[soac-newgtldapsup-wg] On category {ethnic, linguistic, cultural}

[Eric Brunner-Williams <ebw@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Richard,

I managed to hear your question and Avri's reply during the call, just 
before I lost cell connectivity.
So, starting closest to my heart, Indian ("Native American" in the US 
and "First Nation" CA) isn't ethnic or linguistic, it is cultural, and 
more narrowly, recognized by one or both of those Federal governments, 
and/or one or more of their governments of their inferior 
jurisdictions (States/US, Provinces/CA).
If "ethnic" was used to mean "Indian", it might work so long as no one 
actually cared where the boundaries of the definition lie.
Can we nail down a single definition of "cultural" sufficient to our 
needs? Probably not.
Can we nail down a single definition of "ethnic" sufficient to our 
needs? Again, probably not.
What we lack, as a 501(c)(3) California domiciled entity, in easy 
access to the legal terms of art which define protected classes, or 
promoted classes, that are not limited to a specific jurisdiction. 
However, we do have our own basic policy goals, dating back to the 
Green Paper, of representation.
PuntCat used the phrase "linguistic and cultural" to express the 
social, and avoid the political, utility of a registry for the Catalan 
... You can say "language and culture" and have one meaning, or you 
can say "region and economy" and have another. We judged it more 
prudent to use the former, to avoid political and jurisdictional 
concerns by the abutting iso3166 possessed governments (Spain, 
Andorra, France, Italy), chiefly Spain.
For "language" our task is easier. If the language uses more than 
Latin letters (without accents), or uses digits to augment the use of 
Latin letters, then it is not yet represented in the IANA root. Two 
examples are Diné bizaad (Navajo) and 3arabiya (Arab Chat Alphabet). 
It gets simpler if the langauge doesn't use Latin Script.
Another source of definition is the scoring of applications which 
self-identify as Community-Based. An obvious limit is that this has 
not utility if not requested by the applicant, or if the application 
is not self-identified as Community-Based, such as the hypothetical 
application for a reproductive health delivery service in the Indian 
Sub-Continent.
There will be applications which identify as Community-Based which 
will not qualify for "need" or "representation". An application for 
lawyers isn't so unlike the circa-2001 application for .pro, and is 
unlikely to be able to convincingly demonstrate "need".
This is where we come back to examples, as guidance to the 
implementers of the policy we recommend, or as misleading to the same 
implementers.
I don't want to try and cover (a) to (e) equitably, so I'll stop here 
having, I hope, answered the "where to we find definitions for ..." 
question.
Eric