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Modern scholarship regards race as a social construct, an identity which is assigned based on rules made by society. -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_(huma

Modern scholarship regards race as a social construct, an identity which is assigned based on rules made by society. -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_(human_categorization) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_(human_categorization) There’s No Scientific Basis for Race—It's a Made-Up Label -- https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2018/04/race-genetics-science-africa/ https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2018/04/race-gen... As we harvest ever more human genomes one fact remains unshakeable: race does not exist -- https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/mar/01/racism-science-human-genomes-darwin https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/mar/01/racism-scien... I have not lived a double life. There is no parallel form of my adulthood connected to white people or a white community or an alternative white identity. I have lived this lie, fully, completely, with no exit plan or strategy. -- https://medium.com/@jessakrug/the-truth-and-the-anti-black-violence-of-my-lies-9a9621401f85 https://medium.com/@jessakrug/the-truth-and-the-anti-black-v... It seems society itself viewed her as Black. So based on race being a social construct, wouldn't that make her Black? If not, on what basis then isn't she Black? Certainly not ancestry, because: Just 3,400 years ago, the entire population of the Earth were the ancestors of everyone alive today. -- https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jan/30/how-to-argue-with-a-racist-adam-rutherford-review https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jan/30/how-to-argue-w...

ojnabieoot 6y ago
Unfortunately, given the times, I am supposing your question is asked in bad faith. But if "society itself viewed her as black" and then society itself found out that she was systematically lying about her childhood[1] and past experiences of discrimination[2], then society can certainly change its mind. The real thing about race being a social construct is better expressed by Dubois: "the black man is a person who must ride Jim Crow in Georgia." That is, you can't discuss race without understanding that it's nothing more than a psuedoscience designed to enforce a hereditary and geopolitical caste system - discussing it taxonomically is a sucker's game. So while Krug might have been able to successfully lie about being black (while also styling her hair/makeup to make the ancestry more plausible), that doesn't mean very much when she actually spent her life at the front of the bus. EDIT: On race being "oppression first, ancestry later," see also former NAACP leader Walter Francis White, whose recent ancestors were mostly European but whose parents were both "clearly" black. White himself was blonde and had blue eyes, and he often went undercover as a white man. From Wikipedia[3, racist slur censored for HN friendliness]: > Granted press credentials from the Chicago Daily News, White gained an interview with Arkansas Governor Charles Hillman Brough, who would not have met with him as the NAACP representative. Brough gave White a letter of recommendation to help him meet people and his autographed photograph. > Learning that his identity was discovered, White was in Phillips County briefly before taking the first train back to Little Rock. The conductor told him that he was leaving "just when the fun is going to start" because they had found out that there was a "damned yellow nr down here passing for white and the boys are going to get him." Asked what they would do to him, the conductor told White, "When they get through with him he won't pass for white no more!" "High yellow" was a term used at the time to refer to black people of mixed-racial descent and visible European features. [1] https://twitter.com/GrahamStarr/status/1301567380313829381 https://twitter.com/GrahamStarr/status/1301567380313829381 [2] https://twitter.com/JedMSP/status/1301570822545391616 https://twitter.com/JedMSP/status/1301570822545391616 [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Francis_White https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Francis_White
- rbecker 6y ago
  > she actually spent her life at the front of the bus. Only the part before she started "pretending". Lets say she pretended for 10 years. Does 10 years of Black lived experience make her as Black as a 10 year old Black child? And trans-women? Do they not count as women if they transition too late? Picking some arbitrary age before which you have to be seen as X by society to count as really X seems just that - arbitrary, and very inconsistently applied.
  - three_legs 6y ago
    Did she /believe/ she was black, or she was pretending and knew she wasn't?
dragonwriter 6y ago
> It seems society itself viewed her as Black. So based on race being a social construct, wouldn't that make her Black? No, that's not what a “social construct” means. Social constructs still have socially constructed rules, and the social construct of race is mostly based around the race socially ascribed to your ancestors. (There's a newer complementary or competing coexisting construct that has a greater contribution from self-identity, as well, but even that one still has a significant contribution from ascribed race of ancestors.) In her case, neither her ancestry nor her genuine self-identity were black, she was viewed as back only based on her false presentation of both of those points.

ojnabieoot 6y ago

Unfortunately, given the times, I am supposing your question is asked in bad faith. But if "society itself viewed her as black" and then society itself found out that she was systematically lying about her childhood[1] and past experiences of discrimination[2], then society can certainly change its mind. The real thing about race being a social construct is better expressed by Dubois: "the black man is a person who must ride Jim Crow in Georgia." That is, you can't discuss race without understanding that it's nothing more than a psuedoscience designed to enforce a hereditary and geopolitical caste system - discussing it taxonomically is a sucker's game. So while Krug might have been able to successfully lie about being black (while also styling her hair/makeup to make the ancestry more plausible), that doesn't mean very much when she actually spent her life at the front of the bus. EDIT: On race being "oppression first, ancestry later," see also former NAACP leader Walter Francis White, whose recent ancestors were mostly European but whose parents were both "clearly" black. White himself was blonde and had blue eyes, and he often went undercover as a white man. From Wikipedia[3, racist slur censored for HN friendliness]: > Granted press credentials from the Chicago Daily News, White gained an interview with Arkansas Governor Charles Hillman Brough, who would not have met with him as the NAACP representative. Brough gave White a letter of recommendation to help him meet people and his autographed photograph. > Learning that his identity was discovered, White was in Phillips County briefly before taking the first train back to Little Rock. The conductor told him that he was leaving "just when the fun is going to start" because they had found out that there was a "damned yellow nr down here passing for white and the boys are going to get him." Asked what they would do to him, the conductor told White, "When they get through with him he won't pass for white no more!" "High yellow" was a term used at the time to refer to black people of mixed-racial descent and visible European features. [1] https://twitter.com/GrahamStarr/status/1301567380313829381 https://twitter.com/GrahamStarr/status/1301567380313829381 [2] https://twitter.com/JedMSP/status/1301570822545391616 https://twitter.com/JedMSP/status/1301570822545391616 [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Francis_White https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Francis_White

rbecker 6y ago
> she actually spent her life at the front of the bus. Only the part before she started "pretending". Lets say she pretended for 10 years. Does 10 years of Black lived experience make her as Black as a 10 year old Black child? And trans-women? Do they not count as women if they transition too late? Picking some arbitrary age before which you have to be seen as X by society to count as really X seems just that - arbitrary, and very inconsistently applied.
- three_legs 6y ago
  Did she /believe/ she was black, or she was pretending and knew she wasn't?

dragonwriter 6y ago

> It seems society itself viewed her as Black. So based on race being a social construct, wouldn't that make her Black? No, that's not what a “social construct” means. Social constructs still have socially constructed rules, and the social construct of race is mostly based around the race socially ascribed to your ancestors. (There's a newer complementary or competing coexisting construct that has a greater contribution from self-identity, as well, but even that one still has a significant contribution from ascribed race of ancestors.) In her case, neither her ancestry nor her genuine self-identity were black, she was viewed as back only based on her false presentation of both of those points.