Every Gujarati African I have ever met identifies as African first, and probably Indian second but possibly not Indian at all. Indians certainly consider us African, to a point where more traditional Indians will not intermarry with us, even if they are ethnically and religiously identical.
Thanks for the historical perspective. Very interesting.
Interesting thread. However have to disagree. As one of the Logan’s a born in East Africa (albeit non converted one ) The reason Idi Amin threw out all Asians from Uganda are complex and includes insularity of the Asians in all those countries 1/2
Most asians did not identify themselves as Africans and this is what caused the resentment in the local population. In the words of Kenneth Kaunda former of president of Zambia who chided Indians by saying “You Indians have your businesses in Africa, your hearts in India and your money in Europe”.
Thank you very much for this educational thread! I had a vague idea of what diaspora was but it's much clearer to me now.
Great thread. I learned about Amin's expulsion of the Ismailis in my 40s, while researching a piece I was writing. I grew up in Nova Scotia, so my immediate comparison was the expulsion of the Acadians. Easygoing farmers, living at peace with the local natives, AND THEN THE FUCKING BRITISH etc
@skyview.social unroll
Really interesting - thank you:)
Hmm the nerd is strong in this one, thank you for the interesting read. Also did not know Zohran was Ismaili (not that it matters.)
I don't know man, it seems very relevant that he's from an ethno-religious group that are apparently very good at being mayors bsky.app/profile/itmu... Probably shouldn't joke about this too much but allow me these few at least
Maybe we should refrain from correlating someone’s ethno-religious background with their abilities
Thanks for this fascinating history. Putting a visit to the Aga Khan Museum on my to do list.
Thank you for sharing this fascinating thread 🙂
Wow!
This is so true. My auntie is Malawian Indian and she always says the same as she identifies with Malawi first.
Thank you for this thread!
Fantastic thread!
earned a follow from me...
I didnt know any of this, thank you so much!
if this does not become a Drunk History episode there is no justice. so well written.
I need to be able to heart this more than once
Thank you! This is the most fascinating thing I've read in a long time.
This "One of the fucking British" thinks this is absolutely magnificent piece of writing, which I enjoyed hugely! I hope the future Mayor lives up to his heritage and the social responsibilities that this backstory captures. Send it to the New York TImes.
Thank you! This has been tremendously helpful. 🌺
Thanks for writing this up, and for the opportunity to learn something new!
Read this thread. Fascinating (but sad) history.
Thank you. This context was super helpful.
I always wonder if the world would be a better place if there were no religions. Or would everyone just find something else to fight about?
This is so fascinating and helpful. Thank you!
I had a sub in college sociology back in 2019. He argued his African identity with a 1st Gen Ethiopian American student. It got heated. The student felt he was entitled to call himself Ugandan, not NOT African. I did not participate, but found it fascinating, yet very tense
He was subbing because my white prof was at the world conference of African sociologists, being held in Germany. A sentence filled with so many issues that my brain hurts.
Truth. Kenyan Gujarati here and I am African and then American of Indian descent. No emotional or sentimental ties to India because I was born in Africa.
Your people are really impressive. All the would-be obliterations that your culture survived. Thank you for this thread.
Your style is super engaging and the information just flows! Thank you for this clear and fascinating explainer!
Thank you so much for writing this!
What a fabulous write up. I really enjoyed your style of writing and I learnt so much! Thank you for educating us all 🤩
I was in elementary school when many Ismailis came to Canada, and a significant number settled in my area of Toronto. I was familiar with Uganda and Tanzania at a young age, with red/green bracelets worn by Ismailis, and the idea of an Indian diaspora. THAT is the magic of a multicultural #Canada
📌
Thank you. I knew none of that before and I very much appreciate you taking the time to share.
Thanks for this thread! Very interesting to learn this history.
Thank you for this.
This is really informative! Thanks!
Really stunning distillation. Thank you.
I have a Canadian friend who is of South Asian descent and born in Africa and who isn't Ismali; their father had a job in Kenya when they were born.
We had Ismaili family friends growing up—they spoke Gujarati like us, but when someone asked where they were from? Their answer was, “from Uganda.”
Yep. I have a friend who was the first African to attend our college. He is of Indian heritage, but he is from Kenya. (And his wife of Indian heritage is from London.)
This is complicated, I could barely follow it all.
Thank you for sharing! (appreciative)
Thank you! for the most educational but not at all dull 🧵 of 2025.
