What is race? - Can a cracker be a nigger?

[Secret Asshole]

Um, okay? People are either the controllers or the controlled. And if it came across that I'm sugar-coating my racism, I'm sorry. I hate niggers.

All I ask for is honesty

 

[Lemmingwise]

For example if you abuse a kid during their formative years you can turn them into a de facto low functioning autist, regardless of how bright they may have been had they had a normal childhood. https://archive.md/2RqjK

I'd just like to point out that although. People can get absolutely destroyed at the extreme ends of how they're treated, that does not mean that how people are raised on average has a big influence.

We all desperately want to believe it, and the fact that we do means we can go to great lengths to attempt to do well, something I cheer on. But lookimg at the data suggests that this is much smaller than we like it to be.

Genetics plays a role, but in general, nurture and environment are going to shape the way genetics come out.

How you square that with twin adoption studies showing that for traits of being frequent drinker/smoker having 0.5-0.6 correlation with both twin and bio parents, but less than 0.1 with adoptive parents?

I'm just picking one of numerous behavioural traits that we expect to be cultural, but which certainly seem to be much more genetic.

Those were the numbers last time I dived into the studies anyways.

It seems to me that barring very unusual situations like being locked in the basement, genetics are much more predictive than environment (although I admit I put epigenetics on genetic side instead of environment for that comparison). I'm curious how you would account for that where nurture and environment seem to play such a large role.

 

[Str8Bustah]

Race is not your skin colour, and mixing those two up is what leads to half the retarded, midwit takes on this subject that nearly everyone on the internet seems to have. race is about your ethnicity, specifically, which region of the globe your ancestry stems from, what challenges that group faced on an environmental level that led them to evolve to address said challenges in whatever way that they did, and what impact those evolutionary traits have on the modern generation. to pretend otherwise is just being disingenuous.

Wolves and Dogs are the same species. Dog breeds, much like races, do not actually exist. They are entirely a subjective classification.

you sneaky, conniving bastard.

'the best way to hide a lie is to place it between two truths.'

 

[💗Freddie Freaker💗]

Whiteness and race are invented concepts postulated by guilty rich people who needed to justify their sociopathy in the early 20th century by social Darwinism. The 'white' race is a modern invention as Europeans had been fucking murdering each other since the dawn of time. Conveniently, all of the people deemed non-white by Social Darwinism and Racial Science of the 20th century were immigrant groups that were being worked to death by the rich in their factories. Irish, Italians and Slavs are notably the people not considered 'white'. Eugenics was an incredibly popular science in America in the 1930s until Hitler.

'Blackness' is uniquely American and defined by African Americans unable to trace their ancestry. It is a foreign concept outside of the United States.

Race is a cultural concept far more than a genetic or phenotypic one. As evidenced by many pictures in this thread, children from mixed families can come out as looking like one race or the other, and it might even be impossible to tell that they are mixed. Race is a cultural phenotype; a grouping of specific cultural characteristics and identifiers that put us into specific groupings. Appearance, dress, language and speaking are part of this cultural phenotype.

This gets more complicated when powers that be want to divide people into races in order to control them and foster hatred of the lower classes. Generally, this has been used as a tool to get races to kill each other in order to stop racial unity and looking to the powers that be as their true oppressors. So race is an incredibly complicated component that has been manipulated by ill-intentioned people throughout history, making defining it an ultimately fruitless task as people tend to have an ulterior motive when doing so.

For all intents and purposes, stripping it of its (HIGHLY) charged nature, race is: A cultural phenotypic indicator based on behavior, appearance, food, political values, speech in which they can be categorized as belonging to a certain region, class, nationality, city or community. Genetics plays a role, but in general, nurture and environment are going to shape the way genetics come out.

We do have inborn behaviors and do share behaviors with our parents, but to the extent to those which are racial are entirely subjective, not objective. Race is not objective and actually does not exist in any meaningful sense besides the one we attribute to it.



