To hold that position one would need to be neutral with regards to what the actual races are. As the races (as they are commonly understood) are not scientifically defined, if you accept the races (atacu) then you are failing to reject colonial era ideology that was meant to justify conquest and enslavement.
But the actual case of things is race scientists use the colonial era definitions. They look for evidence to fit their preconceptions, instead of forming theories based on evidence. They belong in the same flaming dumpster with other pseudoscience like young earth creationists and climate change denialists.
One could, theoretically, hold such a position that racism is in and of itself a scientifically sound concept, which also happens to be discriminatory and lead to genocide. In that scenario racism would not be inherently flawed, but rather contextually flawed. And I think a lot of people (on here and on god's green earth) fall into that category. Those people I would also call race realists, but I would not say that they have bad intentions. Those would not that race is a construct.
Then there are people who see race as the only reality, and see race not as a concept but rather something essential reproduced via science. Those are another group of race realists, and they have exclusively bad intentions for anyone not part of their in-group. Those people would also deny that race is a construct.
Really, what my entire argument hinges on is that race necessarily conflates phenotypical traits with complex behavioral patterns and physiological differences. If you disagree with that point (which you shouldn't ) then grouping people by race is still arbitrary, but not necessarily flawed.
It's important to recognize how different people engage the concept of race and try to protray different POVs as honest as possible, without projecting onto others.
In the world of Platonic forms, perhaps race-realism wouldn't be inherently flawed. I think it is inherently flawed in the real, historical world we inhabit. The distinction might be meaningful in that the type of people you call race-realists might be persuaded to drop the race science if you're patient enough with them, I suppose. My experience leads me to doubt it. Insisting on the validity of race-science in [current year] necessitates either willful ignorance or outright malevolence.
It's not just you, in fact this often happens to me. People think I'm being sarcastic (over the internet, not in real life) when I'm being completely genuine. I blame the toxic culture that exists, even on this forum. When I want to insult someone, I insult them. When I want to let someone know that I'm impressed or happy, I let them know. Had I been a new user, and if we had no prior history, I doubt you'd have interpreted it as sarcasm.
Otoh, this also tells me that I have to work on my English and on the expression of my ideas/feelings, a thing I've kinda struggled with ever since learning how to write.
It wasn't anything about the way you said it, it was just that you thanked me for reading a long post when I didn't think I'd even shown that I had, and then said you'd respond to each of my points, followed by a long numbered list, when I thought I'd only really made one point. So I just assumed there must be a joke there, but I didn't think it was a malicious joke anyway.
I understand and agree. For that reason precisely, I'd recommend us (and everyone ITT is invited) to use easily distinguishable concepts: "Racial discrimination", "Institutional racism" and "race realism". while those are not perfectly accurate and just examples, I think it'd help us have a more meaningful discussion.
I would almost agree with that, other than (as far as I'm aware) the term "race realist" has some more specific and negative connotations attached to it, at least the way it seems to be used on here. So I'd say that might be a bit of a loaded term, even though again from an English construction point of view it's entirely apt.
One argument I want to make however is that being a race realist is in and of itself an act of racial discrimination
In what sense of "racial discrimination" I'd agree that it's "making a discrimination based on race", but not in the sense you've just defined it as being necessarily negative discrimination. Is it not a bit of a contraction to agree that there are these three different things, but to then say that one of them is basically the same as another one anyway?
because a race realist must qua definitionem always conflate a persons phenotype with their behavior/mental plane
that's so lovely, thanks a lot owen. using latin and french words wrongly in public is one of my biggest personal fears and you've just immunized me against another future embarassement!
To hold that position one would need to be neutral with regards to what the actual races are. As the races (as they are commonly understood) are not scientifically defined, if you accept the races (atacu) then you are failing to reject colonial era ideology that was meant to justify conquest and enslavement.
