I dunno who needs to hear this but there is a difference between ethnic identity/kinship, nationality, and political identity.

An ethnic identity is based on sociocultural factors: the languages we speak, the lullabies we sing, the food we cook, our relationship w the land & waters & spirit & our ancestors, our creation myths, the rituals & celebrations of the seasons of our lives and of the earth, etc.

Ethnic groups & ethnic identity predate the creation of nation-states and settler colonial states, and will outlast them.

A nationality is a legal status.

A political identity is, as Mike Jones, Missouri Board of Education member said, "is something metaphysical."

"It's a philosophical point of view, a way of looking at and understanding the world that empowers you to act upon that world to advance your interests."

"White" is a political identity. It has nothing to do with biology.

"Women of color" is a political identity. It was created in 1977 at the US National Women's Conference as a unifying term for Black women and non-Black minoritized women to address shared political and social issues.

Over time, radical political identities tend to get de-fanged and stripped of their original agenda, like "Asian American," which was meant to be about pan-Asian solidarity & self-determination, and anti-imperialism.

Or, ppl forget that it's a political – not ethnic – identity.

Political identities are usually contextual. In the U.S., non-white political identities are created in response to white oppression, as "white" was originally created as an anti-Black and anti-Indigenous device.

This is why newly arrived African immigrants to the US may not immediately consider themselves as Black.

In Việt Nam, I am not a "woman of color" or "Asian American."

In other words, political identities are about power.

When I talk about "white people," I'm talking abt peoples of *many* ethnicities who have been folded into a political identity for the sole purpose of converting humans and land into property and profit – of racial capitalism

There are times when a political identity is also an ethnic identity. African survivors of the Middle Passage were forced to relinquish their ethnicities, but they forged a new culture, combining varied folklores, languages, music, and foodways.

(The process of whitening European peoples in the U.S. also involved them relinquishing their cultures, but instead of innovating a new culture out of ingenuity, whiteness was and is defined in contrast with anti-Black notions. I might do a thread on that later idk.)

"Black" became a political identity in the 60s. Scholars point to the turning point when Stokely Carmichael / Kwame Ture used "Black power" at a rally in 1966. Prior to that, the term for Black people in the U.S. was Negro.

"Asian" is not an ethnicity, but Asia is a geographical location. You can be a person from a place. In fact, that's how many peoples get their name. The Shanyue people living in Southern China & Northern Vietnam during the Han dynasty, for ex, are literally "mountain people."

An ethnic identity is also not dependent on nation-states. Hmong people have lived in Laos, Viet Nam, Thailand, and China for thousands of years regardless of where the borders are.

This is why, strictly speaking, when talking about ethnicity, someone could be Black and Hmong, but not white and Hmong. There is no such thing as a white ethnicity.

Once again, "white" is not biological. It's a political identity created exclusively to justify the stealing of land, enslaving of people, and wars –– for the maximum profit of the wealthy ruling class.

I hear you say “buuut, what do we call white people if not ‘white’”?

Idk, tbh. White people created this mess. They'll have to figure out how to get out of it. And whiteness studies scholars have thought about it. I recommend listening to this as a start: http://www.sceneonradio.org/seeing-white/ 

Nationality, again, is a legal status between a person and a nation.

In the U.S., the notion of citizenship comes from a white supremacist institution that uses citizenship to legitimate mass displacement and enslavement.

Indigenous peoples didn't legally become U.S. citizens until 1924, but this was an act meant to break up Native nations and forced them to assimilate via the boarding school system.

Throughout US history, citizenship has been used as a tool to create and reinforce a caste system to exploit labor. People look at the 14th amendment giving Black people the rights to citizenship in 1868 as "the end" of making the U.S. a white man’s country. But...

... for immigrants to the U.S., citizenship continues to be a process of "hyper-selectivity," where those who are allowed in usually come from a higher socioeconomic status and have greater wealth than people in their home country *and* in the U.S. – creating an anti-Black wedge.

As Andrea Smith pointed out, the promise of citizenship gives non-Native peoples a way to take part in settling Indigenous lands. And non-Black peoples are promised that if we assimilate & participate in anti-Black systems, we will not be at the bottom of the US racial hierarchy.