1) Wolves and Dogs are the same species. Dog breeds, much like races, do not actually exist. They are entirely a subjective classification. Genetic dog tests are nearly identical to 23andMe tests. They compile a bunch of genetic data from a region (in this case, breed) that they think is common and compare it against the subject. This doesn't account for the thousands upon thousands of years of genetic drift and free reproductive travel between populations.
2) Male Ligers are sterile.
3) This has been known since 1922 and most species on the planet observe Haldane's rule: "When in the F1 offspring of two different animal races one sex is absent, rare, or sterile, that sex is the heterozygous sex (heterogametic sex)". This means that in species hybrids, males are sterile, rare or non-existent (XY, heterogametic as opposed to XX, homogametic). This means that it is impossible for hybrids to be their own species. Humans freely reproduce with one another, do not follow Haladane's rule and are not separate species.
4) Reproductive isolation is a huge factor in speciation and differentiation and in fact, in evolution. Humans have not been reproductively isolated from each other for enough of a time to be able to be considered separate species.
5) Genetically, we are 99.9% identical to one another. This is not enough to make a new species. Comparatively, chimps, our closest relative, are 96% identical to us.
6) While lions and tigers are separate species, they belong to the same genus. Much like humans and Neanderthals were different species, but were the same genus. Like tigers and lions, humans and Neanderthals could interbreed as well.
7) Please just say you hate niggers and stop trying to couch it in pseudo-academic language.


Race is a form of social control, and if someone tells you to care about race, be they a Nazi or a progressive, they're trying to control you for their own ends.

I totally agree about race being commonly used as a tool to control others. Most people don't seem to be able to grasp how nuanced things really are so they revert to thinking "people who look like this good, people who look like this bad" and it leads to petty clan fights that benefit nobody but the ruling class. Coexisting peacefully is possible when opportunists at the top aren't rattling the cage.

I'd just like to point out that although. People can get absolutely destroyed at the extreme ends of how they're treated, that does not mean that how people are raised on average has a big influence.

We all desperately want to believe it, and the fact that we do means we can go to great lengths to attempt to do well, something I cheer on. But lookimg at the data suggests that this is much smaller than we like it to be.




How you square that with twin adoption studies showing that for traits of being frequent drinker/smoker having 0.5-0.6 correlation with both twin and bio parents, but less than 0.1 with adoptive parents?

I'm just picking one of numerous behavioural traits that we expect to be cultural, but which certainly seem to be much more genetic.

Those were the numbers last time I dived into the studies anyways.

It seems to me that barring very unusual situations like being locked in the basement, genetics are much more predictive than environment (although I admit I put epigenetics on genetic side instead of environment for that comparison). I'm curious how you would account for that where nurture and environment seem to play such a large role.

All I can say is that I've witnessed striking behavioral difference between people of the same race who live in different parts of the world. Maybe the perceived size of the difference was just an illusion, though.

 

[murdered meat bag]

race might as well be ethnicity. op's examples have known ethnicities.

its only an issue for westerners and their affiliates like brazil where ethnicity is replaced by nationality.

can a non-chinese be chinese? not really. you can be xxx-chinese but thats to distinguish you from the real chinese.

same for any other asian country.

 

[Marshal Mannerheim]

I know the word ”social construct” gets thrown around a lot, but that's exactly what race is. I have nothing in common with a Bosniak. I speak a Germanic and a Finno-Ugric language, he speaks a Slavic language. I'm a Catholic, he's a Muslim. I'll be able to go to university if I want, while he might not finish secondary school. Yet according to the two sides of the same coin that are white supremacy and critical race theory, we're both the same because we have a similar amount of melanin in our skin.

 

[Feralcheese]

I don't mind the Nsscars, but I would forbid my daughter to marry one.

 

[Windows XP Home Edition]

I know the word ”social construct” gets thrown around a lot, but that's exactly what race is. I have nothing in common with a Bosniak. I speak a Germanic and a Finno-Ugric language, he speaks a Slavic language. I'm a Catholic, he's a Muslim. I'll be able to go to university if I want, while he might not finish secondary school. Yet according to the two sides of the same coin that are white supremacy and critical race theory, we're both the same because we have a similar amount of melanin in our skin.

