4 ms·

Put simply: Fuzziness is a real thing. Fuzziness not only in the topic here but in the meta discussion of the topic. Yeah, there's something about white, Amer

Put simply: Fuzziness is a real thing. Fuzziness not only in the topic here but in the meta discussion of the topic. Yeah, there's something about white, American Christians to be discussed historically… boiling it down to "white" is probably better done by going with "European" but that's probably my own intellectual biases from my experiences of the language. The thing about being Jewish is that it simply has been significantly different (even as there are parallels) to most other ethnic discussions. There are genetic similarities (read: inbreeding) within the primary Jewish ethnicities where other groups show more diversity. There's a weird tie between culture/religion and ethnicity. I often make the analogy to being Cherokee or something. You don't just decide to believe some religious things and it makes you Cherokee, but they do have traditional beliefs and the idea of true adoption as a Cherokee isn't crazy. The Jewish religion is sorta like that where they discourage converts, and conversion is like getting adopted by a different ethnic group. That's quite different from Christianity and Islam that promote conversion. For this and many other reasons, Jews stayed distinct in their own weird way. Talking about "whiteness" and "white people" is actually more like "blackness" and "black people" where dark skin can come from a range of cultural and ethnic backgrounds. Lumping all dark-skinned people together makes little sense except for how it's treated (self-fulfilling prophecy somewhat) in our world in reality. You may recall people remarking that our first "black" president was not only mixed-race but his African father was really African and not a descendant of American slaves. But obviously he still lived his life in a way that had him be a part of the American (slave ancestry) cultural reality. So, yeah, fuzziness. But Jews really have had ties going back generations that the various conglomerations of "white" Americans have not… even as you can draw some analogies and questions.

core-questions 9y ago
> Talking about "whiteness" and "white people" is actually more like "blackness" and "black people" where dark skin can come from a range of cultural and ethnic backgrounds. Lumping all dark-skinned people together makes little sense except for how it's treated (self-fulfilling prophecy somewhat) in our world in reality. I agree with this - but it's also very clear that Black people, especially in North America, have some amount of shared history that crosses their ethnic lines, and absolutely have shared interests. Can one really pretend Black people don't exist? Can one say that it should be deconstructed, and that we should talk about Ethiopians and Nigerians, etc - and if so, which sort, because within country borders there are still many different groups? How do we label an African American who can trace their history back to sixteen different countries? What do they identify as? I can tell you, it's an easy answer if you actually ask them... Not only is this clinal (fuzzy), labels are also applied at different levels of granularity. There's still value in speaking about finer levels of granularity, and the shared history/values/goals/problems that apply at one level of granularity may not apply when you move up to the superset, but some still do. It's those shared issues that highly coarse groupings are concerned with. Let's not miss the forest for the trees.
- quadrangle 9y ago
  The self-fulfilling-prophecy is the key point. Anything we label actually exists if (this doesn't always happen), applying the label causes some remarkable effect. Beyond that, the question is whether labels reflect real meaning or value? For instance, does the label assist in predicting anything else? We do not live in a post-racial society because people who get labeled "black" are also predictably statistically more likely to be found to suffer various consequences of racism (police harassment, systemic poverty…). Can we predict things about anyone labeled "white"? Probably, but maybe less so. So, if the predictive value of a "white" label is less statistically strong than that of a "black" label, then the former is a less valuable label to discuss (I don't know about the truth of the stats). So, everything is fuzzy, but those correlations that are real statistically powerful ones are the places where labels are most useful and reflective of insights into the world. The danger is that the self-fulfilling part interacts with the other-correlation part. So, if "black" people are statistically poorer and everything correlated with that, then applying the label could reinforce that stereotype etc. etc. tough situation… and lots of dynamics for any particular label and consideration.

core-questions 9y ago

> Talking about "whiteness" and "white people" is actually more like "blackness" and "black people" where dark skin can come from a range of cultural and ethnic backgrounds. Lumping all dark-skinned people together makes little sense except for how it's treated (self-fulfilling prophecy somewhat) in our world in reality. I agree with this - but it's also very clear that Black people, especially in North America, have some amount of shared history that crosses their ethnic lines, and absolutely have shared interests. Can one really pretend Black people don't exist? Can one say that it should be deconstructed, and that we should talk about Ethiopians and Nigerians, etc - and if so, which sort, because within country borders there are still many different groups? How do we label an African American who can trace their history back to sixteen different countries? What do they identify as? I can tell you, it's an easy answer if you actually ask them... Not only is this clinal (fuzzy), labels are also applied at different levels of granularity. There's still value in speaking about finer levels of granularity, and the shared history/values/goals/problems that apply at one level of granularity may not apply when you move up to the superset, but some still do. It's those shared issues that highly coarse groupings are concerned with. Let's not miss the forest for the trees.

quadrangle 9y ago
The self-fulfilling-prophecy is the key point. Anything we label actually exists if (this doesn't always happen), applying the label causes some remarkable effect. Beyond that, the question is whether labels reflect real meaning or value? For instance, does the label assist in predicting anything else? We do not live in a post-racial society because people who get labeled "black" are also predictably statistically more likely to be found to suffer various consequences of racism (police harassment, systemic poverty…). Can we predict things about anyone labeled "white"? Probably, but maybe less so. So, if the predictive value of a "white" label is less statistically strong than that of a "black" label, then the former is a less valuable label to discuss (I don't know about the truth of the stats). So, everything is fuzzy, but those correlations that are real statistically powerful ones are the places where labels are most useful and reflective of insights into the world. The danger is that the self-fulfilling part interacts with the other-correlation part. So, if "black" people are statistically poorer and everything correlated with that, then applying the label could reinforce that stereotype etc. etc. tough situation… and lots of dynamics for any particular label and consideration.