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Pre-Med Ethnicity Thread...
Started by UMP
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Well, I'm either totally Han Chinese (not that it really means very much since there's quite a bit of variety in the people that consider themselves "Han" today-especially since many ethnicities were assimilated into it), or something like 15/16th Han Chinese and 1/16th Japanese.
Not that it really matters one way or the other, lol. And seriously, nobody actually knows (there was some confusing thing where someone had remarried, but nobody really kept track of which kid was from which wife, thus leading to me not knowing whether I'm part Japanese or not-although it'd be a really tiny part anyway-but it sounds cool lol).
Maybe I'll just multiply the 1/16th by the probability that I'm 1/16th Japanese and claim that I'm 1/44th Japanese or something. Perhaps not so coincidentally, it makes it really hard to be one of those Chinese people who hate Japanese people when you may or may not be part Japanese, lol. (not that I would hate anybody anyway, just joking here)
Not that it really matters one way or the other, lol. And seriously, nobody actually knows (there was some confusing thing where someone had remarried, but nobody really kept track of which kid was from which wife, thus leading to me not knowing whether I'm part Japanese or not-although it'd be a really tiny part anyway-but it sounds cool lol).
Maybe I'll just multiply the 1/16th by the probability that I'm 1/16th Japanese and claim that I'm 1/44th Japanese or something. Perhaps not so coincidentally, it makes it really hard to be one of those Chinese people who hate Japanese people when you may or may not be part Japanese, lol. (not that I would hate anybody anyway, just joking here)
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W
wickd
Yes you would be...
You guys should take a Sociology of race and ethnicity class; it will help many of you learn the difference between race, ethnicity, ethnic identity and symbolic ethnicity. For those of you interested in the difference between African Americans and Nigerian Americans and their experiences in the U.S. (WHICH IS VERY DIFFERENT) definitely read Mary Waters; her books will answer all of your questions and you'll be less apt to making erroneous comments. Just a friendly suggestion.
Thank-you - bring in the intellectuals, I love it! haha, I love em. Before we make conclusions we should always ask ourselves - do I know the whole picture? Often times, it's a no - my own enlightenment came about when I realized that after 5 years of undergrad , there's still a lot I don't know - things are always more complicated than we believe them to be.
It is different to a certain extent, but there's still more shared common negatives than versus say, a German American. And anyways, I've noticed that Nigerian-Americans will often be integrated fairly quickly into an existing African-American group and take up some of the culture.
But yes, on a lot of issues people who are African-American in the sense that they are descended from slaves brought here, versus black Americans who have recently immigrated (I'm saying black Americans because they might not neccessarily be coming from Africa at this point) do have big differences. For one thing, the recent immigrants tend to do a lot better socially. However, you could also argue that this has a lot to do with the fact that people who were fairly capable and resourceful tend to be those who end up being able to immigrate here to begin with. You could look at exceptions though, where people were refugees who were moved here to escape whatever was happening in their home country.
I think my brother saw some documentary where refugees showed up, were shocked at the fact that there was food everywhere, and like 3 months later they were overweight and wearing Phat Farm
Anyways, intellectual craps aside, the truth is that every person has their own story and I *really* dislike it when people make grand generalizations about any group of people based on some ridiculously broad parameter.
Like, what does it matter if asians produce less tears on average? I was reading about how they wanted to use this in order to adjust how they handle post-op care for lasik patients who were asian. Except the problem is that everyone race had a pretty broad range of tear production anyway (with significant overlapping in the ranges), so wouldn't the proper way to handle this be for doctors to actually check the individuals level of tear production? Seriously, it'd suck to be an asian who produced tears just fine and have some ***** assume you have super dry eyes, and conversely if I was a white person with drier eyes I'd hate to have someone assume I teared enough just because I was white. Any of these generalizations about a race/ethnicity are fairly useless on an individual level because every individual happens to be different, lol. Like, I always find it funny that racists will stress how their race is the smartest. Because even if it were true, they'd still be *******es themselves, because their IQ isn't affected by the average of their race.
So anyways, like an African-American could have had an ancestor who moved north a looong time ago, had his grandchildren go to a good school (this was actually possible in the north in some places, my own high school's class photos showed that even in the very first classes there were african-american students), who then bought some fairly smart stock investments.
And that person would probably have lived a life that was somewhat different than your "average" African-American's life, different experiences, etc.
