3 ms·

Well, the reason they are lighter no doubt is due to mixing with nearby Arabs, who are predominantly white, throughout history, no? Just because you're African

by brabel 6y ago

Well, the reason they are lighter no doubt is due to mixing with nearby Arabs, who are predominantly white, throughout history, no? Just because you're African it doesn't mean you're black (See South Africa and Tunisia for example)... Wikipedia seems to confirm that: "approximately 40% of their autosomal ancestry to be derived from an ancient non-African back-migration from the near East, and about 60% to be of local native African origin "... Not to mention there's no single black race... Africa has more genetic diversity than the rest of the world combined... Calling them all simply "black" is even worse than calling everyone else (Europeans, Native Americans, Asians, Australians, Polynesians) by a single term (brown/white/yellow people, oh man, that' terrible)... just doesn't make any sense.

krapp 6y ago
Of course race makes no sense if you look at it genetically. Race has no real basis in genetics, it's a sociopolitical construct that loosely correlates to superficial traits like skin color and eye shape.
webmaven 6y ago
Are you arguing that stating Gebru is Black is a miscategorization, or are you arguing that the category doesn't make sense?
- brabel 6y ago
  I think that in the future, categorising people by their made up race will be as absurd as categorising people by their eye colour or hair colour (see how skin colour falls into the same kind of trait?). Imagine a group of people who discriminate all red headed people. Makes as much sense as discriminating all people of a certain skin colour. To answer your question: in this hypothetical world where red heads have a hard time: imagine someone being fired for fighting for the rights of redheads while actually looking blonde with a tiny amount of red in their hair colour! That's the situation we seem to be in.
  - webmaven 6y ago
    Fine. But we're not in that future yet. So, are you arguing that in today's world, stating that Gebru is a member of the sociopolitically constructed category "Black" is a miscategorization, or that the category is nonsensical? Personally, I think that Gebru is absolutely correct to categorize herself as a Black Woman for purposes of fighting against the discrimination she experiences.

by brabel 6y ago

krapp 6y ago

Of course race makes no sense if you look at it genetically. Race has no real basis in genetics, it's a sociopolitical construct that loosely correlates to superficial traits like skin color and eye shape.

webmaven 6y ago

Are you arguing that stating Gebru is Black is a miscategorization, or are you arguing that the category doesn't make sense?

brabel 6y ago
I think that in the future, categorising people by their made up race will be as absurd as categorising people by their eye colour or hair colour (see how skin colour falls into the same kind of trait?). Imagine a group of people who discriminate all red headed people. Makes as much sense as discriminating all people of a certain skin colour. To answer your question: in this hypothetical world where red heads have a hard time: imagine someone being fired for fighting for the rights of redheads while actually looking blonde with a tiny amount of red in their hair colour! That's the situation we seem to be in.
- webmaven 6y ago
  Fine. But we're not in that future yet. So, are you arguing that in today's world, stating that Gebru is a member of the sociopolitically constructed category "Black" is a miscategorization, or that the category is nonsensical? Personally, I think that Gebru is absolutely correct to categorize herself as a Black Woman for purposes of fighting against the discrimination she experiences.