Talk:White Argentine

Removal

Removal suggested by Aleta Curry 22:39, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Editorial Council: Case 2011-009

Opened: Peter Schmitt 23:10, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Closed: Hayford Peirce 18:36, 18 December 2011 (UTC)
Page blanked (forbidden WP import). --Peter Schmitt 01:29, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

---

Comments

Hello,

This article has just come to the unofficial attention of the Editorial Council, of which I am the Secretary. In the near future, once we have studied it more carefully, it will almost certainly be either moved from Main Space to an area where it will not be easily found by the general public, or it will be deleted entirely. First of all, it appears to be an article imported directly and entirely from Metapedia -- and Citizendium does not allow articles from other sources to imported. Second, it appears to be making an argument about "Whites" in Argentina. I see that the same article, or similar articles, were either banned from Wikipedia or entirely rewritten, because of the apparent "racism" of the article. Citizendium is no different from Wikipedia in our attitude towards racism -- we simply do not permit it, nor anything that might appear to be racist in either intent or appearance. Citizendium welcomes articles about just about any topic in the world, but they MUST be original articles, written for Citizendium, and not copies of articles that have appeared anywhere else, and they must ALWAYS be written in a manner that cannot conceivably be called racist or that is pushing an agenda of any of its authors. Hayford Peirce 22:05, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

I'm going to move that the article be removed forthwith, on the grounds that it is an import from Metapedia, and Metapedia is self-avowedly a project with an agenda.

I find the subject inherently problematic and controversial, in that

1. the Government of Argentine itself does not make this distinction and in fact, to my knowledge the Argentine government does not even ask about ethnicity in its censuses;
2. the concept of 'white people' is not one that finds its way into current enlightened discourse and such terms are used advisedly and in limited context, for some very good reasons. We avoid racialist discussions that suggest the superiority of one group over another, or imply or lead to the notion of eugenics.

Certainly the article might encompass some topics that would be of interest and benefit to a general encyclopaedia, among these are: Argentine immigration, Argentine demographics, languages of Argentine, religion in Argentina etc., but these must be discussed in an appropriate, non-racist manner.

Aleta Curry 22:39, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

This article clearly is not suitable for CZ. I suggest to replace it by

Term used for Argentinians of European descent, mostly used in a racist context.

and make it a /Definition subpage. --Peter Schmitt 23:41, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

What's racist about the article? Where does it suggest the whites are superior? On the contrary, it mentions at least 3 times ill-treatment and discrimination directed against others. Peter Jackson 14:40, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

And, though Argentina may not any longer compile census statistics on race, many countries do, including UK. Peter Jackson 14:41, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Very true Peter. Considering how many reputable sources use the term white Argentinian it would be interesting to know where those making charges of racism got their information from, especially considering that under the Peron Constitution immigration was restricted to whites only. And I must concur with your second point - having been involved with the census process of three European countries I can tell you that questions about race are far more common than has been alluded to here by non-experts. David Finn 16:02, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

This article is not racist.

Greetings; my name is Pablo Zampini, and I am the author of this article, and I did not write it with any racist idea in mind. It only describes the history of many Eurodescendants living and residing in Argentina. I defend the existance of this article for the following reasons:

• The article exists in Wikipedia under the name Argentines of European descent. It underwent a long discussion -detractors oppose to the use of the word "white" in the title- and a name change, but it was finally accepted after several wording changes.
• Being the primary author of the article, I kept my version of the article and exported it to two different wikisites: one copy is the one we are discussing about now, and the other copy is here.
• As all wikisites allow free copying and pasting of their contents, other readers may do so and export them to other wiki encyclopedias. The article version in Metapedia was apparently copied and pasted by a user named "Parmeggiani", who appears to have interest in this topic, too. Note, anyway, that my version of the article was left untouched in that site, allowing the Jews to be considered White -something that the Nazis deny- and even mentioning "Nazi war criminals" in the History section which deals with immigration after WW2. If anyone here wants to complain to Metapedia for the copyright of this article, feel free to do so; I will not oppose.
• I read the article over and over again, and I don't find a single word or sentence that may sound "racist" or despising other races. That is what "racism" means to me. There are sentences in which I denounce how Mestizos, Blacks and Amerindian Argentines were used as cannon fodder first, and how many Mestizo/Amerindian immigrants from Bolivia and Paraguay are exploited today in Argentina.
• The concept "White Argentine" exists in much bibliography in English; it even appears in the magazine "Ebony". See here, for example.
• If I had written and article on Black Argentines or Amerindian Argentines, there would be no necessity to defend them, for they would not be considered racist articles.

