Even though 'Race' is A Social Construct, Racism Persists

Tell Sirus to look up the character of MLK, and you find he got his doctorate by plagurizing the work of others in his thesis, he stole his "I have a dream" speech from an older pastor, he had drug and drunken orgies with multiple women and frequently beat the hell out of them. Even his own memorial library now admits this.

It's easy to say anything about anybody- and there is so much BS flying right now that truth is about as common as flying pigs.... and good character truly hard to identify when your judgment is is controlled by talking propaganda peddlers trying to make preposterous lies into credible facts. Too many people now lack the ability to tell the difference.

 

But it had the opposite consequence, since this "race is a social construct" cult mantra associated anti-racism with reality denial, so if anything it helped the racists.

For me actual anti-racism would be to say that "different" does not mean "superior". Everybody agrees that the concept of race is valid for animals but you don't see anyone say that black-and-white pandas are superior to brown pandas or something.

 

show us some modern biologists who believe that the white, black and yellow races are real

 

If they aren't real, how come a biologist can tell if a person is white, black or yellow just by looking at their DNA samples, not their pictures?

 

Thats a pretty oversimplified view, generally studies of genetic or historic differences between populations show 20-ish different groups. We can argue on how to define race in a scientific manner but the point is that the concept has a biological basis of identifiable populations. Call it "clades" instead of "races" if you want, but it's a real thing not a social construct.

 

You can use dna to determine what race one is. So if they deny that then the science of determining what a race is impossible, then of course race does not exist. Now, you can call the various racial traits, based upon genetics as not existing, but you must replace the term race with something the left wing is ok with. We used "gay" a term to denote being carefree and happy to denote homosexuals, and I am sure you guys can come up with a nice touchy feely term to replace the word race. So you should get busy!!

And I would love to see what new word is coined to replace what everyone with some sense knows as race. Oh, my scottish terrier is not a terrier at all, and certainly not a scottish terrier. You can call him a Great Dane, or perhaps just a canine, or dog? Whatever makes you feel good about it. For this is very important to faux liberals, to feel good about something. And yet they are also such hate driven beings as well. I can, just utter the word trump, and like Pavlov's dogs, the reactions begin. Is this classical or operant conditioning? Can't recall.

 

If race does not exist, then all of the racial based marketing needs to stop and stop now!! Driven by hate, obviously. Go and sell pomade to white folks and stop targeting the black skinned, kinky hair blacks. A sure fire winner in marketing.

 

What you have to always keep in mind in this discussion (and by 'this' I mean the 'reality of race' discussion which is held over and over, year after year, and in every existing forum on the planet where politics is discussed), is that we're not talking about some technical issue in evolutionary biology, such as, are dogs and wolves separate species.. It's a highly sensitive, highly political issue, where people get very very emotional, on all sides. This impedes rational thought. In political wars, truth is the first casualty.

People are very reluctant to apply biological methods for explaining behavior to our own species. We're made by God, after all, and even people who don't believe in God, still retain this assumption.

And there's a good reason for it: if we are 'only' another species of animal, then there is one less mental barrier to treating humans like we treat animals -- whom we cheerfully kill for our own uses. This was essentially the Nazi approach, not only to non-Germans, but to 'sub-standard' Germans, such as the mentally ill.

However, you can't fool life.

In the long run, genetically-transmitted biological influences on our behavior, perhaps differentially distributed among human tribes, and linked to other genes that are expressed in visible differences, will become irrelevant. Maybe those X's with their high crime rates and poor educational attainment really are that way because of their genes, and maybe those Y's with their industriousness and desire for social harmony and higher IQ's, likewise.

Fine. Our descendants will identify those genes, choose and even improve the alleles that we desire, and all of our descendants will have them. CRISPR is just the primitive beginning of what our great-great grandchildren will be able to do.

Unless their ancestors, us, still dominated by genes for stupidity and impulsiveness and aggression, manage to so damage the human race that scientific progress comes to an end.

 

emphasis mine

I think this is important to highlight because so many progressives and feminists portray the US as a country founded on racism. It is unfortunate because it has generated a lot of resentment.

That said, there is still a lot of work to be done in the US. We still have law enforcement biases that are akin to modern day slavery, so until that is resolved we will see the prevalence of identity politics.

 

Here is where 'race' was first developed:
Background of Craniometry
http://scalar.usc.edu/works/measuring-prejudice/background-of-craniometry

This is the foundation of your argument.

 

emphasis mine
No, the proposition that race is a social construct is based on the general definition of biological race:
"Modern biological concepts of race can be implemented objectively with molecular genetic data through hypothesis-testing. Genetic data sets are used to see if biological races exist in humans...Adaptive traits, such as skin color, have frequently been used to define races in humans, but such adaptive traits reflect the underlying environmental factor to which they are adaptive and not overall genetic differentiation...adaptive traits do not define races in humans"

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23684745

 

a good biologist can also tell with some certainty if someone is Irish, Ashkenazi Jewish, Sicilian, Nigerian, Kenyan, Egyptian, just by looking at their DNA.

does that mean these are all seperate "Races"?

