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A fact from Heather Watson appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 15 September 2009 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:
I have added details of her father's occupation to the article because class warriors are already spreading the false notion that she is from a working-class background due to her skin colour (and they accuse their ideological enemies of racial discrimination!). It is also pertinent to state that she is not black, because I am certain that this misconception will become widespread if her profile increases. Her father is a white Englishman, and the article already states that her mother is from Papua New Guinea, but how many people are there in the world who don't know that Papua New Guinea is nowhere near Africa? Several billion I suspect. Is there a clearer, but still subtle, way of stating that she has no African ancestry? Luwilt (talk) 15:41, 18 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I have not made any unsubstantiated claims in the article, simply added an indisputable fact. I have made comments, here, punchy ones I admit, purely motivated by a desire to improve the qualify of information in the public domain. This is not the article, it is the talk page. If you are not familiar with the misconceptions about Heather Watson you obviously don't spend time on tennis forums on the internet, which is where misconceptions are spread in 2010. Now you might say that internet forums are not a reliable source, but that is what motivated me to try to use wikipedia to provide correct information, and I am not actually using them as a source. The way you are using wikipedia's policies against me is actually undermining my attempt to ensure that Wikipedia provides more reliable information than internet forums. I will repair the damage you needlessly inflicted and add a source. Personally I care more about truth than footnotes, so perhaps wikipedia is not the place for me. I see things I now to be false books and newspapers that are so-called "reliable" sources almost every day, but I would never add them to wikipedia. Is it better to provide correct information, without crossing the i's and dotting the t's of wikipolicy, or to provide false information that is backed up by erroneous "reliable" sources? Luwilt (talk) 01:56, 19 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
@ Rambo's Revenge. The added claim isn't unsourced, so I don't see why it needs removing - it's right there in that Guardian article.
@Luwilt. A couple of people's comments on tennis forums isn't relevant here. The comment about her father's job is fine as it is sourced - I'd suggest that it borders on the spurious, but as a short clause within a sentence is nothing to worry about. Stating that the she is 'not black' or 'not African' (which you seem to equate?), on the other hand, is completely unnecessary. Making any comments about her class in the article would also be spurious, not to mention that you have not provided any sources saying that she identifies with any particular class. Leave the article to provide facts, not commentary or guidance as how to interpret them. Pretty Green (talk) 08:59, 19 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I agree stating she is not black is unnecessary. But just wanted to point out that being black and being of sub-saharan origin generally are considered synonymous, you have to equate them. That Watson has no African ancestry definitely means she is not black. Black is not just a description of a shade of skin. People get confused because the indigenous people of Melanesia look very similar to people of sub-Saharan African origin, however this is a case of looks being deceiving, and actually it shows how spurious our concepts of race are. Black people, of sub-Saharan origin are actually closer genetically to white people of European origin, than they are to the indigenous people of Melanesia. If you were to describe Melanesian people as black purely on the basis of the shade of their skin you may as well call people from the Indian subcontinent black as well. Of course in practice people of Melanesian origin living in the west are probably treated in every day life as if they were black because most people can't tell the difference. In truth race is a social construct with no scientific basis as the Human Genome Project announced a couple of years ago. The Melanesian/Black physical similarities are a good way to challenge peoples' notions of race. That a Black African man is more closely related to a White man than he is to a Melanesian man blows a lot of peoples' minds.92.236.117.111 (talk) 11:37, 23 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
"That Watson has no African ancestry definitely means she is not black"..."race is a social construct with no scientific basis as the Human Genome Project announced a couple of years ago" I know we're digressing, but these two comments seem to be mutually contradictory. Black is a reference to skin colour; the fact that it doesn't map onto geographical/regional/genetic connections is just further proof that converting skin colour to the concept of 'race' is nonsensical. The point is that to be 'black' or 'white' or whatever tells you nothing about someone's character. Also, social scientists and philosophers have long understood this without need for the HGP - see Frantz Fanon for example...Pretty Green (talk) 18:14, 24 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, you've got it exactly backwards. White Europeans and Melanesians are much more closely related than either is to Black Africans. Genetic diversity in Africa is much higher than outside, and all non-Africans form a single branch together with Northeast Africans, see Macro-haplogroup L (mtDNA).
Race is not a biological or scientific category, but it is a social category (folk taxonomy) based partly on ancestry (especially in the context of self-identification) and partly on superficial appearances. Within this context, Melanesians would likely be lumped in with the category "Black" (like Aboriginal Australians and even sometimes Polynesians), given that the common system in Western countries ("Whites" vs. "people of color", which include "Blacks", "Asians", "Native Americans" and "Middle Easterners" as well as commonly a "Hispanic/Latino" category, especially in the US, which crosscuts the entire classification) is rather simplistic and naive (although in the US Census scheme, they are classed under "Other Pacific Islanders"). --Florian Blaschke (talk) 01:07, 28 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
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