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There are Jews who are so because of their focus on heritage and culture.
There are Israelis who are so mainly because they are Zionists.
I am Malaysian by background, culture and heritage, not by race.
Some in Australia incorrectly reckon I am Malay, just because I come from Malaysia. They mix up nationality with ethnic origin.
The age of colonisation from the 16th to 20th centuries have resulted in many individuals sharing the heritage of the Indigenous and the conquerors. Think of South and Central America, Australia, India, the Phillippines,
Lebanon, the USA and Canada.
Across south-east Asia, migrants from India and China in the same recent five centuries have also married and set up families with the already diverse ethnic groups residing there. Today their off spring are popularly referred to as Peranakan Indians and Straits Chinese.
(Peranakan as one may know is the Malay word for "local born".)
Those who have family trees from both European and Asian sides, originating from the age of the rise of Euro sailing trading powers across Asia, are popularly known as Eurasians.
There are Portuguese Eurasians ( think of Goa and Malacca), Dutch Eurasians, Anglo-Saxon Eurasians (reflect on Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore) and Spanish Eurasians (the Phillippines).
Their numbers have dwindled in Singapore and Malaysia, perhaps due to emigration. However many young people across Australia, UK, USA, NZ and Canadia today are the new generation of Eurasians in the 21st century.
In societies that make citizens and residents hold an identity card by law, are Eurasians recognised as an independent ethnic group on their own? Chindians in Singapore have to choose either Indian or Chinese to state in official papers.
For their own reasons, several political entities insist on identifying and compartmentalising the race and religion of their residents. Others do not because it suggests discrimination.
So an Australian, British and Canadian need not necessarily be of Caucasian origin.
Residents of homogenous cultural nations can find it hard to accept that an Australian can be African in appearance, a Canadian is Indian and a Peruvian is of Japanese origin.
How much do emigrants settled in a new nation hold strong links back to the mother culture?
There is strong emphasis by the Japanese on such things.
Indian women proudly adorn their traditional dresses. Muslims are strongly bound by their religious convention.
Chinese tend to everyday wear contemporary Western styles in their adopted lands, bringing out the cultural wardrobes on festival dates.
Improved economic ability, easier air travel, technologically facilitated contacts and more physical interaction amongst the diverse demographics of the human species have also resulted in more intermixing of DNAs, genes and cultural richness.
The evolving development of an European union is also helped by increased marriages of people from the so many different cultures on the continent.
#yongkevthoughts