In many of parts of Europe and Asia, some peoples were oppressed because of their ethnicity which is what a lot of race activists don't really understand.

 

[Penis Drager]

When population geneticists say "race is a social construct," they aren't saying human biodiversity doesn't really exist or that it's completely arbitrary. It just doesn't fall into the neat little boxes we invented long before the field existed. This is why they tend to avoid using the word "race" when studying the phenomenon and instead use the term "population."
Different populations are genetically distinct and this fact is measurable. We can even note variation in genes linked to intelligence or aggression. But to say "black people are X" is kinda silly. Africa is the most genetically diverse continent in the world. There's no one "black population" but several populations that happen to be black.
What does happen is that homogeneous groups congregate together and form a culture that reflects the whole of the curve. So a population that typically would have an IQ curve that is only barely left shifted on a genetic basis would form a less intelligently run society. This results in nurture amplifying the small variation in nature to result in a wider IQ gap when measured.

 

[Marshal Mannerheim]

In many of parts of Europe and Asia, some peoples were oppressed because of their ethnicity which is what a lot of race activists don't really understand.

I know. Even better, they pretend that Europeans weren't properly oppressed in America.

I can point to newspaper articles calling southern Italians ”dagoes” and calling for them to be lynched, and essentially treating them in the same way blacks were treated, and I can point to examples of discrimination against most Europeans who aren't WASPs, but when have facts ever mattered to this lot?

 

[Ahriman]

"Race" is just a placeholder for ethnicity. And they're associated with nationality. You could be ethnically Italian, as in, born and raised, but the moment you moved to Belgium, despite having Belgian nationality and being a legal Belgian citizen, you are still fairly foreign to Belgian culture.

Adi always talked about the German Volk, which directly translates to "people", not race. He always talked about the German ethnicity, not their color.

Color being associated with prejudice normally has nothing to do with it, that is a fairly modern social phenomenon, currently being heavily exploited by socialists to keep creating a divide between a nation's population. Matter of fact, the term "racist" was coined by none other than Trotsky in the late '20s as a wedge term to defame anti-socialist slavs.

Leon Trotsky: The History of the Russian Revolution (1.1 Peculiarities of Russia's Development)

Leon Trotsky: The History of the Russian Revolution (1.1 Peculiarities of Russia's Development)

www.marxists.org

In the second quotation Trotsky says the Slavophiles believe Russians to be inherently democratic, an idea that he rubbishes. He says that also finishes off the claims of the racists. But again he is attacking the idea of racial differences not accusing the Slavophiles of saying racist things. In both cases Trotsky is commenting on an existing ideology of racial superiority/difference, so he therefore did not invent the concept of racism. No more than the person who invented the word ‘cat’ was the inventor of cats! Therefore what was the context Trotsky was using those words in, if he only is attacking the idea of inherent racial differences? In the 1930s the word ‘racism’ meant according to the Oxford English Dictionary, “[t]he theory that distinctive human characteristics and abilities are determined by race”. Which sounds exactly like the way Trotsky was using it. No doubt that applies to his earlier usage of ‘racist’ too. In fact in the 1930s, also according to the OED, the word ‘racialism’ (dating from 1907) meant “belief in the superiority of a particular race; prejudice based on this”.

And before that,

The Ugly, Fascinating History Of The Word 'Racism'

The first recorded utterance of the word was by a man named Richard Henry Pratt, whose legacy among Native Americans and others is deeply contentious. His story illustrates problems with how the word is used today.

www.npr.org

The Oxford English Dictionary's first recorded utterance of the word racism was by a man named Richard Henry Pratt in 1902. Pratt was railing against the evils of racial segregation.

"Segregating any class or race of people apart from the rest of the people kills the progress of the segregated people or makes their growth very slow. Association of races and classes is necessary to destroy racism and classism."