 

I think when people quote the 'social construct' thing, what they're trying to say is that 'race is not real'.

Let us grant that it's a 'social construct'. Certainly 'Protestant' and 'Catholic', or 'Serb' and 'Croat' are 'social constructs'. (There may be slight genetic differences between Serbs and Croats, since they have been separate breeding populations for several centuries, but probably not very signficant ones.)

The real question is, are they valid, useful, social constructs? Does a particular 'social construct' correlate significantly with other things that are important? If you're living in the former Yugoslavia, they very definitely do -- at one point your life could depend on your knowing whether the armed men on the road ahead of you were of the Serb social construct, or the Croat social construct.

And in the US, 'race' -- social construct, biological signifier, or both -- is the primary identity of almost everyone. It's a pretty good predictor of many things, and everyone knows it. Black people are, on average, not just white people with extra melanin. (And men are not just women who can't have babies, to venture into another area where the 'reality is what I want it to be' crowd will soon be trying to make us believe six impossible things before breakfast.)

And all around the world, one's tribal identity is one's primary identity. Pick any spot on the globe, and take a hundred people at random, and you'll find that most of them, given the choice of socializing with people of their own tribal group, or with people of another tribal group who match them in some other way -- their own sex, their own profession, their own age ... they will choose their own tribe. Surely this is uncontroversial? (There are exceptions -- certain religious groups, where religion is not the tribal identity, may break the mould, as may sexual minorities, intellectuals ... but not most people.)

How about this: "Social class is a social construct". Comment.

 

Dogs have been bred for generations to have a specific appearance. They are far more differentiated genetically than humans. Humans don't have anywhere near the phenotypic diversity present in dogs. For example a dog can be under 5 lbs or over 200lbs. There is no equivalent in humans.

People define race by someones appearance. A person with brown skin is no more a different genetic race from a person with white skin than a person with brown hair is a from a person with blonde hair.

 

I did acknowledge that you must have missed it.

I didn't claim it was equivalent.

yes and appearance is genetic.

is it seem that differentiates say an Asian person for me Caucasian person is not skin color or hair color in all reality those two things can be exactly the same and the two individuals will still appear different.

I will say this again two Asians will never ever ever ever ever give birth to a black baby they lack the genetic code to do so.

 

You just defined out racism. Bet you did not realize it though.

 

Examine other things.

 

What all we people share is the same specie. There are races but all of them fall on the same branch of the taxonomical tree. No two people share the same DNA. What we all share is human DNA that differs from person to person.

 

True.

Instantly debunked by typing "albino blacks" in Google. These guys have white skin, so why can you tell them apart from white people if it's just skin color?

 

You would only have a point if you linked a modern scientific study that proved that people of every 'socially constructed' race had the same average brain size.

But you didn't. Crying "bigotry" without looking at the facts is more pseudoscientific than what Morton ever did. Both of you tried to force their idological view onto others but at least he tried to support it with measurements.

I'm pretty sure modern day scientists aren't touching that thing with a 2000 foot pole. So AFAIK it's an open debate.

 

A question to everyone: suppose one person says, "race is a social construct" and another says "race is a biological reality". Are there any operational, behavioral, differences in the way these two people would then act, especially toward other races, as a consequence of their differing beliefs?

If I say "Pluto is a planet" and you say "No, it's not" .... and assuming neither of us hold any theory of planetary formation ... what does it matter?

 

Because those sort of traits don't develop in a single generation. They occur through evolution over multiple generation as adaptation to the environment and sexual preference. If you took a group of asians and had them live in Sub-Saharan Africa for thousands of years they would eventually look more like black people.

 

Albinism is a genetic mutation. Black people look different from white. That is my entire point. The fact that there is variation in appearance does not actually mean there is any significant variation genetically.

Are gingers a different race from brunettes?

 

Albino blacks have white skin but you can still tell them apart from white people because they have different facial traits (mainly lips and nose shapes).

I'm pretty sure facial features are genetic like skin color. So it's not just one genetic difference but a group of them. This group of genetic differences is what we call "race".

No, because that's just one trait that differs. If you dye their hair the same color you can't tell them apart anymore, unlike black and white people where you still can.

 

All of these traits are genetic. The point is there is no such thing as genetic race. You are looking at genetic traits related to appearance and trying to clump people into some sort of negro/mongo/caucausoid when in fact there is not such genetic breakdown. The traits you see as racial are actually result of environmental adaptations and result of sexual preference. They are literally skin deep. There have been studies that show greater genetic diversity between western africans than there is between said africans and white europeans.

Race is something that people made up before we discovered genetics and DNA in order to promote racist ideologies.