But the actual case of things is race scientists use the colonial era definitions. They look for evidence to fit their preconceptions, instead of forming theories based on evidence. They belong in the same flaming dumpster with other pseudoscience like young earth creationists and climate change denialists.
yes, indeed. race scientists and other self-declared race realists are what I described with the second case, and they definitely have a malicious intent
In the world of Platonic forms, perhaps race-realism wouldn't be inherently flawed. I think it is inherently flawed in the real, historical world we inhabit. The distinction might be meaningful in that the type of people you call race-realists might be persuaded to drop the race science if you're patient enough with them, I suppose. My experience leads me to doubt it. Insisting on the validity of race-science in [current year] necessitates either willful ignorance or outright malevolence.
the argument I'm making is that even in the world of Platonic forms, race-realism would be inherently flawed. but if someone would disagree with this it does not automatically make them a bad person, or a racist (colloquial definition here!). the essential question is whether you think race is
a) a reality (aka someone who thinks race just describes reality accurately, someone with malicious intent, who will never recognize race as either arbitrary or a construct)
b) a sound concept (aka someone who believes in race science, with malicious intent or not, but may or may not recognize it as arbitrary or as a construct) -- I think this is actually the group most people fit in, and I also think that most people do not have malicious intent wrt their racist beliefs.
c) an inherently flawed concept (aka someone who believes that race inherently tries to equate skin color with multi-factoral patterns of behavior and thinking and sees that as an internal contradiction. someone who recognizes it as both arbitrary and a construct, and wants to abolish it) -- moi
I would almost agree with that, other than (as far as I'm aware) the term "race realist" has some more specific and negative connotations attached to it, at least the way it seems to be used on here. So I'd say that might be a bit of a loaded term, even though again from an English construction point of view it's entirely apt.
In what sense of "racial discrimination" I'd agree that it's "making a discrimination based on race", but not in the sense you've just defined it as being necessarily negative discrimination. Is it not a bit of a contraction to agree that there are these three different things, but to then say that one of them is basically the same as another one anyway.
Not sure I agree with that, or follow what you're saying.
I would almost agree with that, other than (as far as I'm aware) the term "race realist" has some more specific and negative connotations attached to it, at least the way it seems to be used on here. So I'd say that might be a bit of a loaded term, even though again from an English construction point of view it's entirely apt.
Yes, it does have negative connotations. It is used almost synonimously with "racist" (as in colloquial racist). Not a perfect fit, I agree.
In what sense of "racial discrimination" I'd agree that it's "making a discrimination based on race", but not in the sense you've just defined it as being necessarily negative discrimination. Is it not a bit of a contraction to agree that there are these three different things, but to then say that one of them is basically the same as another one anyway.
You're correct, it is not necessarily negative discrimination. It could just as well be exoticism, which often (but not necessarily) is also a racist belief, but one that glorifies the "other", that projects his own insecurities onto the "other": he is free, he is close to nature, he is in touch with his primal self, he lives in the moment, he is a noble savage and so forth. discrimination, to me anyway, is to treat a person differently not due to experience, but due to some collective identity you have attached to them. (though this can no doubt be seen as belittling by the people you project onto, js).
I also did not say that the 3 terms we just introduced are the same, I said that one logically follows from another, which is entirely different
Not sure I agree with that, or follow what you're saying.
Yeah I realize it's a weird sentence so let me explain it again in a more appropriate way. Just to clarify, again, here I am not talking about colloquial "race", but the actual science behind it, racism in the way that the race scientists thought it up, which is muddled in public discourse
1. Race is determined both by phenotypical traits (like skin color, but that isn't the only one) and, to an extent, by DNA (after all DNA regulates your skin color, and ancestry plays a big role in what you end up looking like).
2. DNA is both inherent and inherited. That means your skin color cannot change after birth (excluding exceptions, but generally speaking) and neither will most of your other genetic makeup.
3. Many complex traits are influenced by DNA (behavior, intelligence, even culture).
4. Not just skin color, but also DNA varies throughout the "races"
---This is where the problem begins.