I understand a little as I met both at sea/port a few times. the goa elec seemed normal 😂😂 we crossed a poop field together in Angola 😑 there's no turning back. The Kenyan foreman was 🤙🏻 because softer than back home in some east ports .. Anyhoo, there's nice and bad people everywhere, pinch noze😉🇫🇷
This was beautifully written and informative. Thank you
Thank you for taking the time to educate most of us. Fascinating piece of history I never knew.
"AND THEN THE FUCKING BRITISH SHOWED UP" (along with some Dutch, Germans, Scots, Irish, and French) is the story of my family, which includes killing Indigenous people and taking their land, owning slaves, and fighting on both sides in the Civil War. It's not the glorious legacy I was taught it was.
This should be the way that we teach the colonial era past elementary school. Less rah-rah white European jingoism, more “they brought superior tech and lots of oppression as the tradeoff of colonial rule”.
Just moving it away from the concept that at the state level, exploration and colonization was motivated by curiosity and adventurism rather than value extraction being the primary goal would be helpful. It is barely even covered with Columbus (looking for trade routes.)
They love to talk up “looking to be allowed to freely exercise religion” while ignoring what brought people over from 1492-1620. It’s also interesting how the history I learned discussed how the Spanish were plundering in Central America and Mexico. Didnt hear much of English plundering.
I'd be interested to know when the pilgrims started being the quintessential America colonist story... I doubt they get all the attention just because they were first-ish.
Ah, how right you are. Plymouth came to the fore in the 19th century, first with John Quincy Adams and the historian George Bancroft holding the Pilgrims up as models of American liberty and governance and then Abraham Lincoln solidifying that legacy by proclaiming Thanksgiving as a holiday.
At some point you learn enough history to know that it is always safe to bet that popular narratives are shaped to serve purposes rather than objective retellings of events... Real history doesn't tend to fit a classic 3 act narrative structure.
Like how I only recently learnd the Boston tea party was not because of a new tax, but that England waived taxes on tea (from one company). Or even something simple like the decl of indep was signed in August and it took months to get it to England. Makes sense. Way too big to fit a fax machine.
And yet the whole concept of Manifest Destiny is all about plundering. The Homestead Act of 1862 really solidified the practice. (We can blame Lincoln for that too.) Indigenous people — treaties, feh! — were pushed onto reservations so white and, yes, Black settlers could take their land.
I learn so much more about our world from perspectives like these than from the typical "world history to 1500" and "world history 1500 to now" timeline-type teaching. It's ridiculous. I just took a globalism class that taught from the perspective of the evolution of capitalism and it was incredible
Scots and Irish were included in the 'British' who showed up. (Scots and Northern Irish still are.) Highland Brigade critical in putting down rebellion mid C19th.
Yeah, of course. Although their own self-identification is a different matter. There were also technically no "Germans" when my ancestors crossed the Atlantic, which was 150 years before Germany became a country.
This was great. Wish I knew this much about my own middle eastern heritage.
Very interesting! Thank you for that. Of the many Indian friends I’ve had over my lifetime in Canada, they are from so many countries. Trinidad, Guyana, Uganda, Tanzania & Kenya. All interesting stories how they got there (all involved the British Empire).
@skyview.social unroll
My father in law worked in Uganda… had to leave because of Idi Amin. Went to the UK, and died there. Never recovered from having to leave Africa.
This hit close to home, I identify as Kenyan more than Indian. Though I haven’t seen/heard of more traditional Indians not wanting to marry the African Gujaratis. But great read nonetheless.
Ethnic marital prohibitions are pretty disturbing to me.
This is a FASCINATING thread — thank you so much for sharing it!
Thank you so much for this!!
Thank you for this thread!
The desire for forms to want to compartmentalise people in neat boxes has always been difficult to rationalise for people with complex family histories. I have a fairly straightforward one but it was not represented well in forms of the past. It's more inclusive now, but not all that clearer.
Sophia, I wish you could post this whole explanation on Substack. It's so good (and can be done with a single post there, instead of a chain of limited characters).
Thanks for this thread!
This Armenian-American who's a bit familiar with the diaspora concept herself is fascinated by all this -- thank you for the history lesson! :)
As a Jewish American... So many people I get to know from diaspora cultures (Yemeni, ethnic Chinese in Vietnam, Armenian, etc)... So many of our histories don't exactly repeat, but they sure do rhyme.
