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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
so recognize that and work through it.
whitedoge the regional cultures in the u. s. are very diverse and the same north south divide exist, perhaps deeper in the u.s. than it does in europe
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On December 08 2014 05:48 oneofthem wrote:
so recognize that and work through it.
whitedoge the regional cultures in the u. s. are very diverse and the same north south divide exist, perhaps deeper in the u.s. than it does in europe
But there is a common state, some kind of common legitimate powers and institutions, etc. This problem all comes from the term "culture". There are, maybe, more values or cultural practice in common between France and Germany than between New York and Texas, but there are no common institutions, no common narrative or commonly accepted political powers in France and Germany : this means a lot. That is what I was talking about when I was saying "cultural diversity" in comparaison to some other place of the world.
"Work through it" : yes the solution is the end of the euro.
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On December 08 2014 05:55 WhiteDog wrote:Show nested quote +On December 08 2014 05:48 oneofthem wrote:
so recognize that and work through it.
whitedoge the regional cultures in the u. s. are very diverse and the same north south divide exist, perhaps deeper in the u.s. than it does in europe But there is a common state, some kind of common legitimate powers and institutions, etc. This problem all comes from the term "culture". There are, maybe, more values or cultural practice in common between France and Germany than between New York and Texas, but there are no common institutions, no common narrative or commonly accepted political powers in France and Germany : this means a lot. That is what I was talking about when I was saying "cultural diversity" in comparaison to some other place of the world. "Work through it" : yes the solution is the end of the euro.
But how is that going to result in more common institutions? Without the Euro nearly every incentive is gone to increase cooperation.
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On December 08 2014 06:15 Nyxisto wrote:Show nested quote +On December 08 2014 05:55 WhiteDog wrote:On December 08 2014 05:48 oneofthem wrote:
so recognize that and work through it.
whitedoge the regional cultures in the u. s. are very diverse and the same north south divide exist, perhaps deeper in the u.s. than it does in europe But there is a common state, some kind of common legitimate powers and institutions, etc. This problem all comes from the term "culture". There are, maybe, more values or cultural practice in common between France and Germany than between New York and Texas, but there are no common institutions, no common narrative or commonly accepted political powers in France and Germany : this means a lot. That is what I was talking about when I was saying "cultural diversity" in comparaison to some other place of the world. "Work through it" : yes the solution is the end of the euro. But how is that going to result in more common institutions? Without the Euro nearly every incentive is gone to increase cooperation.
Incentive for cooperation ? The euro is an incentive to end the european union for Greeks, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, etc.
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On December 08 2014 06:20 WhiteDog wrote:Show nested quote +On December 08 2014 06:15 Nyxisto wrote:On December 08 2014 05:55 WhiteDog wrote:On December 08 2014 05:48 oneofthem wrote:
so recognize that and work through it.
whitedoge the regional cultures in the u. s. are very diverse and the same north south divide exist, perhaps deeper in the u.s. than it does in europe But there is a common state, some kind of common legitimate powers and institutions, etc. This problem all comes from the term "culture". There are, maybe, more values or cultural practice in common between France and Germany than between New York and Texas, but there are no common institutions, no common narrative or commonly accepted political powers in France and Germany : this means a lot. That is what I was talking about when I was saying "cultural diversity" in comparaison to some other place of the world. "Work through it" : yes the solution is the end of the euro. But how is that going to result in more common institutions? Without the Euro nearly every incentive is gone to increase cooperation. Incentive for cooperation ? The euro is an incentive to end the european union for Greeks, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, etc.
I do agree with you, but there needs to be another way. ending the Euro will politically be a major blow for the whole EU project and has the potential to end it completely.
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On December 08 2014 06:28 Doublemint wrote:Show nested quote +On December 08 2014 06:20 WhiteDog wrote:On December 08 2014 06:15 Nyxisto wrote:On December 08 2014 05:55 WhiteDog wrote:On December 08 2014 05:48 oneofthem wrote:
so recognize that and work through it.
whitedoge the regional cultures in the u. s. are very diverse and the same north south divide exist, perhaps deeper in the u.s. than it does in europe But there is a common state, some kind of common legitimate powers and institutions, etc. This problem all comes from the term "culture". There are, maybe, more values or cultural practice in common between France and Germany than between New York and Texas, but there are no common institutions, no common narrative or commonly accepted political powers in France and Germany : this means a lot. That is what I was talking about when I was saying "cultural diversity" in comparaison to some other place of the world. "Work through it" : yes the solution is the end of the euro. But how is that going to result in more common institutions? Without the Euro nearly every incentive is gone to increase cooperation. Incentive for cooperation ? The euro is an incentive to end the european union for Greeks, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, etc. I do agree with you, but there needs to be another way. ending the Euro will politically be a major blow for the whole EU project and has the potential to end it completely.
That would be a bad thing because?
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
ok
to see a problem as "we has no common institutions" then propose dismantling ur one common institution.
ok i guess i misread euro into eu. or u guys can make some stronger europe level financial institution and act constructively with respect to dealing with member states
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On December 08 2014 06:42 oneofthem wrote:
ok
to see a problem as "we has no common institutions" then propose dismantling ur one common institution as the solution
Look at it this way. Why doesn't the US go form a union with Mexico? They are both in North America, Mexico has 120 million people, they could all be one big happy family. What could possibly go wrong?
You're not a racist or something are you?
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
im fine with that, would help
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On December 08 2014 06:34 zeo wrote:Show nested quote +On December 08 2014 06:28 Doublemint wrote:On December 08 2014 06:20 WhiteDog wrote:On December 08 2014 06:15 Nyxisto wrote:On December 08 2014 05:55 WhiteDog wrote:On December 08 2014 05:48 oneofthem wrote:
so recognize that and work through it.
whitedoge the regional cultures in the u. s. are very diverse and the same north south divide exist, perhaps deeper in the u.s. than it does in europe But there is a common state, some kind of common legitimate powers and institutions, etc. This problem all comes from the term "culture". There are, maybe, more values or cultural practice in common between France and Germany than between New York and Texas, but there are no common institutions, no common narrative or commonly accepted political powers in France and Germany : this means a lot. That is what I was talking about when I was saying "cultural diversity" in comparaison to some other place of the world. "Work through it" : yes the solution is the end of the euro. But how is that going to result in more common institutions? Without the Euro nearly every incentive is gone to increase cooperation. Incentive for cooperation ? The euro is an incentive to end the european union for Greeks, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, etc. I do agree with you, but there needs to be another way. ending the Euro will politically be a major blow for the whole EU project and has the potential to end it completely. That would be a bad thing because?