But yes, overall, people descended from slaves get more screwed over psychologically-and I say psychologically because all these social influences do really just boil down to how you interpret them. At the same time though, not everyone gets screwed over, so it's not really very nice to label everyone as socially screwed when they're perfectly OK lol.
Anyways, people really ought to just dump race as a category-I think we should really be beyond arbitrary garbage. Actually, one day I was inspired to think up an alternative to getting rid of race, since people seem so damned inclined to keep it-increasing the # of races to an absurd amount and sort of stroking the flames of racial pride/racism to get them to take, and thus actually kill racism-because when there's 9000 races it'd be hella hard to actually discriminate against anybody else when you don't even know anybody else of your same race lol. But you can be extra proud this way, since your race will be much more tailored to your actual history.
Haha, before you guys go thinking I dropped too much acid, this was just based off of some feminist's idea to get rid of sexism by creating like 20 new genders or something. I just thought it'd be funny to go and take that to a new extreme of #'s =p Plus it'd be funny to split people into different races based on how long their ancestors have lived in a state lol.
You know, you could probably fairly convincely argue that someone who's from a long line of people who lived in Louisiana (and is thus American) is of a different ethnicity than someone who's family was French-Canadian until 2 generations ago when they immigrated to the US and lived in Boston. They'd both be white Americans, but they could also be very different. Or maybe not Louisiana, but fill in some random football crazed state where life basically revolves around football, and instead of Boston choose a city where nobody cares about football. Anyways, I can't wait, I think I picked out a pretty cool name for my own super custom race lol. You better decide what super custom race you belong to soon so I can start insulting you with customized racial slurs.
Not all recent immigrants to the United States from Africa are Nigerian, by the way...Somewhere along the line in this thread they became synonymous...
Many cultures and countries are represented. I personally have known people whose parents came from Nigeria, Cameroon, Sierra Leone, Ghana, Uganda, South Africa, Ivory Coast, Morocco, Kenya, Libya, Egypt, Liberia, Guinea and Malawi.
Many cultures and countries are represented. I personally have known people whose parents came from Nigeria, Cameroon, Sierra Leone, Ghana, Uganda, South Africa, Ivory Coast, Morocco, Kenya, Libya, Egypt, Liberia, Guinea and Malawi.
1/2 persian 1/2 finnish
100% Dutch
My family has been in the US for 5 generations and until my children's generation we have been 100% Dutch. I'm afraid my siblings and I are breaking the tradition though.
My family has been in the US for 5 generations and until my children's generation we have been 100% Dutch. I'm afraid my siblings and I are breaking the tradition though.
A
asif7083
100% South Asian
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what city/region is your family from? do u speak dutch? what do u look like?
1st generation?
Part German and part English. My grandmother was born in Germany. The other side of the family has been in America long enough to host the famous Boston tea party. Going back farther, they're from England and there's some irish as well.
All that means is the more I drink, the more of a smartass rebel I become. 😀
All that means is the more I drink, the more of a smartass rebel I become. 😀
Mmmm...could be.
I'm Hispanic, but in Hispanic families there's a lot mixed up. On my dad's side there is a clearly Italian last name (D'Angelo) and an Irish one (Moran)....On my mom's side it's mainly Spanish, but my grandpa was darker-skinned.
I'm confused now. 😕
It is different to a certain extent, but there's still more shared common negatives than versus say, a German American. And anyways, I've noticed that Nigerian-Americans will often be integrated fairly quickly into an existing African-American group and take up some of the culture.
But yes, on a lot of issues people who are African-American in the sense that they are descended from slaves brought here, versus black Americans who have recently immigrated (I'm saying black Americans because they might not neccessarily be coming from Africa at this point) do have big differences. For one thing, the recent immigrants tend to do a lot better socially. However, you could also argue that this has a lot to do with the fact that people who were fairly capable and resourceful tend to be those who end up being able to immigrate here to begin with. You could look at exceptions though, where people were refugees who were moved here to escape whatever was happening in their home country.
I think my brother saw some documentary where refugees showed up, were shocked at the fact that there was food everywhere, and like 3 months later they were overweight and wearing Phat Farm
Anyways, intellectual craps aside, the truth is that every person has their own story and I *really* dislike it when people make grand generalizations about any group of people based on some ridiculously broad parameter.
