Frequency of the B type blood allele in native populations of the world
Is race biologically real? Or is it just a social construct?
In 1912 most Western scientists would have said yes, race is real, a fact of nature. They took it for granted as “obvious”. But in 2012 most geneticists and biological anthropologists would have answered no.
What seems to have changed their minds:
- The Holocaust made “race” seem like a dangerous idea now that white people were getting killed. Many scientists began to question it.
- Advances in genetics made race seem arbitrary, subjective and, at best, skin deep. It did not match what genes did.
- The rise of colour-blind racism in the US, which seeks to address the issue of race by – not seeing it!
- Out of Africa – once it became clear that humans came from Africa, not Europe or North Eurasia, scientists did not trade their white supremacism for black supremacism. Instead it was: “Race does not matter!”
Richard Lewontin
The genetic argument against race, as I understand it:
- Race is skin deep, at best: Any two humans are 99.9% genetically the same, according to the Human Genome Project. And even that 0.1% is mostly made up of individual differences. Only 6.3% of that 0.1% comes from differences between races (Lewontin, 1972). Deep down we are pretty much all the same. You cannot, for example, tell a person’s race by looking at their brain or their heart.
- Not race but gene frequencies: Races have pretty much the same set of genes, just in different frequencies. And even those frequencies do not always fall along the lines of race. Skin colour changes as you go north to south. The frequency of blood type B changes as you go east to west.
- Race is in the eye of the beholder: There is no clear, objective way to divide living humans into races that is based on biology. Are there three races? Six? Seven? How do you tell? And where do you draw the lines between them? And why?
The US, just so you know, is kind of strange:
- Most of its people come from the extreme ends of the Old World (China, Siberia, western Europe, West Africa).
- Racial segregation keeps them separated into “races” (castes) long after they arrive. If Blacks and Whites were to mix freely, for example, you would not be able to tell them apart after a hundred years.
Some geneticists think race is real:
Neil Risch, c. 2005
Neil Risch in 2002, for example, took DNA samples from 3,636 people in the US and Taiwan. His computer program looked for certain genetic markers and, on its own, divided the sample into four clusters. When he compared the clusters to how people self-identified, he found this:
- Cluster A: 99.63% Caucasian,
- Cluster B: 99.65% East Asian,
- Cluster C: 100.00% African American,
- Cluster D: 97.62% Hispanic.
I find that hard to believe, particularly Cluster D.
Risch says there are five races worldwide: Caucasian, African, East Asian, Pacific Islander and Native American. Some people are a mix between these. Ethiopians and African Americans, for example, are part Caucasian, part African.
See also:
- Cavalli-Sforza on race and racism
- Race as a social construct
- race realism
- colour-blind racism
- Anti-black racism as a guide to science
- The map of white people – a good example of how race is not strictly biological
Abagond 
Well, I would say races, as phenotypically and genetically distinct subpopulations of the species under consideration are very real, however those “races” are not well described or delineated, so you can forget about all that black, white, mongoloid, negroid, caucasoid stuff, THAT is wrong.
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That human races have some distinct genetic characteristic is not a social construct. Whether they actually are distinct races biologically is another question. I think you have to say not. Not different enough.
Different types of people do represent different human breeds however. You can look to breeds of dogs and the results of study of the canine genome for answer to why this is so for humans also. Dog breeds are not arbitrary. That means that you cannot breed your way from one breed to another without also introducing new lines and then selecting for some combination of genes already present in the isolated breeding population you are working from.
Human types likewise arise from distinct collections of genes and their exact combinations. The reason why it might be possible to breed from one basic type to another starting with population designated as black, white, and East Asian is because ultimately, all genes are present in greater or lesser degrees within the totality each population on account of the movement of peoples as individuals, if not as groups, throughout the course of human history and on account of the possibility that they carried these genes with them in the first place. My estimation anyway.
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Whenever I think I understand this, along comes something in the media that confuses me — because it confuses one idea with another.
There ARE observable differences between people. But I’ve always thought human beings are more similar to one another than they are different.
It’s real that most human beings have hair that grows downward, but some human hair grows grows in curls sideways and upward.
Some humans have digestive systems that makes them unable to metabolize cow’s milk. Others are more prone to skin cancer, and so on and on.
Those exmples of particular differences are not “social constructs”.
But as much as those examples of genetic diversity are self-evident and SOMETIMES correlate to places and “racial” divisions, the distribution of specific genes is not the same as the existence of a race — and something that can consistently, accurately identify individuals or populations.
Those 2 things are different, but they get confused with each other.
It’s like saying all brown-eyed people form one race and all blue-eyed people form another. Just because eye colour is one observable similarity or difference, that doesn’t make the individuals and populations that have the characteristic, and 2 clearly defined “races”. Human beings just didn’t develop in such isolated ways…
Imo, many people are probably easy to assign to a “race” but many more are impossible to place.
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Race is not biological. Race is a social construct created by Europeans to oppress Blacks, Indians and those who have darker skin and aren’t White. In many parts of the world, the lighter you are the more privileges and opportunities you have in life. The darker you are the poorer and less opportunities you have in life. That way they can promote White supremacy and spread the belief that White is right. Racism/White supremacy is mostly about having social, political and economic power over others based on skin color. And right now, White Americans have social, political and economic power over non White minorities.
Beauty is also tied into White supremacy but that is another topic that needs to be discussed later on.
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The words ‘haplogroup’ and ‘haplotype’ are the scientific replacements for the word race.
The word ‘cline’ is the poetic replacement for the word race.
The best book I’ve read on this topic is ‘The Nature of Race: How Scientists Think and Teach about Human Difference’ by Ann Morning
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Biologically there are no races, ideologically the concept somehow seems to be immortal. Perhaps there are still too many rich folks who need it to be used in order to keep the less fortunate fight between themselves.
It is no an accident that for some reason the “scientists” who still “believe” that race is biological are from USA. Officially the USA is The racist country in the world. It still officially cathergorise people in races and ethnic entities. Even its own citizen. That is not an accident either.
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Race is usually used as an excuse to treat others lower than animals. Whether it is real or not seems less of an issue than how people treat others based on physical appearance. I don’t hear as much about the sciences of genes and how they play into physiology nearly as much as reasons from people why they fear or hate them.
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There are real differences between races genetically. Clinically, this is represented by ALL sorts of diseases, but especially, tissue typing. For example, the alleles that code for certain types of antigens on the surface of red blood cells have different frequencies. When you go into a hospital, and need a blood transfusion on a regular basis, your race matters greatly. This typing goes WAY beyond just your simple ABO types.
In addition, if there were no racial differences genetically, then how come they can take a blood sample, and KNOW what race you are? I seem to remember you posting an article awhile back about the leader of the KKK finding out he wasn’t entirely white. How did they know that, if there are no genetic differences?
Morally and Socially, science will not take a stand on those issues, as they beyond the realm of their expertise. Maybe ask a psychologist or philanthropist?
Sources:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23994416
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23621993
http://faculty.madisoncollege.edu/mljensen/BloodBank/lectures/RhBloodGroupSystem.htm
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It has never been a case of there not being differences between the way human beings look. The trouble is in the imprecise taxonomy. How do you define a “race” and might there not be other equally valid ways of dividing humans into taxonomical groupings?
There are VAST differences in appearance within every “race” and there are some pretty striking similarities between people’s of different races. So, it’s the arbitrary drawing of the lines that makes one wonder who defines race? Why should a blond-haired, blue-eyed, person with straight hair and fair skin belong to the same “race” as a brown-haired, brown-eyed man with curly hair texture and tan skin? Who decides that those differences do not make them from different races?
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Interesting post and interesting comments.
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The question should be why did the current phenotypic and geographic group known as northern european ,which self identifies with one specific aspect of its groups phenotype: its epidermal (skin) albinism i.e.whiteness , develop the concept of race ,a word which also means competition in relation to speed.
Also from what I’ve observed of our species ,certain large group processes are also long term and will persist even if current knowledge contradicts them.
the concept or interpretation of race and resulting racism ,
religions or belief systems as well, these two large scale human>sapien activities will have effects for many generations after this one due to their effecting perception interpretation and policy from the smallest unit of our species to the largest organizations.
interesting thing about speed and time,while our technical knowledge has increased to the point of regularly using and even depending on devices that far surpass our native abilities ,we are still not able to adapt fast enough to meet the challenges we face effectively leading to the probable necessity of our merging with our constructs.
And thus truly rendering (an erroneous interpretation of) our biological organization obsolete.
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Great post @ Abagond.
I’ve noticed this ideology becoming more widely accepted among people recently. The saying “there’s only one race . . . the human race” is a saying I’ve overheard a lot.
But lmao @ White immediately switching to “race doesn’t matter” upon discovering that all people originate from Black Africa. Oh how we shift the shape of our world views when it suits us. (Giggles.)
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Reblogged this on Mbeti's Blog and commented:
fundamental discussion of a primary issue.
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“develop the concept of race ,a word which also means competition in relation to speed.”
Errr… In English, yeah, and pretty much no other language, and the 19th/early 20th century race concepts didn’t originate in English. The two words have different etymologies. Race with regards to running is from old Norse, race with regards to humans/animals is from French. In short, complete coincidence.
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@Ebonymonroe: I started to type that tired and hackneyed cliche. To me that is one of those corny color blind sayings that people use that are uncomfortable with the subject of “race.”
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“To me that is one of those corny color blind sayings that people use that are uncomfortable with the subject of “race.””
*************
Or, when they haven’t had the experience of being a lifelong victim of institutional (systemic) racial practices!
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@Matari: Exactly.
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Race as we know it definitely a social construct. You think those white slave owners had years of biological science to back them up? And I mean true science, not the whole “I think dark skin and curly hair are related to barbarianism” crap that the early 20th century is known for.
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There is only one race…the human race…as evidence from the genome project can attest, there VERY minor differences in the frequency of certain genes within human populations. But here’s the point: ALL THE GENES ARE THE SAME across the human species. This is why blood transfusions and bone marrow transplants work. This is why Asians can give blood to African descended people and so on..This is why a “black ” persons blood can save an Irishman’s life with a transfusion.and do so on a daily basis.. Some blood types have an affinity for certain groups of people…but the genes are the same.
The racist pseudoscience promoted by European” philosophers, doctors, religious leaders and scientists” (Emmanuel Kant) was used to give pride to and justify the arrogance of a subset of the human family to extort, rob and demean its remaining and more numerous brothers and sisters who only differ in culture and skin color.