I still think the EU did and does more good than bad. And with the biggest economy in the world it is just sad that we don't have more say and take more responsibility around the world. Instead we let the US fuck things up, and dance to their tune more or less because we have somewhat overlapping interests.
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On December 08 2014 06:48 oneofthem wrote:
im fine with that, would help
how about the other ~310(?) million people? ^_^
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On December 08 2014 06:42 oneofthem wrote:
ok
to see a problem as "we has no common institutions" then propose dismantling ur one common institution.
ok i guess i misread euro into eu. or u guys can make some stronger europe level financial institution and act constructively with respect to dealing with member states
When I say institutions, I'm more talking about institued representation, value and symbol, an institued social structure rather than a structure of legal origin such as the euro. The euro is merely an artefact, an economic tool, It's pretty dumb to sacrifice the european people for a tool.
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
social structure? face to face social relations is not the only kind of structure in society.
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On December 08 2014 07:52 oneofthem wrote:
social structure? face to face social relations is not the only kind of structure in society.
Social structure is not limited to face to face relations : common knowledge and representations, common agreements on various distinctions, common dispositions, norms and values, all those things that permit the functionnal integration of an agregation of people in a unified society.
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On December 08 2014 04:59 L1ghtning wrote:Show nested quote +On December 08 2014 01:29 kwizach wrote:On December 08 2014 01:02 L1ghtning wrote:On December 07 2014 23:48 kwizach wrote:On December 07 2014 22:51 L1ghtning wrote:On December 07 2014 11:41 kwizach wrote:On December 07 2014 10:20 L1ghtning wrote:On December 07 2014 04:26 kwizach wrote:On December 07 2014 02:58 L1ghtning wrote:On December 06 2014 20:11 kwizach wrote:
[quote]
What's that supposed to mean? There are no biological "races" among the human species. Races are social constructs. No. Human races are not a social construct. Splitting us into races doesn't mean that we're not related, it just means that our relation is so distant that you couldn't mistake one group with another. A german shepherd is the same species as a dalmatian, but different races. Since the human population have constantly become more heterogenous throughout history, you can't really split us into races based on regions anymore, unless you draw with very broad strokes. Most likely if you went back very long in time, then there would be around 10 distinguable subraces in Europe. Nowadays, you can see these subgroups only if you look at the general population. But, it's still viable to divide us into atleast 4 groups, and that's what we typically talk about when we say the word race. Sub saharan africans is one group. American Indians is another. East Asians is another, and Europe, Northern Africa, the Middle East and all the way to India is the last group. The central eurasian ppl are a mix of the latter two. So, the guy is right in placing Northern Africa under the white race. Let's make one thing clear. Human races are social constructs. Genetic research has shown that there is no scientific basis whatsoever for determining where to objectively place limits that would distinguish different human "races". Sorry, but your pseudoscientific claims about groups completely ignores the reality of our genetic makeup, which is almost entirely the same and for which the little differences that remain can be just as big, or even bigger, between the members of the same group among those you mention than between members of different groups. To quote Dr. Venter and the scientists who worked on the sequencing of the human genome ( source): ''Race is a social concept, not a scientific one,'' said Dr. J. Craig Venter, head of the Celera Genomics Corporation in Rockville, Md. ''We all evolved in the last 100,000 years from the same small number of tribes that migrated out of Africa and colonized the world.''
Dr. Venter and scientists at the National Institutes of Health recently announced that they had put together a draft of the entire sequence of the human genome, and the researchers had unanimously declared, there is only one race -- the human race.
Dr. Venter and other researchers say that those traits most commonly used to distinguish one race from another, like skin and eye color, or the width of the nose, are traits controlled by a relatively few number of genes, and thus have been able to change rapidly in response to extreme environmental pressures during the short course of Homo sapiens history.
And so equatorial populations evolved dark skin, presumably to protect against ultraviolet radiation, while people in northern latitudes evolved pale skin, the better to produce vitamin D from pale sunlight.
''If you ask what percentage of your genes is reflected in your external appearance, the basis by which we talk about race, the answer seems to be in the range of .01 percent,'' said Dr. Harold P. Freeman, the chief executive, president and director of surgery at North General Hospital in Manhattan, who has studied the issue of biology and race. ''This is a very, very minimal reflection of your genetic makeup.''
Unfortunately for social harmony, the human brain is exquisitely attuned to differences in packaging details, prompting people to exaggerate the significance of what has come to be called race, said Dr. Douglas C. Wallace, a professor of molecular genetics at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta.
''The criteria that people use for race are based entirely on external features that we are programmed to recognize,'' he said. ''And the reason we're programmed to recognize them is that it's vitally important to our species that each of us be able to distinguish one individual from the next. Our whole social structure is based on visual cues, and we've been programmed to recognize them, and to recognize individuals.''
By contrast with the tiny number of genes that make some people dark-skinned and doe-eyed, and others as pale as napkins, scientists say that traits like intelligence, artistic talent and social skills are likely to be shaped by thousands, if not tens of thousands, of the 80,000 or so genes in the human genome, all working in complex combinatorial fashion.
The possibility of such gene networks shifting their interrelationships wholesale in the course of humanity's brief foray across the globe, and being skewed in significant ways according to ''race'' is ''a bogus idea,'' said Dr. Aravinda Chakravarti, a geneticist at Case Western University in Cleveland. ''The differences that we see in skin color do not translate into widespread biological differences that are unique to groups.''