Like, what does it matter if asians produce less tears on average? I was reading about how they wanted to use this in order to adjust how they handle post-op care for lasik patients who were asian. Except the problem is that everyone race had a pretty broad range of tear production anyway (with significant overlapping in the ranges), so wouldn't the proper way to handle this be for doctors to actually check the individuals level of tear production? Seriously, it'd suck to be an asian who produced tears just fine and have some ***** assume you have super dry eyes, and conversely if I was a white person with drier eyes I'd hate to have someone assume I teared enough just because I was white. Any of these generalizations about a race/ethnicity are fairly useless on an individual level because every individual happens to be different, lol. Like, I always find it funny that racists will stress how their race is the smartest. Because even if it were true, they'd still be *******es themselves, because their IQ isn't affected by the average of their race.
So anyways, like an African-American could have had an ancestor who moved north a looong time ago, had his grandchildren go to a good school (this was actually possible in the north in some places, my own high school's class photos showed that even in the very first classes there were african-american students), who then bought some fairly smart stock investments.
And that person would probably have lived a life that was somewhat different than your "average" African-American's life, different experiences, etc.
But yes, overall, people descended from slaves get more screwed over psychologically-and I say psychologically because all these social influences do really just boil down to how you interpret them. At the same time though, not everyone gets screwed over, so it's not really very nice to label everyone as socially screwed when they're perfectly OK lol.
Anyways, people really ought to just dump race as a category-I think we should really be beyond arbitrary garbage. Actually, one day I was inspired to think up an alternative to getting rid of race, since people seem so damned inclined to keep it-increasing the # of races to an absurd amount and sort of stroking the flames of racial pride/racism to get them to take, and thus actually kill racism-because when there's 9000 races it'd be hella hard to actually discriminate against anybody else when you don't even know anybody else of your same race lol. But you can be extra proud this way, since your race will be much more tailored to your actual history.
Haha, before you guys go thinking I dropped too much acid, this was just based off of some feminist's idea to get rid of sexism by creating like 20 new genders or something. I just thought it'd be funny to go and take that to a new extreme of #'s =p Plus it'd be funny to split people into different races based on how long their ancestors have lived in a state lol.
You know, you could probably fairly convincely argue that someone who's from a long line of people who lived in Louisiana (and is thus American) is of a different ethnicity than someone who's family was French-Canadian until 2 generations ago when they immigrated to the US and lived in Boston. They'd both be white Americans, but they could also be very different. Or maybe not Louisiana, but fill in some random football crazed state where life basically revolves around football, and instead of Boston choose a city where nobody cares about football. Anyways, I can't wait, I think I picked out a pretty cool name for my own super custom race lol. You better decide what super custom race you belong to soon so I can start insulting you with customized racial slurs.
Oh my, where do I even begin??? First of all, I am African American (1/16 Native American). I fully agree with UTPremed. However, I must say that Cirrus83 made many comments that are just wrong....
"I've noticed that Nigerian-Americans will often be integrated fairly quickly into an existing African-American group and take up some of the culture."
LOL, what? I attended an HBCU, and unfortunately, Carribeans, African Americans, and Africans stayed within their own cultures. Carribeans and African Americans seemed to socialize with each other more often than Africans. The African American culture is unique, and so is the African culture. Despite having the same skin color, these two cultures have had completely different experiences. Still, it is rather disappointing to even type that because African Americans should understand and respect their roots and respresentatives of their ancestry. But, the African American culture has become so separate that you really cannot say that a Nigerian American (unless they were born in America or lived here for an extensive period of time) is an African American.
Also...
"I think my brother saw some documentary where refugees showed up, were shocked at the fact that there was food everywhere, and like 3 months later they were overweight and wearing Phat Farm
"Something about this comment just bothers me. It's just too sterotypical and generalizing. I just have to say not all Africans are starving. Many Africans, particularly ones who can afford to come to America, have just as much food as you and I. And Phat Farm...I won't even address that one.
I'm still not clear on what exactly qualifies as an URM
Under-Represented Minority
Basically if an given race has an low turnout for med school, they qualify as a URM.
haha enough said, Guju!
1/2 Pakistani, 1/2 uh...well this one gets complicated: Burmese/Guju/Mauritian/French/Irish.