Although Pratt might have been the first person to inveigh against racism and its deleterious effects by name, he is much better-remembered for a very different coinage: Kill the Indian...save the man.

So there you have it, he coined the term but in another context.

The current "modern" interpretation of the word is the one Trotsky pushed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Henry_Pratt

Pratt's practice of Americanization of Native Americans by cultural assimilation, which he effected both at Fort Marion and Carlisle, was later regarded by some as a form of cultural genocide. He believed that to claim their rightful place as American citizens, Native Americans needed to renounce their tribal way of life, convert to Christianity, abandon their reservations, and seek education and employment among the "best classes" of Americans. In his writings he described his belief that the government must "kill the Indian...to save the man".

So that is what he meant.

Pratt became an outspoken opponent of tribal segregation on reservations.

Hence, his quote on racism.

 

[BOLDYSPICY!]

What is race

Baby don't hurt me

 

[Penis Drager]

Baby don't hurt purge me

FTFY

 

[Lemmingwise]

When population geneticists say "race is a social construct," they aren't saying human biodiversity doesn't really exist or that it's completely arbitrary. It just doesn't fall into the neat little boxes we invented long before the field existed. This is why they tend to avoid using the word "race" when studying the phenomenon and instead use the term "population."
Different populations are genetically distinct and this fact is measurable. We can even note variation in genes linked to intelligence or aggression. But to say "black people are X" is kinda silly. Africa is the most genetically diverse continent in the world. There's no one "black population" but several populations that happen to be black.
What does happen is that homogeneous groups congregate together and form a culture that reflects the whole of the curve. So a population that typically would have an IQ curve that is only barely left shifted on a genetic basis would form a less intelligently run society. This results in nurture amplifying the small variation in nature to result in a wider IQ gap when measured.

Any subject gets more complex when you talk about it with an expert.

Geneticists are not the ones who came up with the idea "race is a social construct". That's an idea from the sociology department (and they try to make everything a social cobstruct, including gender).

It's not that race is a useless concept (if a very superficial one for the reasons stated), it's that it is a taboo concept. That is a meaningful distinction.

It's taboo not for any reason related to genetics, but for reasons related to politics, society and so on.

There are a number of "black people are" statements that are broadly true. Black people are less sensitive to sunlight. Black people need more sunlight to get sufficient vitamin D. Even with the wide variety between pygmy's, bantu and somali, each share that characteristic compared to european people, even if they differ wildly on other traits.

This if course is one of the least taboo traits that differ.

The problem that an honest genetic assesment of some of those differences leads to uncomfortable questions relating to such subjects as crime, immigration and even the subject taboo of IQ for taboo squared and that is why the subject must be taboo.

You look at these subjects honestly and with clarity and you immediately become a nazi and must be punched.

 

[Penis Drager]

Any subject gets more complex when you talk about it with an expert.

Geneticists are not the ones who came up with the idea "race is a social construct". That's an idea from the sociology department (and they try to make everything a social cobstruct, including gender).

It's not that race is a useless concept (if a very superficial one for the reasons stated), it's that it is a taboo concept. That is a meaningful distinction.

It's taboo not for any reason related to genetics, but for reasons related to politics, society and so on.

There are a number of "black people are" statements that are broadly true. Black people are less sensitive to sunlight. Black people need more sunlight to get sufficient vitamin D. Even with the wide variety between pygmy's, bantu and somali, each share that characteristic compared to european people, even if they differ wildly on other traits.

This if course is one of the least taboo traits that differ.

The problem that an honest genetic assesment of some of those differences leads to uncomfortable questions relating to such subjects as crime, immigration and even the subject taboo of IQ for taboo squared and that is why the subject must be taboo.

You look at these subjects honestly and with clarity and you immediately become a nazi and must be punched.

You're right, and even most population geneticists would agree with you for the most part. Here's a pretty interesting article about two scholars: Charles Murray (the author of "The Bell Curve" which is often decried as a racist screed) and Adam Rutherford (the author of "How to Argue With a Racist" who is known for being a fervent anti-racist). If you don't have the time to read their books, just know that they basically agree 90% of the time. What geneticists tend to take issue with on race is the "wishy-washiness" of the concept. They don't really take much issue with the subsance of the variation, just that the "boxes" we put people in aren't particularly scientific.

