Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

An Argument for Race Abolitionism (2020)

spiked-online.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–49 of 49 posts

Re: An Argument for Race Abolitionism (2020)

#41

Post by Kednicma »

EForEndeavour wrote: post #40
Kednicma wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are accents cultural or racial? There's plenty of cultural traits which are heritable and measurable. The difference is that there's only one human race, while there's many different cultural memeplexes. Race literally doesn't exist: The partitions that you imagine as dividing people aren't actually backed by any particular observable or experiment. Meanwhile, cultural markers do exist: We can measure what people wea…

> The partitions that you imagine as dividing people aren't actually backed by any particular observable or experiment. Meanwhile, cultural markers do exist: We can measure what people wear, speak, trade, value, etc. I'm having genuine difficulty wrapping my mind around this argument. I don't mean to inflame tempers or anything here, but would we agree that any operational definition of "race" probably needs to inclu…

No worries. It sounds like you don't have a problem with the latter part, just the former part, so we'll focus on that.

You say that it's "easy" for you to determine whether somebody is "East Asian", just by looking at a photo. What are you looking for, though? Probably some sort of appearance affected by genetics. However, no East Asian can carry the complete gene pool from their region, so no East Asian can carry a set of genetic markers which is guaranteed to produce an appearance which is reliably recognizable. (This isn't specific to East Asia, of course.) So, whatever you're seeing in that photo, it's not just their genes, but also at least some of your biases, which lead you to think that your classification rate is better than it actually is.

Phrases like "cultural aspects of race" are meant to excuse bigotries beyond racism, I think. As soon as we draw a hard line between genes and memes, and agree that they have different mechanisms of action upon people, then suddenly we need to have a very hard look at anything we do which conflates genes and memes.

I'm saying that, when chatting up a person, their genetic history is extremely irrelevant. Maybe their country of origin matters (as for spies), maybe their religious beliefs matter (as when handling dietary restrictions at a dinner), maybe their accent matters (just when trying to chat!) but their genetics, and thus any notion of race, are not germane.

Keep in mind that genes are affected by pedigree collapse but memes are not. We are one race partially because we do not have enough ancestors to have more races; however, this limitation doesn't apply to cultural knowledge.

Re: An Argument for Race Abolitionism (2020)

#42

Post by Kednicma »

Joker_vD wrote: post #36
Kednicma wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Race is a little bit the issue, because there's no biological basis for the idea that humans aren't just one single species. A genuine observation and appreciation of "race" consists of understanding that humans do not have a single appropriate skin tone, mostly. I'm not sure what else there is for you, but it's not there for me.

Yes, humans are one single species, just like the dogs are one single species, and humans do not have a single appropriate skin tone, just like dogs do not have a single appropriate kind of fur, or single appropriate body proportions. That doesn't change the fact that there are different dog breeds, or different human, well, let's not call them "races" or "breeds", but large vaguely-defined (because they form continu…

Gene pools are at least three-dimensional. Just because humans are diverse, does not imply that the gene pool is not well-mixed. And there's a rather famous anthropological observation that skin colors correlate with latitude, as well as well-understood mechanisms which control that correlation; there's a gentle tug-of-war between lowering the chance of rickets and lowering the chance of skin cancer.

Put another way, we already have had centuries of high-speed travel connecting the world and globalizing the population, and we do have region that produce "uniform" skin tones which look like the average of all of the local skin tones, but those regions also have lots of non-"uniform" skin tones. The people that you imagine are but one thin slice of a much thicker and richer gene pool.

Finally, please don't confuse the deliberate fancy breeding of dogs, pigeons, etc. with humans' natural free choice of how to use their sexuality. We frown on eugenics for humans for precisely the same reasons that dog breeders bemoan hip dysplasia.

Re: An Argument for Race Abolitionism (2020)

#45

Post by EForEndeavour »

Kednicma wrote: post #41
EForEndeavour wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The partitions that you imagine as dividing people aren't actually backed by any particular observable or experiment. Meanwhile, cultural markers do exist: We can measure what people wear, speak, trade, value, etc. I'm having genuine difficulty wrapping my mind around this argument. I don't mean to inflame tempers or anything here, but would we agree that any operational definition of "race" probably needs to inclu…

No worries. It sounds like you don't have a problem with the latter part, just the former part, so we'll focus on that. You say that it's "easy" for you to determine whether somebody is "East Asian", just by looking at a photo. What are you looking for, though? Probably some sort of appearance affected by genetics. However, no East Asian can carry the complete gene pool from their region, so no East Asian can carry a…

> You say that it's "easy" for you to determine whether somebody is "East Asian", just by looking at a photo. What are you looking for, though? Probably some sort of appearance affected by genetics. However, no East Asian can carry the complete gene pool from their region, so no East Asian can carry a set of genetic markers which is guaranteed to produce an appearance which is reliably recognizable.