Intriguing 🧐 and honorable. Would like to know more?
I was making a comment about how Obama was part Irish I realised that due to the British in India it was concievable that Mamdani has irish ancestry but you might have a better understanding about whether that's really possible or not based on this history here (thank you) I expect unlikely, but...?
There’s a book, “White Mughals” by William Dalrymple (2002) about the Irish intermarrying into India and vice versa in the 1800s. Really fascinating!
I must take a look but yes, that was why I realised that he could well be just as Irish...
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What a fabulous and informative thread 🧵!
Amazing thread. My kids are Persian, but of mostly Azerbaijani origin. We should all know just a fraction of this history and the waves of genocide, migration, and integration of peoples throughout the region. Thank you for this concise lesson on a complex history spanning continents!!
Talk about an origin story- I love this
This was a super cool thread. As a Canadian I know lots and lots of Ismailis,so as soon as you mentioned them, I kinda knew where this was going.
Thank you very much.
Great thread! Really interesting, I didn't have a clue!
Love the this thread and love the way you used all caps exactly onetime . AND THEN THE FUCKING BRITISH SHOWED UP
Good grief, there are nigh-infinite personal and cultural histories which should include that phrase.
Aren't there, though?
That marks a 90 degree turn in happiness and progress for many parts of the world.
Technically there was a HOWEVER. But the British showing up deserves that all caps.
Not even for getting genocided by the Mongols 😭😭
Great thread I stumbled in. You should write a book. It's very interesting.
the same Ismailis that worship the Aga Kahn? I have a couple of rants about his luxury real estate colonisation ventures in the mediterranean island I live in...
No, the ones associated with the Aga Khan are Nizari Ismailis, who mostly originate in Iran and Syria. The Ismailis from Gujarat are Musta'li Ismailis. The two split a little over 900 years ago around the collapse of the Fatimids.
ohhh thank you for explaining in detail! 🙏🏻
Great thread, my dad (Punjabi parents) was born & raised in Tanzania before coming to England - he & the rest of my ‘African’ family here, definitely identify as Indian first but I’m mixed (Indian & Irish) & identify as English, despite having no English blood.
To be fair "English" blood isn't really a thing since it's a mix of the Celts, Romans, Saxons, Normans and a bunch of others thrown in too
Can confirm – my surname is English with origins around York, but my DNA profile is Scandinavian, for the most part. There is a tiny bit of Italian, which is probably from a Roman centurion.
Lots of Vikings settled in York, so that makes sense!
Sure, you know what I meant though
That guy Norman really got around.
Absolutely stormin'
People don't really appreciate how much: (Map of Norman territories circa 1130 AD)
Shhhh, don't say that out loud as so many think they are 'pure' English people hence falling for Farage' bullshit... I'm lucky have DNA from all parts of UK and Ireland and happily less English than being born there means.. Unfortunately, also means I have to look at history and wonder how my Scots
I certainly came here to say this ^ My children are white and British but according to Matt Goodwin are not "white British" because their mother was born in Africa.
and Irish DNA mixed in Northern Ireland... Would love to discover too how I'm 1% Ghana/West African as cannot get further back than great great grandparents... After growing up affected by the Troubles I'm happy to be friends with any colour or religion as we're all one species...
As you probably figured, the mixing of Irish and Scotts was yet another chapter of English colonialism
Yep... I can remember "celebrating" 12th July and Orange Marches but now I'm ashamed of it all.. The deliberate stoking of sectarianism and each side marching through the others areas.. The Protestants being used against the Catholics all for others profits..
Hence why I've got a Dad from Belfast a mum from Lancashire yet I'm over 53% Scottish.. 11% Welsh 6% North Western Europe (?) 5% Irish rest English... A right mutt... Most English people don't realise the harm we've done globally.. Or that we should remember past and then celebrate a better future
One of my good friends is Indian by ethnic heritage but was born and raised in Kenya, then the US for college & grad school. While usually identifying as “Indian” her home & people are Kenya. I’m not even sure she has even been to India. It’s complicated & people don’t like complexity.
It is & no they don’t. My daughter has cultural day at school today & I suggested wearing a sari but she said she couldn’t because people would properly get on her as she’s beyond white ‘passing’, she almost has to convince people she’s mixed race 😂 She did henna on her hand in the end.