Well, I must say, the propaganda machine has worked for about 500 yrs to the degree that the very oppressed believe the hype: White supremacy is sticking around folks.
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This sounds like bait for the joker person and other assorted trolls.
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Race is a social construct, you can’t tell the difference between a Nigerian, a Swede and a Chinese! Of course you can, racism is what I think is a social construct. It’s an ideology invented during the era when Europeans needed to give themselves a reason to go pillage, enslave and exterminate other peoples. This post wants to give some credence to the whole centuries long debate about how much other races resemble whites. Peter the Great of Russia carried the definitive experiment, in my opinion, on this question when he had the ancestor of Alexander Pushkin, A black child educated in the European manner. The result was that Russia gained a first class military engineer and several generations afterward a literary genius. It is up to the racists to show that they can take an ape and get the same result, only then will I take this “debate” seriously.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abram_Petrovich_Gannibal
Montesquieu’s cynical comment says it best: “It is impossible for us to suppose these creatures to be men, because, allowing them to be men, a suspicion would follow that we ourselves are not Christians.”
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I’m curious: are you implying it is a form of “color-blind racism” to deny that race is _biologically_ meaningful?
With regard to the “Out of Africa” thing, are you implying that they should’ve gone to “black supremacism”?
Also, with regards to the whole “race does not matter”/”race does not exist” thing: I think there are at least two distinct senses for these terms — one biological, one social — and the answers as to whether or not these claims of immateriality and nonexistence are true depends on which sense one is talking about and the answers need not agree between each sense. And it seems that a lot of arguments and claims around these contain confusion and equivocation between these senses, be it intentional to promote racism of either the “color-blind” form or the overt, fanatical KKK-type form, or unintentional and due to sloppy thinking and/or poor education, or unconsciously and due to hidden biases picked up from the cultural matrix.
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Are social constructs real? (That’s an important question)
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“Race” is a “social construct” which partially builds upon “really” existing phenotypical(especially) and genetical features of people.
“Social construct” does not means pure “figment of imagination”. It means “concepts and meanings developed in the process of the social interaction of people”. “Social construct” can contain a deal of fiction or myth but it is not equivalent to fiction or myth. according to Kant fiction and myth starts when reason oversteps certain bounds.
To be exact, all our knowledge is “socially constructed”. As Emmanuel Kant has claimed, we never directly perceive “things in itself” or “noumena”, but instead we see “phenomena”, i.e. entities that our senses and our reason constructs on the basis of sense perception. According to Kant the process of construction starts already with the sense perception itself and continues with building concepts. The process of constructing is done by whom Kant calls “transcendental subject”, it is a human collectivity rather than a single individual.
Kant nevertheless believed that “things in itself”(i.e. what we may call physical reality) exist, only that we cannot perceive them directly, we can only postulate their existence, however some philosophers known as “idealists” went one step further that there is no “thing in itself” at all, what really exists is Thought, Idea, Consciousness. “In the beginning was Word”(John 1). Thus “idealism” is not new idea.
Given that there is no consensus even about what is “real”, it is indeed difficult to answer the question whether “social constructs are real”.
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A theory opposite to “idealism” would be “psysical(or biological) realism”. According to this theory what really exists, what is primary, is “physical reality” – atoms, elementary particles, energy, electromagnetic field, gravitation field, genes etc. (whatever other concepts that scientists may create) and that all other realities, including consciousness, can be reduced to “physical reality”. Thus for a “pphysical realist” thought and consciousness are the fuctions of a certain physical viological object – the brain.
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@ gatobranco1
If you follow Western philosophy from Thales to Chomsky you will find that almost every new school of thinking tends to refute the previous. If we filter “race” through philosophical opinion, things will become clear as mud in no time at all.
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@King
And to the Western schools you can add Islamic, Hindu, Indian Buddhist, Chinese Buddhist, Confucian and I do not know whatever else:) Certainly not easy to sort out all opinions:D
But any way, it is impossible to argue about whether “race is real” or “whether social construct is real” without first knowing and agreeing what “real” means. It is quite possible that this is a “muddy” question, but if we not know what our key concept means, what sense to discuss?
You may say – we do not need philosophical opinions, take the opinion that “average man in the street” has. Yes true, but then, how the common man in the street defines real? We must first know that. Of course the “common man” certainly may have some vague, preconceptual notion of what “real” is, some “gut feeling”. But agree, it is not easy to discuss on the base of “gut feelings”:))
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One could start by reading what is said in Wikipedia about the concept of “reality”:)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality
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The common thread that connects all beings is the fact that we come from the same creator. It doesn’t matter what your DNA is or your genes or genetics, those things aren’t what connect us. What makes a Human a Human, is his soul, his spirt and his will. That’s what separates us from the animal kingdom. We look at the physical differences as evidence of us either being the same or different, when its not our bodies that reveal that, but rather our souls. Are bodies, and physiological differences are simply the outer shell for who mankind really is. God only made one creation in his image in that is Man. And because God is a God that loves to create beautiful things, so he create all different colors and textures and flavors. But we all share the same humanity. We can be wholly different and yet be wholly the same.
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I don’t see colour!
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@ Legion
Are social constructs real? (That’s an important question)
They are socially real.
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@ King
Yes, what we decide is relevant takes on relevance. Even if die hard racists come to see race as a social construct, there could still be some, of their number, who are committed to keeping racism alive in some other way(s). Of course, that doesn’t mean to stop challenging and disproving false or irrational beliefs.
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This is a very deep question that’s easy to state and difficult to answer. A starting point may be to disregard the social implications of ‘race’ and probably dispense with the word entirely for the moment. We know, for example, that some people have brown eyes and some have blue eyes. It is claimed that people with blue eyes are more light sensitive and have a higher risk of eye cancer. This appears to be a biological difference. But we’re not claiming that brown-eyed and blue-eyed people should be separated into different social classes.
I don’t think our derivation from the same basic set of genes is relevant to the question. Scientists also say that humans are 98% similar (or some other high number) to the chimpanzee. Does that mean we are not different from it? A lot depends on how you’re measuring. Measuring degree of similarity by basic genes is irrelevant because nature works by combination of similar basic elements to create difference. So there is always an underlying similarity. Every atom/ion, despite all the variety of chemical behavior, consists of the same basic subatomic particles (protons, neutrons, electrons) varied in relative quantity. Either/or thinking doesn’t correspond with the workings of NaTuRe because entities can be similar on some level and still be different.
So is there human variation? Yes. Phsyically, for example, some are short and others are tall. Psychologically, some would give you the clothes they’re wearing and others would strip you even if you’re already down to your underwear. Is it possible that tall people are concentrated in certain geographical locations because of the genes that are recombining among the people that live there? I think so. Is it possible that psychopaths are more concentrated in or native to certain geographical locations? I don’t see why not.
Race, as we know it, is a social construct that has been used by one group against the people they encountered. One of the effects is that the trauma of being separated out for brutal treatment because of difference has conditioned others to consider it racist to notice difference. But it’s not the acknowledgement of physical differences, for example, that’s racist but what is done as a result. Those who view differences (from their ‘norm’) as inherently wrong or deficient will have to imagine them away if they’re required to control xenophobic behavior. But the tendency to think in this way is itself a difference. And since it has implications for the well-being of people who do not fit into that group it’d be smart (not racist) for them to notice it.
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I definitely believe “social constructs exist.” If social construction doesn’t exist than neither does culture. Social construction in this context, is just a pervasive and widely accepted body of thought, and unfortunately, people are not immune to the Western cultural blueprints of Black pathologies, and pathologies attached to people of colour in general.
When I was a kid, one of my best friends was a girl named Sue, (I’ll call her Sue), she was a White girl, my age, of Scottish descent, with red hair. We always travelled to and from school together, which was usually nearly a two hour journey. She was even my sleep over guest during a birthday of mine one year, and it was just me and her that particular year. We never ran out of things to talk about, she was fiery and so was I, and we often had heated debates about whatever the topic of discussion was at that time.
But, I noticed that whenever we hit the school door, we’d go our separate ways. She’d go with the White girls and I’d be with the Black girls. When the White girl who was “the head of her group” began picking on her during our primary school years, (we attended both primary and high school together), she came a joined our group for the last primary school year, and we wiped her tears and told her she didn’t need her and that everything was going to be okay. When that particular girl began teasing me behind my back in high school, Sue was the one who alerted me to her laughing behind my back with one guy who was supposed to be my friend and was also another POC.
Even though some of my best friends in high school were girls who just happened to be White, we never hung out during school. It was the Black girls, with the Indian and Hispanic girls, and the token White girl from the projects. It was as if it was completely subconscious.
There is this reality show in the UK called “Big brother.” It’s a load of complete rubbish now, but during its first few years, it was often a great voyeuristic exercise in Western sociology. During one season, there was a rift in the house. Although the contention was only between one or two people from both groups, suddenly, as the weeks went by, the public began to notice two solid and persistent groups had formed: the poc and the White people.
The “ethnic group” was made up of a late 20 something African British girl, an Afro Caribbean British guy in his late teens, a middle aged upper middle class Black British politician, a 30 something Italian guy who has just come to Britain to continue his studies, a young bubbly Arabic guy, an Asian guy, and a mixed race Black girl. The two groups stayed completely separate despite the fact that many members of both groups got along just fine.
In a middle school I attended, it was the same thing. There was me, the Indian girls and guys, the Philippian girl, the dark skinned Jewish guy, and the Black guy. Even though we were all friends in school and had great friendships with each other as a multicultural class and school, in the playground, it was the White group and the ethnic group.
I say all this to say that racism is taught, and so is “differentness.” You’ll find that very young children playing in the sand box, will not decide who they play with over the ethnicity of other kids, because you don’t know any better as a toddler. We’re gradually taught to see the differences between one another as human beings based on race, and gradually, over time, we begin isolating ourselves and building our own constructions of who belongs in our “in crowd.” It’s at this point where you get another segregated generation even if it’s far more covert than the last. We are taught to see “race,” gender, class, and nationality. It’s not innate, but a matter of nurture.
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@Mary Burrell
I agree. It’s funny how “race matters” and “race doesn’t matter” is interchanged for convenience. Lol.
@Jess and Jacque
I agree.
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@herneith: Darn, I see colors but no friggin races. Am I totally lost?? I mean, I see car races and stuff but not human races.