If the problem is that there are other copies of this article in other wikisites, I offer to change its wording and images, so it will look different. Or if anyone wants to do such changes himself, feel free to do so.--Pablo Martín Zampini 16:30, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for these explanations, Pablo. Whether the article is racist or not needs, of course, careful evaluation. However, the fact that the article is accepted by Metapedia, a clearly racist site (and, as it seems, only by Metapedia) raises the suspicion that it shows (at least) a strong bias. (Independent of its content the article violates the regulation on imports.) --Peter Schmitt 02:05, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

It's actually also on Wikipedia and Wikinfo, as stated above. Peter Jackson 11:42, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

Any discussion about racism is, at this point, moot

Whether or not the article is racist, and I think we should accept the author's declaration that the intent is not racist, the article must be either moved or removed because of a greater consideration: the decision, by a 6-1 vote, of the Editorial Council concerning imported articles at http://ec.citizendium.org/wiki/EC:PR-2010-013.

The text of the Resolution reads:

The importation of articles copied from other sources, in particular from other Internet encylopedias such as Wikipedia, is not allowed.

The only exceptions to this general rule are articles written originally almost entirely by the Citizen who imports them and who, in addition, is also an active contributor, and

specific articles that are explicitly accepted by the Editorial Council.

If Pablo can find, say, the original text of the Wikipedia article written entirely by him, then that material may be imported into Citizendium, as many other articles have been. He may not, however, bring in a later version that was edited by other people. Assuming that Pablo can bring in a version written entirely by him, the Editorial Council would then consider whether that article is racist or not. You will also note that the Resolution says that in addition the author must be an active contributor. Pablo, however, is an active contributor only in the sense that he has contributed this single article and nothing else. The purpose of the wording in the Resolution is to specifically prohibit contributors who come to Citizendium to write a single article advancing their agenda of perhaps dubious quality and then leave without ever making any further contributions. Hayford Peirce 17:57, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

What that resolution does not provide is a definition of active Citizen that would supercede that which is found at CZ:Editorial Council Resolution 0012, which seems rather an oversight considering that the whole resolution hinges on that definition. David Finn 18:15, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

That's the definition of active Editor, not Citizen. Peter Jackson 18:29, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

No, the whole Resolution does not hinge on that definition. We could have an indisputedly active contributor such as Norman Gardner or John Brews who brought in a Wikipedia article, or one from some other source, and, given the fact that it was an imported article, it would be removed. The additional phrase had, and still has, a clear purpose: to prevent people with an agenda, generally one of self-promotion, from bringing in an article of marginal quality and dubious provenance, dumping it upon us, and then vanishing forever. This has happened a number of times in the past, and this Resolution was, in part, written to address the issue. Hayford Peirce 18:32, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

(PS: it's claimed there are 20 active Editors on that definition.) Peter Jackson 18:35, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

EC:R-2010-013 makes exceptions only for "active contributors" (of content), i.e., for authors who already have contributed sufficiently to other articles. Pablo's first and only contribution is this article, and it is a copy of a WP article that he previously distributed to several other sites. Therefore its import violates the EC regulation, independent of its content.

By the way, he copied the same article to Knowino on June 2011 [1], two days earlier than to CZ (where it was moved to his user space on June 3). On June 4 he copied it to CZ. While, of course, CZ has to decide independently it is also clear that CZ is not the last resort for articles that other sites reject with (probably) good reasons.

--Peter Schmitt 01:50, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

The article was written almost entirely by me.

This article was almost entirely written by me; it was just two or three paragraphs long when I started to expand it to its current length. Please check the article's history -I appear as Pablozeta- and you will see that the version published here is almost the same version of the article before it was criticized and changed in its wording and title.

If I am a not such an active contributor now it is because I have two jobs, a wife, two sons and a step-daughter to take care of. Besides, I am also contributing with the Spanish version of another wikisite named Wikinfo, founded by Fred Bauder -who also is a Wikipedia administrator himself-.--Pablo Martín Zampini 18:47, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

White America or White England

If someone imported a long article called White America or White England, and put in dozens of pictures of white Americans and white Englishmen, you don't think there would be a tiny suspicion in some people's minds that his intents were racist? What, for instance, would be the point of the article? We already know that there are lots of white Americans and white Englishmen and that they have, for most of their countries' histories, been the absolutely dominant force. You can have your opinion about whether an article entitled White Argentina is racist or not, and I can have mine. Hayford Peirce 18:13, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

Indeed. An article can leave a racist impression even though it contains not a single racist statement, simply by the selected choice of its content.

