The thread on racism

[Domen]

Third Reich for example made alot of money by stealing from jews and others,

Even recently - in 2012 - in Germany, in apartment of an 80-years old Hildebrand Gurlitt in München, investigators discovered a private collection of art, which included almost 1500 up to that point missing pieces of art, which had been stolen by the Germans in the 1930s and the 1940s all over Europe.

 

[Formaldehyde]

To be fair, circa 1913 Europe and North America could rightly call themselves more civilised, if not for racial reasons.

To be fair, that's hardly science. And it certainly doesn't have any place in a science textbook.

And there is hardly general consensus in the matter anyway. You could argue that many Europeans and North Americans with ancestors from Europe thought their own culture was superior to anybody else. That they thought their victims were even subhuman. Many would claim that is the essence of racism.

The skin colour is ruled by pigmentation. Races - if they do exist - are more about other antropological features than about skin colour.

You do realize that science in general doesn't actually support the concept of "race" anymore?

Even though there is a broad scientific agreement that essentialist and typological conceptualizations of race are untenable, scientists around the world continue to conceptualize race in widely differing ways, some of which have essentialist implications.[11] While some researchers sometimes use the concept of race to make distinctions among fuzzy sets of traits, others in the scientific community suggest that the idea of race often is used in a naive[6] or simplistic way,[12] and argue that, among humans, race has no taxonomic significance by pointing out that all living humans belong to the same species, Homo sapiens and subspecies, Homo sapiens sapiens.[13][14]

 

[attackfighter]

I can't believe people can be so cartoonish and stupid.

You quote these random wikipedia articles and youtube links, and make these one sentence declarations, and act as if you understand anything.

And you've been doing this relentlessly for years.

It's mind boggling.

Moderator Action: Insulting people is not allowed. Please don't do it anymore.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[Senethro]

I can't believe people can be so cartoonish and stupid.

You quote these random wikipedia articles and youtube links, and make these one sentence declarations, and act as if you understand anything.

And you've been doing this relentlessly for years.

It's mind boggling.

And you've offered some bogus philosophies about how its all in our minds and how we shouldn't care about it, or that the world is just and we all have what we deserve. Why so keen to advocate inaction over action?

 

[Zack]

I can't believe people can be so cartoonish and stupid.

Says the guy whose avatar is an image macro?

 

[Domen]

You do realize that science in general doesn't actually support the concept of "race" anymore?

Even though there is a broad scientific agreement that essentialist and typological conceptualizations of race are untenable, scientists around the world continue to conceptualize race in widely differing ways, some of which have essentialist implications.[11] While some researchers sometimes use the concept of race to make distinctions among fuzzy sets of traits, others in the scientific community suggest that the idea of race often is used in a naive[6] or simplistic way,[12] and argue that, among humans, race has no taxonomic significance by pointing out that all living humans belong to the same species, Homo sapiens and subspecies, Homo sapiens sapiens.[13][14]

This is more or less true. But in the same understanding, animal breeds also don't exist:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog_breed#Classification

In biology, subspecies, race and breed are equivalent terms. Breed is usually applied to domestic animals; species and subspecies, to wild animals and to plants; and race, to humans.[5] Colloquial use of the term dog breed, however, does not conform to scientific standards of taxonomic classification. Breeds do not meet the criteria for subspecies since they are all one species;

So if we understand race / breed as subspecies, then human races no longer exist (they still existed some 200,000 years ago).

But if we understand race as "less than subspecies", then they exist in the same way as animal breeds exist.

For example here we can see various sheep breeds (in this colloquial meaning of breed):

They differ from each other in appearance, and so do human races (in a similar, colloquial meaning of the term).

They are not, however, different subspecies or different species.

 

[warpus]

Yes, but you also have to remember that the human classification of "race" is a lot more than just a biological differentiator. So no, they don't exist in the same way as animal breeds, because animal breeds don't include things like culture in their definition.

 

[Domen]

I had no idea that "race" includes things like culture in its definition. Can you elaborate on this?

Whose definition is it anyway, that includes culture into "race"? Certainly not a modern scientific one.

Race is just a biological differentiator, like breed among animals. Cultures are not related to races.

 

[Domen]

The main distinction used here is the colour of their skin, which is ruled by our biology via our genetics.

The skin colour is ruled by pigmentation. Races - if they do exist - are more about other antropological features than about skin colour.

