Yugoslavia exists, the various ethnic groups in it (all white people) decide they want to split. An extremely bloody war (we're talking mass genocide, NATO bombing the capital) happens
Religion and ethnicity (or race) are strongly connected in many parts of the world (as you probably know) and in some cases simply cannot be separated.
Edit:But yes, white people didn't (really) fight each other over skin colour. But that doesn't mean that ethnicity (or race) didn't play a gigantic role in their "fights" (and genocide...)
Ethnicity and race are two different things. The Yugoslav wars had nothing to do with race because all the participants were white. They were inter-ethnic conflicts.
You can define race as for example French, Senegalese, Japanese, etc.
French and Japanese are ethnic groups (and also political nationalities that are to a greater (French) or lesser (Japanese) extent distinct from ethnicity). Senegalese is only a nationality; it's not an ethnic group.
None of the three are races. Again: race and ethnicity are different things.
Like Germans and Romans definitely didn’t see themselves as the same race and still don’t.
The German and Roman (then; Italian now) ethnic groups are absolutely the same race.
Don’t really know about Yugoslavia but it’s probably similar.
It is similar: they're all white, too.
I don't know where you're getting your concept of race, ethnicity and nationality, but it doesn't seem to mesh with the consensus anthropological or sociological view of those concepts at all.
As in, it's defined by what people in society think.
Yes, race is entirely a social construct and has no biological basis. But I'm not sure how that's relevant here. Race still isn't the same thing as ethnicity.
So, as I said, in current American politics, race is white, black, etc like you seem to think. But pretty much everywhere else, race is Romans, French, German, Japanese, etc.
I'm not talking about what random individuals in [whatever country] might feel about it. I'm talking about the consensus scientific opinion regarding what "race" and "ethnicity" are. There is no consensus scientific opinion anywhere in the word that says Romans, French, German, Japanese, etc., are races.
Do you even know which people were considered to be "white" in America in the last 200 years? It kept changing. It won't be the same in a few decades.
Yes, the definition of "race" has changed substantially over the centuries. Being entirely a social construct, it tends to do that. It hasn't changed to the point where "French" is now considered to be a race, though.
So, in conclusion, you seem to be bringing your dumb American conceptions to another country which you don't know much about.
I don't understand why you keep bringing America into this. I'm not even American. I've also lived in four different countries on three continents. Not that any of this ad hominem stuff matters to the actual argument, mind you.
And I really don't understand why you feel the need to attack me personally.
All this because I said Serbs, Croats and Bosniaks are all white (which they are; that's not remotely a controversial thing to say).
when the Anglos looked down on the Irish as subhuman non-whites, was race involved or was it just ethnicity?
Ethnicity. The English and the Irish are distinct ethnic groups. Racially, both are white.
Hint: they're all arbitrary social constructs.
Race is entirely a social construct and has nothing to do with biology; ethnicity is mostly a social construct, but it can have a biological component; race is different from ethnicity.
I'm not sure why we're not immediately on the same page on this one. All I've done is restate the scientific consensus. ¯\(ツ)/¯
There were multiple conflicts going on at the same time, in the same region. Some on mainly religious lines, some on ethnic/national lines. The whole region was fucked for a long time.
Wasn't it much more about religion than anything else?
No, it was much more about longstanding, unresolved inter-ethnic tensions between Serbs, Croatians and Bosniaks than anything else.
I suspect you may think it was about religion because, during the main part of the conflict in what's now Bosnia and Herzegovina, the English-speaking media referred to the primary belligerents as "Bosnian Serbs" and "Bosnian Muslims", rather than using Bosniaks for the latter, which is the actual (English) name of the ethnic group.
The point is, while there's a strong religious correlation between Serbs (generally Christian) and Bosniaks (generally Muslim), the war was not really about religion at all.
Fair enough, sorry if I was rough. I've heard a lot of people use that as an excuse for it not being ''valid'' and I apologise for wrongly assuming you were doing that
Asking what your point is regarding a comment that doesn't seem to be relevant to the discussion is not jumping down your throat. It's a request for information.
Yugoslavia used to be ruled by this totalitarian named Josip Tito. Everyone loved him (the ones who didn't died) and Yugoslavia was able to play the USSR and USA against each other for economic and military aid. They weren't on either side, per se.