White bread
No. By URM they mean any ethnic group that the US government screwed over in the past (i.e. african americans, hispanics, native americans.) By URM they mean, "we are sorry for slavery/taking your land/committing genocide against your ancestors, here's a boost for medical school." Strangely enough this doesn't apply to imperialism in south Asia so I'm out of luck. Hahah.
The relationship between "Africans" and "African Americans" is complex and can't be completely understood in the context of these boards. That being said
Most of the black people in medicine are of Nigerian ancestry. While these Nigerians (myself included) aren't culturally African Americans, there is no doubt that the vast majority of us are American Citizens. To discriminate against us would be illegal and devastating to diversity at any institution.
While I don't consider myself African American, there is no doubt that "black medical students" are usually more aware of the plight of minorities in general. This is obvious because the black students at my school are deeply involved in programs targeted to black communities (and other minority communities) (be it research, diabetes barber shop sessions, STD prevention youth development programs).
My native culture is valuable to me and will probably not give way to any other culture (be it American or otherwise). That being said, Nigerian, Ethiopians, Kenyans, African Americans in the U.S face similar issues and we usually work together to solve these problems.
I think most of you will find that there is very little "bitterness" between these two groups at the medical school level. As a matter of fact, our collective communities are so small in medical school, that we end up becoming life friends. A lot of dividing factors are imaginary and based on lack of experience. We tend to have a good time together in med school!
Also, Jessie Jackson needs to do a little more research. Check out a lot of the research targeted towards black communities. Tell me the ancestry of the authors?
I think African and African American students need to be careful of statements made by a lot of "white students" regarding this topic because
1) the statements are often made out of ignorance. (If you, an African or African American are having problems understanding the issue, what makes you think the "typical= most by definition" white person has the slightest clue)
2) The statements are often polarizing and doesn't help existing relationships. There is an history of this both in Africa and America e.g (Rwanda and the numerous interminority battle/ hatred that is being systematically fueled by the Majority).
If you are really interested in this interesting topic, there are good reads out there!
Most of the black people in medicine are of Nigerian ancestry. While these Nigerians (myself included) aren't culturally African Americans, there is no doubt that the vast majority of us are American Citizens. To discriminate against us would be illegal and devastating to diversity at any institution.
While I don't consider myself African American, there is no doubt that "black medical students" are usually more aware of the plight of minorities in general. This is obvious because the black students at my school are deeply involved in programs targeted to black communities (and other minority communities) (be it research, diabetes barber shop sessions, STD prevention youth development programs).
My native culture is valuable to me and will probably not give way to any other culture (be it American or otherwise). That being said, Nigerian, Ethiopians, Kenyans, African Americans in the U.S face similar issues and we usually work together to solve these problems.
I think most of you will find that there is very little "bitterness" between these two groups at the medical school level. As a matter of fact, our collective communities are so small in medical school, that we end up becoming life friends. A lot of dividing factors are imaginary and based on lack of experience. We tend to have a good time together in med school!
Also, Jessie Jackson needs to do a little more research. Check out a lot of the research targeted towards black communities. Tell me the ancestry of the authors?
I think African and African American students need to be careful of statements made by a lot of "white students" regarding this topic because
1) the statements are often made out of ignorance. (If you, an African or African American are having problems understanding the issue, what makes you think the "typical= most by definition" white person has the slightest clue)
2) The statements are often polarizing and doesn't help existing relationships. There is an history of this both in Africa and America e.g (Rwanda and the numerous interminority battle/ hatred that is being systematically fueled by the Majority).
If you are really interested in this interesting topic, there are good reads out there!
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Good post! The only part I would like to comment on is what I quoted above. I certainly don't think anyone wants Africans to be discriminated against in the admissions process. There are people calling for Africans to have an equal footing in the admissions process, rather than a better footing. There are definitely good arguments for both sides, but I have not heard of anyone calling for discrimination against African students.
How about the great railroad with Chinese workers, and sending Japanese people to interment camps? Based on that alone Asians should be URM's too.
Mostly Irish with some other stuff thrown in there.
As I understand it, the term URM consists of 4 specific groups - the exact groups include African American, Native American (including Native Hawaiian and Alaskan), Mexican American, and Mainland Puerto Rican (Of Puerto Rican descent born in the United States, ie in New York or Miami, not Puerto Rico itself.)
So as it stands, African American is a single category based on descent from the entire African continent and right now no distinction is made between black Americans, African immigrants, West Indian immigrants, black Europeans, black Latinos like Dominicans, and North Africans.