Video posted below might be a bit outdaded when it comes to scientific theories (it is from 1985):

But it explains why people in the rest of the world have different pigmentation than people in Sub-Saharan Africa:


Link to video.

 

[warpus]

I had no idea that "race" includes things like culture in its definition. Can you elaborate on this?

Race is a classification system used to categorize humans into large and distinct populations or groups by anatomical, cultural, ethnic, genetic, geographical, historical, linguistic, religious, and/or social affiliation.

That's why you can be racist against Jews - even though they can breed with Muslims and produce fertile offspring.

Whose definition is it anyway, that includes culture into "race"? Certainly not a modern scientific one.

That's what the modern definition of 'race' is. It isn't meant to be a purely biological descriptor.

 

[Domen]

That's what the modern definition of 'race' is. It isn't meant to be a purely biological descriptor.

What ??? What modern "definition" ??? Aren't you confusing definitions with something else - for example with beliefs?

Race is a classification system used to categorize humans into large and distinct populations or groups by anatomical, cultural, ethnic, genetic, geographical, historical, linguistic, religious, and/or social affiliation.

One more proof that information from wikipedia is often worth nothing. Races have totally nothing to do with ethnic, linguistic, cultural, religious or social affiliation. Even if I convert to Islam today, it doesn't mean that I change my race. When I learned to speak English, it didn't change my race.

On the other hand, races are directly related to anatomical affiliation and - but here only indirectly - to geographical, genetic and historical affiliation (because it was geography and history - or rather prehistory, as it was many thousand years ago - as well as gene flow that formed them).

That's why you can be racist against Jews

Only in a very colloquial use of the word "racist", because Jews are not a single race, but there are people of a few races among them.

 

[Traitorfish]

Warpus is talking about race as a real social phenomenon, rather than as the ideal categories applied by racists. The former has always had a cultural dimension, and the latter usually follows from it, an after-the-fact rationalisation. That's why we get things like this,

Which alleges to describe the physiological differences between the English and the Irish, too populations which are in reality physiology identical. The racialisation of Irishness here is a racialisation of Irish culture, not of Irish physiology, and the claims to distinct physiology follow because contemporary English assumptions about race dictated that they should. You'll be aware that many German racists invented similarly spurious claims about "Slavic" physiology, to the point where Slavs who didn't match their stereotypes were declared to be "Slavicised Aryans", a logic which is more than a little tortured.

Part of the problem, I think, is that so often our reflexive example of race is whites and blacks in the United States, in which for various reasons physiology played an exaggerated part. But even without leaving the United States, we could take instead as our example the relationship between whites and Asians, Hispanic or American Indians, in which culture plays a much more pronounced role. It is impossible to understand anti-Asian racism in the United States, for example, without acknowledging that Asians were defined by whites not simply as physiologically non-white, but also as "foreigners".

 

[Domen]

Ah, OK - I see. BTW - I can do this better:

1) Anglo-Teutonic:

Spoiler :

2) Irish Iberian:

Spoiler :

3) Aryan-Teutonic:

Spoiler :

The racialisation of Irishness here is a racialisation of Irish culture

So apparently culture depends on length of side curls and massiveness of forehead ???

BTW - those lengthy side curls of that Irish. Perhaps this is what made them similar to Jews (according to Anglo-Teutons).

It is impossible to understand anti-Asian racism in the United States, for example, without acknowledging that Asians were defined by whites not simply as physiologically non-white, but also as "foreigners".

But isn't this called xenophobia ???

 

[Domen]

You'll be aware that many German racists invented similarly spurious claims about "Slavic" physiology, to the point where Slavs who didn't match their stereotypes were declared to be "Slavicised Aryans", a logic which is more than a little tortured.

Yes I'm aware. French racists, on the other hand, considered Germans as "Celto-Slavs with a drop of Germanic blood". And guess who was considered Aryans by French racists? Well, of course French people - or precisely French aristocracy (according to a French aristocrat and racist, Arthur de Gobineau).

As for German Nazis - they totally redefined the 19th century concept of the "Aryan race", because originally it also included Slavs:

This is a German map from 1885 - 1890 from "Meyers Konversations-Lexikon":

Spoiler :

But the entire European "Aryan race" thing is rubbish. The only real Aryans who live in Europe are Gypsies:

Spoiler :

As for me I would probably not qualify as an "Aryan" for the Nazis, because I'm quite similar to this Ancient guy:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephus

 

[BvBPL]

IMO racism is only an adequate term when we have a pre-concieved notion at hands which is about genetics / a trait given by birth and which a group x shares.
If a pre-concieved notion is rather "merely" about cultural traits - than racism is the wrong word.

