How can any black person be a Republican?

[Igel]

21. There's this assumption that

somehow melanin content or ethnic history determines thinking and other cultural traits.

You see it implicit in this post. You also see it when people assume that somehow you should learn "your" language, which is to say, the language some ancestors spoke. So I studied Russian--and people think it must be because I'm Russian. Carlos studied Russian in the same grad program, and everybody wanted to know why he didn't study Spanish--as though he were somehow betraying his ethnicity.

On the one hand we have people offended when we don't assume that skin color or surname is meaningful when it comes to outlook and cultural background, and we have people offended (sometimes the same people) when we assume that skin color or surname is meaningful when it comes to outlook and cultural background.

Culture and language are completely distinct from skin color, hair cross-section, teeth structure, presence or absence of epicanthic folds, eye color--and only accidentally correlated in many cases these days (with the rest being a sort of historical accident).