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Em’s comment just under Origin’s reminds me of another important question:
https://abagond.wordpress.com/2012/04/26/what-was-your-first-experience-of-white-racism/
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^^^ then neither does culture
………………………………………
Legion said
Em’s comment just under Origin’s reminds me of another important question:
………………………………………….
When I was about 6 and a little Black boy in my class who was my friend and had a crush on me and had come to tell me, was interrupted by his friend who told him he must go for my best girlfriend because although I’m fair, you should always go for the lightest one.”
The first one that I really, really registered was when visiting my grandmother in Manchester in my teens. Myself, my grandmother, my mum, and my grandmother’s friend were at a restaurant and I sneaked outside to get some air, and there was a White guy who stared at me with the most menacing, hateful look I’d ever seen. I had never experienced anything like that, living in London city before, so I though I was being paranoid, but he glare didn’t break for the entire ten minutes I was outside. It was one of those looks where your head is tilted with your chin towards your chest, so his eyes were staring up, piercing mine. He didn’t blink, or turn away once. After a while I realized why he was staring at me with such hate, became unnerved and went back inside. I was going through a lot at the time and had lost a lot of weight, so I appeared like a 12 year old at the time. Still, though he was an adult man, and I looked like a young kid, his hated me through and through.
I ran back to my seat and told my gran, her friend and my mother what had happened. I was shaken up a little. But my grandmother’s friend just jumped down my throat and told me “it works both ways.” No one cared, no one said anything, even though I was still just 15, even though it seemed that I was only a few moments away from being beaten up by an adult White guy for being Black. Even though they’re non Black, they were my family and I never realized that we were different until then. It was a double whammy. The man, and my family. I realized I was very different.
A few weeks later in the park with my mum, still in Manchester, a gang of White guys began cursing us and throwing stones. My mum wanted to confront them, but I dragged her out because I wasn’t prepared to take anyone of with my mother, who I’ve always been overprotective of.
I’d never come across anything like that before. Although my mum has told me that she removed me from my first school because she had found out that my White lady teacher had told me I’d never be pretty because I’m not a Blonde haired, blue eyed White girl. But I don’t remember that. The head teacher at my second primary school turned out to be a member of a White supremacist group, but he never bothered me, so that didn’t matter.
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gatobranco said:
Kant’s own thinking was imprisoned by what he saw as biology and reality, and he never saw the biology and reality that he knew as a social construct.
King said:
King, but philosophical opinions were CENTRAL to how we came to think about race. What’s more, those opinions are just as prone to confusion, self-contradiction and provincialsm as Kant’s were.
Their influence NEVER went away.
Immanuel Kant is important to look at because he is so influential in Western race thought, because, he himself didn’t realize that when it came to race he was:
— confused
— contradicted himself, and was hopelessly
— provincial.
But none of that stopped him.
Kant wanted to distinguish between what Nature made of human beings, and what human beings made of themselves.
He thought that human beings, as physical bodies, were part of the natural world — BIOLOGY.
However, the classification of physical human bodies was not biology, that fell under GEOGRAPHY.
Yet, to gain understanding of the essential characteristics of human beings, their moral nature — in other words — another area of study was necessary: ANTHROPOLOGY. Bodies and places had to be made sense of.
Kant did not believe the elements of Biology, Geography or Anthropology could be separated. Inner and Outer intersected and inter-related.
This was Nature’s Law.
Next, and probably an even bigger mistake: he believed that the ideas about Humanity in general, the intrinsic nature of the Human Being, applied exclusively to European civilization only. To him, European culture and European history was only a reflection of fundamental human nature. That was obvious, and axiomatic.
But, is culture universal, and history fixed?
Aren’t culture and history both a procession of twists and turns?
The human organism, in contract, in that same time frame, does not change with similar drama.
Kant worked with what he knew, ot what he thought he knew.
He split humans into colours, based on skin: black, yellow, read and white.
Those differences were discernible.
That was biological reality.
Moral anthropology was no less a reality.
In his taxonomy, the African, the American* and the Hindu, all lack moral maturity, and any understanding of dignity. This was obvious, because different nations had different gifts, or endowments, from Nature.
Thus, the American* could not be educated, but the African, if beaten, could be trained for servitude. As for Asians (Indians), their nature was passive, feminine, sly and incapable of reason. The other Asians, the Chinese, the Turks, the Persians were the same.
This was self-evidently so, because climate (Geography) made it so.
Africa was masculine and aggressive, Asia was the opposite.
These were then, biological, geographicaland fixed truths.
Kant merely subscribed to the reality of his own perceptions.
He couldn’t SEE that the European Model was not the Universal Model of what Humanity is, or could be. He couldn’t SEE that the ideas of light with good, and dark with bad did NOT translate into skin colour.
How did Kant arrive at these conclusions? he didn’t travel, he stayed in NE Germany (now Russain federation) for much of his life.
He never went to China, or met a Chinese person to find if it was really normal for them to abandon their children. He never went to the Americas, or met an American* to learn whether it was normal for them to bury their chldren alive. He had only heard those stories about Chinese and Americans* from travellers he met at the port city he lived, or what read about other peoples’ travels.
But he felt qualified to teach his conclusions about biology, and difference, for generations to come, widely read and well respected..
* Native American
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typo: *in contrast
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Does anyone have a comment about how “European brand ” Christianity comes up with convenient untruths ( ie race) to justify its close amalgamation with Capitalism?
God wants us to make slaves and make money!
Oh, women don’t need to lead in the church or elsewhere..its the Eve and apple thing. or just feeble biology. ?!
Can the same be said of Bhuddism, Taoism, Islam , etc….?
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[…] See on abagond.wordpress.com […]
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No, I don’t mean to say that Kant should not be discussed at all, of for that matter, Hume, Bracken or Chomsky. I’m just warning that Philosophy always raises more questions than gives answers. Not a bad thing, but often a surprise to those who seek it settle arguments. lol.
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@bulanik
Kant indeed saw the specific knowledge as constructed, however there was something what he saw as not constructed. He called that “apriori ideas”. These were according to him not specific knowledge, but rather “procedural rules” that human reason applies in ordering and arranging the sense data. So that our knowledge is indeed a construct that our mind builds on the basis of the sense data with the help of the procedural rules.
However, he saw the “procedural rules” as static and apriori inherent to any thinking. Therefore he though that the sciences as physics, biology etc, shall be considered universal – not in the sense that they passively mimic reality, but because they are always constructed according to the same inherent rules. Of course he identified these universal rules with the Western thinking, not in the sense that Westerner would be more “universal” in nature, but because, in opinion of Kant(and Hegel), they were these happy ones who discovered those universal rules.
However, one can take one step further and say that not only the specific knowledge but the procedural rules themselves are constructed and they are not given apriori, or to be more exact, they certainly preexist individuals, but do not need to be fixed among different larger collectivities of people and can change in time and space.
This kind of thinking challenges the idea of universality not only of social ideas, be it race or something else, but also the universality of physical or biological sciences, namely one can imagine that it would be possible to construct physics and biology under radically different lines. This stance not necessarily means that only Mind is real and not “things in themselves” exist; they may well exist but the knowledge about them can be contructed in radically different, even mutually incompatible ways. Thus, different theories about reality may be both true and at the same time logically incompatible since they are built on diferent logic, on different procedural rules.
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@ King,
I know, King, and it’s true enough, but I suppose what I wanted to say wasn’t about whether the philosophers should or shouldn’t be discussed, or whether the questions made things better or worse:
I just feel that Kant — in particular — set a down a tradition of “race thinking” that endured and endured, he set down a paradigm. His tradition is deeply flawed, full of confusion and provinicialsm, yet taken for granted and respected as reliable principles and trusted approaches.
This has been so penetrant and durable in race theories that even the lingering tendrils of it some how seem invisible if they aren’t pointed out.
(You’re right, I don’t like him!
His “Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime” (Beobachtungen über das Gefühl des Schönen und Erhabenen) turned me allergic, well after “On the Different Races of Man” (Über die verschiedenen Rassen der Menschen) sent me over the edge…all within “pure” reason, course! lol)
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Ethiopians are half caucasians? Please explain this to me. You see am Ethiopian, I am dont consider myself mixed. For example, southern Ethiopians are very different phenotypically to other Ethiopians.
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Does the social constructed concept of race have any scientific biological meaning?
No! Is the short and definite answer to that question which is in agreement with how Abagond’s post has been constructed. I would also agree with this observation and statement:
No one would argue or deny there are differences (and similarities) in ethnic groupings of people. These are normally delineated along the areas of culture and geographic region. But even these lines get blurred due to the colonial and imperial forced adopted homogenization of Western cultural standards.
Its also true to state that 99.99% of our genetic DNA is the same. This means any biological differences can only be accounted for from that tiny 0.01%
So while we all can see the fallacy of dividing people up into races as opposed to one single distinct race – The Hue-man race. There obviously needs to be another way to account for not just the perceived observable physiological differences (skin, hair, nose, lips etc..) but the perceived psychological and spiritual differences as well.
I believe the proper study of Melanin and its varied biological functions in the Hue-man race could account for this. Such a proper funded publicly and formerly acknowledged study can only take place outside the traditional climate of (racism) white supremacist thought and practice.
But it will eventually have to happen..
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and most of that 0.01% is differences between individuals, not between “races”, which at most is only 6% of that 0.01%. The differences between individuals within races is greater than the differences between “races”.
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I think it is important to understand, as some scientists are who have bothered to do the research, that there are numerous attributes of Melanin which transcend the purely physical (DNA, genetics etc..) measurements. Those attributes demand a more metaphysical analysis otherwise they – as traditional Western science would have us believe – become seen as completely irrelevant. Which obviously, from a simple intuitive perspective, cannot be the case
http://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/does-skin-pigment-act-natural-solar-panel
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Since race is social construct should we then accept that a person’s race is defined by society and not by how she self identifies?
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@bulanik
What is interesting in Kant’s herritage is his concept of “transcendental idealism” as alternative to both “mind only idealism” and “physical realism”, and not his antiquated, provincial and naive theories about nature, race and many other things.
physical realism – things really exist and can be knowable as they are “in itself”
mind only idealism – no things in itself exist, all what we deem as real are constructs of mind
transcendental idealism – things in itself do exist, but we never know them directly, we can know only our constructs which are constructed on the basis of the stimuli we get from the “things in itself” with the help of preexisting paradigms inherent in our thinking.