It’s wild how kids can pick up these nuances and complexities by often it is the “adults” that mess it all up.
Yep & how skin colour plays such a huge part in how others identify us.
Thank you, I learned so much! What an incredible history.
Thank you! This is fascinating and another diaspora story that I knew nothing about but am glad to learn.
Met an old man in the 1990s who never left Uganda during the expulsion. He sent his family to the UK, but he hid out the duration of Amin's reign. "Why should I go? This is my home." Revived his vegetable oil business when he came out of hiding.
I enjoyed reading that. Thank you
Thank you for writing and sharing this Sophia, it was an interesting and accessible read.
Thanks for this. One of my best friends is a Gujurati Sikh who came to UK as a young kid when his family were kicked out of Kenya in the late 1960s. He's a cultural chameleon, able to adapt to fit in anywhere. His other good friend was a very devout muslim of Pakistani origin.
So well articulated and easily delivered so people can comprehend the complexities.
Absolutely fascinating and very well done. Thanks for enlightening us all.
Great thread and aligns with what I've learned from good friends who were Punjabi Sikhs who ended up in Kenya during the diaspora and now very proudly identify as Kenyans.
Thank you ❤️️
👌-read things here & there but never this succinctly put in 1 place. for me thinking goes whatever we can get the better. ppl living in their own bubble (esp indians) always miss out on larger pic & wish they consider how their sense of identity gets enriched with multitude of diaspora out there..
This was the most interesting read I've had in a while. Thank you for that!
really appreciate this thread, thank you for sharing
Brilliant—the whole thing! Thanks!
Two posts into your thread, and I knew you had to be a writer!
Brilliant thread. My family/community is also from East Africa (Gujarati/Jain). We are now scattered in a similar way, mostly UK but USA, Canada, Aus, NZ though many also remain in Kenya and others are back to India.
So our lot definitely identify as Indian (though also African, some first, some second). Many identify with Hinduism too and there's multiple Jain and Hindu communities that will engage with each other.
But many have also fallen for the anti Muslim rhetoric in both Britain and India in recent decades. Which is very very disappointing given our shared histories.
... As I was just saying... 😞 bsky.app/profile/alja...
Recruited to work on the railways in East Africa . Shop owners later .
Fascinating history.
Thank you for taking the time to write out such a detailed account and informative thread! It was an interesting read and I always love reading about the histories of other diasporic peoples.
Terrific explanation! 🙏
These are the stories that make a history teacher happy. Personal, with emotions, easily connected to historical events and so interesting. Thank you for sharing for the important reason you did but also to give an old history teacher a way to re do an immigrant assignment.
As a teacher, you might like the book “Orange for the Sunsets”, which takes place in Uganda in during the expulsion. I read it aloud to my Grade 4s and 5s every year, but your students could read it independently.
Thanks I will check it out. I remember Idi Amin and at the time could not believe the evil of that man.
thanks, I just requested it :)
Duly purchased.
Thank you for sharing! Such an interesting read and I learned something new
Thank you for sharing this history! I lived in DRC a year or two after the expulsion. My best friend was the Ugandan daughter of a Supreme Court Justice that was murdered by Amin. I was 12 and only learned a lot of this when I was in college but initially I didn't make the connection with Mamdami.
Thank you for this.
This was so interesting. Thank you!
That was fascinating history I've never learned, presented beautifully. Thank you.
Sounds like the perfect background to be a wonderful mayor in New York City
Thank you for taking the time to share this, Sophia!
Wasn't the film Mississippi Masala about the diaspora in Uganda? In the film I remember it being labelled indian..
Messy and very well told. Thank you.
Exceptional explanation of your diaspora. Thank you.
What an interesting and informative thread – thank you!!
thank you
Very interesting
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oh im bookmarking this because this very informative!
Its so funny because yes entirely true, but also the tip of the iceberg in terms of how complex inter ethnic dynamics are for south asian communities.
Some Gujaratis ended up in central and southern Ethiopia as well; much of the oldest housing stock in Addis Ababa and the southern city of Harar is in the Gujarati style.
This was SO educational and a delight to read. Thanks for taking the time to share it.
Fascinating! Thanks so much for sharing.
Genuinely extremely interesting! Do you happen to know of any books or articles that recount this whole history at greater length? (Perhaps not, I imagine it’s a pretty niche topic, but sometimes there are surprises!)
@derspekter.bsky.social did a piece on a related topic www.derspekter.org/doikayt-in-t...
