riki wrote:ethnicity is what makes up your psychological as well as physical identity. There is no way you can be a "non" ethnicity, even people who claim they are from "no where" understand that.
Again, people can definitely ignore that, especially in an environment that doesn't stress the concept.
riki wrote:Well if you dont give any weight to ethnicity then why do you answer the ethnicity part in the Brazilian census?
Because the question is there to be answered. If I could write the questions myself, I might probably ignore it. And, even then, 'white' doesn't really define much—it's just a colour. In the past, you'd probably be required to choose from white, black, yellow and red.
riki wrote:Surely it must have some weight or bearing on your concious if you answer it (even if it maybe that you will get fined for not completely filling in the census, in this way, you are not completely ignoring ethnicity).
As far as I know, we don't get fined. But the reason why I answer that, besides what I wrote in the paragraph above, can be inferred from my original post—I look in the mirror and that's what I see. Again, it only boils down to colours once again—black people and mixed people are known to answer using a huge number of different shades to that question: black, brown, brownish, chocolate-brown, maroon, yellowish brown, dirty white, coloured etc. Some claim this is mostly because they're ashamed of being identified by 'black' alone, but there's no denying that the only concept they're actually using is the same anyone would use to answer about the colour of his eyes or hair—and I highly doubt that anyone's tried to define ethnicity put that simply since Hitler and was any successful.