Also much of Latin America, including the island of Puerto Rico itself, is not actually considered underrepresented...Unless you happen to be from one of these countries and are of African descent.
This is my understanding...anyone have corrections?
Oh my, where do I even begin??? First of all, I am African American (1/16 Native American). I fully agree with UTPremed. However, I must say that Cirrus83 made many comments that are just wrong....
"I've noticed that Nigerian-Americans will often be integrated fairly quickly into an existing African-American group and take up some of the culture."
LOL, what? I attended an HBCU, and unfortunately, Carribeans, African Americans, and Africans stayed within their own cultures. Carribeans and African Americans seemed to socialize with each other more often than Africans. The African American culture is unique, and so is the African culture. Despite having the same skin color, these two cultures have had completely different experiences. Still, it is rather disappointing to even type that because African Americans should understand and respect their roots and respresentatives of their ancestry. But, the African American culture has become so separate that you really cannot say that a Nigerian American (unless they were born in America or lived here for an extensive period of time) is an African American.
Also...
"I think my brother saw some documentary where refugees showed up, were shocked at the fact that there was food everywhere, and like 3 months later they were overweight and wearing Phat Farm
Something about this comment just bothers me. It's just too sterotypical and generalizing. I just have to say not all Africans are starving. Many Africans, particularly ones who can afford to come to America, have just as much food as you and I. And Phat Farm...I won't even address that one.
Well, saying that my comments are wrong is a little harsh no? The nigerians that I knew did in fact integrate fairly quickly. I guess your experiences are different, but to broadly state that nobody integrates just because the kids at your school didn't is also a little excessive.
Oh, and I only mentioned the documentary because my brother kept repeating this to me for like 3 months. I never said all Africans are starving, where the hell did you get that from anyway? This was a documentary about refugees who actually were starving, and living in refugee camps until they got sent to live in the US. And they *were* starving.
The Africans (as in immigrants from Africa) that I've met have never been starving, so if you're assuming that I believe that Africans are starving, you're totally wrong lol. In fact, most Africans I've met have come from probably the top tier in their country, so they're very well off. The last kid I met, his dad was an ex-president, lol. Now, this particular kid didn't really integrate as much with the African-Americans since he couldn't really see their viewpoints on a lot of stuff, so he ended up hanging out very often with people from similarly advantaged backgrounds as himself.
Anyways, I don't know why people on SDN keep reading totally crazy and extreme viewpoints into my posts. Someone on another thread I thought I was a white person insisting that Asians can't be genetically superior, when I'm Asian-American. Then that same thread someone thought I was bashing Asian refugees as all being dumb when the whole point of my post was that it's stupid to assume people have any particular trait based on stereotypes of a whole group of people.
Maybe I really do deserve that L on my MCAT writing, because apparently everyone totally misinterprets what I write. =(
My point is really that you shouldn't bring your preconceived notions of what I think when reading what I actually wrote. Of course it's hard since everyone interprets things based largely on their own life experiences, but seriously, I'm not out to attack anybody or any group. I'm probably like the last guy on the planet who'd do that kinda stuff.
...though Puerto Ricans are all mixtures of European and African ancestry...
Actually, only one half of this statement is true. I wrote an extensive paper on it and almost turned it into a thesis. African immigrants are just as bad of socioeconomically though are currently the most highly educated immigrant group in the United States. Similar to Asian immigrants, who are typically also well-educated, their level of education does not translate into high economic earnings as it does for "native" Americans- a sort of foreigner biased discrimination. First generation African and Caribbean immigrants (children of) generally outperform native black Americans on standardized tests, though the gap narrows as generations progress. Interestingly this is also seen in Asian families with first generation Asians outperforming second generation and so on...
Yea, back then when Christopher Columbus first arrived at the island. He found the native indians (Tainos) living there. Then more people from Europe came over who brought African slaves to work the lands. My second grade teacher told us so 🙂 . I think this is the ancestry mix you're refering to. I say I'm 100% puertorrican because in my family, no one is half Cuban or half Venezuelan, for example.
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Same here!!! I get the "What are you?" questions a lot. Is your mom or dad asian? What do you put on applications? I usually put "other" or "biracial" if it's an option, but otherwise, I leave it blank. Is it bad to leave it blank?
50% Itallian 50% Indian
100% Sexy
holla.
100% Sexy
holla.
