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"Marriage is for white people"

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Re: "Marriage is for white people"

#61

Post by RiderOfGiraffes »

gaius wrote: post #60
RiderOfGiraffes wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a deeply unpleasant comment. For one thing, people I know with red hair object to being called "Ginger". To htem it's offensive on the scale of some racial epithets, and in the same way, it's OK if they use the term. For another, you've just created the possibility that people will go "Ooh, they've got ginger hair, I'll bet they're inbred." And finally, you started with "well that's different ... " which, in t…

Are you claiming that the gene is not recessive? Because you're wrong. Note: I am not saying that an individual ginger should be discriminated against. But a high proportion of them is a warning sign that something is going genetically wrong with a community.

> Are you claiming that the gene is not recessive?

Of course I'm not saying that. I know that the gene for red hair is recessive. And it's true that an entire community having mostly red hair has an increased probability of being inbred.

But think of it as a test that someone comes from a community that is inbred. Almost every positive (someone has red hair) will be a false positive (they most likely are not from a community that's inbred, although the chances are increased infintesimally). Your comment, however, seems to advocate pointing at someone and saying "They've got red hair, it's more likely they're an inbreed."

Now turn it around. Give everyone on HN a test for some rare condition (SRC). There are a few tests turn up positive, so you point at them and say "It's more likely they've got SRC." Yes, that's true, and completely unhelpful. It's almost certain to be a false positive.

On the other hand, you said:

  Quoting>> And anybody with red hair
  Quoting>> knows how true that is.

  You said> Well, that's different.
The text from which you quoted is this:

  > If everybody would be born exactly the same
  > shade of medium brown as of tomorrow I'm sure
  > we'd focus on hair colour next. And anybody
  > with red hair knows how true that is.
So when you say "Well, that's different," your implication is that it's not OK to be prejudiced because of skin colour, but it is OK to be prejudiced against people with red hair. It's different, because having red hair makes it more likely that they are inbred.

That's how your comment reads. That's what your comment appears to say. It may not be what you meant, but it's still deeply offensive, even if you don't realise it.

Your comments about communities, etc, are correct, but when you insert them into a discussion about prejudice, the implications and import are entirely different. It's that juxtaposition that matters.

Re: "Marriage is for white people"

#62

Post by jacquesm »

gaius wrote: post #60
RiderOfGiraffes wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a deeply unpleasant comment. For one thing, people I know with red hair object to being called "Ginger". To htem it's offensive on the scale of some racial epithets, and in the same way, it's OK if they use the term. For another, you've just created the possibility that people will go "Ooh, they've got ginger hair, I'll bet they're inbred." And finally, you started with "well that's different ... " which, in t…

Are you claiming that the gene is not recessive? Because you're wrong. Note: I am not saying that an individual ginger should be discriminated against. But a high proportion of them is a warning sign that something is going genetically wrong with a community.

By your rules a community of mostly blue eyed people has something genetically wrong with them.

Funny how eugenics doesn't work whichever way you try to slice it isn't it ?

A gene being recessive or dominant and being expressed in a group of individuals is not immediately a sign of 'inbreeding'. By that standard we are all 'inbreeding', everybody will have a number of recessive genes expressed, even if that does not lead to them having a different phenotype.

Inbreeding refers to a population too small to have a viable sized gene pool, one of the traits is exposure of recessive traits.

You're confusing the cause and the effect. Not all recessive traits are exposed by inbreeding, the vast majority of them are regular recombination in a lively genepool.

Re: "Marriage is for white people"

#63

Post by jacquesm »

RiderOfGiraffes wrote: post #61
gaius wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you claiming that the gene is not recessive? Because you're wrong. Note: I am not saying that an individual ginger should be discriminated against. But a high proportion of them is a warning sign that something is going genetically wrong with a community.

