Eurasians in the Sportlight

"混"出名堂



Can an ethnic mix be trendy? At the moment, Eurasians are enjoying an unprecedented high profile in the news, in advertising, and in the entertainment industry. People of numerous cultures have embraced Eurasians like actresses Karen Mok and Maggie Q, not to mention superstar golf player Tiger Woods. Modeling agencies are scrambling for women with mixed blood, while Eurasians are becoming the darlings of music stations MTV and Channel V.



Eurasians have not always basked in the warm glow of public attention. Historically, there has been a lot of deep-seated prejudice against ethnically mixed people. In countries such as the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam, such offspring were seen as negative reminders of Western male colonizers and Eastern female war victims and opportunists. For decades, Eurasian children have had to challenge negative stereotypes and fight for their rights.



Does this current prominence of Eurasians represent a new acceptance, or is it merely a marketing twist on old racial biases? Many of the VJs on Channel V and MTV look racially mixed only because they have had plastic surgery to change their features. They say they feel pressured to look mixed because Western beauty is still the ideal to many people. Hopefully, in the future, this admiration and acceptance of those with multicultural heritages will deepen, and people will appreciate others, and themselves, regardless of their ethnic background.



Race has always had a huge impact on history, society, and culture. But according to many scientists, the concept of race has no biological basis; it is merely a social construct.



The American Anthropological Association has stated that race simply cannot be tested or proven scientifically. Because humans have been around for a relatively short time by evolutionary standards, scientists say that there is not enough genetic diversity in humans to allow us to be divided into neat, racial cubbyholes or subspecies. . It is generally believed that humans originated in Africa about two hundred thousand years ago and migrated to other continents one hundred thousand years later. Although environmental variations have produced the physical differences in hair and skin we see today, underneath the surface there has been little change.



Systems of racial categorization, first developed in the eighteenth century, have divided people into three, nine, twenty-six, and as many as three hundred races. Scientists reject such thinking as myth. They say that geographic patterns of sets of genes show that people have been migrating and merging from the start; race may be heavily tied to culture and how people see one another, but it is something we have created.



Scientists know this may be difficult for some people to accept. As summed up by Jonathan Marks, a University of California at Berkeley anthropologist, "Teaching that racial categories lack biological validity can be as much of a challenge as teaching in the seventeenth century that the earth goes around the sun."





"混"出名堂



种族混血也可成为时尚吗？此时此刻，新闻、广告和娱乐圈对欧亚混血儿都有空前广泛的介绍。许多源自不同文化的人都相当欣赏混血儿，诸如莫文蔚、玛吉Q等等，更不要说超级高尔夫明星泰格·伍兹了。模特儿经纪公司竞相争夺混血美女，欧亚混血儿俨然成为音乐频道MTV及Channel V的宠儿。



欧亚混血儿并非生来就沐浴于公众关心的温煦的光辉之中。历史上，对种族混杂的人有许多根深蒂固的种族偏见。在菲律宾、泰国、越南等国家，混血后裔勾起人痛苦的回忆，使人们想起当年的西方男性殖民者和东方女性战争受害者，以及投机分子。数十年来，欧亚混血的孩子们不得不与人们对他们抱有的负面偏见抗争，为自己的权利而斗争。



现今欧亚混血的声望，是否代表一种新的包容，或仅是在旧的种族偏见基础上的市场手段？Channel V和MTV的很多主持人看上去好像是混血儿，这是因为他们通过外科美容手术改变了面容。他们说由于他们看起来像混血儿而感到有压力，因为西方美人还是许多人心中的理想。但愿对多元文化的赞赏与接纳，在未来可望与日俱增，人们会欣赏别人，也会欣赏自己，无论源于哪一个种族，哪一种背景。



种族问题一直对历史、社会和文化有巨大影响。但是根据许多科学家的观点，种族概念没有生物学上的立论根据，纯粹仅是社会建构出来的产物。



美国人类学协会指出，种族基本上无法用科学方法加以测试及验证。因为就进化的标准来说，人类的存在相对较短，因此科学家认为，人类的基因不够的多样化，还不足以划为纯粹的种族分支或亚种。一般认为，人类在二十万年前源于非洲，十万年后陆续迁徙到其它大陆。虽然各地的环境差异使人们在外观如肤色、发色上大相迳庭，但是骨子里不同之处极少。



首先在18世纪发展起来的种族分类体系，将人分为3支、9支、26支，甚至多达300个支系种族。科学家斥之为神话。他们认为，各地域基因组合的规律显示，人类从一开始 就在迁栖、在结合；种族可能与文化及人们怎样相互看待有紧密的联系，但这些不过是我们自行建构出来的产物而已。



科学家也知道这种理论很难为一些人所接受。正如加州大学伯克利分校的人类学家乔纳森·马克斯所概括的，"宣扬种族分类缺乏生物学依据所具有的挑战性，绝不逊于在17 世纪宣扬地球是绕着太阳运行的"。
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