Dr. Jurgen K. Naggert, a geneticist at the Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Me., said: ''These big groups that we characterize as races are too heterogeneous to lump together in a scientific way. If you're doing a DNA study to look for markers for a particular disease, you can't use 'Caucasians' as a group. They're too diverse. No journal would accept it.'' On December 07 2014 02:36 mcc wrote:On December 06 2014 20:11 kwizach wrote:
[quote]
What's that supposed to mean? There are no biological "races" among the human species. Races are social constructs. Read the context. I was not discussing whether races do or do not exist as commonly defined. But I was reacting to someone accusing the original poster of racism against blacks even though he was talking about North Africans, and they are not black and according to the common definition of races are counted as white. Thus person that comments on some issues with North African culture (whether valid or not) can hardly be accused of racism against blacks based on that, no ? Anyway races do not necessarily have to be social constructs as color of the skin is not a social construct, but that is really quite irrelevant as mostly they are. EDIT: You can also group humans into "races" based on common genetics and that can have some reasonable applications. From what I understand, Nyxisto was pretty clearly talking about racism against "the other", the non-white, for which he used the term "black people" to refer to how racists think about those "others". Color of the skin is not a social construct per se (although you can argue that how color is perceived is), but races, as the arbitrary delimitations of groups based on skin color, still are. The fact that you consider North Africans to be "white" doesn't mean that others can't see them as "black" or "brown" or "mixed" or whatever because there's nothing objective about where to place those limits (or about placing them at all). You clearly don't understand the concept of race. Anthropology studies, especially studies of Y-chromosomes have clearly shown that europeans and middle easterns, and white indians and north africans have the same heritage, with gradual differences. Gradual differences meaning that swedes may look a bit different on average than poles, but that in the end they consist of the same 10 or so undistinguable subgroups, just at different ratios. And even if swedes may in fact be almost 100% distinguishable from let's say, egyptians, swedes themselves are not a distinct race, and neither are egyptians. This is why the concept of the german race falls flat, while the concept of the indoeuropean or the white race is valid. In order for a race to be valid, you need to be able to distinguish them from everybody who isn't part of the race. And indeed the indoeuropeans are 100% distinguishable from east asians, native americans and sub-saharan africans, both in terms of certain genetical markers and physical features. Of course, the races did appear simply because we procreated seperately from eachother, but that doesn't make them less valid. I understand the concept of race very well, thank you, which is why I'm explaining to you that it is a social construct which is based on the delimitation of groups when those limits have no objective scientific basis. None of what you said even remotely answers what I presented you with. Who is disputing that heritages can be studied, or that traits vary? The point is that on the genetic level the "human races" you referenced make little sense, and that the very traits and characteristics that are used to define "races" in reality exist in spectrums across humanity (or at the very least exist without obvious "breaks"), making any such delimitation arbitrary and socially constructed. You mention anthropology. Have you read the "Race Reconciled: How Biological Anthropologists View Human Variation" special issue of vol. 39, issue 1 of the American Journal of Physical Anthropology (May 2009)? The authors clearly and unambiguously demonstrate that "race is not an accurate or productive way to describe human biological variation" (Heather J.H. Edgar and Keith L. Hunley in the introduction of the special issue, p. 2). You can read a detailed summary of the findings here (this is the page where I initially learned about these papers - I "only" read three of the articles themselves). Here are a few quotes from that summary: In a discussion of Race and global patterns of phenotypic variation, John Relethford plots human skin color variation: "The result is a continuous straight line ranging from the darkest extremes to the lightest extremes in skin color. There are no identifiable clusters. . . . Researchers are of course free to subdivide this continuum into different groups, but such clustering would be arbitrary and subjective in terms of the number of groups and the cutoff points used to distinguish them. The lack of apparent clusters is a reflection of the fact that skin color shows a classic pattern of clinal variation." (2009:17) [...]
Unlike some textbooks and pronouncements which use this information to declare all physical variation is clinal, Relethford proceeds to consider craniometric or skull variation. [...] Relethford considers racial labels as “a culturally constructed label that crudely and imprecisely describes real variation” (2009:20). Variation is real, exists, and has been structured by geography and migration, but the labels we use are a “crude first-order approximation” (2009:21). Relethford uses the example of how we see height as short, medium, and tall: “We tend to use crude labels in everyday life with the realization that they are fuzzy and subjective. I doubt anyone thinks that terms such as ‘short,’ ‘medium,’ and ‘tall’ refer to discrete groups, or that humanity only comes in three values of height!” (2009:21). [...] Current scientific consensus is that craniometrics yields clustered geographic groupings, but those groupings are subjective and arbitrary. [...]
Skin color, like many other racial measures, is continuously variable. Crania may be structured geographically, but classifications based on geographic clusters would be arbitrary. But what about measuring all the bones? Television shows feature forensic anthropologists easily identifying race from skeletal remains. Does that mean race is real?[...] Sauer explains “the successful assignment of race to a skeletal specimen is not a vindication of the race concept, but rather a prediction that an individual, while alive was assigned to a particular socially constructed ‘racial’ category” (1992:107). Forensic anthropologists have samples of bones from many geographic areas, and can classify bones according to what race society has assigned to people with ancestry in those geographic areas. However, examining the bones provides a probability estimate of likely race assignment: “In ascribing a race name to a set of skeletonized remains, the anthropologist is actually translating information about biological traits to a culturally constructed labeling system that was likely to have been applied to a missing person” (1992:109).
Despite the provocative and sometimes misunderstood title, Sauer pleads for forensic anthropologists to better explain what it means to make racial classifications from skeletal remains. He begs forensic anthropologists not to “sail on” without making an effort to expose people “to the notion that perceived races are not reflections of biological reality” (1992:110). We should “not fall into the trap of accepting races as valid biologically discrete categories because we use them so often” (1992:110). [...] What actually happens is forensic anthropologists match bones probabilistically against known existing assortments. Those assortments can be anything socially relevant. Changing the context of bone discovery could lead to different predictive classification–of the same bones: “The use of different priors also shows the importance of prior information, as ‘Mr. Johnson’ would have been classified as a Pacific Islander had his remains been found on Hawaii and as an ‘American Black’ had his remains been found in Gary, Indiana” (Konigsberg et al. 2009:83). [...]
