Wikipedia:WikiProject Ethnic groups

WikiProject Ethnic Groups is an optional template to be used to create articles about ethnic groups.

A few Wikipedians have gotten together to make some suggestions about how we might organize data in articles about ethnic groups. These are only suggestions, things to give you focus and to get you going, and you shouldn't feel obligated in the least to follow them. But if you don't know what to write or where to begin, following the below guidelines may be helpful. Mainly, we just want you to write articles!

This is very much work in progress. Please feel welcome to sign up as a participant and/or to make suggestions.

Motivation

NOTE that there is no intention of identifying all individuals by ethnic group or even of increasing the number of ethnic/national identifications in Wikipedia. Let's be clear: ethnicity is a minefield. However, that is all the more reason we need to come up with clear and consistent criteria for talking about it when we talk about it.

1. Ethnic groups have only slightly more epistemological validity than races, and the concept is possibly even more subject to hijacking by extreme nationalists than the concept of a nation itself. Nonetheless, it crops up constantly and it would be very helpful to have some standards for dealing with it. For example, almost every biography of a person who is not of the majority ethnicity of the country they are from already notes ethnicity.
2. This project intends to clarify the distinction between ethnicity and nation-state and to make it possible to describe (for example) a Romanian national of Hungarian ethnicity without linking to the arguably irrelevant article about the nation-state of Hungary (or similarly, to refer to a Hungarian national of Romanian ethnicity without linking to the article about Romania). Similarly, there needs to be a way to talk about the Volga Germans or the Saxons of the Siebenburgen that acknowledges their connection to an ethnicity without implicitly viewing them as the misplaced nationals of a different country.
3. In other words, there needs to be an article about Hungarians (or, more appropriately, Magyars) independent of the article about Hungary; there needs to be an article about Ethnic Germans independent of the article about Germany, etc. We would never conflate Jews and Israel. We would never conflate Celts and, say, Eire. However, often, where nation-states exist, a comparable conflation occurs.
4. As of January 2004, different ethnicities are very differently handled. For example, most Native American ethnicities are dealt with mainly from a historical and anthropological point of view, whereas other groups such as the Overseas Chinese are dealt with from a contemporary political point of view. A template for these articles, would serve as a reminder that (for example) Native American groups are still present in the world today and (conversely) European ethnic groups also have anthropologically significant sub-ethnicities.

Scope

This WikiProject aims primarily to provide a template for articles about ethnic groups and nationalities independent of writing about nation-states. The motivation for this came in writing about Eastern Europe, but it should relevant to any other parts of the world.

This project construes the term "ethnic group" in its broadest sense. There may be identifiable ethnic (sub)-groups within an ethnic group (such as the Ashkenazi within the Jews). Any templates we adopt have to allow for a way to talk about that. Often, ethnicities border on being nationalities, such as the native "First Nations" of the Americas, or are heavily identified with a particular nation, such as the Ethnic Germans.

Parentage

No parent of this WikiProject has been defined.

Descendant Wikiprojects

No descendant WikiProjects have been defined.

Similar Wikiprojects

The similar WikiProjects are WikiProject Clans of Scotland and WikiProject Languages.

Participants

• Jmabel
• JCarriker

Structure

Discuss the format for each article based on the WikiProject. Include various categories applicable to the topic.

Hierarchy Definition

No classification of ethnic groups has been defined.

General Strategy and Discussion forum

For now, let's use the talk page as the discussion forum. We can move content to more appropriate places as pattern develops.

Template

There is currently no template. Suggestions towards a template are probably best made on the talk page of this meta article.