What I laid out in the framework from point 1-4 is just one part of dividing "races". "Race", after all, is a broader concept then both phenotype and DNA. for example, aboriginals are "black", but genetically they're not similiar to "black" Africans. they do not have that shared DNA that would group them together as one "race". and an infinite amount of such cases may be made. "blacks" may or may not at all be genetically similiar, because "black" is not the same as "of African ancestry" and so forth. what this example is trying to do is to highlight that the concept in itself fails here, that it contradicts itself. This contradiction would not be there if "race" was a purely genetic concept, nor would it be there if it was a purely descriptive (phenotypical) concept. But that is not what race scientists have been arguing. In fact one thing that all race scientists from Blumenbach to Rushton have agreed on is that race is determined by both your ancestry (DNA) and your looks (phenotype). the whole idea behind race theory was that there was an essence that united the people from Kongo, from Australia, from Nigeria, from South-Africa and the Bantu people. This essence was not purely descriptive (they all look similiar), it was prescriptive (they all have similiar intelligence, behave in the same way, think in the same way and so forth). This is a core tenet of racism. It is also the reason why so many race scientists are doing IQ research, because they want to prove one of the central tenets of racism, being that each of the races has an essence. It is no wonder then that race realist scientists have "found out" that all central and sub-Saharan Africans have similiarly low IQ. It is precisely this data they would need to validate their ideas. So, in short:
5. Having "races" contingent on both phenotype and DNA leads to internal contradictions: e.g. some people who look almost exactly like "blacks" (Africans) don't share their ancestry and vice versa
6. The next leap in logic is that because different "races" do have different genetic makeup, is that complex traits like intelligence and behavior, dependant on millions of alelles, are at all meaningfully affected by race: e.g. "blacks are inherently violent"
-- intersection:
Spoiler:
you could argue that this is only my definition of race, and that people don't really believe this, but I assure you that even if people don't actively think or say "some races are inherently less intelligent than others", this is something that subconsciously a vast population of this globe believes. and this belief does not necessarily lead to racism (colloquial def.), it might just as well lead to helpful behavior: remember the refugee crisis, aka self-endorsement via helping brown people, the idea of the noble savage, world music, exoticism, all these are united by their belief that the "other" is inherently less civilized (and, really, that means intelligent and it has always meant that) than yourself.
so from point 1 to 6 you can hopefully follow that race scientists made the assumption that skin color and ancestry are equal (which worked fine until it turned out to be wrong, or at least not exactly right) and that the racial identity was contingent on both. which is why race is inherently flawed as a scientific concept. then, race scientists also believed that with race you could also associate complex traits like behavior (which also turned out to be wrong), because it is partly rooted in ancestry. from that they developed a collective identity, which is not merely wrong but actually harmful. which is why race, as a concept, is harmful.
now people today do not follow the same distinctions laid out by race scientists in the 18th century (we still say caucasian, instead of caucasoid, but we no longer say "mongoloid" to all asians, thank god). but what they did take from them was the idea that complex traits could be associated with race, and that people of one race necessarily shared an identity. this is arguably even more dangerous than the crusty old Blumenbach racism, because people now arbitrarily group people to their liking, and also associate a collective identity with them to their liking:
"white people be like..."
no comment
"asians are so smart!"
see how this is so often said wrt Chinese exchange students, or Japanese people, but never ever for Indians, Mongolians, Filipinos, whatever. the statement is not in reference to the people of Asia, it is in reference to an arbitrary collective identity that follows pretty much exactly phenotype. Chinese, Japanese, Korean, the "good asians" who have features slightly more related to Caucasians and SEAsians, Indians and so forth, who are less similiar to Caucasians and more similiar to "brown people", the "bad asians". what I'm trying to get at here is that categories like "Caucasoid, Mongoloid, Negroid" while now horribly outdated and weird still play a role for our understanding of human populations and differences, and that is really screwed up. many of our modern notions of races, even the one from the US census burea, follows the concept of Blumenbach racism closer than actual identificators like DNA. we could have overcome the contradictions and pitfalls of racism if anyone had cared to take the concept of racism in the right direction, but quite the opposite. we measured skulls and slaughtered them. race as a concept was useful for colonial racism, and no one was even interested in it being scientifically valid or a useful metric or anything like that. it was a canvas to project one's own fears and dislikes onto. much like culture is becoming now. if anyone actually read all of my posts, kudos, you've made it. noice.
