Why Polish aren't white??

Rozumiemnic is right. There is no such thing as British ethnicity. British is a nationality but it's not an ethnic group. You're either English, Scots, Welsh, or a mix of any of those three. Of course you can be black and British but your ethnicity is Afro-Caribbean.

Stop splitting hairs. There are ethically British (yes Welsh, Irish, Scotish and English) people, just as there are ethnically French, German, Polish etc. If you're not bright enough to acknowledge that...well...your problem, not mine. I'm certainly not going to waste anymore of my time educating you.

The black woman above is calling herself British which is just ridiculous. She's *civically* British only, which ANYONE can become. If I move to Nigeria next week, am I, a white man, Nigerian? - ofcourse not. A horse born in a kennel is still a horse, not a dog.

- albeit a rather large kennel.. ;)

Sort of, yes. Ethnic means shared cultural values, not skin colour or DNA as our racist guest poster seems to think.

So yes, there's a British ethnicity and yes, people of any skin colour or family origin can have British ethnicity.

This discussion would have sense if Hitler himself started this thread. We would then understand that is man crazy and we would maybe even joke with poor creature

Ok, HarriHasAbf - here's the official British line. The National Statistics Office of the UK states :

'Is a person's ethnic group self-defined? Yes. Membership of an ethnic group is something that is subjectively meaningful to the person concerned, and this is the principal basis for ethnic categorisation in the United Kingdom. So, in ethnic group questions, we are unable to base ethnic identification upon objective, quantifiable information as we would, say, for age or gender. And this means that we should rather ask people which group they see themselves as belonging to.'

So put that on your needles and knit it.

Hello all. This is my first post as a member. This thread just happened to be one of the first interesting ones I saw.
I am 45 years old and have spent my entire life in the US. All of my great grandparents were born in Poland and came to the US circa 1900. I have recently become very interested in learning more about the history of Poland, and interacting with Polish people. Believe it or not, it is extremely common among Americans to not take much interest in their European heritage. I could be described this way until recently.

I was born in NJ and moved to the South (North Carolina) as a young adult. I now have a home and a cabin with some land in Tennessee. I'm an RF engineer in the telecommunications industry, single, never married. Currently in a relationship with a lady of Czech descent who grew up in Nebraska and lives in Colorado (My home is in Tennessee, but I travel for work quite a bit and have spent the better part of the last 3 years in Colorado, where we met). It is funny to me (not meaning to insult anyone) that in other parts of the world we might be considered "different," since in the US we are extremely similar on a relative basis (compared to the lack of homogeneity in the cities and suburbs here).

On topic, I have never been considered anything but white by anyone, ever. Never any doubt about that. I do get some funny looks from the Scots-Irish people of the South (Tennessee, North Carolina) when they hear my Northeastern accent (though it has faded) or read my last name, but I don't seem out of place by appearance as far as I know.

Looking forward to interacting here.

Welcome Uncle Mitch,

OP was correct. I think the misunderstanding stems from Poles being Slavic and Germans not. To some Americans this makes Poles/Poland somewhat of a spin off from Russia.

"Believe it or not, it is extremely common among Americans to not take much interest in their European heritage." usually the case because the majority of Americans are mixed. I remember discussing this with my table in a Physics course in American University. I was the only one 100% something. Each individual was a different religion too: Muslim, Catholic, Athiest and Mormon.

IMO, if you have never stepped foot on the homeland you cannot consider yourself that ancestry. This is many times the case with Americans.

"IMO, if you have never stepped foot on the homeland you cannot consider yourself that ancestry."
I don't understand. Though most Americans are mixed, as far as I know all of my great grandparents came to New Jersey directly from Poland. Of course that is my ancestry, by definition. I worked for a guy who was my age, who came to the US from Poland at age 18, who told me that he hired me because I was Polish, even though I'm 4th generation American. I'm just quibbling with you in a friendly way, man. I understand that people see things differently. I never said I was a Polish National or anything like that. Anyway, I'm here to learn something. I only read the first and last pages of this thread. I think I will start here by reading this one in its entirety.

Uncle Mitch

I think what nothanks was trying to say is that if you are 25% German, 25% French and 50% Spanish, then you are neither. You are 100% American :) Of course you have some ancestry in Germany, but if you were not born in Germany or at least one of your parents, some may consider you 0% German for example. Not entirely my opinion though :)

Anyway, I'd love to hear a comparison between Tennesee and NJ, especially if you own a cabin and some land :) Great outdoors? Hate the city?

Please do not change the topic.