> Are you claiming that the gene is not recessive? Of course I'm not saying that. I know that the gene for red hair is recessive. And it's true that an entire community having mostly red hair has an increased probability of being inbred. But think of it as a test that someone comes from a community that is inbred. Almost every positive (someone has red hair) will be a false positive (they most likely are not from a c…

I think gaius has made my point better than I could have ever made it myself.

Any outside distinction will lead to people using that distinction to draw far reaching conclusions about the people that have that distinction.

Inbreeding indeed.

Re: "Marriage is for white people"

#64

Post by gaius »

jacquesm wrote: post #62
gaius wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you claiming that the gene is not recessive? Because you're wrong. Note: I am not saying that an individual ginger should be discriminated against. But a high proportion of them is a warning sign that something is going genetically wrong with a community.

By your rules a community of mostly blue eyed people has something genetically wrong with them. Funny how eugenics doesn't work whichever way you try to slice it isn't it ? A gene being recessive or dominant and being expressed in a group of individuals is not immediately a sign of 'inbreeding'. By that standard we are all 'inbreeding', everybody will have a number of recessive genes expressed, even if that does not…

By your rules a community of mostly blue eyed people has something genetically wrong with them.

Well, yes. There are such communities, and they are inbred.

Re: "Marriage is for white people"

#65

Post by RiderOfGiraffes »

gaius wrote: post #64
jacquesm wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By your rules a community of mostly blue eyed people has something genetically wrong with them. Funny how eugenics doesn't work whichever way you try to slice it isn't it ? A gene being recessive or dominant and being expressed in a group of individuals is not immediately a sign of 'inbreeding'. By that standard we are all 'inbreeding', everybody will have a number of recessive genes expressed, even if that does not…

By your rules a community of mostly blue eyed people has something genetically wrong with them. Well, yes. There are such communities, and they are inbred.

And the way you phrased your earlier comment, you make it sound like it's therefore OK to be prejudiced against people with blue eyes.

Maybe you personally aren't, and quite possibly that's not what you mean, but it is an interpretation of what you are saying.

If it's not what you mean, I suggest you think more carefully about how you say things.

Re: "Marriage is for white people"

#66

Post by sokoloff »

emmett wrote: post #11
skwaddar wrote: post #5

Blacks and their slavery shoulder chip, GET OVER IT Newsflash : "more Irish were sold as slaves to the American colonies and plantations from 1651 to 1660 than the total existing “free” population of the Americas" http://www.ewtn.com/library/HUMANITY/SLAVES.TXT http://www.scoilgaeilge.org/academics/slaves.htm From 1641 to 1652, over 500,000 Irish were killed by the English and another 300,000 were sold as slaves. Ire…

First - great collection of links. The history of slavery deserves a more thorough understanding than what's normally taught in high school. And yet, it was not the Irish who couldn't vote as late as the 60s, nor were the Irish the ones in segregated schools through the 70s, nor were there Irish divisions of the armed forces in World War II sent on the most dangerous missions. There were not masses of Irishmen enslav…

If you agree (as I do) that the sooner a population "gets over it" and starts looking forward rather than back to improve their situation, the better it is for them, then suggesting that they "get over it" is good prescriptive advice.

The longer that a community keeps bringing up the past as a "reminder of what you did to us", the longer those after-effects persist. Nevermind that in almost every cse, the "you" isn't the one that did those things, and that the "us" wasn't the one to whom those things were done. (Where it is, by all means avail yourself of the remedies available in the legal system.)

Do you feel that scientists have made an adequate recovery from the persecution (and in instances, executions) of the past? Do you think that Christians have made an adequate recovery to a position of at least equality with the Romans?

I acknowledge that terrible, unconscionable things have been done to different groups of people by other different groups of people over time. We can concentrate our efforts on forcing atonement and punishment for the past acts of others who look like us, or we can shrug all that shit off and say "today and tomorrow are new days; let's make them the best days we can." Some people will choose the former and some the latter strategy. On balance, those who choose the latter strategy will be more successful and happier, whether they are members of the previously "superior" or "persecuted" population.