Even after proving the continuous variation of skin tones, and even after showing how bones and skulls do not confirm traditional race classifications, there is still the sense that genetics offers real proof of race. Genetic testing companies amplify this misconception in a rush to market ancestry, while pharmaceutical companies sell race-targeted medications.
[...] Genetic classifications of races outside of Sub-Saharan Africa are simply subsets of Sub-Saharan African diversity. Moreover, and perhaps most strangely, “a classification that takes into account evolutionary relationships and the nested pattern of diversity would require that Sub-Saharan Africans are not a race because the most exclusive group that includes all Sub-Saharan African populations also includes every non-Sub-Saharan African population” (Long et al. 2009:32).
[...] This evolutionary history is explained in the article The global pattern of gene identity variation reveals a history of long-range migrations, bottlenecks, and local mate exchange: Implications for biological race. Once again, sophisticated techniques reveal a “nested pattern of genetic structure that is inconsistent with the existence of independently evolving biological races” (Hunley et al. 2009:35). The authors confirm greater genetic variation within Sub-Saharan Africa, and all other humans are a sub-set of this variation. Taxonomic classifications of race cannot account for observed genetic diversity. [...]" In short, and as I said, variation among humans obviously exists (nobody is claiming otherwise), but races are social constructs. All the ppl who claim that races doesn't exist are just making skewed semantic arguments, by saying things like, although there are certain differences in certain characteristics that are undeniable, there are also a lot of characteristics that are not defined by race. This is true, but claiming that this disproves the race theory shows that the person doesn't understand the concept of race. Races are not completely different from eachother, they are only marginally different in some ways, for instance in facial structure and skin tone. But there are a lot of characteristics that are not defined by race. Height is one of them. Although asians are shorter on average, this is not a rule, and all races have a great diversity in terms of height. What defines a human race is that they have certain features that doesn't exist among other humans, and because the 4 groups that I have mentioned, lived sheltered from eachother for probably over 10 000 years, they gradually developed into races as history passed. I'm well aware that we're all related if you're just going back a lot further in time. This is why we have these different races, rather than different species. We're all the same species, but different subgroups or races, similarly to dog breeds. I agree that there's no viable reason for why these races should exist, but supporting their existence is merely a question of observation, rather than about justifying their existence. At this point you are repeating what you already said before instead of addressing my arguments and the thorough debunking of the concept of race that I presented you with through my reference to the scientific findings on the non-existence of objective races with regards to skin color, craniometric variation, skeletons, and genetics. You've also resorted to arguing against strawmen, since the argument is not that races don't exist because we share common characteristics. If you want to bury your head in the sand and ignore the scientific research which debunks your position on the existence of human races that's up to you, but for the people actually interested in learning more on the topic I refer you to my previous post, the "Race Reconciled: How Biological Anthropologists View Human Variation" special issue of vol. 39, issue 1 of the American Journal of Physical Anthropology (May 2009) and, for a simple summary of the findings, the page I quoted extensively. As I said, human variation obviously exists, but races are still arbitrary, subjective and very flawed pseudo-delimitations of variations, and thus socially constructed. You haven't debunked anything concerning race. You just don't subscribe to it, because it doesn't fit your narrative about white europeans being "racist" against the rest of the world, including north africans and middle eastern ppl. The reason why some white europeans look at brown-skinned, black haired indoeuropeans with distrust is because brown skin and black hair is a proxy for indoeuropeans who was raised outside of Europe. It's the culture that are present in those regions that ppl don't like or are afraid of, not the skin color, or the way they look. This is why greeks and southern italians doesn't get lumped up with the ppl who come from muslim countries, despite the fact that they look a lot more like them generally than they look like the typical person in a germanic country. They don't get lumped up with other mediterranean ppl, because the mediterranean ppl north of the sea is closer culturally to "us" than they are to the middle east. The reason why Christian Europe tends to look down upon Muslim Middle East and North Africa, has cultural reasons. It's about phobia of cultures that we consider lesser than ours. This is also why ppl in protestant countries like my country, tend to have the greatest level of trust for ppl who live in protestant countries, followed by the catholic countries and lastly the orthodox countries. This is because religious heritage is a proxy for cultural heritage. Race is a observation and that's all it is. You're only afraid of the word, because you have this idea about different races not liking eachother because of racial hatred. This is all bullshit. Do you honestly believe that if the ppl in west Africa were in fact white, that they wouldn't have been enslaved? They were enslaved because of cultural reasons. Because they were so technologically backwards and didn't have any powerful allies, the westerners could get away with enslaving them. This is why they were enslaved. This is why the irish was enslaved too. The irish were sheltered on an island in the middle of nowhere. The english could do pretty much whatever they wanted with them, because they had no prominent allies. The fact that they had a shared celtic genetical heritage didn't seem to matter. Again, an entire post not addressing what I said in the slightest and arguing instead against a series of strawmen that have no connection to what I actually wrote here and what I linked to in terms of scientific research. Thanks for proving my point. The page you cited claimed among other things that dividing by skin color is arbitrary, which is nonsense. If you're going back 3-4 generations, it's impossible to mistake a person of 100% european descent, from a person of 100% sub-saharan african descent. There are no exceptions to this, so it's not arbitrary. Just because there are ppl in Ethiopia who kind of looks like a mix of Egyptians and Kenyans, it doesn't mean that race isn't a viable concept. The idea that you can't distinguish races without being arbitrary is not true, it's only true if you feel the need to categorize everybody. For instance, if you went to a place like Kazakhstan and tried to categorize everyone as either indoeuropean or east asians, then I get that it would feel very arbitrary, but for those individuals where it isn't obvious, they shouldn't be categorized as either. This is what you do with dogs. They need to fit certain criterias to be called german shepherds or labradors, and if they don't, then they'll generally be called mixed. This is how we categorize dogs, so why are you so afraid of doing the same with humans? If I told you that I had a german shepherd dog, would that be racist against dogs, to refer to him and thus acknowledge his breed as a viable concept? And if yes, would it be racist against german shepherd dogs or against dogs that aren't german shepherds, or maybe racist against dogs that look similar to them, but don't fully categorize as a german shepherd? I do recognize that races exists, but I don't claim that some kind of purity should be maintained. I disagree with you that races are arbitrarily defined, but on the other hand, races were definately arbitrarily created, so the idea of purity is nonsense. The races are the result of small groups of ppl immigrating into new territories and living sheltered from other humans, and eventually emerging as new civilizations founded by the ancestors of the first immigrants.