(I'm just going to adopt the definitions you laid out in post #684 to avoid having to keep specifying in which way I mean things, hopefully picking the right ones in the process)
In what sense of "racial discrimination" I'd agree that it's "making a discrimination based on race", but not in the sense you've just defined it as being necessarily negative discrimination. Is it not a bit of a contraction to agree that there are these three different things, but to then say that one of them is basically the same as another one anyway.
You're correct, it is not necessarily negative discrimination. It could just as well be exoticism, which often (but not necessarily) is also a racist belief, but one that glorifies the "other", that projects his own insecurities onto the "other": he is free, he is close to nature, he is in touch with his primal self, he lives in the moment, he is a noble savage and so forth. discrimination, to me anyway, is to treat a person differently not due to experience, but due to some collective identity you have attached to them. (though this can no doubt be seen as belittling by the people you project onto, js).
Well there's that as well, but what I really meant was I don't think "race realism" necessitates that you believe such large differences, particular in terms of behaviour or mental state, exist. Whether that be negative things like "they're all ignorant savages", or positive like "gee aren't they all great dancers". The former is definitely bad, the latter is... well potentially bad, but at least a bit weird.
I also did not say that the 3 terms we just introduced are the same, I said that one logically follows from another, which is entirely different
I didn't say that you said they were the same, I said that you said they were different, but then went on to say that two of them were the same when you said (to paraphrase) "race realism is in and of itself racial discrimination". I thought you had agreed these were different things, hence stating two different terms to use for them, but then said one was the same as the other, or at least an example of the other. But again as the last exchange shows, it seems we're still not entirely on the same page with what "racial discrimination" means.
Yeah I realize it's a weird sentence so let me explain it again in a more appropriate way. Just to clarify, again, here I am not talking about colloquial "race", but the actual science behind it, racism in the way that the race scientists thought it up, which is muddled in public discourse
[big long bit that I did read, but there's no need to quote]
Okay so it seems this goes back to what I said about "race realism" being a loaded term. I'm happy to use that as the label for "belief that race is a thing", but it seems in this instance you're attaching all the specific baggage to it that I don't think most people these days who say "race is a thing" would actually believe. Such as that all people with dark skin have an inherent "blackness" that links them, from Africa to Australia, and that this makes them savages (noble or otherwise). So yes, if you are using "race realism" to mean then then I agree that a race realist "must by definition always conflate a person's phenotype with their behavior/mental plane", but I thought we'd just agreed that we weren't using it to mean that.
To just single out this bit:
the whole idea behind race theory was that there was an essence that united the people from Kongo, from Australia, from Nigeria, from South-Africa and the Bantu people. This essence was not purely descriptive (they all look similiar), it was prescriptive (they all have similiar intelligence, behave in the same way, think in the same way and so forth). This is a core tenet of racism
Now this is all very interesting from a historical and sociological point of view, but I have a hard time believing anyone on this forum would actually hold the above to be true. Certainly I've never seen anyone state anything like that. I have, however, seen plenty of other people on this forum assert that people on this forum think these things, due to continually projecting assumed thoughts/motivations/secret Klan memberships/brain diseases onto them. And it just gets annoying and tiring. Especially when they're the ones continually brining up race all the time. I realise I'm just ranting now and not really answering you, but bleh.
Also you said "racism" again and I don't know in what sense you meant it
Click on one of the old threads and look at all the banned names.
Also, if a person thinks that race is genetic, and that racial divisions are exactly the same as in racist colonial ideology, and they cling to these unscientific positions for presumably emotional reasons, then its kinda reasonable to assume they're at least a little bit racist.