It feels like this discussion is disproportionately weighted toward exceptions to demonstrably real correlations between a person's ancestral origin and their appearance and genes. Why would every member of a given cluster of related people be required to carry every one of the criteria that define the cluster? In my mind, that defeats the whole purpose of clustering in the first place, and seems especially out of place given that normal people in normal situations make fuzzy, heuristic classifications of people based on incomplete information.

Also, doesn't this "nobody carries the complete pool from their region" argument apply equally to any conceivable definition of culture? Not every rural Texan espouses exactly the same cultural values as each other, or cultural memes, or what have you. Despite the inherent fuzziness in defining what it means to be rural Texan, you can still make the definition meaningful. The ability to define a Sherpa culture seems equally plausible as the ability to characterize Sherpa genotypes and phenotypes. The fuzziness of a classification does not negate the fact that fuzzy classification is still possible.

> So, whatever you're seeing in that photo, it's not just their genes, but also at least some of your biases, which lead you to think that your classification rate is better than it actually is.

That makes sense to me.

Re: An Argument for Race Abolitionism (2020)

#46

Post by arel »

syshum wrote: post #33
arel wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you're missing here is in reality, your life experience, outcomes and how you are treated in society can be very much a consequence of your "identity". All groups are advocating for is equality of treatment from institutions and from society at large. Is that too much to ask? Once we get to that place there's nothing more marginalised groups would love to do then to stop being defined by race.

What you are missing is that "All Groups" are not simply asking for "equality of treatment from institutions and from society at large" in fact many groups are asking for equity not equality, there is a difference. Sometimes this is referred to was "equality of outcome vs opportunity"

This a (frankly lazy) narrative often used to dismiss demands for equality.

You might be able to point to isolated incidents but to view group advocacy as a whole as malicious power grab is simply not true and a gross misrepresentation.

A better question is probably do you think certain groups are wrong in their perception that they are unfairly treated?

If yes then you are not acknowledging a vast amount of very clearly expressed life experience and if no why be against them advocating for themselves as a group?

Re: An Argument for Race Abolitionism (2020)

#47

Post by justin66 »

atemerev wrote: post #2

This is how it works in European countries, e.g. France. “Race” never figures in any government documents, forms and surveys. Mentioning someone’s race considered to be somewhat rude and is regarded as a thing of the past. Not everybody is race-agnostic, but all government organizations and all businesses are required to be race-agnostic by law. This includes never asking about race, particularly in forms and surveys…

> Mentioning someone’s race considered to be somewhat rude and is regarded as a thing of the past.

After reading about some especially unsubtle racism in the French right-wing press today, [1] it struck me how similar France and the United States are in this regard, at least superficially. The centrist people in government condemning the obvious racism, the powerful right-wing political figure offering a weird non-condemnation condemnation that does not call racism by its right name, the far-right publisher's response:

"Our text is not racist at all," it argued. "It is convenient for our opponents to throw that accusation at us."

None of it seems very alien to an American.

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-53972591

Re: An Argument for Race Abolitionism (2020)

#48

Post by bitemealienboi »

The problem with race abolitionism is that it removes the language for discussing racial issues and hides these issues where they cant be addressed. Its essentially the equivalent of saying "All Lives Matter". It attempts to dismiss and ignore the problems that wont go away even if ignored.

It would be nice to live in a world where racial discrimination and issues dont exist and skin colour is as meaningless and superficial as eye colour or the colour of your clothes. And perhaps, someday, this may be the case.

But at the end of the day, racial problems still exists. Racial discrimination still exists. People are still being treated differently by individuals and systems based on their physical features and the colour of their skin. Cops see and treat black people differently, so do doctors and judges and juries and home sellers and bankers and hotel clerks. And that causes real effects and impediments to people of colour that needs to be addressed first.

Identity politics is not saying these people are different. Identity politics is saying that society sees these people as different, and that its a problem that needs to be addressed

Re: An Argument for Race Abolitionism (2020)

#49

Post by burfog »

Kednicma wrote: post #30
Joker_vD wrote: post #5

> the concept of ‘race’ is scientifically and socially unsupportable. Just like the concept of "culture". See https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/12/does-race-exist-does-c... , here's the kicker: "There were two arguments against race being a real concept: it didn’t cluster nicely, and within-group variation was greater than between group variation. And both of these are equally true of culture. Any mathematical argum…

Are accents cultural or racial? There's plenty of cultural traits which are heritable and measurable. The difference is that there's only one human race, while there's many different cultural memeplexes. Race literally doesn't exist: The partitions that you imagine as dividing people aren't actually backed by any particular observable or experiment. Meanwhile, cultural markers do exist: We can measure what people wea…

Accents and staple foods are terrible examples.

We know that the sound of the human voice is determined by the shape of the air passageway, including teeth and nose. We know that these shapes vary around the world.

We know that lactose tolerance varies by population, and that this would influence the degree to which milk is used as a staple food.

Post reply on HN