Except that human races have precious little to do with genetic differences.

Taxonomically, a race is a subset of a species that shares within that race genetic similarities where such similarities are sufficiently different from other members of the species to set the race apart from other races or subspecies. You've said as much.

However, the application of the term to the human population is flawed. Humanity exhibits just as much genetic diversity within its "races" as it does between the races. Indeed, it is not unusual for a group within a race to be more similar, genetically speaking, to a group within another race than a group within the first's own race. Such is the case with Italians, Irish, and black South Africans. The Irish, as a population, are more genetically similar to black South Africans than they are to Italians despite Italians and Irish both belonging to the same "race."

If you are going to start from first principals, as you appear to, then you should acknowledge that human races are purely a social classification and not a genetic one. Or, at the least, not have genetics enter into the discussion.

Whether or not this invalidates the rest of your argument is left as an exercise to the reader, but you should be aware that your initial facts are fundamentally flawed.

I, for one, agree that "race" and "racism" should not be used to describe purely social discrimination. In its place, I advocate nouns and adjectives based on ethnicity and other clearly social terms.

 

[Senethro]

Edit: forget it, BvBPL covered this better

 

[Domen]

However, the application of the term to the human population is flawed. Humanity exhibits just as much genetic diversity within its "races" as it does between the races.

Yes, but there are particular genetic traits which evolved in some regions to adapt particular groups of people to local climatic conditions.

It doesn't mean that those people are different from other groups in other parts of their genomes, because:

Check this video - fragment which starts at 09:20 - he explains how people inherit traits:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o25ANiRAMvM#t=9m20s

Here is one of many interesting things he says:

"(...) If one is to trace one's ancestry back in time, there is in fact a different ancestry at every place in the genome. Every place in your genome traces back a different path through your ancestors. (...)"

And also:

"(...) In you, the current generation, is the physically melted manifestation not of your parents, but of your grandparents. (...)"

The Irish, as a population, are more genetically similar to black South Africans

No, they are not.

Unless you mean Bushmen. Everyone might be similar to Bushmen because they are probably the oldest existing group of humanity.

But then, Bushmen are actually not black (when it comes to skin colour) - they are more like brown (ranging from dark brown to light brown).

Bantu people, who expanded to South Africa into Bushmen territory from the north, are black.

Bantu people came to South Africa later than Europeans (Boers).

 

[BvBPL]

Yes, but there are particular genetic traits which evolved in some regions to adapt particular groups of people to local climatic conditions.

I wouldn't deny that there are genotypical (genetic) or phenotypical (physical / appearance) differences between people of different ethnicities or races nor that there are similar differences between animals races or breeds are you pointed out above.

However, the differences between animal breeds or races are far greater than the similar differences between people of differing ethnicities or races. The Chihuahua, according to the AKC, is expected to have a mass of about 3kg and the St. Bernard is expected to have a mass of about 90kg. You will not find a similar weight differential between people of varying races. Nor would you find that one race has hair and another doesn't as we see in dog breeds.

Taxonomic classification by races requires much more variation than is seen in human races.

That plus the lack of genetic similarities within a race that are greater than those between races means there are not human races.

 

[Domen]

However, the differences between animal breeds or races are far greater than the similar differences between people of differing ethnicities or races.

Which is not at all surprising, considering that animal breeds were artificially created by humans via selective breeding. There was no any artificial selective breeding ever applied to humans, but there was always either greater or smaller gene flow even between populations from distant regions (in case of very distant from each other populations, that gene flow was only indirect - with mediation / participation of populations living in between - but still was).

That plus the lack of genetic similarities within a race that are greater than those between races means there are not human races.

But now you are talking about overall similarity levels of entire genome. And here I agree.

However, in case of particular small parts of the genome, such local similarities probably exist.

For example black people have a much higher frequency of a gene for a broad nose.

 

[BvBPL]

That's as may be, but a slower gene flow between distant populations is insufficient, in itself, to create a separate taxonomical race

To address the question of human interference in dog breeds, consider that a male Bengal tiger weighs about 220 kg where as a male Sumatran tiger weighs about 120kg. A significant racial (or subspecies, in this case) difference in physique is not limited to domesticated animals subject to human breeding controls.