This explains why Charli XCX is so hot and cool.
Thank you for taking the time to write that. I wish it could also be posted on a blog, or written as an Op Ed in a newspaper. Publish it everywhere. I don’t see it has his story or your story, but our story. I wish I knew my own history as well.
Thanks for this thread!
Thank you for this very educational thread. 🧵 Should be spread wide.
This is a tenuous general history lesson right up until how it is framed as a history lesson about the mamdani family escaping persecution, at which point it is garbage. Mahmood Mamdani was born in family in Bombay - there is no evidence of violence against muslim during the troubling partition.
Mira Nair is prominent bollywood celebrity born and raised a hindu. She continues to be influential married to an African-Indian Muslim, both groups african and muslim struggling for standing in India. the Mamdani's moved to africa as part of a larger migration due to british colonial oppression
Get hat narrative nonsense out of here It is a garbage history lesson.
There is no story of sacrifice and tears that leds to Mamdani identifying himself as African Asian. Zohran is Asian because of his parents origin (India is in Asia) and he can by choice identify himself African because that is the region he grew up in.
This is fascinating! Thank you for sharing. I gotta say, the richness of a history of a people is a beautiful thing, even when that history is fraught & oppressive. Knowing the kind of people you came from is an amazing gift and white ppl don’t lean into that. I guess bc we come from the oppressors…
Thank you for this. Many of us wouldn’t have known (not that the jerks will care, but many of us like to be informed!)
Are there any good books you would recommend on the subject?
Did you also settle in Zaire? There were a lot of Indians there when I lived there.
Ismailis did also settle in Zaire! But a fair bit after we settled in East Africa. There have been many waves of South Asian migration to Africa over the past 2000 years, especially East Africa since it’s the easiest to reach by boat, so there are also plenty of non-Ismaili Indians.
@skyview.social unroll
Fascinating history! As a teen, I stayed with a Punjabi Sikh family in Kenya. The community there inhabited the same niche: shop owners and merchants, and so were the perfect scapegoats any time there was unrest.
that is fascinating, thank you. reminds me a bit of my Irish catholic mother not talking to the protestant Irish next door neighbour in the Australian suburb i grew up in. people are crazy.
What a great read. Thank you for this fascinating history lesson!
📌
Great thread, thanks!
Cousin! ❤️
And the Aga Khan came to Sardinia
Thank you for posting! This has been very interesting and informative
Amazinf thread Sophia. so informative! I hope you publish it somewhere before it all gets out of hand 👍
The former mayor of Calgary is Ismaili! People were racist dicks to him too, turns out.
Mamdani has been giving serious Nenshi vibes for a while now!
He’s the Best! www.cbc.ca/news/canada/... Naheed Nenshi awarded 2014 World Mayor Prize | CBC News
Oh wow - so these people are good at being mayors, is what I'm getting out of this
Um, racist about mayoral abilities much??!! (I kid, I kid!)
You kid, but not everyone does: bsky.app/profile/davi... and Heaven bless them for it they're not wrong
Okay, so I missed the joke
Oh, sorry! I assumed you just disapproved of it which I think is fair (I'd definitely rather people disapproved of that joke for the right reasons rather than approve it for the wrong ones).
But yes it was a joke. I don't think one example a correlation makes, and if a correlation did exist I'd find it very dangerous to base voting decisions on (although the sociology would probably be fascinating to study).
The former mayor of Calgary is my MLA!
Or as an East African Asian
Wasn’t a lot of the immigration also the British bringing Indian laborers to Africa?
Fascinating thread. I enjoyed reading it.
Thanks for sharing all of that. Fascinating history.
You wrote an intriguing but I must say preposterous thread in regard to facts. And it's a shame.
Be great if you elaborated on why it's preposterous
Genuinely one of the most interesting things I've randomly read on the internet. Thank you.
Fascinating story! Thank you 💐
The amazing arrogance of all European colonizers disabled the ability of the entire world to advance civilization. Instead of respect for cultures, invaders believed they held the only keys to acceptable standards of living. Like yesterday's vote,religious zealots framed wealth takeover as justice.
Very interesting and well written. There was a huge gap of hundreds of years where Muslims mutilated and killed millions of Hindus, though when Muslims were the rulers in India. They destroyed many incredibly beautiful ancient temples, too. You might want to be honest about that.
