Talk:List of contemporary ethnic groups

Ethnic groups not showing up in the 'A' section

None of the ethnic groups between 'Arab Britons' and 'Ayrums' are being displayed. ArenTMA (talk • contribs) 15:14, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

Arab Britons are described as" an endangered Amazonian tribe of hunter-gatherers"... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2.50.131.40 (talk) 08:05, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

I did eventually manage to fix this, although I quite liked the idea of Arab Britons being categorised as an endangered Amazonian tribe of hunter-gatherers. --Roisterer (talk) 07:30, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

I do know for 8 years, the mysterious Adyhaffe people was a supposed Ethiopian tribe that lived in the list of modern ethnic groups, but it turns out they did not exist and the edit was removed. The list is in need of proper regular maintenance to make sure no hoax, myth or fake edits show up again. 71.102.1.95 (talk) 18:50, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

List Split by Continent

Surely this list should be split by Continent, i.e List of Ethnic groups in Africa or Europe--WALTHAM2 (talk) 23:00, 26 May 2012 (UTC)

Good idea. If no one disagrees, I'll start the long, labourious process. --Roisterer (talk) 13:01, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

That should probably be a separate page; "list of ethnic groups by continent"? Maybe even multiple pages: "ethnic groups of Africa" "ethnic groups of North America", etc. I think this is fine as an alphabetical list can be useful.

Are castes ethnicities?

I've noticed a few Indian castes on this list (e.g. Brahmin and Boyar caste). Are they actually seperate ethnicities? Or am I opening a huge can of worms raising this? --Roisterer (talk) 09:17, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

Ethnicity, A-H

Did some industrious editor get tired of working on this page after they got through "H"? Because getting all of this information on to one page is a helluva lot of work and is very useful (even realizing that the population numbers are quickly outdated).

If anyone wanted to return and finish I-Z, I certainly would applaud the effort! Newjerseyliz (talk) 22:26, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

I've done some editing - namely expanding and joining the tables for all groups while removing the alphabetical grouping which made sorting by population numbers impossible. 91.49.230.169 (talk) 17:35, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

This doesn't make sense!

Seriously, when you order things by population in the table, you can see how outrageous the numbers are. I mean, there's no way there are 300 million Bengalis and Bretons. How about thos 38 million Chickasaws in the United States? Or 280 million Arabs? I'm going to try to fix all this. InMooseWeTrust (talk) 18:13, 22 August 2013 (UTC)

Sardinians as an ethnic group

I've been noticing some anonymous reverts on this article; since it would be pretty embarassing to start an heated edit war, which would lead to nowhere but trouble, I'll be starting a dialogue (or, at least, try to do it). The anonymous, always deleting the voice, states Sardinians are not an ethnic group (too bad the reason why they wouldn't is left to the imagination), therefore they absolutely shouldn't be here; a source has been provided saying the opposite, so I've done nothing but restore part of the reverted edit adding the above-mentioned reference; however, the anonymous once again deleted what's been written asserting I posted a source stating exactly what he/she's being saying. The encyclopedia says as follows: ...It is not easy to define the charateristics of Sardinians as an ethnic group, but certainly the common linguistic tradition and insularity are two crucial elements... and ...It is difficult to conceive of Sardinian culture as a homogeneous whole, despite the region's insularity and its unique history; it is, however, possible to highlite some distinctive themes in its popular culture.; therefore, in my opinion the source considers Sardinians to be an ethnic group indeed for historical and linguistical reasons, in spite of the fact it couldn't be that easy to portrait their culture as a monolith (the same thing, however, could be said to any people). That said, I just want to raise the issue on this talk page in order to invite the anonymous to give me some reasons about her/his recent edits, so that we could discuss about the problem (otherwise, I'll be bringing back the page as it was before), as well as to ask for a third opinion. [I'd be pleased if you correct my grammar mistakes]. --Dk1919 (talk) 13:43, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

Sardinians are not an ethnic group for several reasons:

1)There is not a common Sardinian culture; For instance people from Gallura are very different from those of Cagliari in terms of traditions, culture and language. Strangely enough, the only thing that all people from Sardinia have in common is the Italian language and culture.