Way to completely miss the point argued in the article. As is very clearly explained, skin color among humans is clinal and is a "continuous straight line ranging from the darkest extremes to the lightest extremes in skin color. There are no identifiable clusters [...]" (John H. Relethford, "Race and global patterns of phenotypic variation", American Journal of Physical Anthropology, Volume 139, Issue 1, May 2009). This means that racial categories, that is where you decide to draw lines separating different groups, are subjective and arbitrary. Nobody is claiming that people with dark skin cannot be distinguished from people with very light skin. Can you stop arguing against strawmen?
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
On December 08 2014 08:26 WhiteDog wrote:Show nested quote +On December 08 2014 07:52 oneofthem wrote:
social structure? face to face social relations is not the only kind of structure in society. Social structure is not limited to face to face relations : common knowledge and representations, common agreements on various distinctions, common dispositions, norms and values, all those things that permit the functionnal integration of an agregation of people in a unified society.
legal institutions and civil society convention can bridge lack of kinship or whatever 'organic' ties.
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On December 08 2014 03:27 Nyxisto wrote:oneofthem is right on this, racism in the US is different from Europe. Even the most conservative guys in the US thread don't come up with this genetic nonsense. Racist statements in the US are almost always cultural, like pointing the finger at African-American culture and arguing how bad it is or whatever, but half of the last few pages here look some kind of KKK-seminar. (which ironically happens to be an American organisation, duh) Show nested quote +Your simplistic approach just prevents you from actually understanding anything since you miss the details. Oh yes, I'm sorry for not understanding the sophisticated character of racist theory, that is clearly my fault. I really should talk to those "casual racists" more, they seem like genuinely smart people.
Well considering your responses show your complete inability to actually comprehend simple text, they seem much smarter than you. Or is it because you ignore whole posts and just pick sentences without context so you can knee-jerk over them.
But I will try to explain to you like one would to a child. I was not talking about complexity of racist theory. I was talking about complexity of racism as a phenomenon. I know that for some this distinction is too complicated to understand, but maybe you can actually grasp it and stop accusing people of racism based on your misunderstanding of simple concepts. If we , like you already did, abdicate on trying to actually understand differences in causes and expressions of racism, we are reduced to simplistic understanding of it, which will limit our ability to actually fight it. Just saying racism is bad does not seem to be doing the trick, does it, seeing the increase in support of racist parties in Europe.
Also thank you for conceding the other point I was making.
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There's nothing complicated about racism, no matter if you write an essay on it or not. People see their economic situation deteriorating on the one hand and are unable to cope with the idea of living in a tolerant open society on the other. So as usual the blame gets shifted to some minority group because that's easier than blaming yourself. There's no reason to argue with or to appease these people.
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On December 08 2014 04:59 L1ghtning wrote:Show nested quote +On December 08 2014 01:29 kwizach wrote:On December 08 2014 01:02 L1ghtning wrote:On December 07 2014 23:48 kwizach wrote:On December 07 2014 22:51 L1ghtning wrote:On December 07 2014 11:41 kwizach wrote:On December 07 2014 10:20 L1ghtning wrote:On December 07 2014 04:26 kwizach wrote:On December 07 2014 02:58 L1ghtning wrote:On December 06 2014 20:11 kwizach wrote:
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What's that supposed to mean? There are no biological "races" among the human species. Races are social constructs. No. Human races are not a social construct. Splitting us into races doesn't mean that we're not related, it just means that our relation is so distant that you couldn't mistake one group with another. A german shepherd is the same species as a dalmatian, but different races. Since the human population have constantly become more heterogenous throughout history, you can't really split us into races based on regions anymore, unless you draw with very broad strokes. Most likely if you went back very long in time, then there would be around 10 distinguable subraces in Europe. Nowadays, you can see these subgroups only if you look at the general population. But, it's still viable to divide us into atleast 4 groups, and that's what we typically talk about when we say the word race. Sub saharan africans is one group. American Indians is another. East Asians is another, and Europe, Northern Africa, the Middle East and all the way to India is the last group. The central eurasian ppl are a mix of the latter two. So, the guy is right in placing Northern Africa under the white race. Let's make one thing clear. Human races are social constructs. Genetic research has shown that there is no scientific basis whatsoever for determining where to objectively place limits that would distinguish different human "races". Sorry, but your pseudoscientific claims about groups completely ignores the reality of our genetic makeup, which is almost entirely the same and for which the little differences that remain can be just as big, or even bigger, between the members of the same group among those you mention than between members of different groups. To quote Dr. Venter and the scientists who worked on the sequencing of the human genome ( source): ''Race is a social concept, not a scientific one,'' said Dr. J. Craig Venter, head of the Celera Genomics Corporation in Rockville, Md. ''We all evolved in the last 100,000 years from the same small number of tribes that migrated out of Africa and colonized the world.''
Dr. Venter and scientists at the National Institutes of Health recently announced that they had put together a draft of the entire sequence of the human genome, and the researchers had unanimously declared, there is only one race -- the human race.
Dr. Venter and other researchers say that those traits most commonly used to distinguish one race from another, like skin and eye color, or the width of the nose, are traits controlled by a relatively few number of genes, and thus have been able to change rapidly in response to extreme environmental pressures during the short course of Homo sapiens history.