She's ismailli. That never happened in her timeline. Ismailis believed that Islam and Hinduism were syncretic and there was no hardline between the religions. Hence, they had names like Krishna Bhanji (Sir Ben Kingsley's real name). Read this en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satpanth
Okay,but did the Muslims take over the wealth of the country as they forced their culture on the Hindus? That's the point.
Of course they did.
Thank you for your detailed, compelling narrative!😍
Thank you! But I read the whole thread and missed the part where you all became communists.
She said they were nerds that like to argue about books
Thank you for your story
This was a fascinating read. Thank you.
This was an absolutely wonderful history I would never have known if you hadn't shared-thank you!
If you haven't seen it, I *highly* recommend the film "Mississippi Masala," directed by Mira Nair, who is Zohran's mother. It recounts some of this Indian-African history, and stars a very young Denzel Washington.
Ty, I will!
Wait, no way?! that's his mom?!
bsky.app/profile/josh...
This thread is fantastic. I was recently reading about the Ismailis in Yemen when learning about pre- and post politics of Yemen’s unification.
Fabulous. Thank you. (I'm FUCKING BRITISH)
😳 I had no idea. Interesting. (Not great, but interesting. ) 🙏
Followed because of this train. Beautifully told!
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Have you considered posting this whole thread on Substack? It's free, and this would make a terrific piece and reach many more people.
Thank you for this education! Now I gotta go be a nerd and find a book about all this.
Please share when you find one
This one looks interesting! asianreviewofbooks.com/the-gujarati...
TY!! 📌
Wondering where Priti Patel fits undo this with her parents being refugees from Uganda
Thank you for taking the time to explain this and share the history with us. This is a fascinating history and it is so important for people to remember there are SO MANY different diasporas in our world including the countless ones caused by things like "and then the British showed up".
incridible thread, thank you !!
Not really .
While this is 100% true, the truth is that the bigger scandal here is NYT publishing this in the first place, you would expect to see this kind of garbage in the sun or thrash like that
This was really fascinating! Thank you.
Thank you for this thorough history lesson. My heart yearns for a day when we can coexist without the oppression of one another; where people can pray to whatever deity they choose to follow, and when one of us is not more deserving than another of a safe, happy and healthy life.
I believe that humans have some inherent tribalism/xenophobia in our nature that we’ll never fully eradicate. That being said, I long for the day when it’s turned way down to “sports team rivalry” levels.
Are you or are you not or have you ever been a Star-bellied Sneetch?
I can't imagine why a standard university form wouldn't have your beautiful thread as one of their options to the question about ethnicity. A) White B) Black C) Asian D) Non-Black Latin E) So theres this people from Lahore but they're not really from Lahore, probably from Afghanistan who settl...
Could be easier: ☐ British or just as white ☐ Fucked over by the British ☐ Somehow managed not to be fucked over by the British (rare)
You also need a category for 'Your ancestors would be so mad you exist' for those of us with both British and fucked-over-by-the-British ancestry.
Of course when you apply for a birth certificate (in Mass. at least) you get the following worksheet. Which … yeesh. Just give me a 23andme why don't you?
I ask this with the utmost respect: Other Portuguese?
Is this for a Portuguese speaker who is not from Portugal, Brazil, Cape Verde, or Fall River?
(I had not thought about the Azores or Macau as possibilities. I had thought of parts of Africa but couldn't remember which - I see now Angola and Mozambique)
📌
I think I put European and specified something like "from what is now Poland, Hungary, Belarus, Russia, Ukraine, maybe Transnistria, but we don't really know other than it was pretty clear they didn't like us there."
I’m literally 1/2 Scottish and 1/2 English, but both my parents are second gen Canadians. So I either have to go with Western Europe, White, or Caucasian. Not very many forms/surveys outside Canada will allow you to identify as having Canadian ancestry. It has to be “somewhere else.”
I'm first-generation Canadian and that is all I identify as. For me, identity is 100% about culture, and Canada is the country I identify with culturally. (Parents are from India.) I'm always ticked off by people who project & force their ideas of identity onto others. We all decide for ourselves.
This is my family. “We get conquered a lot so borders moved all the time” should be an option
"Slovak but not Slovak enough to get citizenship by descent because when my g-g-grandparents came over, it was still the Austro-Hungarian Empire. But I am neither Hungarian nor Austrian." ("SLOVAK!" my grandmother hissed to me. "Not Czech. SLOVAK.")