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In my mind, race is neither a biological fact existing independently from our understanding or concepts, neither it is pure figment of imagination, but is is a concept(s) that our human understanding constructs on the basis of the “biological things in itself”.
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Since race is “concept”(even if grounded in reality) and not “reality”, not “thing in itself” so it is possible for it to be constructed in many different ways or not to be constructed at all
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Some people think that there is difference between “nature” and “society” in the sense that things of society are “constructs” while things of nature are “things in itself”. I think it is a leftover of Cartesian dualism which strictly separated “nature” and “mind”. Kant also partially holds to similar duality that human person is unfree and bound as “natural object” but at the same time free as “moral being”.
But in my mind, this is not the case. There is no clear cut boundary between “society” and nature” and objects thought as “natural” are as much “constructs” as things of “society” are only that the constructs that exist in natural sciences as “gene”, “elementary particle” or “quark” are maybe more fundamental and stable. But they are constructs nevertheless.
Even so called “facts”, either physical or biological, are in fact constructs since in order to observe facts you already shall have some theoretical conceptual framework, so that you can conceptualize what you observe. If you have no theoretical framework all you can observe in nature is chaos and flux in which it is not possible to make any sense. So even “facts” which we observe depend on theoretical framework we already must have before we start observing.
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There is a good exposition about the race as “social construct”
Click to access Race%20is%20Socially%20Constructed.pdf
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An interesting thing is that both “race” in the social sphere and “genes” or “elementary particles” in the sphere of natural sciences have been constructed with similar aims in mind:
– the “race” has been constructed in order to give the “white” man the domination over “non-white” humanity
-“gene”, “atom”, “elementary particle” and other concepts of biology and physics have been constructed in order to guarantee the man the technological domination over nature
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@gatobranco1. I really don’t get what you getting at? If you are trying to argue that all concepts, ideas, or observations are false or bias, then you destroy your own argument. Why? Because that concept is a concept. You see how circular that is. Maybe I’m not understanding you though. Maybe I’ll go test the concepts of physics by running into a tree. If I believe hard enough, maybe it will just be a “social construct”, and I’ll pass right through it.
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@Dman
Your reasoning is a good example of wrong understanding that many people have about “social constructs” as something wrong or false or figment of imagination. This popular understanding means that if you think that something is a “social construct” you could just start by disregarding it and will fade away as if running through a tree:)
No, a construct is not something false or figment of imagination, something you just can just think away, I have already been repeating it several times already. I think you should just read more carefully what I have already posted.
When I am saying that “elementary particles” or “genes” are constructs, it means that “genes” or “elementary particles” are not “out there” in a ready made and definite form. It would be wrong to assume that science just “discovers” something out there. There is “something” out there which acts on our measuring devices, but we cannot know that “something” directly, only as reasults of experiments, as some measurements, which we later interpret though a prism of our concepts.
Thus scientists construct different concepts which more or less succesfully account for the results of their experiments. Of course is natural to assume that concepts that physicists and biologists conceive, are in certain measure biased by their culture, upbringing, or philosophical views, and especially by dominating scientific paradigms and by already existing scientific theories. Scientists do not live in vacuum they do live in society.
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@Ebonymonroe:
So if “difference-seeing” is both not “natural” and also something that leads to “isolating” and segregation, then it seems like one should instead unlearn it and not “see difference” … which sounds like “color blindness” … but isn’t that racist too? So what am I missing here that is causing this confusion?
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@gatobranco1
I’m curious about this: It seems that “race” and its goal of domination of the “white man” over “non-white humanity” is evil, that is, a construct which is morally wrong, because it is the cause of untold suffering, pain, misery, and things like that for a large amount of the world’s population and was created specifically for the purpose of inflicting the imperialism that resulted in it. But if you say the concepts and constructs of biology and physics share a similar root in the thinking behind them, then does the moral wrongness or “evilness” carry over to them as well? If “race” needs to be gotten rid of, does the same apply to science and technology?
Because there it seems less clear-cut. While I am not sure of one good thing that comes out of “race”, there are at least some good things that come from the scientific concepts and the resulting technology — one of the greatest being the ability to treat and cure disease, and another being the ability to bring the world together, even though of course there are also bad results as well, e.g. atomic bomb, dirty energy.
In other words, it seems that despite the seemingly-similar root, the moral rightness or wrongness does not carry entirely from one to the other.
What do you think? Also, it looks to show that a line of thinking can lead to both negative and positive results depending on to what and how it is applied.
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Thought I might clarify that — I just realized it: the race-construct is “evil” because it was created to _do_ evil, to oppress people, not just because of its result. That was its purpose: to push the European colonialists to the top and all the great and diverse peoples of the whole rest of the globe to the bottom, something which is not just.
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@mike4ty4
[If “race” needs to be gotten rid of, does the same apply to science and technology?]
I just wanted to say that both “race” and the ideas behind science and technology were conceived with the idea of domination.
The idea whether it is “evil” or not, whether it has to be “rid of” or not and whether it is possible for it to be “rid of” is another issue.
Many people will say that the domination of man over other men is evil, while the domination of man over nature is good. However this distinction can be a bias created by particular Christian cultural concepts inherent in the Western culture. Christianity, especially the NT, teaches that all men are equal, there is “no more Jew or Greek”, while the Christianity continues to teach that man shall be lord over nature(cf. the Genesis 1-3)
NB. If something is biased, it not necessarily means it is bad or wrong or false.
Can there be a culture which thinks that the domination over both other men and nature a evil? Or that the domination over some groups of other men is good, but the domination over the nature is evil? I cannot answer this question just now, but I think such cultures could in principle exist.
And another issue is that of feasibility. If the humanity will decide to get rid of the science and technology, it would be probably too huge price to pay, modern society is too much dependant on technology. But if technology is inevitable it does not mean it might be necessary something good. A drug addict cannot any more exist without drugs yet who will say that drugs are good to him.
However getting rid of the concept “race” looks much more feasible.
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Most likely there could be a culture for each of the 4 possibilities: both bad, one good and the other bad, one bad and the other good, and both good. Colonialist Europe, I think, probably held to the last of those possibilities (it is good both to “dominate” man and nature).
Now, that bit about Christianity is intriguing: it says “all men are equal” yet “man should be lord over nature”. Yet it seems that in Colonialist Europe and its offshoots, NOT all men were considered equal — that’s where race and racism come from. Hence why I put Colonialist Europe in the last of those categories. What happened to the Christian idea in the minds of the racists?
As for whether it is “good” or “bad” to “dominate” in and of itself, it seems it is not necessarily clear-cut. For example, a ruler has domination over those ruled — but does that make the ruler bad? Not necessarily, for a ruler can be just, a tyrant, or somewhere in between. It’s not the mere having of power that makes the ruler good or bad, but to what end that power is put to use. Of course, then you do have people who would argue that all rulership is bad, e.g. Anarchism and various permutations on that idea. Then you have others that argue the precise opposite.
So with regards to “domination” of nature, then we would ask, to what end? For example, if we fly in an airplane, we have “dominated” nature, for our natural condition is to remain on the ground. Is it bad? Is it good? To me, whether or not some particular program of “domination” of “nature”, or anything, for that matter, is “good” or “bad” should be found by examining the results. With regards to the overall program of science and technology, looking at the results shows both good and bad ones have come from it. To me, that means we need to understand what causes the bad ones, and to find out how to improve things. Much of the difficulty also arises not with science and technology itself, but rather with how it is shaped by and used in the hands of people.
Also, I’m curious, do you think technology is “good” or “bad”? I pointed out examples of where it has done both good and bad, so it doesn’t seem to be possible to make a blanket judgment. It seems the reality of this issue is not one that fits into simple, binary either/XOR categories like “good” and “bad”.
If you think technology is “good”, what do you make of the examples of bad things I have mentioned as coming from it?
If you think technology is “bad”, what do you propose to do about the bad things that result from its lack, like the inability to treat disease, and appalling infant mortality?
If you think it is both or neither, then what do you think needs to be addressed with regards to the bad things mentioned so as to maximize the good?
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(that was @gatobranco1’s post immediately above it)
Also, I notice you mentioned that if “something is biased that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s bad or wrong or false” — so what applies in this case?
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@mike4ty4
Of course, one shall first define and clarify what is meant by domination.
One can start with such a definition – domination is when one entity – the “dominator” – uses another entity – the “dominated” – as a tool or an instrument for obtaining the goals of the former, and not as a goal in itself.
I do not know if it is a clear or useful definition but maybe it can serve a starting point.
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So then does that mean the relation of a ruler to ruled is not necessarily “domination”, even though a ruler wields and exercises great power over those (s)he rules?
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Many Western men in the colonial epoch agreed with the idea of Kant that fellow men cannot be treated as instrument since man is “moral being”, while it is quite correct to dominate nature since nature lacks a moral personality.
But there was a racist trick: both Kant and his later followers thought that only the “western man” is mature enough to be considered a moral personality “above nature”. While the people of other races are, according to Kant and followers, “children of nature” who have not risen above it, so they indeed lack a “moral personality” and therefore shall be dominated, even for their own sake.
Here it appears so, if one thinks that the domination of nature and its instrumental use is good and correct one can use it as an excuse for racism claiming that certain groups of fellow men are indeed more “nature bound” as other men, e.g. the idea which was repeated ad nauseam by colonialists and indeed cannot cause nothing but nausea and disgust – that “civilized white europeans” are “rational” while “savages” are dominated by their “passions”.
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@ mike4ty4
Indeed good question that you have raised. Indeed, not all rule must necessarily be domineering, for example as the rule of a father over his children(I mean really good and caring father) which is based on love and care.
However paternalist ideas that “white” men shall act as “fathers” to “non-white” people regarded as “children” presumably for thir own good, was also used as excuse to colonialism and racism.
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Ah, so the colonial Europeans found a loophole: just consider the people being dominated more in the “nature” category than in the “man” category.
Now if the “domination and instrumental use of nature” can be used as an “excuse for racism”, would that mean that if we want to be truly serious and honest about attacking and defeating racism and other social ills, that idea itself would also have to be attacked and defeated? If so, what would that imply we have to do with technology (and what are the attendant implications with regards disease, infant mortality, etc. that I mentioned)? As wouldn’t it make sense to challenge every avenue that could potentially lead to the problems under attack?