Yes, she is right in the sense these terms are understood in Western Europe. In Eastern or Central Eastern Europe (Poland included) people will rather use them in a diferent way. There where the British say "nationality", the Polish term will be 'citizenship'. I have just taken out my identity card (dowód osobisty) from the wallet and can read: Dowód osobisty jest dokumentem [...] poświadczającym obywatelstwo polskie (testifiying Polish citizenship).

In Polish documents you will be declaring for example: obywatelstwo (citizenship): POLSKIE ; narodowość (nationality) SILESIAN. If British terms were applied, would you then read "809,000 people declared Silesian nationality in the 2011 national census of whom 362,000 do not feel Polish at all" - the way the results of the census were reported in Polish media? By British standards, however, their nationality would be reported Polish, whereas "Silesian" would be their ethnicity.

Is "Welsh" nationality or ethnicity?

" Is "Welsh" nationality or ethnicity? "

ethnicity as there is no such thing as a Welsh passport.
Also of course there is a separate Welsh language as you know.

Ethnicity means shared cultural values (including conflicting ones) and a shared identity. Nothing else. Nothing to do with white or black.

This is a funny thread I must say. It's just like many Americans think all Mexicans are Amerinds or Mestizos when in fact Mexico does have a small White minority. However, I have seen a few individuals who looked clearly semitic but were culturally Polish. I suppose they are the leftovers from the Muslim raids centuries ago.

Why would it matter how white or black they are?

@Jon357

Because there are differences between races. Like the IQ gap between blacks and Europeans for example. That's why it matters.

" Like the IQ gap between blacks and Europeans for example "

oh please not that old chestnut.

Going by some of the posts on this forum I think that there may well be a gap ;-)

Quite. Though to draw on Roger's post, any gap doesn't reflect well on the ethnicity of the poster.

Anyway, better go, I'm seeing Dr M'kwane for some x-Ray results.

oh I think he trained with my obstretrician Dr Godswill M'Bongo

Some people rate nature over nurture and confuse cultural exposure with intelligence. If most posters on here (including myself) met our great great great great grandparents we would probably think they were stupid. They weren't (necessarily), they had just formed different neural pathways to someone in the modern world. Just as someone in a small village in Mali or Dahomey would score differently in an IQ test designed in New York.

And irrelevant how Polish (I suspect the OP means Pol-Ams) are seen as 'black' or 'white' by some other person. The amount of melatonin in the skin (and it varies in Poland) has no known effect on intelligence; nor does ancestry from a particular part of the world.

exactly. One must have a low IQ to do such a thing..:)

@Jon357

You leftists are so enlightening. LOL

This presentation disagrees with your egalitarian ideas:

youtube.com/watch?v=RxAhwYoZQKU

Unfortunately it's a load of cobblers and nothing to do with the thread..

"oh please not that old chestnut"

It is fascinating that there are people who will still try to refute the racial IQ difference. I simply can't believe that you don't privately acknowledge it, at least to yourself, so I wonder why you insist on saying this.

Because there isn't any, and even if there were, it would make not the slightest bit of difference to anything - certainly not to the topic of this thread.

check 'refute' in a dictionary, as you seem to have its meaning wrong. Just saying.
Have you heard of 'cultural bias'?

That's been debunked ad nauseam.

I was being lazy, edited.. "who try to refute the evidence-based assertion that there is a one standard deviation difference in mean IQ between Europeans and sub-Saharan Africans with wishful thinking"

How's that?
Of course I have heard of cultural bias; I am very familiar with IQ testing. Cultural bias is one of the myriad defenses leftists flail about in desperate denial of truth that threatens their narrative. Test makers have been doing backflips for decades trying to create a test that closes that gap. Maybe you could do something constructive and work on another one. Lol.

i agree there s IQ difference between races. There is also EQ difference between them. im Turkish but i wont say my nation is smart, but we are good at finding exploits or practical solutions. we are weak in engineering. on the other hand have high EQ.

in north, scandinavia,germany,denmark etc people who eat more fish and red meat, people tend to have higher IQ. its natural thing, eating red meat and fish makes the brain cells develop more, and generations over generations people transmit such genes.

historically , invention of fire, and hunting and eating animals made us smart.
black people have more muscles as a fact, coz its more of a muscle utilized life style in africa last 6000 years. Not the smartest, but the fittest will survive there.

but this doesnt make anyone superior to other.
in life, there is only one classification, good people, and bad people.

On the whole Polish people have milky-white almost translucent skin, even whiter than the average white American so I don't understand OP.