Similar but grandparents came from Moravia. Identified as Bohemian. But were Austrian citizens when they arrived in the states. I asked my father if we were Czechoslovakian. No, American. But what nationality? Bohemian. Jak se mas?
I somehow am also neither Hungarian nor Austrian, while my g-grandparents came from Hungary & their village is now in Austria & they spoke German. Empire is a mess!
I was Czecheslovakian as my grandma's family came from opposite ends of the country. Took me a while to even realise we qualified as Slovak because that wasnt how she framed it 😅 I believe her heritage was Moravian and Hungarian essentially?
If your ancestors came after 1904, I think, you might be able to get an EU passport. Mine did not. :(
oof I should check. I think we were late 1800s though. My wife, OTOH, was 1920ish.
Well get that Slovak passport! And sew some gold coins into the hem of your coats just saying.
Ha, no i have one great-grandmother that was born here in 1899 so im out of luck
"I think Eastern European Jewish, but I'm sure that at some point some Kozaks passed through my ancestors' village, so it would probably be 'mixed ethnicity'"
Yeah. I looked for my great-grandparents on the 1910 census (they were in Boston by that point) and country of origin was listed as “Poland” (which wasn’t precisely an independent country at that point) and ethnicity “white” which I’m sure a lot of Bostonians at the time would not have believed.
(And internal evidence suggests at least one branch of my family spent time in Odessa because they adopted the SWEET gefilte fish, ew)
Is there a reason why "Portuguese" is not included in "European" ?
Because it's a Massachusetts form
newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/how-portugue...
Portuguese immigration in MA was largely from the Azores, not mainland Europe. Just like Zohran is African and Indian and Muslim, without ever setting foot in South Asia.
But it seemed to me that most of the Azorean population came from continental Portugal ?
*Among* the things I’d check on that: European (almost *all* of them, that I know of. Italian from the part that many Italians sneer at as “being Africa” — which is historically populated by a fine admixture of just about every ethnic group that ever lived in or near the Mediterranean, or visited).
We considered putting "Africa" and specifying "well if you go far back enough …"
Look I've got to give them credit for this much at least: That's a beautifully large selection of "other" options.
European: "Mostly the parts that enjoyed pillaging and looting the other parts and discovering North America first, a lil' bit the part that likes bratwurst, a dash of the rest." ... 3/4 "Scandinavian", germanic last name because my grandpa was taught wrong as a joke.
So would I just check American whatever that is? Or follow my ancestry DNA mix. This is ridiculous. Do we really need it? They need a box for Everything and almost everything and only one thing and none of the above!
☐ Icelandic ☐ Maasai ☐ Mixed ethnicity
Literally a whole continent missing from this checklist. Was it compiled by flat-earthers?
I’ve been doing a lot of job applications and there was exactly one company¹ which had a more specific background than merely “white” for white folks, which, when I was a kid, was a big deal in Chicago because it MATTERED where your people were from and Greeks and Italians and Czechs and Poles² were
all distinct communities (although my parents’ generation intermarried a little bit, but usually not dramatically (like Slavs would marry other Slavs, although not across the Catholic-Orthodox borders).
⸻ 1. They did not offer me an interview. 2. Kids outside these ethnicities were rare in my neighborhood and if you had an Ango-Saxon last name, you would be relentlessly teased for it.
"Other not listed"... Canadian ay?
Soooooo, not much of a melting pot after all. Like, how could there be all those options AND an ethnic "American" AND that doesn't mean "Native American"? Gee, I wonder what an ethnic American could be if not all of those other options considered as one?
I love how there's this list of highly specific nationalities and then just "Middle Eastern (please specify)"
To be fair, it's not so rare - lots of South/Central America was fucked over by the Spanish instead, for example. Instead of our current racial/ethnic categories, we should all organize by whichever group fucked us over last.
Don't forget: ☐ Fucked over by someone other than the British
Fucked over by someone who had at some point fought a number of pointless wars against the British and then figured "if you can't beat 'em, join em"
('Twould be me, I'm Vietnamese)
Wait but you can be British and also be fucked by the British, needs more representation there 🤣
Brilliant.
If you're Irish, select the first two.
Hmmmm. My English ancestors would put me in the first category. My Irish, Scottish and Welsh ancestors would put me in the second. My German ancestors would qualify for the third.