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There are indeed cultures who think that all human rule is inherently corrupt, unjust and domineering.
Jehova Whitnesses think that all human governments are subservient to Satan and that the only just rule will be that of Christ which will be established in “the end of time”
Shiite Muslims think that the only just ruler can be an Imam from the Ahl al-bayt (the family of Muhammed). The current Imam according to them is in hidden state and will establish the “rule of justice” when he comes back from the occultation.
Sunni Muslims are not millenarists but they believe that for a rule to be just it shall be based on Sharia(i.e. rules culled from Qur’an and the teachings of the prophet Muhammed) and not on “man made laws”. Thus in there view, the just rule is implement by ordinary humans but on the basis of non-human, divine(as they claim) rules.
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@mike4ty4
[Now if the “domination and instrumental use of nature” can be used as an “excuse for racism”, would that mean that if we want to be truly serious and honest about attacking and defeating racism and other social ills, that idea itself would also have to be attacked and defeated?]
If we want to be honest about attacking and defeating racism, then we should indeed at least admit that exploitative and domineering attitude, be it against nature or anything else does involve serious problems, what of course does not mean that we have to capitulate against child mortality etc.
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Another important point is that we all humans are a part of the nature, since our bodies and brains are very much parts of the nature. Even if we think of ourselves as different from the nature and standing outside and above it, it is not completely the case. Consequently, the domineering and exploitation of the nature inevitable results in the manipulation and exploitation of human beings – be it racism or semething else. If man enslaves the nature he inevitably enslaves that verynature which is within him and which is his inherent part.
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@gatobranco1: In short, you’re therefore saying it’s bad. But does that mean science and technology themselves are bad and would better be gotten rid of (which by necessity means capitulating to “child mortality”, etc. since it was through the methods of science and technology that we were able to solve that problem in the Western world and other developed areas)? Is it possible to simultaneously cease the “manipulation and exploitation of human beings” and deny “exploitative and domineering attitudes against anything” while still having advanced science and technology including medicine? As if advanced science and technology are built on that, then doesn’t it logically follow that if you deny or reject the “exploitative and domineering attitude”, then science and technology must be rejected?
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As after all, isn’t this just simple logic?: if science and technology are based on domination, and you reject domination, then you reject what is based on them as well, i.e. science and technology? Q is necessary for P. Deny Q, therefore deny P.
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@mike4ty4
Its not so simple, and it cannot be dealt by logic alone:) As I have told there is also a problem of feasibility.
Besides that, logic, especially disjunctive aristotelian logic based on “either-or” mentality(from two alternatives A and not-A one must be necessarily false another true) is also a cultural construct. It is even more evident than with physics, because nowadays there are plenty different systems of logic. Some cultures, as Islamic and Chinese, appear to be built and different logic than disjunctive which see the opposite alternatives as complementary rather than exclusive.
Our dialog reminds me a dialog between a feminist who criticized the science as the invention of “white males” and a philosopher of science(also a women) who claimed that if it is really true that it is patriarchalism that underlies the modern science then the feminist should admit that the patriarchalism is not so bad because it has created the tool(science) which now can be used for the empowerment of women.
As you see it is not quite simple as Q and P:)
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You are correct with regards to the logic part — even in modern Western logical thought there are a wide variety of logics other than just simple classical “Aristotelian” logic: relevance, intuitionistic (you can say “neither P nor not-P”), paraconsistent (you can say “both P and not-P”), modal (deals with “necessity” and “possibility”), fuzzy (deals with things which are not wholly true or false), etc. “Logic is logic” isn’t really how it is… 🙂
… so with that in mind, is it possible to deny “domination”, while accepting science and technology, from a moral point of view? As I’m more concerned with the moral issues here in this discussion, specifically how you face off domination, science and technology, and compassion (-> what is the reason behind things like reducing infant mortality, etc.) So we accept P, and P implies Q, so Q, but we also deny Q, yet it all works out in some way because the simplistic classical logic was not the right one. Indeed, it seems that classical logic may be good for a mathematical proof, but it doesn’t necessarily make the best model for the universe we live in and with dealing with moral dilemmas, etc. . (And even with regards to mathematical proofs, it’s not necessarily a sure thing — remember that “intuitionistic logic” above? There’s a whole school of mathematical thought that works based on that. Which goes to show that maths itself is a sort of construct in its own right, well it is, after all — it’s a system of rules that we have developed for modeling reality, and which have been explored for a long time and which have evolved over that time.)
In particular, I’d be curious to explore how one could: reject domination, accept science and technology to at least some extent, and also accept compassion (and it’s interesting to note that with “domination” defined as it is here, it would seem that accepting compassion would imply rejecting domination, so perhaps we can reduce this to only two things: accepting science and technology, and accepting compassion).
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Anyway, I’ve got to go to bed now…
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If you haven’t already, I suggest reading Blood by Lawrence Hill. It was the subject of the 2013 Massey Lectures. Generally a good read, and a large portion in particular discusses the ideas and connections around blood and race.
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To Abagond:
Risch says there are five races worldwide: Caucasian, African, East Asian, Pacific Islander and Native American. Some people are a mix between these.
Did you read his paper (linked below) or someone’s interpretation of the paper… when he cites those classifications..? He uses the word “roughly” when describing those groups: “Numerous recent studies using a variety of genetic markers have shown that, for example, individuals sampled worldwide fall into clusters that roughly correspond to continental lines, as well as to the commonly used self-identifying racial groups: Africans, European/West Asians, East Asians, Pacific Islanders, and Native Americans..”
Also:
“In addition, out of convenience or out of necessity, case and control subjects are sometimes recruited from different geographic regions, matching only at the level of major racial group. An underlying assumption is the relative homogeneity within a single SIRE group. The validity of this assumption must be evaluated.”
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1196372/
In interviews he clarifies, as an epidemiologist, he conducted the study.to determine if racial/ethnic self identification (also to affirm or refute other studies) was relevant when treating diseases that manifest themselves more commonly in certain populations.
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@ sb
Deleted your long comment on drowning. Not sure what it has to do with this thread.
Please stop spamming my threads or I will add you to my spam filter as a known source of spam.
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“Is race biologically real?”
I don’t want to sound flip, but does it matter?
Real to who? Who is defining the terms of biologically “real” race differences? Who knows the truth? Is it true that Europeans and Africans look differently, worship differently, speak different languages, eat different foods, express themselves through culture differently? Which is more important, that we look alike under a microscope or that we are most comfortable living, sharing and working with people like ourselves?
I would say that for high information individuals, who look to science to tell them the truth, race is a cultural, but not a biological construct. But how about for the masses? What if I told them that they should stop going to church and sending their kids to Sunday school. God isn’t real. Some highly trained archaeologists have completed a study and found that they could not prove that God existed. There is no evidence that Jesus ever lived. There is no evidence that King David ever lived or Noah or even Moses. They are just stories in a book made up by untrustworthy narrators and then edited by someone who decided what to include and what not to include.
You’d think that upon hearing the archaeologists news we’d see a mass movement away from the Christian Church. Folk would turn their lives over to scientific reason. But guess what, there is no evidence that Jesus ever lived. There is no evidence that King David ever lived or Noah or even Moses. And the information is out there, but it doesn’t make a damn bit of difference.
And the reason is that church attendance fulfills a social purpose beyond religion.
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[…] Is race biologically real? Or is it just a social construct?In 1912 most Western scientists would have said yes, race is real, a fact of nature. They took it for granted as “obvious”. But in 2012 most geneticists and biological anthropologists would have answered no.What seems to have changed their minds: The Holocaust made “race” seem like a dangerous idea now that white people were getting killed. Many scientists began to question it.Advances in genetics made race seem arbitrary, subjective and, at best, skin deep. It did not match what genes did.The rise of colour-blind racism in the US, which seeks to address the issue of race by – not seeing it!Out of Africa – once it became clear that humans came from Africa, not Europe or North Eurasia, scientists did not trade their white supremacism for black supremacism. Instead it was: “Race does not matter!” […]
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[…] Is race biologically real? Or is it just a social construct?In 1912 most Western scientists would have said yes, race is real, a fact of nature. They took it for granted as “obvious”. But in 2012 most geneticists and biological anthropologists would have answered no.What seems to have changed their minds: The Holocaust made “race” seem like a dangerous idea now that white people were getting killed. Many scientists began to question it.Advances in genetics made race seem arbitrary, subjective and, at best, skin deep. It did not match what genes did.The rise of colour-blind racism in the US, which seeks to address the issue of race by – not seeing it!Out of Africa – once it became clear that humans came from Africa, not Europe or North Eurasia, scientists did not trade their white supremacism for black supremacism. Instead it was: “Race does not matter!” […]
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We, the Human Race Are All Africans Abroad
The definitive insight into this concept of ‘race’, I argue, can be found in the writings of the brilliant Harvard scientist, evolutionary biologist, paleontologist, and historian of science Stephen Jay Gould, in his book, “The Mismeasure of Man”, he distinguished between ideology and science.
Gould writes that,
“We pass through this world but once. Few tragedies can be more extensive than the stunting of life, few injustices deeper than the denial of an opportunity to strive or even to hope, by a limit imposed from without, but falsely identified as lying within.”
False labeling of differentiation of a qualitative sort between so-called ‘races’ (a term that arose out of a desire to assign inferiority to Africans in the 1500’s and to justify the corporate Atlantic Slave Trade) is not science, is the conclusion I draw from Gould.
To be sure, objective observation of physical differentiation between classes, groups, sexes, and ethnicities show that these differentiations are physical (physically anthropological), are real (as for instance nose size, lip shapes, and thumb lengths are real) but, Gould argues, the labeling of, measurement of, and assigning of QUALITATIVE meaning to what is mere descriptive and quantitative observation, has historically been a consummate injustice inasmuch as it is used as an excuse to declare arbitrary (and false) justifications for social inequality, for planned injustice, and for political/economic oppression and outright exploitation. Likewise, truly legitimate quantification is not of ‘race’ but of physical differentiations which are evolutionary and arise from the principles of adaptation and speciation. They are the result of adaptation and thus (I myself would say) BY DEFINITION prove that we are one single specie, one RACE if you will, with many, many adapted groups, ethnicities, and tribes within that race who have changed due to human migration out of Africa. Human beings are all simply AFRICANS abroad!