Of course, articles on the population of a country, on population groups (immigrants or indigenious), etc. have to be possible. --Peter Schmitt 02:15, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

That's right. I don't claim editorship in anthropology or in Latin American area studies, but I believe I'm the closest we've got in either category right now. I can confirm that Whiteness is a key topic to engage for understanding Argentine history. But this is not the responsible way to go about doing so. I hope that one day we will have many articles on nationalism, immigration, politics, media, popular culture, etc. in Argentina: those articles will need to deal with Whiteness. I would suggest complete removal of this article rather than simply paring it down to what remains right now. --Joe Quick 04:51, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

This sort of thing is an inevitable consequence of EC policy that people can write articles on anything they like. Is it a good idea to deal with it by overriding the policy on an ad hoc basis? That is also liable to give rise to suspicions of bias. Peter Jackson 10:13, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

@Peter: What would you suggest instead of "policy that people can write articles on anything they like"? Even if it causes problems there is no alternative -- CZ cannot work on the basis of "invited articles" only. Or do I misunderstand you? --Peter Schmitt 10:27, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

@Joe: Please correct my text if you think that I did not get it right. However, I think some short text (but not an extensive article) should live under this title: The term exists and articles -- like the imported one -- are easily found on the Internet, therefore CZ should not leave it empty. Objective articles on this subject will have other titles, anyway. --Peter Schmitt 11:21, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

Peter, the new text seems fine. But it is NOT a term. The White Hmong are a real ethnic group. White Russians are something else. White Argentines are a totally artificial: the people who might fall under that label do not represent a group that is defined by anything except imagination. I do not think that we are ethically bound to host an article just because other sites have one. --Joe Quick 13:39, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

CZ should not host a fully-fledged article on this topic. But it should explain what you say above -- that the phrase is ideologically used. --Peter Schmitt 14:58, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

I concur with Peter on this, Joe -- you are by far the closest we have to being a resident expert on this subject: please jump in and rewrite the brief present article in any way you like! Hayford Peirce 15:37, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

Please list your examples of racism in the original text here

The above section containing comments about racism in the original article text was started before the removal case was officially closed by the Secretary of the EC and has continued after the article has been replaced so I presume the subject of racism in the original article text is still up for discussion.

One of the things you notice about the comments on this page about racism in the original text is that none of them quote or link to any supporting material and there are no examples of racism in the article given. This makes it hard for an independent observer to evaluate whether the text was racist or not without doing some research of their own. Especially in a wiki environment it is quick and easy to link to or quote from online texts and it makes our opinions visibly grounded in fact rather than being just opinions.

An article about White America with lots of pictures of white Americans has existed on Wikipedia for five years now without too much difficulty. The United States Census Bureau defines White people as those "having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa. It includes people who reported “White” or wrote in entries such as Irish, German, Italian, Lebanese, Near Easterner, Arab, or Polish." - all taken from the Census Bureaus pamphlet, "The White Population". I pull down a copy of the Statistical Abstract of the United States from my shelves at random, its the 128th edition - page 9, Resident Population by Sex, Race, and Hispanic-Origin Status and I see that the subgroup White rose by 13 million between 2000 and 2007. It seems like the US Government consider Whiteness to be a topic worthy of discussion and aren't afraid to ask about it via their census.

White Australian is another similar Wikipedia article - in many ways unsurprising considering the "White Australia" government policies that seem to have been in effect at least partially until 1973. White British is there too (white was an option on the 2001 British census apparently), White Brazilian, white this, white that. Wikipedia doesn't have a problem with articles that have white in the title, nor ones that have pictures of white people in them. At Wikipedia they discuss the articles content.

So is it possible to discuss the concept of whiteness in Argentina without it being racist?

