Does Race exist?

[Lexicus]

But it makes just as much sense as any other classification system: any criticism anyone can level at race as a concept can equally well be levelled at the term 'genus' or 'family', or at taxons in other schema such as cladistics, or indeed whole schema themselves.

No, it does not "make as much sense as any other classification system." This statement is scientifically illiterate.

It is worth noting that the people most likely to reject notions of race on CFC are also highly likely to make disparaging comments about 'white' people. Showing that they know perfectly well just how simple it is to classify people into races.

All it shows is that we are aware that while race is not a valid biological concept it is a hugely important sociological concept. It's also worth noting, of course, that the same people who claim that we don't need specific policy to address racial discrimination or racial disparities because racism isn't a significant determinant of outcomes are also highly likely to claim that race is a biological reality (though they are invariably vague on the details).

 

[Senethro]

Like, what is it about the phrase "social construct" that some people are violently allergic to, such that they break out in dumb?

 

[Farm Boy]

I'm not afraid of gross exagerations, when it suits me.

Well, it does take a man to admit when you're full of **** and talking smack.

 

[brennan]

This is wrong and you're just trying to be contrarian. Genus and family (screw cladistics) are (ideally) based on descent while race is just rubbish.

Neither of those terms were based on descent. They both preceded evolutionary ideas about common ancestry. They were later assumed to match up with theories about descent, but now we know of many cases where supposed common ancestries are wrong (thanks to genetics). Thus, as I said, any objection applied to race applies to other taxa.

We can go on. 'Not properly defined' is an objection to using 'race' by people who are happy to use the term 'homo' (our genus). What does wiki say is the definition of the genus 'homo'? "Even today, the genus Homo has not been properly defined." Let's have some consistency people.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Race exists in this thread's context only in that it is for whatever reason widely accepted as shortform for "arbitrary identification/discrimination grouping". A black person from Mali and a black person from Somalia are not comparable in many meaningful ways, same for "Asian" spanning Iran to Japan or "white" making Spanish and Russian the same thing.

I admit it does annoy me that some kinds of discrimination are considered much worse or more acceptable than others, with no coherent basis even so much as stated by wider society. If it's your skin color people really care a lot. If it's your height people barely care or don't care at all, despite that this is also a physical characteristic people can't reasonably control.

If you have unorthodox preferences outside of social norms you also face discrimination, unless these preferences happen to belong to an accepted exception category. In that case they're legally protected instead of being overtly penalized, though sometimes they're still penalized under the table.

 

[Senethro]

Neither of those terms were based on descent. They both preceded evolutionary ideas about common ancestry. They were later assumed to match up with theories about descent, but now we know of many cases where supposed common ancestries are wrong (thanks to genetics). Thus, as I said, any objection applied to race applies to other taxa.

Nah, taxonomics is continually being revised to reflect descent. Its a done deal. Descent is all that matters. Whales are even toed ungulates.

 

[Tristan_C]

No, it does not "make as much sense as any other classification system." This statement is scientifically illiterate.

Like, what is it about the phrase "social construct" that some people are violently allergic to, such that they break out in dumb?

Math exists, even though the numbers and laws are abstract. When you look at the die face,

You are not looking at the commutative property of multiplication itself, but you are looking at a real physical manifestation, in the real universe, of the commutative property of multiplication. 3 × 2 = 2 × 3.

The same facts hold true for biological phenomena. Evolution in different environments will cause the manifestation of different prevalent DNA strains, and the abstract concept of race is a direct analogue to my communicative property in describing this feature of reality.

 

[Senethro]

Are you suggesting that if a population spends enough time on the savannah they will in some way "become" the same race as all other savannah dwelling populations?

 

[brennan]

Are you Kathy Newman?

 

[Lexicus]

The same facts hold true for biological phenomena. Evolution in different environments will cause the manifestation of different prevalent DNA strains, and the abstract concept of race is a direct analogue to my communicative property in describing this feature of reality.

