I believe if you are a citizen, you are also a national.

For dual citizenship, if neither of the two is the US, then I usually go with the one that helps us most or matches the passport they entered on. As an example, an Italian/Venezuelan citizen can enter without a visa (Italians can), so we might go with that as the primary citizenship.

I've also seen that "country of origin" and "nationality" were not at all synonyms in the early twentieth century.

That doesn't surprise me. My grandfather never called himself Russian, even though he immigrated from there in 1912. He insisted he was Ukranian, because that's the language he spoke. And according to him his mother, despite being born in Ukraine, considered herself German. Shocked the hell out of my cousins when they found that out, they'd been saying they were one quarter Ukrainian forever and were very disappointed to have to add the German in there.

He insisted he was Ukranian, because that's the language he spoke.

Just as there's a controversy on what's French/English/German, and on what's Polish/German, there's a controversy on what's Ukranian/Russian (without even mentioning what's Russian/Georgian).

One of my classes in this year is (soon to be was) on genealogy and social structure, and we saw there how the nationality question moved from genealogy of people to genealogy of languages to determine a country's boundaries. In genetic research, btw, we see that there's nothing between racism and genealogy: there's more genetically in common between a Caucasian (nevermind from where) and an Aborigine than to two random people from Africa. In other words, how most people see "race" has nothing to do with scientific reality, and most scientists believe that when it comes to humans, one can't talk about races.

Also, ~ma to Ryan and his parents.

Jessica, I apologize most profusely. I was trying (and quite obviously failing) to lighten up the discussion. I am very sorry that that misguided comment was it for you adn you walked away. I was not trying to imply that your grandparents are at all racist.

Again, I apologize. I would have done sooner, but had fallen asleep and then took a shower. Joe let me know that you had posted.

I can't get too involved in this discussion, as, ever since I met The Girl a few years ago, I've been struggling to sort out my feelings about Israeli social injustices alongside some hateful racism that Jewish people in this country are currently getting that's linked to Israeli policies. It all gets a bit fraught in my house around this subject.

But entering the slightly less fraught discussion: in nationality terms, The Girl is almost as interesting as you get. She's a dual US and Irish citizen, has Swiss domicile, is a British resident and considers herself Israeli (because both her parents are Israeli and her first language is Hebrew). I thought my mixed Irish-British background was interesting until I met her. Now I feel quite dull.

I feel like a lot more people should be like The Girl. Not only because she kicks ass, but because of nationality terms. The more one person will have, maybe then we'll realize how stupid it is to consider and judge a person according to his/hers nationality, and start seeing him/her as a human being.

The moment I saw all of the nationalities and people of colors who came to PHR's free clinic the day I volunteered there, my eyes were opened wide with a huge grin, with only one thought on my mind: "this is what I want to see around me all of the time - that variety of people".

huh. I discovered an oval pad of squishy, lumpy fat directly above my butt crack (don't ask how i noticed it, the story is not at all fun or interesting) and am now a bit grossed out by own body. How long has that been there? Is it supposed to be there, or just an effect of weight gain? Once again glad that i don't wear low rider jeans *shudder*

Again being Lebanese origin is not an excuse. But the difference between that any being from other regions is the very recent attacks by Israel on Lebanon. A better comparison might be to Irish-Americans giving money to the IRA in bars without really thinking what is is they were supporting in the 70's. And then that combined with some anti-semitic tropes she absorbed somewhere.

I made it to my cousin's shower today. The higher dose of the steroids are starting to kick in, but my plan is to park myself in the corner and not move.

the very recent attacks by Israel on Lebanon

Huh? What did I miss since 2006?

{{sj}} good luck.