• Discover Magazine - How Argentina became white
• Council on Hemispheric Affairs - Nearly All-White Argentina Confronts Its Troubled Racist and Religious Past
• University of Dayton - "Most sources report Argentina's population as 97 per cent white"

It seems it is possible. Discussion of White Argentinians is rife. So the question remains as to what the commenters have seen about this article that makes them say it is racist. So far the only comment about the actual content has been about the title and the pictures but we have shown that the concept of white Argentinians is one that exists independently of this article so that viewpoint still requires for the actual content of the article to be clearly racist.

So, rather than a list of opinions about the ideas behind this article we should list the actual content that is to be identified as racist here, otherwise the usefulness of this discussion to identifying racism in articles will be extremely limited. David Finn 11:26, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

As I wrote above it are not isolated statements, it is the choice of what is said and what not.

• The conquering or "white" invasion of Argentina and immigration are part of the history where it can be treated in context. Here it was treated isolated, talking about "whites" only and hardly mentioning its effect on the original population.
• Culture in Argentina (music, sport, etc.) are valid topics for separate articles, where "white" and "non-white" influences can be described in context, but they are out-of-place under a "white Argentien" heading.
• Important Argentinians -- whether white or not -- deserve articles of their own, but citing them because they are white (in a country with a predominently white population!) makes no sense.

By the way: Referring to WP articles does not prove anything. CZ has to make an independent decision. Moreover, these articles are not undisputed at WP, either. --Peter Schmitt 13:03, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

I was really hoping for facts rather than more unreferenced opinion. David Finn 13:17, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

David, have a look at this statement from the American Anthropological Association. It is not enough to remove the racist material from the article: the topic itself does not get anyone anywhere. Even though race and racism are invented, they clearly affect people's lives. So we cannot ignore race or its effects. We should absolutely address racism in Argentina or anywhere else. But to insist that we can learn anything real by identifying the people who fall under this label is racist at its root. -Joe Quick 13:46, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

Do you mean the statement from the American Anthropological Association that "does not reflect a consensus of all members"? I was really hoping for facts rather than the opinion of an unquantified fraction of some members of an association - especially since very many governments around the world do not seem to share this fraction of this American associations viewpoint when it comes to the usefulness of identifying and discussing race. Including the American government. David Finn 14:01, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

All three points I mentioned were present in the removed article. They show that the article had a clear and strong bias.

The AAA statement is an official document and is therefore representative for a qualified majority of the society. You'll never get unanimity on such topics.

--Peter Schmitt 14:56, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

David, the AAA statement is the single most authoritative document that directly engages what race is and how it works. Any other treatment that comes close is book length. I'd be happy to provide you with a reading list, if you'd like, but I don't think you really care enough to follow up. Did you actually read any of the statement beyond the preamble? I think you'll learn something if you do.

There is no absolute consensus because race works on each life a little differently. There will never be complete consensus on this topic, David. If you find me consensus within even a small group of people, I'll show you the most committed racists out there. David, 'the facts' are that race only provides anything of scientific validity when it is used to understand how the invention and perpetuation of racial theories have impacted people's lives. When individuals, groups, or governments use it otherwise, they get wholly unreliable results because race does not measure anything. Medical professionals occasionally use race as a proxy for genetically inherited traits and risks that are more prevalent within largely endogamous groups, but they use race as a shorthand only; they do not actually measure race because 'racial' traits do not mutually co-vary.

I will not rewrite anything in the article. I may have been unclear in my previous statement that this should be deleted outright. There is NO scientifically valid statement that can be made about the group of people designated by this phrase. I'll consider whether it is practical to give special attention to Argentina in the article we already have on eugenics.--Joe Quick 00:33, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

The American Sociological Association explains very clearly that race is invalid except for studying the effects and structures of race itself here. The American Association of Physical Anthropology explains the non-biological nature of race here. The United Nations provides substantial insight into the results of misusing race here. --Joe Quick 00:40, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

‘Black boys’ and ‘flesh-coloured pantyhose’

One of the problems in dealing appropriately with institutionalised racism is that is insidious, often intangible and often unconscious. This is a deadly combination, because it means that otherwise decent people can promote racism without meaning to. It also means that racist people can promote their agendas and then, when caught out, raise their eyebrows in feigned innocence and say who, me? That’s not what I meant! and it’s impossible to prove or disprove in the absence of further action.

