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- I definitely have to agree with Xavier. Ryan's comment saying, "['Ethnic'] has other meanings, but it's a perfectly acceptable use to use it to mean someone who has an ethnicity from your point of view. And there's nothing wrong with that. It's a natural human thing to see and acknowledge others as... other" makes me very upset because it seems that you, Ryan, are participating in the idea of normative whiteness that completely messed up this country.
We all get a picture in our heads when the word "ethnic" is used. I'm sure it isn't a white person, and that is why Jed said an "ethnic version of Tom Selleck"--who is a white guy. It's this collective understanding that we've been conditioned to know that "ethnic" is somehow non white. I feel that Ryan's comment is very much an example of this idea of normative whiteness: this idea that being white is somehow neutral, plain, culture-less and therefore non-ethnic. I don't even understand what it means to call someone ethnic when you feel that they have an ethnicity. Everyone has an ethnicity. Even if you are white, you can be Polish or Russian or German, whatever--you are not ever non-ethnic. And this idea that being white is somehow not ethnic is ridiculous to me.
That is why saying someone is ethnic is offensive and ignorant. When you say someone is "ethnic" you are implying something very specific, like Xavier said, and it does not make sense that only if you are non-white you are "ethnic." But, that is how we've come to know it in America and that is why Jed's comment makes sense to all of us. We all know what he means when he says, "an 'ethnic' version of Tom Selleck."
That's crazy to me.
But, also, in regards to Ryan's comment about how a doctor should test a black man for hypertension more than he would a white man because of the "statistics" doesn't really make sense to me after hearing the segment. What I got from it is that it depends on what statistics you are looking at: if you are looking at statistics from the US, then yeah, it is going to LOOK like more black mean suffer from high blood pressure.
But, Richard Cooper's research shows that nationally, hypertension is more common among German/Russian populations. Same goes for the BiDil study: it looked like it worked more on black people because they were the only ones being tested! Reminds me of a time when studies and data were shown to prove Africans were biologically inferior...if you are looking for a specific answer, you can bet your ass that you can twist and bend science in your favor. BiDil wasn't tested on non-blacks for a specific reason. Just like scientific data was twisted and exaggerated to prove crazy things about non whites. To me this shows that race and racial studies don't really have much place in medicine. Depending on what statistics you are looking at, where you live, and who is being tested, you will get very different results and answers.
Sorry this is so long =)