 

[Lemmingwise]

You're right, and even most population geneticists would agree with you for the most part. Here's a pretty interesting article about two scholars: Charles Murray (the author of "The Bell Curve" which is often decried as a racist screed) and Adam Rutherford (the author of "How to Argue With a Racist" who is known for being a fervent anti-racist). If you don't have the time to read their books, just know that they basically agree 90% of the time. What geneticists tend to take issue with on race is the "wishy-washiness" of the concept. They don't really take much issue with the subsance of the variation, just that the "boxes" we put people in aren't particularly scientific.

Here's a nice question.

You say they agree on 90%.

If races are meaningless because we are "more similar than we are different"....

Here we have a notorious racist Charles Murray and a very outspoken anti-racist, Adam Rutherford. And their ideas on race are more similar than they are different.

Would that mean that racism is meaningless?

Or is it perhaps possible that a couple of percentage points can result in very meaningful differences?

 

[Penis Drager]

Here's a nice question.

You say they agree on 90%.

If races are meaningless because we are "more similar than we are different"....

Here we have a notorious racist Charles Murray and a very outspoken anti-racist, Adam Rutherford. And their ideas on race are more similar than they are different.

Would that mean that racism is meaningless?

Or is it perhaps possible that a couple of percentage points can result in very meaningful differences?

"Race is meaningless" is a stretch. It's just that focusing on it is an oversimplification to the point of error. I mean, you'd agree that different white subgroups are easily identifiable, yes? Spaniards, Irish,, and Swedes are pretty distinct even at a superficial level without need for genetic analysis. Well Africa is more genetically diverse than Europe, though the superficial differences are notably harder to spot.
What I'm getting at here is that conventional notions of "race" aren't particularly helpful in understanding the reality of the situation. Even reducing it to "ethnicity" is only slightly more helpful as subpopulations within an established nation can often be easy to tell apart (see: Uyghurs, Tibetans, and Han Chinese, though this is the extreme) hence why it's been such a worry in recent times that the CCP has taken such an interest in population genetics studies. Nobody's been saying the science is flawed. The worry is they may use the knowledge they acquired in an unethical manner.

 

[Lemmingwise]

"Race is meaningless" is a stretch. It's just that focusing on it is an oversimplification to the point of error. I mean, you'd agree that different white subgroups are easily identifiable, yes? Spaniards, Irish,, and Swedes are pretty distinct even at a superficial level without need for genetic analysis. Well Africa is more genetically diverse than Europe, though the superficial differences are notably harder to spot.
What I'm getting at here is that conventional notions of "race" aren't particularly helpful in understanding the reality of the situation. Even reducing it to "ethnicity" is only slightly more helpful as subpopulations within an established nation can often be easy to tell apart (see: Uyghurs, Tibetans, and Han Chinese, though this is the extreme) hence why it's been such a worry in recent times that the CCP has taken such an interest in population genetics studies. Nobody's been saying the science is flawed. The worry is they may use the knowledge they acquired in an unethical manner.

I don't think that's what's going on. I think people are trying to find posthoc reasons why it's good that we don't have an intermediary concept.

It's a modern kind of doublethink. We obsess about antiracism and how to equalize things with affirmative actions, even as we deny the concepts themselves that even make that analysis possible in the first place. It's a kafkaesque game without solutions once you engage in it.

Why would variety in a collection of subgroups matter when comparing larger broader groups? Men have larger variety of behavioural traits compared to women on such metrics as criminality and productivity. Does that render comparison between men and women invalid?

Does comparing japanese to australian aboriginal become invalid because one or the other has more genetic variety? You can only say one has more genetic variety by comparing them in the first place. Even as you try to defend abolishing the concept, you have to use the concept to make your point.

---

Look at it another way.