Requests and comments such as ‘please list your examples of racism in the original text here’ and ‘I was really hoping for facts rather than more unreferenced opinion’ make informed people sigh, because, assuming good faith on the part of the enquirer, we know that it will be a long, protracted process (and an uphill battle if the enquirer has already made his or her mind up) to first discuss the background issues that must of necessity go into the making of these determinations, and then a discussion of the matter at hand. Facts? Opinion? Well, the fact is that this is inherently a matter involving opinion, because opinion is what gets us into trouble in the first place.

The Editorial Council is being asked to rule that because the governments of, say, the UK or the US (which, as we all know, have their own unresolved problems in this regard) have decided to include ethnicity in their censuses in their own manner, that we should simply apply their standards to a discussion of Argentina, regardless of the stance of the Argentine government. We are also being asked to disregard current academic discourse and understanding of these issues. That’s foolish and patently ridiculous; any such determinations have to be made advisedly.

A second issue is one of language: its meaning, its usage and its neutrality. What I’m reading is the argument that if something isn’t explicitly racist, it isn’t racist at all. That shows limited understanding, but people may not realise why, exactly.

Two examples spring to mind. One is from my childhood and has to do with the category of undergarments that includes stockings and pantyhose. The wearing of full-length hose is has been decreasing in importance but when I was a girl, hosiery was ubiquitous, no self-respecting Western woman would go out socially without them and certainly no professional woman could go to the office with bare legs. I can clearly remember pantyhose packages marked ‘flesh-coloured’. Even as a kid I knew there was something wrong with that…’flesh’ coloured? The colour of whose flesh? What I didn’t know was that that was racism in action or that in the 70s and 80s a lot of very nice men and women wouldn’t have understood that that was racism in action. No, there’s nothing inherently racist about a term like ‘flesh coloured’, if everyone’s flesh happens to be the same colour, but in a diverse society, it’s exclusive, exclusivity is bias, and bias in skin colour leads to racism. Fortunately, nowadays I don’t think one can buy ‘flesh coloured’ pantyhose in pluralistic societies, and hose hue is more appropriately and inclusively described.

The second example is when then New York Yankee manager George Steinbrenner described someone in his business entourage, I think it was his accountant, as a ‘black boy’ (might have said ‘young black boy’ or ‘smart black boy’ – don’t remember the exact words now, but I sure remember the reaction. The thing is, there are people of every human colour who might use the same phrase and mean nothing at all derogatory by it, but we are none of us mind readers and it is therefore impossible to know. It did not help matters that the comment was made during a discussion of racism.

The reaction from the Black community – I believe we were on the cusp of switching from ‘Black’ to hyphenated American then – was swift and vocal. Now, we know that there are people – Black, Italian, Jewish, Chinese…whatever, who will take offense in a heartbeat and will not be convinced that no insult was intended, no matter what. Then there are people who will give the benefit of the doubt, no matter what. But I think that many more people fell, understandably, into the ‘I just don’t know’ camp and because they couldn’t know, they thought the comments were, at the very least, ill-advised.

It is immaterial that an 80 year old African American woman from a wealthy suburb of Atlanta might use the exact same phrase of her nephew and mean it affectionately. Or that a 50-year-old banker from Kampala might simply mean that his accountant was clever, male, and younger that he.

In such a case, it would do no good to ask if it’s right on wrong that using the word ‘boy’ to refer to African American adult males is charged with meaning, emotion and history. People can say that it should not have any weight, they may even be right, but the fact remains that it does have weight, and the fact that the phrase may have no hidden meaning in Uganda, does NOT mean that we are excused from being sensitive to cultural and historical elements when we’re speaking about the United States. The same applies if we’re talking about the way the phrase has been historically used in South Africa.

So far as I know, CZ does not have any articles in which African American adult males being referred to as ‘boys’ without context. We don’t do it and we won’t do it because we know that in the United States, this would be lacking in impartiality.

I bring these examples up because we are in a similar situation; we are being asked to disregard our life experience and our knowledge of historical context in making decisions on a case where there may be implied racism. We can’t do that.

There has been an implication here that we are saying that these issues are taboo. That’s rot. We’re saying that they have to be addressed in a manner that

1. Respects human dignity
2. Does not suggest innate superiority or inferiority of any human background

We, too, are not mind readers, and we cannot know for certain what might or might not have been meant, we can only deal with what has actually been presented. If there is error, it is our duty to err on the side of knowledge, forethought and good judgement.

Aleta Curry 22:48, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

Brilliantly analysed and stated, Aleta. Bravo! Hayford Peirce 01:05, 20 December 2011 (UTC)