3)The most important people from Sardinia show a deep Italian culture. Grazia Deledda won the Nobel Prize for her work written in Italian. Strangely enough again, two Presidents of the Italian Republic were from Sardinia (Antonio Segni and Francesco Cossiga) as well as Goffredo Mameli, who wrote the Italian Anthem; Enrico Berlinguer, one of the most important Italian politicians , was from Sardinia as well. There are thousands of similar examples that show how Sardinia is now part of the Italian culture as well as the Italian ethnic group.

4)In the Italian Parliament, the Region of Sardinia is represented like all Italian regions and not as an ethnic minority (like the Germans and the Ladins in Alto Adige).

5)The reference you use doesn't say that Sardinians may be considered an ethnic group, it says the contrary.

6)Wikipedia doesn't consider Sardinians as an ethnic group as well.--93.32.141.192 (talk) 13:21, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

1) As I already said above, the same thing could be said to several people, including the "Italians" that, according to your logic, wouldn't exist either; many people in Italy still don't even have Italian as their first language, which was imposed by law both in Italy and in Sardinia, so your point is flawed: not to speak about the "Italian culture" thing, which is quite debatable and could be called into question; how could Sardinians share in common something which is all but "common", given the huge amount of internal cultural differences in Italy? Please.

2) Let's assume, for the sake of the argument, that these more or less contemporary "most important people" (all belonging to the Sardinian bourgeousie and the upper class, which is now Italian just like it was Catalan back when the island was Aragonese property...) you're talking about should prove the "true" nature of Sardinian social identity; even then, one could just states their status as assimilated ethnic group (the alterity of Sardinians from Italians was notorious even to Dante, considered the father of Italian language...), just like the Ainu living in the Japanese island of Hokkaido and our Corsican northern brothers (that, by the way, are still here on the list in spite of the fact that one of the most important individuals of theirs, Napoleon, had once been non other than the Emperor of French... What's the meaning of this double standard policy?).

3) Sardinian-speakers are recognized by law (even if not "de facto") as a linguistic minority (they constitute the largest one in Italy), just like the German-speaking South Tyroleans are.

4) The source says otherwise, as I already pointed out. As long as you don't prove what you're asserting, it's merely your opinion and, being it totally unexplained, should be treated as such.

5) That page, strangely enough as you'd say, has just been edited a couple of days ago by some people (actually, it's always the same user), whose activity just resulted in edit war, and probably for political, rather than objective, reasons. I'm afraid that a wikipedia article, editable by anyone at any moment, is not that kind of reliable source you're trying to pass off.

Seriously, I just didn't want to be involved in edit war (that's the reason why I wanted to start a dialogue) but as long as you persist in it and if some unsourced, as well as rethorical, pov is all I could get, I frankly don't think we're going anywhere.--Dk1919 (talk) 19:23, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

It's clear you have your personal point of view about Sardinia. I dont want to criticize your ideas. But the edit war you are talking about in the article of Sardinia began on September 19th, when a user edited the article by using the term "ethnic group" for Sardinian people for the first time in the history of the article http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sardinian_people&diff=573684848&oldid=573142235, without consensus. The Corsican people and the Ainu people are not considered an ethnic group by Wikipedia. The Sardinian people are just the people from Sardinia. If it had been an ethnic group (hence different from Italians), we would have had data about "how many Sardinians and Italians live in Sardinia" as we do with Trentino Alto Adige (Italians, Germans and Ladins), Friuli Venezia Giulia (Italians, Slovenes, Ladins), Calabria (Italians, Albanians and Greeks) and a lot of similar examples. I saw your edits on Wikipedia and they are not always impartial; in some edits your attitude to promote the Sardinian culture becomes a sort of Sardinian nationalism/independentism (as in this article), that today is just a political idea, nothing else. Even the tone you use to talk is a bit radical (i.e. you used the term "brothers" to classify the Corsican people: we are in an encyclopaedia, you are not doing a political speech!). Wikipedia is not involved in politics, therefore if you want to promote your political ideas, you are free to do it on internet but not here.--93.32.141.192 (talk) 00:18, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

