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> Comparing white Americans (a random group of people defined by a subjective criteria, rather than by anything scientific) to a whole European country is rando
by xyzzyz 2y ago
> Comparing white Americans (a random group of people defined by a subjective criteria, rather than by anything scientific) to a whole European country is random.
“White Americans” is very much not a “random group defined by subjective criteria”. Self-identification as white is extremely highly correlated with objective, measurable metrics like percent of European ancestry, and this also makes US whites directly comparable to population of European countries, which as it happens still are overwhelmingly comprised by people of European ancestry.
I am not selecting best performing group for the sake of comparison, I’m just comparing various natural and obvious population clusters that have been understood and distinguished by everyone completely unrelatedly to the discussion of educational outcomes. The category of white Americans has not been invented to show how great US education is. I am totally interested in comparing educational outcomes of white Americans with other major ethnic or ancestral populations in other countries, it’s just white Americans come out ahead almost every single time.
- ivan_gammel 2y agoSelf-identification on the basis of race is not objective. Races do not exist, it is a scientific fact. There are many other more reasonable ways to cluster American population. Ancestral angle is important, but only from cultural proximity perspective if you talk about people who are 5-10th generation Americans. Black Americans that are descendants of slaves may have higher proximity to Europe than to Africa, so they should be included in the group that you compare to Europe and anyway that comparison must be based on some theory, otherwise it’s just cherry-picking for building a convenient narrative.
- callingbull 2y ago> Races do not exist, it is a scientific fact. Races do not exist in the same sense that the periodic table does not exist. Both are constructs over reality, and they are both informative (i.e. science).
- ivan_gammel 2y agoPeriodic table uses objective criteria for categorization. American race classification is rooted in debunked theories and mostly meaningless today. One can say at least that there exists black subculture, black dialect of English etc among descendants of slaves. How much of that is related to 1st and 2nd generation immigrants from Africa, which have much stronger cultural links to their motherland, speak different languages and may even have different faith? Asian bucket is absolutely non-sensical — there’s either cultural proximity to America or to native Asian cultures, which are very different, so the people are very different. It is very hard to understand why Indians and Chinese should classify themselves the same way. This classification is imposed on them. How is this nonsense informative? It’s just some racist legacy. In Europe we do not have that system and we don’t miss it.
- callingbull 2y agoRaces are also based on objective criteria: physical characteristics, which convey information about ancestry and genetics. I don't know why you're talking about "culture"?
- ivan_gammel 2y agoYou cannot be serious. It is very well established by science that biological races do not exist. They remain in the mostly American conversation as sociocultural constructs. Maybe you at least read Wikipedia to educate yourself?
- callingbull 2y ago[flagged]
- 6thvoicein 2y ago[dead]
- xyzzyz 2y agoThis is just obfuscation. The population clusters will still exist even if we don't use the word "race" to describe them, and they can be described in biological terms that will overwhelmingly overlap with the sociocultural construct.
- trafficante 2y agoFWIW, American Descendants of Slaves (ADoS) have an average European genetic admixture of ~24%.[1] 1. https://www.cell.com/ajhg/fulltext/S0002-9297(14)00476-5 https://www.cell.com/ajhg/fulltext/S0002-9297(14)00476-5
- ivan_gammel 2y agoI‘m talking about cultural proximity. The tragedy of American slavery is that it erased any links of slaves to Africa, so modern black Americans have barely any relationship to Africa, still carrying the pain but losing any cultural or ancestral connections. They were raised and educated in a culture that is mostly a product of Europe. It is wrong thus to compare them to African countries since it gives false impression that they are doing great.
- callingbull 2y ago> The tragedy of American slavery is that it erased any links of slaves to Africa, so modern black Americans have barely any relationship to Africa, still carrying the pain but losing any cultural or ancestral connections. I don't know why you deny genetics.
- ivan_gammel 2y agoAncestral connection in the quoted sentence means knowing your ancestors, not genetic lineage. It must have been clear from this thread that I don’t deny genetics.
- xyzzyz 2y ago> Self-identification on the basis of race is not objective. It correlates extremely closely with objective measures like percentage of genetic ancestry from a given continent or historical population, so close in fact that for statistical purposes, it is justified to regard these two as virtually identical. > Races do not exist, it is a scientific fact. I’ll happily use different term like “ancestral group” if you like it more, but the (scientific) truth of the matter is that it’s just splitting hairs. I know that in recent years activists worked hard to obfuscate and misinform people on these topics, so I will happily accommodate you.
- ivan_gammel 2y ago> It correlates extremely closely with objective measures like percentage of genetic ancestry from a given continent It doesn’t make this clustering less arbitrary. > I’ll happily use different term like “ancestral group” if you like it more I do not care what term do you use for it as long as I do not see any scientific argument for having it. Politics and whatever activism have nothing to do with it.