And so equatorial populations evolved dark skin, presumably to protect against ultraviolet radiation, while people in northern latitudes evolved pale skin, the better to produce vitamin D from pale sunlight.
''If you ask what percentage of your genes is reflected in your external appearance, the basis by which we talk about race, the answer seems to be in the range of .01 percent,'' said Dr. Harold P. Freeman, the chief executive, president and director of surgery at North General Hospital in Manhattan, who has studied the issue of biology and race. ''This is a very, very minimal reflection of your genetic makeup.''
Unfortunately for social harmony, the human brain is exquisitely attuned to differences in packaging details, prompting people to exaggerate the significance of what has come to be called race, said Dr. Douglas C. Wallace, a professor of molecular genetics at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta.
''The criteria that people use for race are based entirely on external features that we are programmed to recognize,'' he said. ''And the reason we're programmed to recognize them is that it's vitally important to our species that each of us be able to distinguish one individual from the next. Our whole social structure is based on visual cues, and we've been programmed to recognize them, and to recognize individuals.''
By contrast with the tiny number of genes that make some people dark-skinned and doe-eyed, and others as pale as napkins, scientists say that traits like intelligence, artistic talent and social skills are likely to be shaped by thousands, if not tens of thousands, of the 80,000 or so genes in the human genome, all working in complex combinatorial fashion.
The possibility of such gene networks shifting their interrelationships wholesale in the course of humanity's brief foray across the globe, and being skewed in significant ways according to ''race'' is ''a bogus idea,'' said Dr. Aravinda Chakravarti, a geneticist at Case Western University in Cleveland. ''The differences that we see in skin color do not translate into widespread biological differences that are unique to groups.''
Dr. Jurgen K. Naggert, a geneticist at the Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Me., said: ''These big groups that we characterize as races are too heterogeneous to lump together in a scientific way. If you're doing a DNA study to look for markers for a particular disease, you can't use 'Caucasians' as a group. They're too diverse. No journal would accept it.'' On December 07 2014 02:36 mcc wrote:On December 06 2014 20:11 kwizach wrote:
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What's that supposed to mean? There are no biological "races" among the human species. Races are social constructs. Read the context. I was not discussing whether races do or do not exist as commonly defined. But I was reacting to someone accusing the original poster of racism against blacks even though he was talking about North Africans, and they are not black and according to the common definition of races are counted as white. Thus person that comments on some issues with North African culture (whether valid or not) can hardly be accused of racism against blacks based on that, no ? Anyway races do not necessarily have to be social constructs as color of the skin is not a social construct, but that is really quite irrelevant as mostly they are. EDIT: You can also group humans into "races" based on common genetics and that can have some reasonable applications. From what I understand, Nyxisto was pretty clearly talking about racism against "the other", the non-white, for which he used the term "black people" to refer to how racists think about those "others". Color of the skin is not a social construct per se (although you can argue that how color is perceived is), but races, as the arbitrary delimitations of groups based on skin color, still are. The fact that you consider North Africans to be "white" doesn't mean that others can't see them as "black" or "brown" or "mixed" or whatever because there's nothing objective about where to place those limits (or about placing them at all). You clearly don't understand the concept of race. Anthropology studies, especially studies of Y-chromosomes have clearly shown that europeans and middle easterns, and white indians and north africans have the same heritage, with gradual differences. Gradual differences meaning that swedes may look a bit different on average than poles, but that in the end they consist of the same 10 or so undistinguable subgroups, just at different ratios. And even if swedes may in fact be almost 100% distinguishable from let's say, egyptians, swedes themselves are not a distinct race, and neither are egyptians. This is why the concept of the german race falls flat, while the concept of the indoeuropean or the white race is valid. In order for a race to be valid, you need to be able to distinguish them from everybody who isn't part of the race. And indeed the indoeuropeans are 100% distinguishable from east asians, native americans and sub-saharan africans, both in terms of certain genetical markers and physical features. Of course, the races did appear simply because we procreated seperately from eachother, but that doesn't make them less valid. I understand the concept of race very well, thank you, which is why I'm explaining to you that it is a social construct which is based on the delimitation of groups when those limits have no objective scientific basis. None of what you said even remotely answers what I presented you with. Who is disputing that heritages can be studied, or that traits vary? The point is that on the genetic level the "human races" you referenced make little sense, and that the very traits and characteristics that are used to define "races" in reality exist in spectrums across humanity (or at the very least exist without obvious "breaks"), making any such delimitation arbitrary and socially constructed. You mention anthropology. Have you read the "Race Reconciled: How Biological Anthropologists View Human Variation" special issue of vol. 39, issue 1 of the American Journal of Physical Anthropology (May 2009)? The authors clearly and unambiguously demonstrate that "race is not an accurate or productive way to describe human biological variation" (Heather J.H. Edgar and Keith L. Hunley in the introduction of the special issue, p. 2). You can read a detailed summary of the findings here (this is the page where I initially learned about these papers - I "only" read three of the articles themselves). Here are a few quotes from that summary: In a discussion of Race and global patterns of phenotypic variation, John Relethford plots human skin color variation: "The result is a continuous straight line ranging from the darkest extremes to the lightest extremes in skin color. There are no identifiable clusters. . . . Researchers are of course free to subdivide this continuum into different groups, but such clustering would be arbitrary and subjective in terms of the number of groups and the cutoff points used to distinguish them. The lack of apparent clusters is a reflection of the fact that skin color shows a classic pattern of clinal variation." (2009:17) [...]
Unlike some textbooks and pronouncements which use this information to declare all physical variation is clinal, Relethford proceeds to consider craniometric or skull variation. [...] Relethford considers racial labels as “a culturally constructed label that crudely and imprecisely describes real variation” (2009:20). Variation is real, exists, and has been structured by geography and migration, but the labels we use are a “crude first-order approximation” (2009:21). Relethford uses the example of how we see height as short, medium, and tall: “We tend to use crude labels in everyday life with the realization that they are fuzzy and subjective. I doubt anyone thinks that terms such as ‘short,’ ‘medium,’ and ‘tall’ refer to discrete groups, or that humanity only comes in three values of height!” (2009:21). [...] Current scientific consensus is that craniometrics yields clustered geographic groupings, but those groupings are subjective and arbitrary. [...]
