4 ms·

That article doesn't mention the word "race" once. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_(human_categorization) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_(human_categori

That article doesn't mention the word "race" once. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_(human_categorization) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_(human_categorization) > there is a broad scientific agreement that essentialist and typological conceptions of race are untenable Any educated person with access to the internet who never was even curious about this I'm suspicious of. If you don't arrive at it by the thought experiments a bored teenager might do, it takes like 5 minutes of reading, and then that's done.

xienze 3mo ago
> That article doesn't mention the word "race" once. Are you being intentionally obtuse by pretending ethnicity and race can't be used interchangeably on a broad level? The entire point of requiring "diversity in bone marrow donation" is that you can't just take bone marrow from an ethnically caucasian ("white" in racial classification terms) and expect the transfer to be successful for an African American person ("black" in racial classification terms). Yes "white", "black" et al are imprecise terms but they broadly align with certain ethnic groups, and there ARE biological differences between ethnicities.
- simianwords 3mo ago
  I think this discussion won't be productive because for them, dismissing race as a concept is a way to combat racism itself and prove higher moral ground.
  - customguy 3mo ago
    No, I think racism is mostly one of the ways in which little fish get played off against other little fish, and the best way to combat it is also the best way to combat a lot of other big issues, and that is holding the big fish to account. We're angry fighting over table scraps because consolidated power consolidates further and takes all our oxygen. Like in that meme image with a rich guy and a plate with hundreds of cookies, telling a worker "careful, the immigrant wants to steal your cookie". I think similarly about other "culture war" issues: there are always two sides that have at least one 2+2=5 article of faith, e.g. races being real and super important, or white old men being the source of all sin, or some religion or other, or biological sex being a spectrum. But there's always something, you always have to hand off your brain and reduce yourself below the level of a moderately intelligent and curious teenager. Otherwise, you're "the other", and what that is depends on the group, not you. So how you instantly have an image of me in your head, simply because I "talked back" or whatever, is hilarious to me. You have no idea about me, and and couldn't guess in a million years how I actually am, but you know your enemy, so I'm probably that. And the most fun part is, I will get told I'm "fash" or MAGA with exactly the same ease. From my perspective, I know with 100% certainty y'all are talking about each other, because none of it even begins to describe me or my conduct, and is always the same dumb shit, very little variation or originality.
    - happytoexplain 3mo ago
      I mostly agree/sympathize with this. Though I think it's fascinating that "race is real" is a 2+2=5 example for you, but for me, "race is not real" is 2+2=5. Of course what I really think is that both are quippy oversimplifications. Really the fundamentals underlying both "sides" are all reasonable, and it's just a semantic argument poisoned by social politics, which encourages people to sort of implicitly ignore the semantics another person is using, and at the same time to leave things unsaid in their own retorts too, making room for the other person to continue the cycle.
dofm 3mo ago
This whole discussion is exhausting, isn't it, but it worries me because it seems we have fully gone backwards if people are back to saying "OK biologically you are of the black race, we can prove it". Only scientific racists think this.
simianwords 3mo ago
But like... no one claims there's some essentialist and typological race. Everyone knows that it is lossy but a real category. Whom are you attacking here? Any educated person knows that there's no one to one mapping between DNA and how the word "Asian" is used. There's a good predictive power for DNA and a high correlation. But that's how language works. Between a "hill" and a "mountain", there's no concrete boundary. So even this is not essentialist. But no educated person would claim that hills and mountains don't exist as categories. I think this is what you have done: you want to signal that you are against racism. So you end up using a strawman definition of race and then deny that race as a category itself doesn't exist. Advice: don't create this strawman. Argue against the real thing: race is a category albeit a fuzzy one that humans use through language and this category has a biological basis.
- dofm 3mo ago
  > Advice: don't create this strawman. Argue against the real thing: race is a category albeit a fuzzy one that humans use through language and this category has a biological basis. Advice: the above is essentially indistinguishable from the false scientific argumentation that white supremacists use to make their case. It has no meaningful basis in science.
  - simianwords 3mo ago
    > Advice: the above is essentially indistinguishable from the false scientific argumentation that white supremacists use to make their case Wow. You make things worse by calling people who think race is a fuzzy category white supremacists. This kinda thing is part of the problem. Please reconsider - its childish and everyone can see through this.
  - happytoexplain 3mo ago
    Essentially indistinguishable? That's going so far. Please don't do this. It's so counter-productive to provide evidence for the "they call everything racist/white-supremacist" accusation.
- customguy 3mo ago