Gould’s 1981 book, “The Mismeasure of Man” (and his1996 edition that expanded Gould’s arguments in order expressly to attack the overtly racist pseudo science of Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray in their book, “The Bell Curve”) presents both a history and a critical proposition–calling into question something far more subtle than the misconception that ‘race’ can be quantified scientifically when in reality there is nothing scientific at all about ‘racial’ quantification. He says that the methods and the underlying motives of “biological determinism” are subjective, not objective and thus the ‘measuring’ of racial identities is mostly bogus and is mostly IDEOLOGICAL rather than scientific, For instance, the assigning of levels of natural ‘intelligence’ to one or another ‘race’ based on skin color, which is not a natural sign of qualitative identity but a mere quantitative adaptation that does not prove we are smarter or less smart than one another as a specie.
I would go even farther and would say that skin color does not prove that we are even of different races but proves in fact that we are of the SAME race: for adaptation and speciation to have occurred, there must have been a starting point–Africa.
Gould himself argues that assigning ‘intelligence’ and even HUMAN WORTH to mere physical adaptive traits is bogus. He exposes ideology calling itself science. Re-examining and challenging root practices of pseudo science both of the past and of the present such as craniology and psychological and intellectual testing, Gould exposes and scrutinizes the real focus of mostly ideological conceptions of ‘race’, that focus being NOT scientific enlightenment but biological determinism. “Worth,” he writes, cannot be “assigned to individuals and groups by measuring intelligence as a single quantity.” His argument suggests that ‘race’ is AT THE MOST a simple evolutionary collection of adaptations that are not even that finely delineated from ‘race’ to race’ (I take this to mean that as a specie we humans are more like a Venn diagram than like a chekerboard). At worst a simple evolutionary collection of adaptations are used to set arbitrary demarcations between groups in the human specie with the intention of justifying inequality, exploitation, violence, and even genocide, The use of quantitative and descriptive data points to justify SOCIOLOGICALLY created and enforced discontinuities between groups and their talents, abilities, intelligence, and human worth, is what Gould’s book attacks.
Gould centers his critique on method. Methods of ‘measuring’ supposedly qualitative distinctions between groups of the human specie (between ‘races’) betray what he calls two “deep fallacies”: 1. reification, and 2. ordering or ranking.
‘Reification’ as he describes it is the tendency “to convert abstract concepts into entities”, entities such as ‘intelligence’, IQ, and ‘racial superiority’. His idea is that we have no scientifically justifiable reason to see ABSTRACTIONS (‘race’ for example) which arise from arbitrary physical traits that are simply adaptive, as ABSOLUTES, or as fixed and indicative of worth, superiority, or inferiority. My own thought here is that ironically, even these concepts (worth, superiority, strength, intelligence) are themselves abstractions, without any fixed meaning until and unless a society assigns meaning to them.
‘Ranking’ is what he calls the “propensity for [hierarchically] ordering complex variation as a gradual ascending scale…the abstraction of intelligence as a single entity, its location within the brain, its quantification as one number for each individual, and the use of these numbers to rank people in a single series of worthiness, invariably to find that oppressed and disadvantaged groups—races, classes, or sexes—are innately inferior and deserve their status.”
I personally just go with the lessons of French semiotician, philosopher, and linguist, Roland Barthes–I simply say that race is a myth. It is a collective illusion arbitrarily constructed by societies through an act of deliberate selection–artificial selection. Why should skin color or nose size be a decided determiner of identity? Why not lung capacity? Why not penis size? Why not the length of one’s thumb or the length of one’s tongue? Any arbitrary evolutionary and/or adaptive traits could conceivably be used to make ideological pronouncements about identity, correct? It is a sign of hos illegitimate ‘race’ is as a determiner of identity that we choose to use a trait that is VISIBLE to us, easily marked, and easily tracked. These are in fact exactly the characteristics of MYTH rather than SCIENCE.
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[…] Race is a fact of science […]
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Races are “real”, but they are not biological. Sure you can divide people in groups based on genetic markers. However, people who belong to the same genetic group can have very different phenotypes and appearances. Races, as they are culturally defined, do not match genetic markers.
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The white supremacist hates the Jew because the Jew built another layer of exclusivity on top of the existing white supremacist structure.
Does that make Jews a race?
Why not; they both utilize the same mechanism?
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Neil Risch in 2002, for example, took DNA samples from 3,636 people in the US and Taiwan. His computer program looked for certain genetic markers and, on its own,
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Oh, so using a computer is supposed to make this study objective?
What color was the person who wrote the program for the computer because it did NOT write it itself?
Why didn’t the computer flag lactose tolerance/intolerance and make a race out of those people?
What about homosexuals, are they a race?
People who can’t curl their tongue?
Big dicks…?
Race is nothing more than a power dynamic. He who has the power DECIDES.
This is why racism = White supremacy
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@ George Ryder and Thwack:
To say that ‘the’ Jew ‘built ‘another’ layer (so where was the FIRST so-called ‘layer’??) of ‘exclusivity’ on top of the existing white supremacist culture….” is itself ANTI SEMITIC, whether you intended to be or not–this is just ham handed and ham mouthed, and insensitive to the point of distraction.
This is the dumbest thing I’ve heard in ages, and I hear a lot of dumb things standing in front of college classrooms full of twenty year olds. What ‘exclusivity’? A thousand years of pogroms and attempts at genocide suffered by Semitic peoples? That’s ‘exclusive’ alright, but the Jewish victims are not the ones who ‘built’ that. So now we are discussing how Jews threw themSELVES into the flames of the death camps? This is what you pull out of the sublimely clear and rational writings of Stephen Jay Gould?? Why don’t you just READ some GOULD so you can understand the anthropological, genetic, historical, and evolutionary-biological concepts??
Anyway, please STOP whatever ugly, awkward, backroom Alabama thing this is you two are fumbling at saying. Geeeeez, you sound like it’s the Elizabethan era and your’re sitting around gabbing with Sir Francis Drake and the Spaniards who mounted the rationals for the Inquisition. What next? The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. STOP IT.
Here’s Gould AGAIN. READ IT:
__________________________
“We pass through this world but once. Few tragedies can be more extensive than the stunting of life, few injustices deeper than the denial of an opportunity to strive or even to hope, by a limit imposed from without, but falsely identified as lying within.”
Gould points to false labeling of differentiation of a qualitative sort between so-called ‘races’ (a term that arose out of a desire to assign inferiority to Africans in the 1500’s and to justify the corporate Atlantic Slave Trade) is not science, is the conclusion I draw from Gould.
To be sure, objective observation of physical differentiation between classes, groups, sexes, and ethnicities show that these differentiations are physical (physically anthropological), are real (as for instance nose size, lip shapes, and thumb lengths are real) but, Gould argues, the labeling of, measurement of, and assigning of QUALITATIVE meaning to what is mere descriptive and quantitative observation, has historically been a consummate injustice inasmuch as it is used as an excuse to declare arbitrary (and false) justifications for social inequality, for planned injustice, and for political/economic oppression and outright exploitation. Likewise, truly legitimate quantification is not of ‘race’ but of physical differentiations which are evolutionary and arise from the principles of adaptation and speciation. They are the result of adaptation and thus (I myself would say) BY DEFINITION prove that we are one single specie, one RACE if you will, with many, many adapted groups, ethnicities, and tribes within that race who have changed due to human migration out of Africa. Human beings are all simply AFRICANS abroad!
Gould’s 1981 book, “The Mismeasure of Man” (and his1996 edition that expanded Gould’s arguments in order expressly to attack the overtly racist pseudo science of Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray in their book, “The Bell Curve”) presents both a history and a critical proposition–calling into question something far more subtle than the misconception that ‘race’ can be quantified scientifically when in reality there is nothing scientific at all about ‘racial’ quantification. He says that the methods and the underlying motives of “biological determinism” are subjective, not objective and thus the ‘measuring’ of racial identities is mostly bogus and is mostly IDEOLOGICAL rather than scientific, For instance, the assigning of levels of natural ‘intelligence’ to one or another ‘race’ based on skin color, which is not a natural sign of qualitative identity but a mere quantitative adaptation that does not prove we are smarter or less smart than one another as a specie.
I would go even farther and would say that skin color does not prove that we are even of different races but proves in fact that we are of the SAME race: for adaptation and speciation to have occurred, there must have been a starting point–Africa.
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It’s like I didn’t say anything to you, huh? The problem with racism is that it often IS as deaf and as blind and unintentional as yours was, and just as clueless when that is brought to attention. READ GOLD is all you need do, don’t waste your time explaining to me how you didn’t intend what you said or how it’s innocent and without signification.
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@Ryder.
Sorry. GOULD. Stephen Jay.
READ.
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Rayfield A. Waller
@ George Ryder and Thwack:
To say that ‘the’ Jew ‘built ‘another’ layer (so where was the FIRST so-called ‘layer’??) of ‘exclusivity’ on top of the existing white supremacist culture….” is itself ANTI SEMITIC,
————————————————————————————————
Not you again? I thought you died?
*shakes heads*
Mr. Waller, are you a Semite? If you are NOT, please sit down and shut up.
Thank you.
Now, is there a SEMITE in the house?
If you are a SEMITE, please explain:
1. What a SEMITE is? and
2. What a SEMITE does?
Thank you.
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@ Thwack and at Ryder:
First of all, Ryder, I know your line of thought and I don’t think you meant to be offensive, I think the true culprit here is Thwack, so this is really meant for him, more than you.
Thwack, you offer more bullsh*t on top of the previous bullsh*t. Classic reductionism, projection, minimization, back-peddling, derailing, double tracking, selective response, quoting out of context, straight up ignoring the complexity of what I wrote to you, and little boy sh*tfaced jokes–silly uses of humor to hide how empty your silly jokes are when offered as a substitute for real scientific analysis.
“Gaaaaaw-lee Mr. Big words Rayfield, I we ain’t smurt like you is!’
Well if you don’t READ I guess you ain’t; but the most offensive of ALL, is how you, yes you, not Ryder, YOU relentlessly double down on offensive racist mutterings to challenge my objection to anti-Semitism because I am not a Semite?? Gee, didn’t I just post in the last two weeks an EXHAUSTIVE list of Whites who have objected to slavery, Germans and Europeans of various origins who objected to the holocaust, and Whites who were martyrs in defense of people of Color??