Skin color, like many other racial measures, is continuously variable. Crania may be structured geographically, but classifications based on geographic clusters would be arbitrary. But what about measuring all the bones? Television shows feature forensic anthropologists easily identifying race from skeletal remains. Does that mean race is real?[...] Sauer explains “the successful assignment of race to a skeletal specimen is not a vindication of the race concept, but rather a prediction that an individual, while alive was assigned to a particular socially constructed ‘racial’ category” (1992:107). Forensic anthropologists have samples of bones from many geographic areas, and can classify bones according to what race society has assigned to people with ancestry in those geographic areas. However, examining the bones provides a probability estimate of likely race assignment: “In ascribing a race name to a set of skeletonized remains, the anthropologist is actually translating information about biological traits to a culturally constructed labeling system that was likely to have been applied to a missing person” (1992:109).
Despite the provocative and sometimes misunderstood title, Sauer pleads for forensic anthropologists to better explain what it means to make racial classifications from skeletal remains. He begs forensic anthropologists not to “sail on” without making an effort to expose people “to the notion that perceived races are not reflections of biological reality” (1992:110). We should “not fall into the trap of accepting races as valid biologically discrete categories because we use them so often” (1992:110). [...] What actually happens is forensic anthropologists match bones probabilistically against known existing assortments. Those assortments can be anything socially relevant. Changing the context of bone discovery could lead to different predictive classification–of the same bones: “The use of different priors also shows the importance of prior information, as ‘Mr. Johnson’ would have been classified as a Pacific Islander had his remains been found on Hawaii and as an ‘American Black’ had his remains been found in Gary, Indiana” (Konigsberg et al. 2009:83). [...]
Even after proving the continuous variation of skin tones, and even after showing how bones and skulls do not confirm traditional race classifications, there is still the sense that genetics offers real proof of race. Genetic testing companies amplify this misconception in a rush to market ancestry, while pharmaceutical companies sell race-targeted medications.
[...] Genetic classifications of races outside of Sub-Saharan Africa are simply subsets of Sub-Saharan African diversity. Moreover, and perhaps most strangely, “a classification that takes into account evolutionary relationships and the nested pattern of diversity would require that Sub-Saharan Africans are not a race because the most exclusive group that includes all Sub-Saharan African populations also includes every non-Sub-Saharan African population” (Long et al. 2009:32).
[...] This evolutionary history is explained in the article The global pattern of gene identity variation reveals a history of long-range migrations, bottlenecks, and local mate exchange: Implications for biological race. Once again, sophisticated techniques reveal a “nested pattern of genetic structure that is inconsistent with the existence of independently evolving biological races” (Hunley et al. 2009:35). The authors confirm greater genetic variation within Sub-Saharan Africa, and all other humans are a sub-set of this variation. Taxonomic classifications of race cannot account for observed genetic diversity. [...]" In short, and as I said, variation among humans obviously exists (nobody is claiming otherwise), but races are social constructs. All the ppl who claim that races doesn't exist are just making skewed semantic arguments, by saying things like, although there are certain differences in certain characteristics that are undeniable, there are also a lot of characteristics that are not defined by race. This is true, but claiming that this disproves the race theory shows that the person doesn't understand the concept of race. Races are not completely different from eachother, they are only marginally different in some ways, for instance in facial structure and skin tone. But there are a lot of characteristics that are not defined by race. Height is one of them. Although asians are shorter on average, this is not a rule, and all races have a great diversity in terms of height. What defines a human race is that they have certain features that doesn't exist among other humans, and because the 4 groups that I have mentioned, lived sheltered from eachother for probably over 10 000 years, they gradually developed into races as history passed. I'm well aware that we're all related if you're just going back a lot further in time. This is why we have these different races, rather than different species. We're all the same species, but different subgroups or races, similarly to dog breeds. I agree that there's no viable reason for why these races should exist, but supporting their existence is merely a question of observation, rather than about justifying their existence. At this point you are repeating what you already said before instead of addressing my arguments and the thorough debunking of the concept of race that I presented you with through my reference to the scientific findings on the non-existence of objective races with regards to skin color, craniometric variation, skeletons, and genetics. You've also resorted to arguing against strawmen, since the argument is not that races don't exist because we share common characteristics. If you want to bury your head in the sand and ignore the scientific research which debunks your position on the existence of human races that's up to you, but for the people actually interested in learning more on the topic I refer you to my previous post, the "Race Reconciled: How Biological Anthropologists View Human Variation" special issue of vol. 39, issue 1 of the American Journal of Physical Anthropology (May 2009) and, for a simple summary of the findings, the page I quoted extensively. As I said, human variation obviously exists, but races are still arbitrary, subjective and very flawed pseudo-delimitations of variations, and thus socially constructed. You haven't debunked anything concerning race. You just don't subscribe to it, because it doesn't fit your narrative about white europeans being "racist" against the rest of the world, including north africans and middle eastern ppl. The reason why some white europeans look at brown-skinned, black haired indoeuropeans with distrust is because brown skin and black hair is a proxy for indoeuropeans who was raised outside of Europe. It's the culture that are present in those regions that ppl don't like or are afraid of, not the skin color, or the way they look. This is why greeks and southern italians doesn't get lumped up with the ppl who come from muslim countries, despite the fact that they look a lot more like them generally than they look like the typical person in a germanic country. They don't get lumped up with other mediterranean ppl, because the mediterranean ppl north of the sea is closer culturally to "us" than they are to the middle east. The reason why Christian Europe tends to look down upon Muslim Middle East and North Africa, has cultural reasons. It's about phobia of cultures that we consider lesser than ours. This is also why ppl in protestant countries like my country, tend to have the greatest level of trust for ppl who live in protestant countries, followed