xienze 3mo ago

> That article doesn't mention the word "race" once. Are you being intentionally obtuse by pretending ethnicity and race can't be used interchangeably on a broad level? The entire point of requiring "diversity in bone marrow donation" is that you can't just take bone marrow from an ethnically caucasian ("white" in racial classification terms) and expect the transfer to be successful for an African American person ("black" in racial classification terms). Yes "white", "black" et al are imprecise terms but they broadly align with certain ethnic groups, and there ARE biological differences between ethnicities.

simianwords 3mo ago
I think this discussion won't be productive because for them, dismissing race as a concept is a way to combat racism itself and prove higher moral ground.
- customguy 3mo ago
  No, I think racism is mostly one of the ways in which little fish get played off against other little fish, and the best way to combat it is also the best way to combat a lot of other big issues, and that is holding the big fish to account. We're angry fighting over table scraps because consolidated power consolidates further and takes all our oxygen. Like in that meme image with a rich guy and a plate with hundreds of cookies, telling a worker "careful, the immigrant wants to steal your cookie". I think similarly about other "culture war" issues: there are always two sides that have at least one 2+2=5 article of faith, e.g. races being real and super important, or white old men being the source of all sin, or some religion or other, or biological sex being a spectrum. But there's always something, you always have to hand off your brain and reduce yourself below the level of a moderately intelligent and curious teenager. Otherwise, you're "the other", and what that is depends on the group, not you. So how you instantly have an image of me in your head, simply because I "talked back" or whatever, is hilarious to me. You have no idea about me, and and couldn't guess in a million years how I actually am, but you know your enemy, so I'm probably that. And the most fun part is, I will get told I'm "fash" or MAGA with exactly the same ease. From my perspective, I know with 100% certainty y'all are talking about each other, because none of it even begins to describe me or my conduct, and is always the same dumb shit, very little variation or originality.
  - happytoexplain 3mo ago
    I mostly agree/sympathize with this. Though I think it's fascinating that "race is real" is a 2+2=5 example for you, but for me, "race is not real" is 2+2=5. Of course what I really think is that both are quippy oversimplifications. Really the fundamentals underlying both "sides" are all reasonable, and it's just a semantic argument poisoned by social politics, which encourages people to sort of implicitly ignore the semantics another person is using, and at the same time to leave things unsaid in their own retorts too, making room for the other person to continue the cycle.

dofm 3mo ago

This whole discussion is exhausting, isn't it, but it worries me because it seems we have fully gone backwards if people are back to saying "OK biologically you are of the black race, we can prove it". Only scientific racists think this.

simianwords 3mo ago

But like... no one claims there's some essentialist and typological race. Everyone knows that it is lossy but a real category. Whom are you attacking here? Any educated person knows that there's no one to one mapping between DNA and how the word "Asian" is used. There's a good predictive power for DNA and a high correlation. But that's how language works. Between a "hill" and a "mountain", there's no concrete boundary. So even this is not essentialist. But no educated person would claim that hills and mountains don't exist as categories. I think this is what you have done: you want to signal that you are against racism. So you end up using a strawman definition of race and then deny that race as a category itself doesn't exist. Advice: don't create this strawman. Argue against the real thing: race is a category albeit a fuzzy one that humans use through language and this category has a biological basis.

dofm 3mo ago
> Advice: don't create this strawman. Argue against the real thing: race is a category albeit a fuzzy one that humans use through language and this category has a biological basis. Advice: the above is essentially indistinguishable from the false scientific argumentation that white supremacists use to make their case. It has no meaningful basis in science.
- simianwords 3mo ago
  > Advice: the above is essentially indistinguishable from the false scientific argumentation that white supremacists use to make their case Wow. You make things worse by calling people who think race is a fuzzy category white supremacists. This kinda thing is part of the problem. Please reconsider - its childish and everyone can see through this.
- happytoexplain 3mo ago
  Essentially indistinguishable? That's going so far. Please don't do this. It's so counter-productive to provide evidence for the "they call everything racist/white-supremacist" accusation.
customguy 3mo ago