We should make distinction between "believing that race is a thing" and "projecting mental and behavioral patterns on members of particular races".
Also, I don't see internal inconsistency in idea that race is defined by both DNA and phenotypical traits. Phenotype in this context is only "manifestation" of DNA, thus races can be considered as defined purely by genetic clustering.
Except they can't. We're not lying. This isn't SJW propaganda. It makes it look like you have a reason to stubbornly cling to this wrong assertion that you don't even back up.
We should make distinction between "believing that race is a thing" and "projecting mental and behavioral patterns on members of particular races".
Also, I don't see internal inconsistency in idea that race is defined by both DNA and phenotypical traits. Phenotype in this context is only "manifestation" of DNA, thus races can be considered as defined purely by genetic clustering.
The two components are inseparable. Race necessarily entails both phenotypic categorization AND behavioral patterns. If race were just a matter of phenotypic categorization then "redhead" or "blue-eyed" or "tall" would be a race. If race were just behavioral patterns then all cultures/ethnicities would be races. Race is both: it is a categorization on the basis of presented, physical/geographical characteristics, AND the attribution to those characteristics of certain, specific Platonic essences which either supersede or outright direct historical, cultural, and individual-level behavioral processes.
I mean, this is patently obvious based simply on how people talk about race. Pointing out that someone has dark skin isn't an expression of race or racism (i.e.: nobody actually does this outside of raw description/conversation, indistinguishable from what someone would do when describing hair color or height). Saying "that dark-skinned person likes watermelon" or characterizing a dark-skinned person as a "physical freak" or declaring that "white men can't jump" is.
but if someone would disagree with this it does not automatically make them a bad person, or a racist (colloquial definition here!). the essential question is whether you think race is
It does require willful ignorance or malevolence, is what I said. Now, whether these things make someone a "bad person" is probably more a matter for God than for us, but I'm content calling such people racists if they defend folk conceptions of race as "scientific" against people who actually know what they're talking about.
I mean, this is patently obvious based simply on how people talk about race. Pointing out that someone has dark skin isn't an expression of race or racism (i.e.: nobody actually does this outside of raw description/conversation, indistinguishable from what someone would do when describing hair color or height). Saying "that dark-skinned person likes watermelon" or characterizing a dark-skinned person as a "physical freak" or declaring that "white men can't jump" is.
The two components are inseparable. Race necessarily entails both phenotypic categorization AND behavioral patterns. If race were just a matter of phenotypic categorization then "redhead" or "blue-eyed" or "tall" would be a race. If race were just behavioral patterns then all cultures/ethnicities would be races. Race is both: it is a categorization on the basis of presented, physical/geographical characteristics, AND the attribution to those characteristics of certain, specific Platonic essences which either supersede or outright direct historical, cultural, and individual-level behavioral processes.
I mean, this is patently obvious based simply on how people talk about race. Pointing out that someone has dark skin isn't an expression of race or racism (i.e.: nobody actually does this outside of raw description/conversation, indistinguishable from what someone would do when describing hair color or height). Saying "that dark-skinned person likes watermelon" or characterizing a dark-skinned person as a "physical freak" or declaring that "white men can't jump" is.
That's kind of strange statement. I don't think behavioral patterns should apply to ethnicities. To cultures maybe, but not to ethnicities or races.
And why the only valid definition of race is the one used by racists? I disagree. Platonic essences and mental patterns don't exist, DNA clusters obviously do.
Inclusion of race in medical research indicates statistically significant medical differences between races.
If you want indication that genetic clusters exist, read earlier messages in this thread, particularly articles linked by Truthy.
Truthy's articles show many many ethnic genetic clusters that are clinal between them, not 4ish well defined racial clusters. Or did you just read what you wanted into them?
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) then grouping people by race is still arbitrary, but not necessarily flawed.
I'd agree that it's "making a discrimination based on race", but not in the sense you've just defined it as being necessarily negative discrimination. Is it not a bit of a contraction to agree that there are these three different things, but to then say that one of them is basically the same as another one anyway?
