91–100 of 124 posts
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This is one of the creepiest things I’ve ever heard and this generalized would most likely lead to the extinction of our species (or at least reinforce really bad racist stereotypes).
Reality is racist. Racism is natural. We've had to force ourselves not to be racist for a reason.
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Or maybe the opposite? Race as most people conceive of it today is primarily a social construct with only a slight genetic basis.
Most people in your room? In reality you know race by persons face. Is face a social construct?
Skin color, facial structure and other commonly held visual traits of "race" don't map strongly to genetic identifiers that could form some scientifically valid definition of "race." Two black people living in the same area, sharing the same cultural and ethnic identity, can differ more genetically than either with a white immigrant.
In other words, that "black" is a race, and "white" is a race, etc, is entirely a social construct, which should be non-controversial given that these categories were created and solidified, culturally and politically, long before genetic science was even a thing.
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Most people in your room? In reality you know race by persons face. Is face a social construct?
>Is face a social construct? Skin color, facial structure and other commonly held visual traits of "race" don't map strongly to genetic identifiers that could form some scientifically valid definition of "race." Two black people living in the same area, sharing the same cultural and ethnic identity, can differ more genetically than either with a white immigrant. In other words, that "black" is a race, and "white" is…
I'm pretty sure that's false. What is true is that africans exhibit a great amount of genetic diversity, i.e. two africans will typically be more genetically different than two europeans. But the genetic distance between either of those two africans and either of those two europeans will still be even greater.
> In other words, that "black" is a race, and "white" is a race, etc, is entirely a social construct, which should be non-controversial given that these categories were created and solidified, culturally and politically, long before genetic science was even a thing.
It's a social construct to the same extent as colors are a social construct, which were formulated long before the theories of electromagnetism was even a thing.
A thing being a social construct doesn't mean it doesn't describe an underlying reality. That applies to any category invented by mankind. For instance, considering plants and animals, or even living beings and inanimate objects, as belonging to different categories is also a social construct. Because, after all, they're all just an association of atoms.
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>Is face a social construct? Skin color, facial structure and other commonly held visual traits of "race" don't map strongly to genetic identifiers that could form some scientifically valid definition of "race." Two black people living in the same area, sharing the same cultural and ethnic identity, can differ more genetically than either with a white immigrant. In other words, that "black" is a race, and "white" is…
> Two black people living in the same area, sharing the same cultural and ethnic identity, can differ more genetically than either with a white immigrant. I'm pretty sure that's false. What is true is that africans exhibit a great amount of genetic diversity, i.e. two africans will typically be more genetically different than two europeans. But the genetic distance between either of those two africans and either of t…
I didn't say Africans and Europeans, I said black people and white people.
A black person from Africa and a black person from elsewhere are considered the same race because of their visual similarities, regardless of their background. That's the social construct.
>A thing being a social construct doesn't mean it doesn't describe an underlying reality
It can be inaccurate enough that it isn't useful, though.
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> Two black people living in the same area, sharing the same cultural and ethnic identity, can differ more genetically than either with a white immigrant. I'm pretty sure that's false. What is true is that africans exhibit a great amount of genetic diversity, i.e. two africans will typically be more genetically different than two europeans. But the genetic distance between either of those two africans and either of t…
>I'm pretty sure that's false. What is true is that africans exhibit a great amount of genetic diversity, i.e. two africans will typically be more genetically different than two europeans. But the genetic distance between either of those two africans and either of those two europeans will still be even greater. I didn't say Africans and Europeans, I said black people and white people. A black person from Africa and a…
Same thing
> A black person from Africa and a black person from elsewhere are considered the same race because of their visual similarities, regardless of their background. That's the social construct.
And also perhaps because they actually are from the same race? Do you consider all the current inhabitants of the USA to be native americans?
> It can be inaccurate enough that it isn't useful, though.
That's true, but racial categories are really accurate, especially in this age of cheap DNA testing. As for usefulness, I'd say it's pretty useful in the medical field, for instance certain drugs work in some races but not in others due to racial differences in body chemistry.
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As far as I can tell, race has no taxonomic significance when applied to modern humans, because all modern humans are the same species . The system for grouping people together by facial features seems to be a social construct most of the time. I can think of a partial exception to this rule: facial features which can be linked to diseases and injuries (for example, the tell-tale evidence of stroke make it possible t…
All dog breeds are part of the same species, and dog breeds are fundamentally a social construct. Does this mean that we need to stop categorizing dogs into breeds? I find it hard to understand how some people still cling to 1960s "there is no such thing as race" arguments while in the real world you can send a swab of spit to 23andme or similar services and get a precise breakdown of your ethnic background down to t…
All I'm saying is, this has nothing to do with the results of a 23andme sequencing run, which would provide details about your ancestry. Race (in the US sense) correlates pretty weakly with ancestry, e.g. all the early humans for most of human history were black.