Excellent 🤣, but you forgot... ☐ British but also fucked over by the British
The Welsh have entered the chat...
Joined by the Irish and Scottish….
Hey, some Irish aren’t British any more. They have their own republic and flag and everything.
Note: The last sentence of the thread calls her people 'ethnically and religiously identical' to Indians. You could say that asking applicants to check the box of a simplified racial category is stupid, but then you'd be a liberal.
No, she doesn't. She says "even if they are ethnically and religiously identical." As in not all are, but some may consider themselves to be.
True - & thanks for the correction - but the point stands that the important difference isn't ethnicity.
It's weird they ask in the first place, and if they do, it should be write-in
We (government, advocacy groups, university administrators) wanted universities to be less racist about who they admit. The first step was to start collecting race and ethnicity data on who applied and who was admitted. And the data needed to be standardized to be useful. Thus, checkboxes.
Why the hell will a university ask for your ethnicity?
My mums go to was always other Heinz 57 which makes sense when you're born in Jamaica grew up in Singapore and Scotland and your family is Jamaican Jewish Greek Scots, Irish, Canadians and that's just the last 2 generations the most recent adds my Japanese, Chinese and Nigerian cousins
We say “Heinz 57 of the British Isles” which is pretty much everyone in Nova Scotia that’s white.
I consider myself a mutt
Our, well my, knowledge of migrations is very Eurocentric. I didn't know about the South Asian communities in Africa until I visited Malawi. But there is so much more. I taught 2 sisters who were Portuguese Burghers from Sri Lanka. Very beautiful, they insisted they were white despite the evidence.
Did you consider they maybe insisted they were white because that made their lives significantly easier? It's fairly common amongst mixed-heritage folks.
No. It's how Sri Lankan Burghers are. 😉 They do insist they are white. Commonly it's Portuguese and Dutch Burghers although it's just a single term. My Grandmother was a Dutch Burgher. The British also used the term Anglo-Indian for a whole other group of what were also mixed race subjects.
Anglo-Indian is a fascinating term. In C19, it means an English resident of India, often children born there. See the novels of Frances Hodgson Burnett. By C20, it means mixed origins & snobbery. Closer to independence, the status changes again.
Having talked with them and read about the Burghers, I came to understand them better. Years of working on post-war reconstruction in Zimbabwe also gave me some insight. In their minds, they were superior to the Sinhalese, closer to their Portuguese ancestors. Of course, it made life easier.
So well told! I keep picturing an amazing animated film to accompany this - old school collage and such -
I wish I had the skill to do little animations; I feel like that would be super fun
@mollycrabapple.bsky.social has the skills!
Saw this recently and this is a style I pictured- m.youtube.com/watch?v=UBnV...
Reach out to your circle; maybe somebody does- a sweet little collaboration- educational too!
Great — select “Other” or “Asian” and write an essay about it. Don’t lie by selecting a box to misrepresent your ethnicity as “Black/African-American” cuz that’s not the diversity you’re bringing to college
It's just too easy to blame people when you mischaracterize what they actually did. (He never claimed to be Black. African birthplace is true tho.) If you want to assign blame, choose the disinfo agents who politically manipulate you with rage bait. Don't reward them by repeating their trash takes.
The box he selected was “Black/African American”
Not exactly. "Black or African American" Or. Whatever you think is implied by the two being grouped together, African American is still appropriate for someone whose country of origin is in Africa. Why SO hung up on this irrelevant detail? Do you scrutinize far right politicos to the same degree?
By that logic, Elon Musk is “African American.”
Officially yeah, he is. I know it's ironic given how wildly racist EM is against Black people. Jordan Lasker, who leaked the non-story about Mamdani's app, is also a white supremacist. He hid as "Cremieux" while pushing racist disinfo. This NYT scandal has exposed him more than Mamdani, lol Also:
Lasker lied about his academic record & his one paper was discredited for citing pseudoscience & for lying on the data application to the NIH, then misusing their data. His tenured co-author was fired over it. That's a MUCH bigger deal than what he wanted to punish Mamdani for doing. Projection!
Wtf do you think that slash means?
It does not mean the Asian son of Asian parents.
"African American" means multiple things in America. African American is both people who were born in Africa and moved to America, (See Muskrat, who is technically African American but not black) people descended from such, and also their ethnicity being Black.
Why the fuck a college gotta know what diversity Im bringing it. Im not a sticker on your skateboard
