OKAY LOOK. It’s 2016. Ethnicity and nationality are two different things. Saying you don’t understand how it all works is fine, but if you’re offering fc help, the next step is to LEARN and stop spreading misinformation. Ethnicity is dependent upon your parents. Nationality is dependent upon what nation you belong to and they can intersect a LOT. See this guy?
His name is CHRISTOPHER LARKIN. you may know him from The 100. Christopher Larkin’s Ethnicity is Korean. He is a Korean man born in Daegu, South Korea. If he was raised in South Korea, his nationality would also be South Korean, but he was not raised in South Korea. He was adopted as a child and raised in Connecticut. This makes his nationality American. Christopher Larkin is an American man. A Korean-American man.
Now, if that was hard to follow, this next example may blow you guys minds, but bear with me. Lets look at my mascot, IMAAN HAMMAM.
She’s a Morrocan-Egyptian Dutch model. “Whoa!” you may say. “Slow down, Raven! Too much at once!” It’s alright. I’ll try and break this down for you. Imaan’s mother is Morrocan. Imaan’s father is Egyptian. She’s a black model born & raised in Amsterdam (Netherlands) which makes her nationality Dutch (because amsterdamian isn’t a thing I guess.)
Lastly, let’s look at someone who is aggressively white.
This is DANE DEHAAN. Ethnicelebs has him down as Dutch, German, Italian/Sicilian, English, with distant Welsh and Northern Irish. All that? By American standards, that’s A LOT of white. That’s a bunch of different names for white. Dane’s ethnicity is white. Yes I understand that if you ask some white people, they’ll start rattling off percentages ( because for some, their lineage can be easier to trace due to their ancestors not being killed off ahem ) and say that they’re “20% German, 10% Dutch…” etc. I’m not ignoring that, but in the end they’re still white ) His nationality is American.
Now let’s look at all these faceclaims together. If we were using them for roleplaying purposes, we could make ALL THESE CHARACTERS JAPANESE. “But, Raven. How?? You already said they were white/black/korean!!!” you shout from your tower of ignorance “Simple!” I reply! If they’re raised in Japan, their nationality is now Japanese. It’s like roleplay magic. Yer a wizard.
If Christopher Larkin was raised in Japan instead of America, his ethnicity would be Korean and his nationality would be Japanese. He’d be a Japanese man of Korean descent. ( Descent meaning he was the product of people who were ethnically Korean. )
If Imaan Hammam was born and raised in Japan instead of Amsterdam, she would be a Morrocan-Egyptian Japanese Model.
If Dane Dehaan was born and raised in Japan, he’d still be fifty shades of white, but he’d be a white Japanese man because his nationality is Japanese.
In some ways, sites like ethnicelebs are unreliable because when they list someones ethnicity, they could be listing their ethnicity or their nationality. More often than not, it seem like we play it safe and assume that ethnicelebs is listing ethnicity so we don’t end up whitewashing.
Nationality is flexible in the rp world. Ethnicity is not. You cannot make Christopher Larkin half white for shits and giggles, but you sure as hell could make him Australian or African in nationality. Because changing the latitude and longitude of the place you were born in does not change who your parents were ethnically. I pray to god that cleared some things up.
*NOTE: before someone tries to anon hate me for this: bold/italics/capitalization are stylistic choices made to emphasize the importance of certain WORDS and aren’t necessarily me yelling at y’all