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Races exist. I can't believe that I'm even saying that. They're not a social construct. Nor are the sexes. Human beings are a single species with a large numb

• achenet 4y ago
  ehhh.... You have genes. Certain genes are well adapted to certain environments, for example hi/low melanin to protect from UV radiation. In environments where people don't move a lot, such as the Earth 5000 years ago, genes will tend to cluster together, and if you have someone's genetic makeup you can make informed guesses about their phenotype. The problem, imo with 'races' is that the modern world has created too many hybrids to be able to accurately guess much information about someone's genetic makeup from their phenotype. Blue eyes for example, which maybe 5000 years ago were only found in one small corner of the globe, are common in many different places, and associated with many other types of genes. You can no longer reliably predict that someone with blue eyes will have blonde hair for example. Or that they won't also have say sickle cell anemia when in the past those two traits were probably never found in the same person. Like for example when in the US someone marks their race as "Black" in some census form, that tells you almost nothing besides maybe that they likely have elevated levels of skin pigmentation. You have some genetic clusters, such as those found in the Kenyan Rift Valley, where they have good genes for long distance running, and others, such as those found in Jamacia and West Africa, better suited for explosive sprinting. Both of which tend to be associated with high levels of skin pigmentation. Operating at the level of 'races', which, from what I can tell, basically means 'skin color', completely misses this sort of detail, and is, in my opinion, a mental model that is so crude, and so lacking in granularity as to be basically worthless. Genes exist. Races... if you're using that term to mean "certain groupings of genes which are often found together, usually in groups of people that have spent a long time living together in the same environment", then yes, they exist, but then you have many people that you'd not be able to fit into a 'race' - basically every stereotypical American who is "one eighth Irish, one eighth Italian, one eighth Swedish, one eighth Chinese...." is going to have a set of genes that is not associated with any "race".
• avgcorrection 4y ago
  I salute your tilting at windmills against Political Correctness. But it’s a waste of effort. I mean that it is pseudo-science in the sense that there is no scientific substance to it. I mean that every time someone has tried to make a science of race—and there have been plenty of attempts—it’s just turned out to be a crock of shit. There is an everyday meaning of “race”, yes. mostly about skin pigmentation, eye shape, bone shape. Things like that. So why do I mention the pseudo-scientific connection? Because “race-mixing” implies that different “races” breeding is bad, which must mean—beyond the completely shallow like the appearance of people who are “mixed”—that there is something substantive to the notion of races which makes mixed-race people inferior in some way. Or that non-<race> are inferior. But there isn’t. One can easily imagine a parallel universe where what we call races correspondend with completely wildly different traits, like a completely different level of intelligence (a recurring racist trope). Or we could just look at the differences in other biological species in our own (non-parallel) universe. But it just so happens to be the apparent fact that human races (in the everyday sense) are not substantially different. Certainly not different enough to worry about race-mixing. If you raise a child born in Indonesia in Sweden, they will speak Swedish and be like other Swedes. But if you put a 20-year-old Swede in the middle of a jungle of in Papua, they will probably just die. The point is how plastic young children are and how inconsequential the fact that your genes came from the other side of the planet really are. Your allusion to examples of differences between people illustrates this: > Human beings are a single species with a large number of branches allowing them to survive localised environmental niches. Human beings are a tropical primate who use technology to survive permanently in climates ranging from the tundra to the desert. The know-how of an Inuit is much more relevant for their survival compared to the fact that they are probably more adapted as an organism to living in eight-month-winter climate compared to a Spaniard. > But to pretend that races aren't real just because of an interlink between the study of race and racist ideologies is fucking ridiculous. Nowhere did I say or imply that I think that “race” is pseudo-science because of racist ideologies. Stop making shit up!
  • yarg 4y ago
    > There is an everyday meaning of “race”, yes. mostly about skin pigmentation, eye shape, bone shape. Things like that. So why do I mention the pseudo-scientific connection? Because “race-mixing” implies that different “races” breeding is bad, which must mean—beyond the completely shallow like the appearance of people who are “mixed”—that there is something substantive to the notion of races which makes mixed-race people inferior in some way. Or that non-<race> are inferior. But there isn’t. I'm going to try in good faith to follow what you just said. Or get so far as the part that makes me stop reading. > Because “race-mixing” implies that different “races” breeding is bad Why? Because a bunch of racist bullshit about the mud people? You're confusing the manifestation of an event with the social stigma around it. And there is no doubt at all that that stigma was abhorrent to its core (shout out to Dolphus Raymond), but that's got fuck all to do with what you are asserting. And by the way, mixed race people (unimaginary as they are) are sexy as hell.