Talking about people as left vs right is also an oversimplification when discussing politics, but it is still a useful building block towards growing understanding.

You need to start at the oversimplifications before you start coloring in the details.

No matter the difference between the irish and spaniards, you're still going to find useful comparisons compared to asians, whether taken broadly as "asians" or selecting a couple specific ethnicities.

In the end it is a question of magnification. Just because race is a broad concept doesn't render it obsolete. It only means that it should be reserved for when that level of magnification is appropriate for the task at hand.

 

[Penis Drager]

I think people are trying to find posthoc reasons why it's good that we don't have an intermediary concept.

But we do have a concept that's pretty decent in terms of accurately describing the differences we find: populations. It's unfortunate, but understandable, that the general public isn't well versed in the nuance of the discussion here. It's not like our joke of an educational system would care to elaborate on human biodiversity. Hell, it's worth noting that Murray, the "racist," is the one who takes the more nuanced approach to discussing race while Rutherford fixates on essentialist ideas that even the most fervent racist doesn't necessarily subscribe to. When Rutherford does discuss the nuance, he's in agreement with Murray.

Why would variety in a collection of subgroups matter when comparing larger broader groups?

It's a fair question. The answer is simply that, when you do subdivide the groups, some of the generalizations disappear in some populations while being more pronounced in others. I agree that the generalizations can be useful. But in a hypothetical scenario where two adjacent populations are notably distinct in some factor (let's say intelligence), it's important not to lump them together when discussing that factor. Like if race A tends to be more intelligent than race B, it's not too much of a stretch to apply that generalization when looking for intelligent people. But if population A1 just happened to be intelligent enough to overcome the ineptitude of A2, we could find that populations B1, B2, and B3 are each more intelligent than A2. So looking for A becomes a flawed strategy despite being a halfway decent rule of thumb.
This doesn't even touch on the fact that there is a lot of overlap involved here. To paraphrase Rutherford: "people move around a lot, and people aren't really picky about who they breed with." You're always going to find cases where groups quite easily can be identified as one "race" but actually are more similar to another race than their own when you study their genetics.

 

[Lemmingwise]

But we do have a concept that's pretty decent in terms of accurately describing the differences we find: populations. It's unfortunate, but understandable, that the general public isn't well versed in the nuance of the discussion here. It's not like our joke of an educational system would care to elaborate on human biodiversity. Hell, it's worth noting that Murray, the "racist," is the one who takes the more nuanced approach to discussing race while Rutherford fixates on essentialist ideas that even the most fervent racist doesn't necessarily subscribe to. When Rutherford does discuss the nuance, he's in agreement with Murray

I mean that's just an idea that someone else wrote about Rutherford, I wouldn't take that at face value without readinhg his own work.

I just watched a video of Rutherford going on and on about jews. I suppose race doesn't exist as a useful concept except for his own group?

Like if race A tends to be more intelligent than race B, it's not too much of a stretch to apply that generalization when looking for intelligent people.

This actually proves my point. See that there is no argument against the viability of race as a useful concept? It is taboo and fear of results what happens when you open pandora's box.

Take away race for a second.

If intelligence is what you're looking for it is completely sensible to target the group with higher intelligence. For example if one neighborhood has been studied to be significantly more intelligent, it's completely sensible to put your billboards up in that neighborhood.

And then if others are already doing that, it is completely sensible to put a billboard in the less intelligent neighborhood, to target the smaller group, but existing outliers that are missed by your competitors?

Now when you get to race, why would those same strategies suddenly be ineffective?

They wouldn't. It's just taboo.

As for your A2 analogy, targetting A is still a more succesful strategy than not targetting A. It's the same with employers not legally being allowed to ask if a woman is planning to get pregnant.

This devalues the group women as a whole as they are now a potential liability. Because we are not allowed to discern women planning to get pregnant from women who are not.

It's the kind of unfair prejudice that everyone has to deal with one way or another. You don't solve these by avoiding the word race in favor of a less descriptive word like "populations".