> Italians & Swedes living in Europe? They are not a race. Italians& >Swedes living in this country? Not a race either: they are foreign Oh really? Crack open the history book to the way the Irish were treated when they immigrated to the U.S. after the Potato Famine. Look at how the Italians were treated when they immigrated. Look at the cute names they gave Eastern Europeans. Go ahead and tell me that you can't consider these to be different races. They have been, hence they can be. We still think of them as different. I'm sure you've seen stereotypes of suave Latin or Italian lovers, contrtasted with the stereotype of repressed Englishmen. People with identical physiology are swimming in each other's blood in Bosnia because they think that one side or the other is an ethnicity responsible for bad things in the country. Go ahead and tell me that people of the same skin tones are the same race. >nationals. Italian-Americans & Swedish-Americans? They are >European-Americans. Some people call them White. But then the question Yes, some people do. You'd probably call an Italian white, and a Jew white - but the KK doesn't, and would be just as happy to kill them as they would kill a black man. Hmmm. . .sounds like race depends on your perspective. As in, it's all in your head. >of ethnicity surfaces. Ethnicity: foreign born Whites--immigrants >(Richard Polenberg, *One Nation Divisible*). Or ethnicity: US born people >with symbolic ties to another country. Well, that'd be one way of organizing things. Of course, 4th & 5th generation descendants of immigrants may be pretty mainstream and not have ties to the old country, at least none that are more than of the most superficial nature. Where would a Brit who immigrates fit in? How about Stanley Kubrick, who is an American who (as I understand it) lives in the U.K all the time? How about a former Korean friend of mine who was adopted through some relief agency when he was 4 and has grown up in Montan? Where do these people fit in? >>1--I'm not sure what other paradigm exists, since whites have defined >> the terms for race and racialism for centuries. > I couldn't agree with you more. So, isn't that time that these >paradigms are challenged? Why bother with such BS in the first place? The only paradigm for race that I can see as an improvement is one that says we are all the same race - the *human* race - and that's all there is to it. >Obviously, one can > imagine many multi-racial contexts for various combinations, but how many > of them are actually depicted in American films--and only as a relationship > and not an issue. > So, it is time that we change the cinematic paradigms as well. >To begin with: avoiding compiling lists of films where interracial >relationships do *not* constitute an issue, for example. That's one answer. I think that it's good to have films where the interracial aspect of the relationship isn't an issue. Similarly, it'd be nice to have films with gay characters where their sexuality wasn't even a tangent to the plot. If it doesn't seem unnatural in the film, then maybe people will walk away with the idea that it isn't, or at least shouldn't, be unnatural in real life. >Let's look at films such as *Mississippi Masala* rather than >*Bodyguard.* Good idea; it was a *much* better film anyway ;) J Roberson