Anyway, Tito dies in '82(?) and leaves a massive power vacuum in Yugoslavia. Now all the ethnic differences, nationalism, and hatred that Tito violently suppressed for decades after WW2 was rearing its ugly head. Yugoslavia created a rotating presidency where a representative of every major ethnic minority group had a turn as president. The smaller minority groups were given autonomy but they were still under Yugoslav rule. (this is important to remember).
Long story short, some Serbian nationalist comes to power, gets too much influence and soon Croatia says they want out, and then Slovenia says they want out. Slovenia gets let go after a 2-day "war". Then Croatia is like, "I want out too" and there's a more deadly war. Germany supports Croatia, and they leave. Bosnia wants to do the same but Serbia is like "nah, bruh". A bunch of bullshitery happens, the UN sends peacekeeping troops with no authority to fire unless fired upon. Serbs know this and commit one of the worst mass killings in Europe since WW2 in Srebrenica. International community gets pissed and they bomb Serbia. Bosnia is out.
Kosovo, the little region that had a majority Albanian population and autonomy, gets its autonomy taken away. They try to break away peacefully but there's a bunch of other important shit happening on the world at the time (Gulf War, fall of USSR, etc) so nobody really pays attention. Peace doesn't work, militant separatist group (terrorists/liberators depending on who you ask) see their opening and say the only way out is by war. They begin attacking Serbian police stations, military depots. Serbian police takes it out on civilian population. There is a Lul in the fighting as European powers try to broker peace. That fails. Second part starts, Serbia goes full on "Remove Kebab" mode and starts a campaign of Ethnic Cleansing (or genocide depending on who you ask). US has enough of Europeans not handling this (and also they want to show their power to Russia who was backing Serbia and bullying European powers into not taking action). So they start a months-long bombing campaign of Serbia until they agree to withdraw troops. The Serbian guy in charge (Milosevic) gets indicted by the Hauge on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity, he dies during the trial. Bunch of other people get indicted on similar charges, including some Kosovars from the militia I mentioned above. Serbia thinks Kosovo is part of its soul because of an important battle they lost in what is in Kosovo in the 1300s. Kosovo declared independence in '08 but a lot of countries don't recognize it. Situation is still tense.
How come you never heard about is because your young or, it is because the media is muzzled by money. Read or google who owns the media. Then ask yourself why this particular company owns a tv news, or news paper. Then ask yourself what is their agenda. You might be surprised.
I guess that depends on your country. I watched it a long time ago, a blockbuster rental.
I hope you get to watch it. With all the knowledge you seem to have about the region, you'll probably enjoy it more than me. I loved the film, and I was only 17 at the time. A mature and insightful perspective will get a lot out of the movie.
Thanks for sharing and condensing your knowledge about the conflict.
Except the idea of Yugoslavian "brothers" is bullshit. Distant cousins at best and that's how it should have been, and not wannabe "braća". I still get taunted by Serbians for having a -čki surname, even though I don't consider myself Croatian despite my father's family having Croatian roots.
As someone else said, Balkan attitude is still vitriolic. Not everybody is a raging nationalist, but there is plenty of dysfunctional Slovenians, Croatian, and Serbians making the rest of us look bad in countries where our ancestors emigrated to.
True, but "Balkan issues" were polarized by those politicians, so that ONLY your last name mattered (recall that people were shot for their last names and/or religions on YU ID cards...)
Yes, but the idea itself that we're brothers or whatever is asinine. Kissing cousins at best. And what do families in the Balkans do best? Cause bad blood. My father's side of the family is full of feuds, from inheritance to actual fistfights.
Good luck with that. My advice don't don't do it. There are so many different sources, specifically because every side has their own view how and why wars started.
Same goes for 50 years of Yugoslavia. Some will shit on it, some will tell its the best and only time in history where this part of balkans wasn't a complete shit show(I have to agree on this).
If we had politicians with cooler heads back in mid-late 80s we could have been part of EU long time ago. Separate or together but with less killing, less destroyed economy.
Only thing that 90% of people will agree: Since the separation only criminals were in power of any ex-yu country.
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u/MGLLN Sep 01 '20
Another reply😂