined: 24 Feb 2006
Posts: 4106
Location: Detroit, Michigan, USA
|
| Sat Dec 09, 2006 17:03 pm Does it require any comma? or any other modification |
|
|
| Conchita wrote: | | Dr. R. Saroj wrote: | | ... white female ... |
Thank goodness you didn't use the awful term 'Caucasian female'! |
The term "white" is just as weird as the word "Caucasian", Conchita. It's hard to figure out what people mean by it.
When I was a child, where I lived "white" meant anyone who was Caucasian or Mestizo. So Mexicans were "white" in my area, because they were kind of like southern Italians, but darker. The kid in my class from India was "white" also, because he was of the "Caucasian race". So was the Egyptian girl, and there was no question that all the Syrians and Lebanese in my classes were white. If you were half Japanese or Chinese, or half American Indian, you were "white". A couple in which one spouse was Asian and the other was of European origin was not considered an "interracial marriage" when I was a kid.
Little by little, in the US, these groups have stopped being white. I noticed when I was in high school that TV started to talk about "whites" in contrast with "Hispanics". I think this distinction originated in California and the Southwest. So Latin Americans weren't white anymore. After a while the people from India became Asian instead of white. Now the Syrian and Lebanese people I know who are in their 40s and 50s, and whose families came in the early 20th century or before, are white, but the Arabic kids whose parents still have foreign accents are considered "non-white" by many people and even by themselves. (However, black people usually call them white.)
And to show you how absurd the whole thing has gotten, here are two more examples:
-- Because of the race consciousness they were taught at school in Colorado, a Czech friend's small American children think she is of a different race from them, because she tans easily in the summer and they don't. (Even in the bad old days before the Civil Rights era, we were not taught to be racially conscious to such a bizarre degree!)
-- I've recently read this sentence on the web that was written by a young American woman: "My father is Italian and my mother is white." (So now even ITALIANS have stopped being white!)
The word "black" is almost as weird. I had a classmate in college who had a Polish surname, blond hair and lighter skin than mine, but because the texture of his hair and his facial features made it obvious his ancestry was mostly African, everyone of every race considered him "black". I think he did himself. |
|
Jamie (K)
I'm a Communicator ;-)
Joined: 24 Feb 2006
Posts: 4106
Location: Detroit, Michigan, USA
|
