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> Throughout all of biology you find definitions that are often quite arbitrary There is a big difference though - there is mostly international agreement on w

> Throughout all of biology you find definitions that are often quite arbitrary There is a big difference though - there is mostly international agreement on what are the boundaries between species. I’m sure there are some disputes, but also vast areas of agreement By contrast, “races” and the boundaries between them is a country-specific concept. The US is unusual in having officially defined racial categories. Most other countries don’t do that. And the few other countries that do, have very different categories from the US

somenameforme 3y ago
I'd argue against most countries not having their own classification system. That has not been my experience, and I don't understand how e.g. a demographic census would even function otherwise. But whether or not this is true, it's inconsequential to the main point. And that's that you're absolutely right the boundaries are often quite arbitrary, but such is the nature of any and all classification systems. You end up with weird edge cases at any sort of binary line you draw. So I think the issue is not one of arbitrariness, but would it even be useful to have some sort of a global categorization system for humans? And I think probably not. We're a species just a bit too addicted to dystopia, and I'm increasingly averse to pretty much anything that begins with the words global or world.
- skissane 3y ago
  > I'd argue against most countries not having their own classification system. That has not been my experience, and I don't understand how e.g. a demographic census would even function otherwise. Many countries collect data on ethnicity-hence, they will have a system for categorising people based on ethnicity, often based on which ethnicities are most common in that country. But the US is unusual in having racial classifications instead of purely ethnic ones. Differences: race purports to be a biological classification, ethnicity is predominantly a cultural one; racial classifications very often attempt to sort everyone into a small number of categories, while ethnic classifications tend to be much more expansive (with dozens or even hundreds of categories)–e.g. the Australian government's system recognises over 250 distinct "cultural and ethnic groups" [0] Consider the case of identical twins separated at birth, and raised by families belonging to different ethnic groups-the twins could grow up to have different ethnicities, but few would agree they could have different races. Suppose one twin is adopted by an Italian family and grows up speaking Italian at home, while the other twin is adopted by a Lebanese family and grows up speaking Arabic at home instead In theory (and occasionally in practice), you can change your ethnicity - sometimes a person joins an ethnic group (often via marriage, religious conversion, and/or immigration), and becomes so thoroughly assimilated to it that everyone accepts them as a full member. A relatively rare scenario-and different ethnic groups differ in their openness to it-but given ethnicity is a cultural category there is nothing in principle wrong with the idea of changing your ethnicity. Whereas, in theory, your race is immutable and cannot be changed (in spite of rare cases when practice has deviated from the theory) [0] https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/classifications/australian-standard-classification-cultural-and-ethnic-groups-ascceg/latest-release https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/classifications/australian...

somenameforme 3y ago

I'd argue against most countries not having their own classification system. That has not been my experience, and I don't understand how e.g. a demographic census would even function otherwise. But whether or not this is true, it's inconsequential to the main point. And that's that you're absolutely right the boundaries are often quite arbitrary, but such is the nature of any and all classification systems. You end up with weird edge cases at any sort of binary line you draw. So I think the issue is not one of arbitrariness, but would it even be useful to have some sort of a global categorization system for humans? And I think probably not. We're a species just a bit too addicted to dystopia, and I'm increasingly averse to pretty much anything that begins with the words global or world.

skissane 3y ago
> I'd argue against most countries not having their own classification system. That has not been my experience, and I don't understand how e.g. a demographic census would even function otherwise. Many countries collect data on ethnicity-hence, they will have a system for categorising people based on ethnicity, often based on which ethnicities are most common in that country. But the US is unusual in having racial classifications instead of purely ethnic ones. Differences: race purports to be a biological classification, ethnicity is predominantly a cultural one; racial classifications very often attempt to sort everyone into a small number of categories, while ethnic classifications tend to be much more expansive (with dozens or even hundreds of categories)–e.g. the Australian government's system recognises over 250 distinct "cultural and ethnic groups" [0] Consider the case of identical twins separated at birth, and raised by families belonging to different ethnic groups-the twins could grow up to have different ethnicities, but few would agree they could have different races. Suppose one twin is adopted by an Italian family and grows up speaking Italian at home, while the other twin is adopted by a Lebanese family and grows up speaking Arabic at home instead In theory (and occasionally in practice), you can change your ethnicity - sometimes a person joins an ethnic group (often via marriage, religious conversion, and/or immigration), and becomes so thoroughly assimilated to it that everyone accepts them as a full member. A relatively rare scenario-and different ethnic groups differ in their openness to it-but given ethnicity is a cultural category there is nothing in principle wrong with the idea of changing your ethnicity. Whereas, in theory, your race is immutable and cannot be changed (in spite of rare cases when practice has deviated from the theory) [0] https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/classifications/australian-standard-classification-cultural-and-ethnic-groups-ascceg/latest-release https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/classifications/australian...