by the catholic countries and lastly the orthodox countries. This is because religious heritage is a proxy for cultural heritage. Race is a observation and that's all it is. You're only afraid of the word, because you have this idea about different races not liking eachother because of racial hatred. This is all bullshit. Do you honestly believe that if the ppl in west Africa were in fact white, that they wouldn't have been enslaved? They were enslaved because of cultural reasons. Because they were so technologically backwards and didn't have any powerful allies, the westerners could get away with enslaving them. This is why they were enslaved. This is why the irish was enslaved too. The irish were sheltered on an island in the middle of nowhere. The english could do pretty much whatever they wanted with them, because they had no prominent allies. The fact that they had a shared celtic genetical heritage didn't seem to matter. Again, an entire post not addressing what I said in the slightest and arguing instead against a series of strawmen that have no connection to what I actually wrote here and what I linked to in terms of scientific research. Thanks for proving my point. The page you cited claimed among other things that dividing by skin color is arbitrary, which is nonsense. If you're going back 3-4 generations, it's impossible to mistake a person of 100% european descent, from a person of 100% sub-saharan african descent. There are no exceptions to this, so it's not arbitrary. Just because there are ppl in Ethiopia who kind of looks like a mix of Egyptians and Kenyans, it doesn't mean that race isn't a viable concept. The idea that you can't distinguish races without being arbitrary is not true, it's only true if you feel the need to categorize everybody. For instance, if you went to a place like Kazakhstan and tried to categorize everyone as either indoeuropean or east asians, then I get that it would feel very arbitrary, but for those individuals where it isn't obvious, they shouldn't be categorized as either. This is what you do with dogs. They need to fit certain criterias to be called german shepherds or labradors, and if they don't, then they'll generally be called mixed. This is how we categorize dogs, so why are you so afraid of doing the same with humans? If I told you that I had a german shepherd dog, would that be racist against dogs, to refer to him and thus acknowledge his breed as a viable concept? And if yes, would it be racist against german shepherd dogs or against dogs that aren't german shepherds, or maybe racist against dogs that look similar to them, but don't fully categorize as a german shepherd? I do recognize that races exists, but I don't claim that some kind of purity should be maintained. I disagree with you that races are arbitrarily defined, but on the other hand, races were definately arbitrarily created, so the idea of purity is nonsense. The races are the result of small groups of ppl immigrating into new territories and living sheltered from other humans, and eventually emerging as new civilizations founded by the ancestors of the first immigrants.
Ok,
Let's imagine I take a piece of paper and print 7 billion dots on it, each representing one person, I then make 7 billion copies of the piece of paper and hand one out to each person on earth and ask them to shade areas of the paper that they believe define the different "races". At the end of this process I gather up a few billion or so copies shaded by people that roughly agree with me, I scan them into a computer and have it produce map of the races of humanity based on a statistical analysis of those papers.
What I have just described is profoundly more rigorous than your hand waving and yet it is, absolutely clearly, no more meaningful than Astrology.
Let's take that Astrology analogy a little further (perhaps too far, let's see) and look at a situation where "race" is often used as a short hand for a physical description, when a witness describes a crime.
So, officer, I was at my computer and I look out my window and I see a white guy shooting a gun.
White?
Yea you know, pale skin, thin pointy nose, his hair was dark and curly, I mean, maybe he was North African or something but... basically white.
North African is white?
Yea, Caucasian. Have you not read Lord fafnfaf's 18th century treatise on the subject of race? North African's count as white.
What time and day did this happen sir?
I'm not sure, I was deep in a 2 week long viagra charged SC2 and wanking marathon. Would have been the beginning of December some time. It was night, I know because I remember he took the shot under stars, Orion's right foot was behind him.
Orion's right foot?
Yea, you know. The star sign with 4 stars sort of in a box that could be shoulders and feet with 3 stars in the middle of them that kind of looks like a belt.
The bottom 2 stars are feet?
Yea, feet. Have you not read madam blackcat's 9th century almanac of the constellations? They're feet.
Well, your physical description of "white" seems to fit a guy we have in custody and consulting my police issue star chart I see that a stellar formation "Orion's right foot" would have been roughly outside your window in the early evening which matches the time we have for the shooting...
Both the race and star sign are, very human, projections onto physical reality. They do correlate with measurable things:
-You can place callipers on someone's nose or on the nasal cavity of a skull or you can measure the wavelength of reflected light from a given person's skin.
-You can map the heavens, measure the distance, speed and direction of travel of stars.
Exactly none of this means that "white" or "Orion" is a real that exists objectively in reality. They are both "social constructs", subjective assessments which may function as a useful shorthand in certain circumstances. "Race is a observation and that's all it is." "Astrology is a observation and that's all it is."
The thing is though, Orion is never going to turn up for a job interview only to encounter someone behind the desk that believes it is "unambitious" and therefore less likely to employ it. But this happens to people all the time because they are "black". If maartendq is ever in a position to hire and fire people and encounters someone who he believes is "North African" he will maintain a bias against them because "North Africa has a mercantilist tradition" whatever it is that that means.
This is exactly what Racism is.
I want to be clear. Nothing that I regularly encounter irritates me more than the shrill howl of the warrior journalist condemning people as evil racists and ending all possible discussion on the matter, primarily because, I believe, they are failing in their stated aim: Reducing racism. All they do is drive people (yes, shockingly, racists are people too) out of the arena of public debate, submerging their voices in such a way that they search of others of like minds and develop an echo chamber constructed of bovine excrement.
I don't argue against racial definitions because they are evil.
I argue against them because they are woo.
They are hocum.
They are bullshit.
I don't really spend time arguing against Astrology because I think, comparatively, the belief that the position of celestial objects can tell us something about people is less harmful and, less othered/submerged and less tacitly encouraged by the news press and politicians than is the belief that a person's personality and disposition can be garnered in a glance. If we lived in a world where your star sign could get you beaten up my priorities might be different.
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