> CEO of nVidia is a Chinese guy. Perhaps the Chinese view them as safer because of this.
Are you kidding? Please fact-check strong assertions like that.
Jensen Huang is Taiwan-born and so is cousin-related AMD CEO Lisa Su, also Taiwanese, which even if the hypothesis of Taiwan-connected people being safer (due to more Chinese relationships) was true, then there would be no need to issue a curtailment on AMD chips in government computers.
It is going to sound a little weird, but some people have trouble understanding complexities of ethnicity, country of origin, its intersection with local history, religion and so on ( my wife struggled hard with this ). Some people see Huang as Chinese, the same way they may see me as European. It might be technically true ( and it does betray some perspective a person may have on the subject ), but it happens to ignore some reality on the subject ( as in, how does Huang see himself ). I guess what I am saying is that it is an easy ( if a little lazy ) way to label people.
There's the anthropological concept of "Chinese" and then there's the identitarian notion. This is analogous to biological versus identitarian notions of gender.
Interesting comparison, but I don't want to get into that particular minefield today.
Would say it is possible to be an American today without having appropriate documentation declaring that? Likewise, is it possible to be not an American ( not uphold its values ) and be properly documented?
"American" is not an anthropological category, though.
Consider how odd "ethnically American" sounds to the year. Compare that with "ethically Chinese", "ethnically Indian", "ethnically Korean".
"American" is a geopolitical concept defined in terms of a political entity, the United States (just like "Israeli" is a geopolitical concept defined in terms of the country Israel). This is just a consequence of the fact that America is not a nation state (In this respect compare e.g. the -stan countries of Central Asia, each of which is named after a dominant ethnicity. "Tajik" is not defined in terms of "Tajikistan", rather the reverse is true).
Is "ethnically American" even a single homogeneous thing though?
How many languages are spoken, how much territory used to be part of the New Spainish lands for how many hundred years, how many diaspora's fed into modern America?
"Native American" itself is a broad spectrum, many past language and cutural groups, many degrees of living on and off reservation lands, many intertwinings with former slaves, ranchers, et al.
I wouldn't say ethnic-group formation happens as soon as the next generation (after the founding generation), but I agree with the larger point. I wouldn't be surprised if in a couple hundred years no one would bat an eye at talk of "ethnically American" or "Norwegian of American descent". My understanding is that that's more or less what happened with the French.