Oh, I guess you didn’t READ that. What DO you read? I’m supposed to just go on repeating myself so that you can make up for the intellectual bankruptcy of your comments by gaining a sense of power from making me react to your ignoring of all the other people as well as me who have posted challenging anthropology, history, biology, and genetics in response to Abagond?
Shake your two ‘heads; at that. The utter obtuseness of responding to all I wrote by asking, what a Semite does, can be answered like this: ask the former Haganah, terrorist and criminal abuser of Ramle and Lydda who somehow bravely reformed himself into the martyr for peace with Egypt, Yitzhak Rabin (a Semite). Ask Bob Marley, whose Afrikan descent in the belly of a slave ship in the middle passage was from the original tribes of Israel through the Saharan Rastas (a Semite too).
Let me show you what a Black man does in the face of jokes in response to his analysis: he ignores your butt from here on out.
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@Rayfield
As much as you may like to write George off as not knowing better, I would not be so quick. His brand of joking is just as bad and in poor taste as thwack.
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Rayfield A. Waller
“Gaaaaaw-lee Mr. Big words Rayfield, I we ain’t smurt like you is!’
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Are you making fun of the way black people talk?
Thats racist.
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George Ryder
Nope. It is not Halloween yet, but I do not believe in giving one a pass over the other.
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@George
I am most certain he can too, but I am also free in stating my opinion on the matter.
I don’t really feel any kind of way about you, but it would be short-sighted on my end to ignore a behavior that is similar to a troll.
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King said:
Excellent comment.
The taxonomic and semantic aspects are important. Who decides which differences are racial and which are variation within race? The obvious suspicion is to think that these decisions are made according to socio-political agendas rather than according to scientific rationale.
Unfortunately, there are practical reasons to treat race as de facto, objective reality, even though politics is still inextricably tangled up in it all. For example, the ongoing controversy about the lack of representative diversity in medical research and clinical trials. It is established fact that some medicines are not only more effective for patients of specific “races”, but that safety issues also vary according to “race”. What cures a white patient may be detrimental to an black African or African American patient, and vice versa.
The implications are not difficult to extrapolate.
It seems impossible to separate scientific concepts of race from political ones.
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@George
I am sure if it made no difference you would not have responded in the first place.
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buddhuu
It is established fact that some medicines are not only more effective for patients of specific “races”, but that safety issues also vary according to “race”.
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OK, lets follow your logic for a moment:
“It is established fact that some medicines are not only more effective for patients of specific “ages”, but that safety issues also vary according to “age”.”
Should children be described as a different race than adults?
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Um… no.
To what logic do you refer, thwack? Are you sure you’re reading what I wrote?
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Here’s a n example of the kind of medical concern to which I alluded.
(http://center4research.org/nrc-in-the-news/lack-of-diversity-in-cancer-drug-clinical-trials/)
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The reason I used the term “race” in quotes was to qualify it, to acknowledge the taxonomic or semantic ambiguity to which King alluded.
Regardless of the terminology one chooses, there are differences in biological reactions when certain drugs are used on white patients and black patients.
The “child” substitution does not work. I would say that universally all sane people would judge a child’s life to be at least of equal worth to that of an adult. Would you be confident that decision makers and budget allocators exercised similar value judgements when considering black and white lives?
Concern has been raised that drug trials are overwhelmingly carried out on white subjects. It follows that safety is more certain for white people.
So far, all Ebola patients treated with the apparently effective grugs that have made the headlines have been white.
You think the same reckless disregard is exercised where the difference is between children and adults?
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* drugs
not “grugs”
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buddhuu
The reason I used the term “race” in quotes was to qualify it, to acknowledge the taxonomic or semantic ambiguity to which King alluded.
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Oh no you don’t; don’t try to blame King for your use of the term “race.”
If the term “race” is ambiguous, why are you attempting to use it to validate the classification of people into races?
Do white people have to know how you react to a certain medicine before they can mistreat and/or abuse you?
buddhuu, are you a white person?
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*Sigh*.
thwack, I don’t know you but your tone is that of the guy in the pub who prods at you and blocks your way when you try to walk past because you’re not interested in arguing with him.
I have no idea what your problem is, or what you’re trying to prove about me by deliberately misinterpreting my comments. Know what? I don’t feel inclined to waste the effort finding out.
I don’t know you and you very obviously don’t know me. I think we’ll keep it that way.
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@Sharina
“I am most certain he can too, but I am also free in stating my opinion on the matter…I don’t really feel any kind of way about you, but it would be short-sighted on my end to ignore a behavior that is similar to a troll.”
I think you are correct, Sharina, and I am taking your comments seriously–I am not going to waste my time with either George or Thwack when they are being Frick and Frack together with the primitive racism they joke with. I shouldn’t waste time engaging in battles royals and little boy arm wrestling as much as I have already.When people disrespect the very serious topics Abagond posts on and refuse to have an adult discussion about those topics I should–and will–ignore them.
I simply have the feeling, just my feeling, that although you are correct, George Ryder is merely being annoying. Thwack however is a lot more negative, sinister, at times even hateful–in this past instance racist. He takes joy in getting a rise out of people with his disrespect and word games. He’s done that a lot in the past here, so I won’t allow myself to be used for that George upsets me but I will probably respond to him again if he ever says something worthwhile again, but Thwack, I’m through with. He can be a derailer and a signifying monkey just fine without me to bounce his cynicism off of.
I read everything YOU said to George with great interest, and enjoyed it, though…
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@rayfield waller i agree thwack is just throwing gas on the fire for unknown personal reasons. it reminds me of my marriage, after the ship was sinking and it was not going to get better any type of way, how my ex-wife would speak to me, trivializing and making every statement something it’s not
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When someone highlights the contradictions, hypocrisy and logical inconsistencies of my positions, I just call them a troll and that makes me feel better about myself.
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Thwack Is a borderline troll. Engage him at your own risk. In my experience he cannot hold a serious discussion. He would much rather set off stink bombs.
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Thwack
Nothing you say is logical. You sound like the homeless man under the bridge.
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Yeah idk thwack i seem to recall you saying that you’re black here and i did a cursory search for your moniker on race relations blogs (kinda cold trail, what did you just get out or something) and this would seem to be your preferred persona; however, you act ‘white’ here and just say stuff that generally derails and obfuscates — i’m not sure what you’ve said that isn’t highly polemic and most of us here are pretty much done with you, not to speak for anyone else of course — i don’t think that’s necessary in any regard
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sharinalr
Nothing you say is logical. You sound like the homeless man under the bridge.
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So what, Jesus was born in a barn?
Ignoring the one on top of your head, whats your point?
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Thwack
Your follow up comment proves my point. 🙂
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V8
He just needs to put on his tin foil hat and sit down. Lol
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v8driver
however, you act ‘white’ here
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OK V8driver,
*cracks knuckles*
you’re a white person, tell us how a person “acts white?”
(George Ryder scampers back under his rock)
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@thwack start with your deficit not difference spiel
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@ George
I agree, but I think a new tactic is in play as well. I’m just not sure it can be placed in the divide and conquer category just yet.
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@ George
“you don’t think race can be used as a tool to divide and conquer people?”—Did not say that.
Well the divide among races is only a surface tactic, but it goes much deeper than that. There is also a divide among the racial genders happening as well. Try visiting these white men pro Asian sites. Those guys are convinced that White women are the devil. Visit any Tommy s type sites. Those guys are convinced black women are the devil. Sometimes I believe the movement is more towards trying to mix the races. Though this is just a theory because it does not seem to make sense when faced with everything else.
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@ George
Well who can cry race if we are all mixed? You see how people will smoke the pipe and drink the kool-aid so quickly when they believe everything is copacetic?
For example few if any people challenged the corrupt government or police. Mainly because less media showcase, but with more media showcase more are questioning and yet we still have those struggling with a sense of denial that the police and government could be corrupt. If everyone starts mixing race and becomes mixed then people will revert back to the utopia idea and when teens get shot or what not people will make a less stink about it being race and will accept police and government officials are doing their job all while they are happily making us more of a police state.
When I set up a profile it would not let me use my other name, so I made the slight change to it and it went through.
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@v8driver
“you [thwack] act ‘white’ here and just say stuff that generally derails and obfuscates — i’m not sure what you’ve said that isn’t highly polemic and most of us here are pretty much done with you, not to speak for anyone else of course —”
____________________________________
Well, you sure do speak for ME driver, and I agree with what you say, particularly the word that I think BEST describes thwack–‘polemic’. Exactly hits his head right on the nail.
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@George Ryder
“race is an invention & the existing power structure has a vested interest in maintaining this myth.
it’s all divide and conquer, clearly.”
________________________________
Very well said.
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@v8driver
By the way, driver, I WAS actually READING what you have been writing, and I did notice that you put the word ‘white’ into single quotation marks, thereby signifying that you were offering the word as an unstable signifier, not as an absolute or as an essentialized identity–
Meaning of course that you were simply referring to Thwack’s ambiguous claims about what HE is. So, I wanted to say that before someone, we know who, wants to claim you have any obligation to ‘define’ whiteness or explain your own identity or any of that crap which is beside the point of what you were actually saying.
Don’t even let yourself be lured by any of that because such as that would only be somebody (we know who) trying to detract from the valid points you were making.
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George
Him acting like a troll is merely what people want to believe. He is a troll. His behavior says as such. With that being said; I have yet to read anything of his that I personally find worthy of being called intelligent. His words are more like a psych patient who is abusing his computer privileges. On top of that you can’t fight racism yet uphold it with racist trains of thought.
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If you or anyone can direct me to a response of his that is logical and intelligent then I may give him a slight bit of credit, but so far his posts seem to be childish banter.
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@thwack since ya asked, ya freakin prick, let’s take 2 american high schools, one black in the city, like east orange, nj and one white in let’s say atlantic city, nj and play apples and oranges and you can tell me how it was all fair and black people just didn’t pull hard enough on their bootstraps
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You didn’t answer the question v8driver. You accused me of “acting white.”
How does a person “act white” when you only know their LANGUAGE?
You are a white person so stop stalling and answer the question.
Don’t wait for a black person to come rescue you; TRY to be a man this time.
