"cracker" ;)

I hate the term 'race'. What does it mean exactly? I am more influenced by my surroundings than my 'race'. Such a horrible term. I thing it merely perpetuates segregation. I think a better survey question would have been "Where are you from" or "What culture do you identify yourself with" if you want to identify your audience.

Hispanic

I identify myself as SLC24A5 threonine allele

Most surveys list "Indigenous Americans" as "Native American." Even though I'm so white I'm almost translucent I check that box because I was born here.

I think this goes to show that non whites hate the environment. ;)

I'm Swedish, German, British, and Native American

I choose "other" and describe my ethnicity as European. My ancestors came from 7 different European countries. Why shouldn't I be known as a European American?

Or perhaps most non-whites don't need to start little clubs (blogs) in order to educate themselves on how to be less destructive....

I consider myself human.

"I consider myself human."

I certainly hope everybody here does.

It would be interesting to compare the results of this poll to some kind of survey about the average internet demographics for an English-language website.. Not sure if that's easy to find, though.

Asian is not a race, and it doesn't aid discernment to group people from Japan to Turkey into a single category, then distinguish Pacific Islanders as though discrete.

Especially when common usage of Asian refers mostly to people from the far East.

Don't ask people to alienate themselves in the process of self-identification.

Why not use "Caucasoid", "Negroid", and "Mongoloid" while you're at it.

I'm a human being from the United States.

"These categories are based on the 2000 U.S. census; visit the website to learn more about the justifications for the response options."

human.

race is a misnomer. there are no races on this planet only species and the species i belong to is homo sapiens sapiens. if i identify with a geographical orientation i am of northern european ancestry, born in the u.s., and in proper buckminsterfuller style i consider myself a member of the crew of spaceship earth. the sooner we get beyond manufactured concepts of race and nationality, which do little besides divide us against ourselves, and begin to think and act globally and bioregionally, the sooner we will find that most, if not all, of our other social ills dissapear. culture is a local organic process and does not translate to nationalism, much less race. the rock is only so big and if we ever want to survive our own worst efforts we will encourage a human globalism of cooperative co-existence and dispense with outdated and useless misnomers.

holy crap if you don't like the question don't answer it.. there was a noble cause behind the question.. to prove that race is not a deciding factor in being a treehugger. Be constructive! Answer the survey to the best of your ability then post constructive criticism like stupid broad statements that "race doesn't exist" BECAUSE IT DOES

I understand that the race question elicits many emotions. It is, unfortunately, widely used as an overly-simple proxy for all sorts of other social, cultural, and economic data.

However, the environmental movement is often seen as a cause of rich white people. Should we as "environmentalists" not be concerned about diversity in our ranks, about addressing the ecological health and justice needs of all people? Or is there a better way, other than race, of doing this?

Yeah...enough of the holier-than-thou and politically correct garbage. Races do exist and there is nothing wrong with being proud of one's ancestry, heritage, culture, etc. Unfortunately, "racism" itself continues to be a widespread problem, but I fail to see how refusing to acknowledge the differences that makes us all special and unique is going to fix things...

Mike, I think you are mistaking race with culture. Two seperate things. Race is a silly way of categorizing skin colour. And you are right, there is nothing wrong with being proud of ones ancestry, heritage or culture, rather its something that should be celebrated. However, race is soely based on skin colour. Just because I am of a certain colour does not automatically associate me with the steroptypical cultural assosiations of that 'race'.
I believe geography has a lot more to do with it. i.e. North American; great laker; urban...etc, than my skin colour.

Arab.

Human race

1 generic humanoid carbon unit
AKA Human :)

I am an Australian, lving in the US, does that make me an Other Pacific Islander? Or am I still white. Last time I checked, my home land was an island, in the Pacific.

My mother is Indian, my father is German. I was born in india and lived there for 8 years after which i moved to Australia where i have now been for 10 years, but have a german passport....

Makes it a pain in the bum to get my university fees to be subsidised by the governement !!

The poll's use doesn't really come from you identifying yourself, it comes from noting those who are not identifying themselves based on demographics.

Instead of bashing the question, it seems important to note that culture is inextricably linked to race by virtue of how you are treated.
For instance if you are black in south you have certainly been asked "Why didn't you go to an HBCU?", where being involved in environmental activism is limited since environmental clubs are rare at HBCUs.

It's great that people have different experiences, but if you feel that race (skin color) has nothing to do with TH readership, then please explain (email me, I want to know) why people act indepedently of skin color.

I, for example, can explain to you why certain demographic groups in the US do not ride bicycles. But, its a very sensitive topic and I would never tell anyone outside my 'cultural' group. As the kids say "its real like that."

I answered this question the way I always answer this question, no matter who is asking, with "other," even though my skin pigmentation is closer to "white" than anything else.

If you define "race" as skin color, than shouldn't the answers to the question be white, yellow, red, black, brown, tan, etc.? "White" is the only answer choice that is a skin color. The rest of the choices are related to cultural heritage. Why should I, someone with tannish-white skin, be defined only by my skin color while the rest of the population is defined by the nation their ancestors came from?

I am aware that this question was worded as in the U.S. Census, but I believe it is outdated. There aren't enough catagories to truely reflect people living within the United States, or outside our borders. You can group people in this way, but I don't think it will tell you a whole lot.

Tell me, for example, what percent of the people who access the internet (any area of the internet) are Asian or Native American or "white." This will affect the outcome of this question. If 10% of the people who access the internet are Native American and 10% of the people who answer this question choose Native American, you've got a 100% success rate with reaching Native Americans.

White is neither a race nor ethnicity. Those things depend on things like history, culture, and location. I'm Irish and German with a little bit of Scotish. I do feel a connection to my Irish heritage through music, history, and myth.

Interesting comments. I just looked up how the Canadian Census categorises race, since someone mentioned that the above categories are the US census ones. It's really an interesting point how some are based on colour while others are based on country or origin. I never really thought about this before.

"This information is collected to support programs that promote equal opportunity for everyone to share in the social, cultural and economic life of Canada. Mark more than one, if applicable:

North American Indian
Métis
Inuit (Eskimo)
White
Chinese
South Asian (e.g., East Indian, Pakistani, Sri Lankan, etc.)
Black
Filipino
Latin American
Southeast Asian (e.g., Vietnamese, Cambodian, Malaysian, Laotian, etc.)
Arab
West Asian (e.g., Iranian, Afghan, etc.)
Korean
Japanese
Other — Specify

scientificly speaking there is only one race for humans, the human race. You can look at it geneticly or anthrpologicly, you still find only one race. Everything else breaks down into different cultures. please excuse my misspelling, its early.

News flash! Hipsters and hippies are predominately white! ;)

don't mean to beat a dead horse, but historically speaking the irish were not "white", even though of northern european descent, until they contributed to the northern efforts in the u.s. civil war. to wit how the irish became white. better yet look at the punch cartoons from the 19th century. the view of the english towards the irish was not dissimilar to that of "whites" towards "blacks" (even today this view still unfortunatly exists).
i answered the question not in regards to statistics, but as regards the question. i am human, as anyone else answering the question is. if you want to know what cultural group i belong to or what my anscetry is, ask that. "the map is not the territory".

My name is rain,

and

i

am

CANADIAN!

Maori/niuean/nz european

I am CANADIAN!

from TORONTO ;)