Ah, so now you've taken it one step further and claimed that the "races" represent evolutionarily divergent populations! I wondered when/if that would happen. Nice to know we are sinking deeper into the mire here.

 

[H4run]

Math exists, even though the numbers and laws are abstract. When you look at the die face,



View attachment 524426

Ugh this is horribly misleading, so, people never mixed after hundreds thousand of years of existence? You do realize there are variety of face among the Japanese or the Chinese? China is a nation state, it is not a race, are we consider Okinawa to be a Japanese btw? Look within this nation-state there are so many ethnicity, while those group of ethnicity not divided by their generic face like it is imagined in your quoted chart, but it is divided by their common culture and languages.

 

[brennan]

Ah, so now you've taken it one step further and claimed that the "races" represent evolutionarily divergent populations! I wondered when/if that would happen. Nice to know we are sinking deeper into the mire here.

Again, are you Kathy Newman?

Some people are pretending that things are being said that are not. Is this just misguided or deliberate misrepresentation?

 

[Lexicus]

Again, are you Kathy Newman?

Some people are pretending that things are being said that are not. Is this just misguided or deliberate misrepresentation?

1) who the crap is Kathy Newman?
2) can you read English?

Evolution in different environments will cause the manifestation of different prevalent DNA strains, and the abstract concept of race is a direct analogue to my communicative property in describing this feature of reality.

 

[Cloud_Strife]

Brennan, are you a fan of Jordan Peterson by any chance?

 

[Samson]

Genus and family (screw cladistics) are (ideally) based on descent while race is just rubbish.

What have you got against cladistics? There may be some question mark over the assumption of a SINGLE common ancestor, but that only a question at the far margins. It is just formalising what we believe about about the evolutionary relationships.

 

[brennan]

Brennan, are you a fan of Jordan Peterson by any chance?

Not really.

 

[Tristan_C]

sinking deeper into the mire

Not interested in your post-war leftwing psychopathy, but to be fair, it did emerge from the discrediting of pre-war, right wing psychopathy.

Ugh this is horribly misleading, so, people never mixed after hundreds thousand of years of existence? You do realize there are variety of face among the Japanese or the Chinese? China is a nation state, it is not a race, are we consider Okinawa to be a Japanese btw? Look within this nation-state there are so many ethnicity, while those group of ethnicity not divided by their generic face like it is imagined in your quoted chart, but it is divided by their common culture and languages.

Nope, didn't say anything like this.

 

[Peuri]

I'm not sure I follow you all the way to trees and lakes as social constructs, but I agree with your basic idea: Because a thing is a social construct doesn't mean it's not "real."

I'm not saying that the world doesn't exist outside of human constructions, but that us having knowledge about the world and being able to think about the world requires us to socially construe it. The lakeness of a lake, that distinguishes it from the riverness of a river, while both are bodies of water, requires us to construe said categories from our point of view. All this doesn't mean that some constructions are not better than some other constructions at predicting the world, but they are constructions nonetheless.

 

[EgonSpengler]

Terry Gross is interviewing Daniel Okrent on Fresh Air about his new book on the history of US immigration laws; the Chinese Exclusion Act; eugenics, etc. Okrent quoted an early 20th-Century writer who described immigrants at Ellis Island from Eastern and Southern Europe in as having the appearance of 'cave men.'

Okrent sees echos of the 1924 act in President Trump's hard-line stance regarding immigration: "The [current] rhetoric of criminality, the attribution of criminality — not to individual criminals but to hundreds of thousands of people of various nationalities — that's very similar to the notion of moral deficiency that was hurled by the eugenicists at the Southern and Eastern Europeans of the 1910s and '20s."

 

[Lexicus]

Not interested in your post-war leftwing psychopathy, but to be fair, it did emerge from the discrediting of pre-war, right wing psychopathy.

Odd that you continue to hold on to views you claim have been "discredited".