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weeel now thwack let’s see what do we have here now… what i am saying is you code switch too, but in a somewhat different way than me. personally, my interpretation of your dialogue is a bit muddled, perhaps it’s your presentation style, you excoriate black people and say they hold themselves back, this is standard white conservative rhetoric, and then you dance away from any constructive contribution to a solution, which is what i’m interested in before this us of a becomes engulfed in self destruction. you seem pleased in a zero sum way, this is obviously subtextual and inferred. honestly, i’ve forgotten what you’ve said since your ‘grand re-opening’ here, not sure what it is you are trying to achieve except inflammatory agit-prop, standard troll fare.
what is going on with you? you are black, right? do you think that you can just operate in some deus ex machina mode and encourage people to go out there on the street and propagate your message of semi-benign scorn? what are you tryin to do?
you come off like a prepper that is sort of saying, ha ha i will be ready and you are all going to suffer, but not me. why is that? and that is what i am saying
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know what thwack? i dont really go to any other blogs than here, ima leave that all alone. everybody here knows me good bad indifferent, but you just are a giant question mark and noone really wants to get in there and figure it out but i’ll give it a shot
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lol and if you think i have something to hide you haven’t been paying attention
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@v8driver
You’re right, we do know you here, and you have contributed thoughtful comments, even if somebody disagrees with you, it is clear that you are serious, and that you are thinking.
What does Thwack offer? Like you said, agitation-propaganda. So what if he might be ‘Black’? He’s a troll. My Uncle Stan is Black, and Stan is the biggest asshole I know (LOL). On this blog its not about who you are or your skin color but what you have to say, which means Thwack ain’t hittin’ on a single valve.
That puts you up 8 valves against his zero, that’s how I see it. We should get back to the topic.
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ok professor waller actually valves take in or introduce out air of the cylinder where the detonation takes place, so typically there is 16-32 valves in a 8 cylinder car but that’s ok well hopefully everything will calm down this weekend i will finally be off the street and it’s in my list of things to do to actually do some writing, like perhaps without external commentary, maybe that’s going to work better. i am definitely intrigued by ms. kara walker’s work but i am not sure it would have the same effect looking at it online as opposed to being there and seeing it fill the whole room however i digress
@ryder really? seeking attention yes, unable to provide some type of clear message or ‘wish’ of his not sure what his motivation is maybe he is real lonely or something dkdc at this point, it just gets me all emotional some of his postings and detracts from me thinking clearly, that is all i’m saying
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* or air/fuel mixture in a naturally aspirated system
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Do any of you understand why v8driver refused to answer the question?
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wow dude i spent about 2 hours on your butt las night not sure how you can even say that you have been extended a courtesy by me, how’s them water grits, did you get some coffee
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Prime example of how racism works and continues to work. Thwack has made quite a few indicators that he is and her usual you always have the one claiming “I don’t think he’s racist.” No need to worry why it still exists.
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Though everyone is entitled to their opinion.
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George
I am not talking about his childish banter being racist. I am talking about actual statements he has made as being racist. Perhaps you choose to overlook it, but not ever one chooses to be that naive.
I hardly ever peg a person as being racist and I have called only 2 people max in here racist ever, so your thought process is off. When I do call a person racist it is based o the fact that they prove it. Not the fact that I disagree with them.
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Everyone*
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Also it does not matter if people choose to talk about him or the thread as it is their choice, but to follow up their choice you are always one comment behind them talking about them talking about him. Doing all the same as them but putting yourself as a pillar of virtue. And I am sure you are going to act as if you have no clue how you are doing this.
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George
This is not a debate. Not ever single time someone points something out to you is going to add up to a debate. The mere fact that you think so speaks on a whole other level of volumes that I will just not get into.
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Can you two please get a room?
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Thwack
I would say the same in your case. What with your heated need of arguments with white men and all.
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George
Oh it does. I think Matari pointed it out better than anyone.
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Why do people postulate “biological reality” and “social construct” as if they are mutually exclusive?
Clearly race is for the most part skin deep, but what causes your appearance? Your genes! You biology! And just because something is a social construct doesn’t make it more real.
I believe race has some genetic basis,but it is a social construct.
Asking what constitutes as a “black” is akin to asking what blue looks like. I think at least in america we all have a good idea of what a west African looks like.
Races are just categorizations of how you look and where your family or you are from with cultral implications, because let’s be real, go to Nigeria, Sweden, and Japan and tell me that each group looks like the other. If you tell me that, you’re lying.
The way I see race is this
Categories of culturally established patterns of phenotype with regards to most recent or frequently occurring geological and cultural ancestry.
Basically race is based on where your family or you are from, your appearance, and society categorization of such appearance.
Sure we have more similarities than differences but the differences between races and the similarities within them are the ones that makes themselves most apparent despite being so small. I don’t look the same as Little wayne(I’m a black guy) We are vastly differnt in appearance, but the few similarities we have are what makes itself most apparent .
Just like how scarlet and orange red are different from each other but you can tell they both still obviously red.
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BLake
go to Nigeria, Sweden, and Japan and tell me that each group looks like the other. If you tell me that, you’re lying.hanx
———————————————————————————————-
Im not gonna lie to you. People look different.
Now wake me up when you get to the part that justifies mistreating and abusing people because they look different.
Thanx.
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
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@BLake
What you are saying implies
– siblings with the exact same of parents and ancestors and who grew up in the same household can be of different races depending on how society categories them based on appearance
– if society categories a certain appearance, say, as foreigner or alien, then even 7th or 8th generation persons may rightfully be assigned to that category of being a permanent alien.
– if society categorizes you as a certain “race” even if your actual background is totally different, then you are still part of that race.
Are you a race realist?
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Y’all see what happens when you don’t stay focused on the abuse and mistreatment?
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Question: Why Neil Risch, in the article subdivised humans in 5 races, Cavalli-Sforza in 9, other studies in 7… Does it proved that human races is a blurred and arbitrary concept?
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WRONG QUESTION. Red Herrings. After all, THUMBS are ‘biologically real’, aren’t they? The answer is yes, but are they indicators of humanity, intelligence, creativity, courage, integrity, beauty, profundity, superiority, spirituality, or of ‘civilization’ based on their shapes, sizes, or lengths? Of course not. They are simply a visible and physiological reality of physiognomy through evolution.
Here’s the RIGHT question: Is ‘race’ anything other than a mundane biological detail? The answer is NO. Check out the Star Trek episode, “Let This Be Your Last Battlefield” (linked below), a brilliantly written episode of that old sci fi program that exposes how preposterous ‘racial’ inequality is. Two beings, Bele and Lokai, are the last representatives of their entire race, who have artificially divided themselves from one another by conceiving a ‘racial’ difference between themselves: one is Black on the right side while the other is White on the right side. To them, this is an irreducible, absolute sign of fundamental difference between them, dividing them into two distinct ‘races’ as they see it, and this trait is used to justify war and the eventual total destruction of their RACE.
The point is, that we are ONE RACE–the HUMAN race, dammit. We can yammer all the pseudo-biological, bullshit ideological, and sophist pretenses at ‘measurement’ of ‘racial’ difference we want to (dammit, everyone of you should READ “The Mismeasure of Man” by Harvard paleontologist, evolutionary biologist and historian of science Stephen Jay Gould, it’s in print, it’s in libraries, it’s available in E-book form, it’s on Amazon, there’s even a comic book version for the slower readers among us, it ain’t hidden and it’s there for you to learn something from), and all our yammering and red herring chasing doesn’t change the basic reality that we are confusing the term RACE with the legitimate evolutionary principle of TRAIT. Simple differences in adaptive TRAITS do not create new RACES!
Wait until we finally meet an ACTUAL new RACE, kids, from another galaxy,we and get a load of an ACTUALLY different RACE with a different musculoskeletal system (exoskeletal, for instance, like an insect) or with an extra sense perception organ situated between two of it’s tri-pedal legs requiring us to stick that organ into our mouths in order to communicate with it, or we encounter a race with a gaping aqueous-viscous hole in it’s face where a single eye stalk protrudes, or perhaps an excretory organ where we expect to see a nose. We will sure as hell stop pretending we are not one human race and get to cooperating with one another quick, fast, and in a damn hurry, if that alien race happens to be hostile.
Mark my words.
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vi7QQ5pO7_A)
http://www.amazon.com/Mismeasure-Man-Revised-Expanded-ebook/dp/B007Q6XN2S/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1418094737&sr=8-1&keywords=the+mismeasure+of+man
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The Mismeasure of Man has many issues, and has been thoroughly debunked, There are hundreds of differences in races to this day, and they all trace back to an origin, before admixture. In fact, there are many issues with this article including the fact that we now understand that modern man originated not in Africa, but in the middle east. Then when mixed in the middle east, they returned back to Africa. Scientists say that homo sapiend were because of admixture in the middle east with Neanderthal, just as Ethiopians became humans only as they mixed with whites in the middle east. This is a carbon dating confusion, due to a nuclear war of the alien gods, but they are the same. In other words, blacks only joined the human race when they mixed with them. The ancient texts had a lot to say of these events. The chosen people, the Adamic race was started in the cradle of civilization, and the whites are the only ones who tie to that area. According to all science and even admitted to by Wikipedia, whites were the original people of the middle east. Tracing Jewish genetics it becomes obvious that the only pure Jews are white. Jews are a race, not a religion alone. This is when race started.
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^^^^^^^
Are you retarded?
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@ Herneith
He was doing pretty good till he let slip about the nuclear war of the alien gods.
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Ah, I understand him now, what with being a Tharkess from Mars!
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Herneith, despite the resemblance to the name of Hitler’s dad, Alois, Aloisi2 is female. I’m assuming that her blog profile is truthful of course.
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To break it to you but an ad hominem attack is not an honest debate tactic . I have studied this topic for six years and know what I’m talking about you are simply biased and in denial .
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I don’t have to ‘debate’ you. I will get out my tin hat in order to communicate with you more effectively.
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Yes I am a woman, and a very knowledgable one on the subject! Yes it may seem strange, but the science proves me out.
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Aliosi2
Much of what you said is opinion not science. FYI Wikipedia admitting to something is short of saying some guy edited it to admit to something. Ijs
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Aliosi2, you claimed that Gould’s Mismeasure of Man “…has many issues, and has been thoroughly debunked…” I’d like you to back your opinion with facts. Please state the arguments that ‘debunked’ the book, in your own words, not a link to somebody else’s work
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I would, but as the problems are so numerous, I was collecting my thoughts on them in a blog post to do them justice. It is not done yet, but if you want to know about some of the many biological differences race makes, read here:
http://passionateproject.blogspot.com/2014/07/love-who-you-will-but-should.html
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