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>I'm pretty sure that's false. What is true is that africans exhibit a great amount of genetic diversity, i.e. two africans will typically be more genetically different than two europeans. But the genetic distance between either of those two africans and either of those two europeans will still be even greater. I didn't say Africans and Europeans, I said black people and white people. A black person from Africa and a…
> I didn't say Africans and Europeans, I said black people and white people. Same thing > A black person from Africa and a black person from elsewhere are considered the same race because of their visual similarities, regardless of their background. That's the social construct. And also perhaps because they actually are from the same race? Do you consider all the current inhabitants of the USA to be native americans?…
As for medicine, while the efficacy of drugs can be ethnicity dependent, race is such a weak proxy for it that it often leads to mistakes when doctors operate by habit. Nothing trumps actual genetic screening (as opposed to "which Anglo-centric category do you fit best based on how you look").
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This is one of the creepiest things I’ve ever heard and this generalized would most likely lead to the extinction of our species (or at least reinforce really bad racist stereotypes).
Reality is racist. Racism is natural. We've had to force ourselves not to be racist for a reason.
It doesn't mean there weren't any in-group dynamics or discrimination though. Race simply wasn't the focus. People would discriminate based on things like religion instead.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
All dog breeds are part of the same species, and dog breeds are fundamentally a social construct. Does this mean that we need to stop categorizing dogs into breeds? I find it hard to understand how some people still cling to 1960s "there is no such thing as race" arguments while in the real world you can send a swab of spit to 23andme or similar services and get a precise breakdown of your ethnic background down to t…
"Race" is just how you look to other people and how that ties to your status. Its categorization is very much country dependent - Hispanic people are often not considered white in America, while no one would be making that distinction in Europe. On the contrary, Europeans often don't consider Arabs white, even though they often look white. The US and Europe have things like 'white', 'black', 'asian' but Latin America…
Hispanic is not a race. Latin american history is complex and a lot of mixing happened. You do have hispanics who are predominantly european and are considered white in the USA, and they're appropriately called "white hispanics".
> while no one would be making that distinction in Europe.
Where do you get that from? I'm pretty sure a guy looking like Hugo Chavez would stand out in Sweden.
> On the contrary, Europeans often don't consider Arabs white, even though they often look white.
Same thing, what's an arab? The term arab is applied to people as distinct as yemenites, moroccans and syrian alawites. It's not a racial category. It's true that levantines can look white (Bashar al Assad for instance).
> The US and Europe have things like 'white', 'black', 'asian' but Latin Americans are much more nuanced. There are people that would be considered 'white' in Brazil and 'black' in the US. There are also things like passing [1] and so forth.
You're cherry picking. It's true that mixed race individuals (like a lot of Brazilians) are hard to classify, because they're precisely mixed! Same thing with other "border populations" like Turks. I'd like to see a full blooded Nigerian attempt to "pass" as Japanese in Japan. You know very well that is a ridiculous idea.
> All I'm saying is, this has nothing to do with the results of a 23andme sequencing run, which would provide details about your ancestry.
Ancestry and race are the exact same thing, since racial characteristics are passed down genetically. You're just playing semantics.
> Race (in the US sense) correlates pretty weakly with ancestry
It actually correlates really well. For instance, having all of your ancestors moving from Europe a hundred years ago correlates pretty well with you ending up white (and not a pygmy or australian aboriginal).
> Race (in the US sense) correlates pretty weakly with ancestry, e.g. all the early humans for most of human history were black.
I don't even know what to say to that. I guess we're all unicellular organisms too, if you go even further back...
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Reality is racist. Racism is natural. We've had to force ourselves not to be racist for a reason.
Racism as we know it has only been a thing since the days of slave trade and colonization, probably as a way to rationalize it. The early day and medieval empires (Roman, Mongol, Inca, etc.) were very much not racist given how they had to federate many different populations and coerce them into living together. It doesn't mean there weren't any in-group dynamics or discrimination though. Race simply wasn't the focus.…
Fortunately we don't have to stay at that level and can over come it to an extent, but claiming it wasn't a thing in medieval and other empires is factually incorrect.