African-Americans and Their Statelessness

While I have no objections to the classification of the descendants of African slaves living in the U.S. as "stateless," (which is, in itself, a controversial opinion that I happen to adopt) I think the justification for this claim ought to be reconsidered. It is not due to "mental conditioning" by European/American colonizers that African-Americans cannot (or do not) identify with a state in West Africa. A more valid reason is that most West African states which exist today did not exist at the time of slavery in the U.S. More, it is extremely probable that most African-Americans are of mixed ethnic ancestry (not to mention mixed racial ancestry) due to the intermingling of various African ethnic groups once they reached the New World via slave ship. Lastly, as descendants of Black slaves have likely had lineages extant in the U.S. for centuries, it is not unexpected that they would not trace their personal ethnic identities back to a single African state. Even many White Americans who have ethnic group-specific last names may not identify with a particular European state due to intermarriage through the generations, a loss of record of where their families came from, and/or a lack of interest in identifying as European after numerous generations are born in the U.S.

71.162.197.201 (talk) 02:57, 13 October 2013 (UTC)Chuck G.

Ethnic superpowers and "mental conditioning."

Look; the statement that African Americans don't know their heritage due to "mental conditioning" is just completely asinine. It's difficult enough to convince people that slavery left a cultural imprint even without trying to blame a tangentially-related social ill on a polyethnic racial category like "Europeans."

African Americans have not been "conditioned against" knowing their heritage; they don't know it because the records have been lost and because many have intermarried. And in any case, blaming Europeans in general rather than slaveowners in particular for the very real mental and cultural conditioning of slavery... to blame the general rather than the specific: first, is to trivialize the sacrifices made by millions of whites (among others) who fought for the North during the Civil War; second, is to reject the solidarity expressed and realized by whites (among others) from the time of the Underground Railroad through the Civil Rights movement and into the present day; and third, is to ignore the dedication put forth by those researchers who have given us a glimpse into the real psychological and cultural cost that was actually incurred by slavery.

Because frankly, the notion that mental conditioning is even *capable* of preventing people from identifying with their heritage roughly seems to imply that African Americans have this superpower wherein they automatically know what African state they were from, a superpower that is deactivated as if by kryptonite whenever African Americans come into contact with "suppressive Europeans." (Did you catch the Scientology reference? Because that's the other thought-system the statement brings to mind...)

I'm going to delete the phrase "mental conditioning by Europeans" and replace it with the phrase "lost records and intermarriage". The text will then read, "Due to the inability to identify themselves with any particular African ethnic group or African state as a result of lost records and intermarriage, they are largely considered a separate ethnicity." In the future, if you wish to claim that "Europeans mentally conditioned African Americans to make them unable to identify with Africa," please give a reason, specifically one that is grounded in actual psychology and not just half-minded racist mythology. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.132.173.18 (talk) 02:17, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

European Americans

There seems to be an edit war over the inclusion of "European Americans" as an ethnicity. Under WikiProject it is officially an ethnic group, but personally, its status its debatable. For one, it's very broad. "European" refers to hundreds of ethnicities residing in Europe and is too diverse to be included as a separate entry on this page. Even if it were separated into 'Croatian American' or "Anglo-American", it feels superfluous to contain a subcategory of an ethnic group simply because they reside in another country.

Your thoughts? AlexTeddy888 (talk) 10:07, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

It stated that there are 50 millions berbers, which is much higher than 30 millions refered here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berber_people