Re: "Marriage is for white people"

#67

Post by scott_s »

TomOfTTB wrote: post #29
msluyter wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s against men’s evolutionary nature to marry yet they still got married just as quickly (and they didn’t need wives to support them). Actually, as I understand it, current evo-psych holds that men (and women) have dual evolutionary strategies. One, as you imply, is to play the field as widely as possible. But the other is to invest one's energy in a single woman/family in order to increase the chances for a partic…

I've never heard of this occuring at a primitive level (which was what I was referring to). I know there are primates where females are considered the "leaders" such as Gibbons and monogamy has been observed in them but I've never seen a male dominated society of primates where monogamy was naturally occuring. Again, I'm not disputing the fact that men can want to be monogomous or realize it's the best way to breed.…

I'm not sure what you mean by "without female influence." In humans, semi-monogamous coupling is an a result of the extraordinary expense (in time and energy) of raising a human child. Read The Third Chimpanzee by Jared Diamond for a full discussion on how the spectrum of human monogamy - I say "semi-monogamous" since cheating is prevalent in all humans, and he provides potential reasons for why this is so.

Re: "Marriage is for white people"

#68

Post by scott_s »

TomOfTTB wrote: post #28
cgranade wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your claim that somehow marriage is against "men's evolutionary nature" is a pretty strong one. Certainly, widespread attempts at reproduction (screwing everything that moves) is one strategy, but it's not at all clear to me that such a strategy is favored by our human instincts honed by evolution. Frankly, your use of the word evolution seems to be to justify preconceived notions of male and female roles in society.

Are you kidding? Look, you can argue there are varying opinions. I have no problem with that. But the majoirty opinion among people who study male nature is that our instinct is to "spread our seed" as widely as possible because or evolutionary purpose is to further our own lineage. You see this in pretty much all primates. Silverback Gorilla's have whole tribes that are made up of the women they have sex with and th…

That is not the majority opinion. That's reasoning is too simple; it takes no account for the cost of raising children.

Using other primates as support is dangerous. Raising a human child is much more time consuming than raising a gorilla. Gorillas can forage for themselves much earlier than a human child can provide food for itself. Our ecological niche is using tools, so we have to train our children how to use them. This takes time.

As the expense in terms of time and energy of raising an offspring increases, it puts selection pressure towards monogamy.

Re: "Marriage is for white people"

#69

Post by gnaritas »

TomOfTTB wrote: post #12
steveeq1 wrote: post #6

And how does this relate to hacker news?

It’s a stretch, I’ll grant you that (I didn’t submit it). But to me this is an interesting challenge to the technology community. Having people in good marriages is a positive thing. It’s good for society (it promotes stability in a population), it’s good for individuals (who always have someone to rely on no matter how tough things get) and it’s good for children (divorced parents show up as a negative factor in eve…

> My observation is that black women in their twenties and early thirties want to marry and commit at a time when black men their age are more likely to enjoy playing the field.

I hardly think this is unique to black men and women, this seems a general description of all men and women and is easily compensated for by the fact that women tend to marry older men and men marry younger women.

Re: "Marriage is for white people"

#70

Post by nopassrecover »

9oliYQjP wrote: post #31
nopassrecover wrote: post #10

What is the American obsession with race? I'm sure there's a more useful explanation behind these rates (perhaps family tradition of marriage, income, place of living etc. etc.).

I'm not American, but Americans get a bad rap on race relations. Go to other westernized countries and racism is far more systemic. I mean for crying out loud, you have the gypsies all across Europe who are marginalized, Spanish fans taunting a black F1 driver with the "N" word, Japan is a completely xenophobic mess, etc. All otherwise comparable countries in terms of standard of living. Except the United States is i…

Good points. I didn't mean Americans are more discriminatory, just that they are more obsessed. It's always about a person's race.
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