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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 169.207.89.188 (talk) at 12:13, 3 January 2004. The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Existing articles that should be considered

Here are some existing Wikipedia articles we might want to consider along these lines. Some of them are heavily tied in with other issues (typically a past, present, or projected nation-state or affiliation with a religion).

We will need to study these articles to begin to develop an appropriate template. Some of these articles are little more than stubs, but they are a good reminder of the diversity of groups we will need to think about.

Please feel free to add to this list. Try to maintain the organization.

Additional articles that could be written

  • Additional ethnic groups
    • Bajau -- Borneo, Malaysia -- Trying to find a venue to document their participation in sea piracy (in fleets of thousands of boats) in the early 1800s to present day. Known today as Sea Gypsies. Their name is a synonym for pirate in some countries. However the Bajau currently deny they are pirates, of course.
    • Barbary pirates
  • Groups currently subsumed into articles about countries
    • The French
      • The role of the French Foreign Legion in granting citizenship in France
  • Articles on ethnic groups within particular countries or reographic areas
    • Jewish Americans
    • British Moslems

Ancillary articles, not fitting the template, that need to be written in support of this work

  • We will probably want to expand the article on Ethnicity to take up more of the issues of the difficulties of this concept and to explain the way we approach the concept in these templated articles.

Topics that will need to be covered in the template

  • Should include a discussion of kinship groups and the need for coalitions for survival
  • Could include statement of the protecting agency, because minority groups are sometimes wiped out during times of ethnic cleansing. For example, the protection of Moslems and Jews during the Mongol rule over China; the Mongols were the protecting agency.
    • As another example, the Civil Rights act is the protecting agency for ethnic minorities in the US; however, the Human Rights declarations of the UN form no protections at the current time. Thus a statement of ethnicity (on Wikipedia, for example) could be a death warrant in the wrong place at the wrong time.
  • Should contain a link to Ethnicity in the opening paragraph
  • Need to work out how we will deal with extinct groups and those whose identity is disputed
  • History
    • Origins of ethnic group and/or origins of its identity
    • Targeting in ethnic persecution
  • Population and Geographic distribution
    • Population history (i.e. change in numbers, geographic distribution; for many groups, the changes can be very dramatic)
    • Percentage of the population of different countries
    • Geographic history (e.g. migrations)
  • Countries, para-states, ethnic political parties, ethnically based liberation movements, etc.
  • Linguistic variability
  • Religious distribution
  • Sub-groups (and, vice versa, super-groups). We probably want to look into some anthropological hierachy of ethnic groups
  • Cultural description, where this can't just be referred to an article on a geographic entity

Discussion of project, compunctions, etc.

In starting this project, I realize I am wading into a minefield. Ethnic groups have only slightly more epistemological validity than races, and the concept is possibly even more subject to hijacking by extreme nationalists than the concept of a nation itself. Nonetheless, I think it is important that we work out how Wikipedia will handle the issue of articles about ethnic groups, proto-nations, etc.

I would like to construe the term "ethnic group" in its broadest sense. There may be identifiable ethnic (sub)-groups within an ethnic group (such as the Ashkenazi within the Jews). I think our templates have to allow for a way to talk about that. Often, ethnicities will border on being nationalities, such as the native "First Nations" of the Americas, or will be heavily identified with a particular nation, such as the Ethnic Germans. This last case is part of the motivation for this project: there needs to be a way to talk about the Volga Germans or the Saxons of the Siebenburgen that acknowledges their connection to an ethnicity without implicitly viewing them as the misplaced nationals of a different country.

I am not sure if we will want a single article template or several, although the existing approach to languages suggests that we can get away with one.

-- Jmabel 23:25, 2 Jan 2004 (UTC)

-- 169.207.89.188 11:52, 3 Jan 2004 (UTC) I think my interpolations into this page are convincing me that requiring a statement of ethnicity in a Wikipedia article would be a counterproductive policy, in general. However, I agree that statement of an ethnicity/belief/action system can be illuminating when used with discretion, but I think not as blanket policy for Wikipedia. For example, to identify XYZ as Irish Catholic sets up the expectation that XYZ is against suicide and abortion, but no such expectation is justified in a court of law.

Rather, this project seems to be a venue for marginalizing individuals and groups. In fact the word should, as used in this proposal makes the project prescriptive. If instead, the words might and may were used, then the project might be illuminating.

To make this point plainer, it can be and has been dangerous to a person to be publicly identified as Jew or Arab or Gay or Goy. How about dropping the idea. 169.207.89.188 12:13, 3 Jan 2004 (UTC)

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