HTML banned?!?!

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nomadologist

Guest
Eric said:
Now I'm confused. I thought the argument was about whether there were `racial' characteristics that are genetically determined. Patently wearing baggy pants or whatever is not, but does that mean that nothing is? Surely one can draw a line b/t your first three examples and your second three. This argument looks a bit absurd to me.

Also, a random question: what does it mean to be 100% ethnically Dominican or PR? It seems obvious that these groups are `mixed-race' anyway, if you accept this terminology. Why would it be surprising that someone might have a flat nose or whatever in this case?
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No it doesn't. The argument is that the things that people are talking about when they think of "racial" characteristics, although the biological traits associated tend to be skin color and facial features, include cultural traits. You might argue that most of what a racist is talking about when they talk about the "inferiority" of, for example, black people has even more to do with the cultural traits associated with "blackness" than with superficial traits like skin color. According to the logic of the racist, these negative cultural attributes are simply PRODUCTS of the genetic predisposition of black people. To a white supremacist, a black person is "inferior" (their music is bad, their culture is "evil" and "savage", they are less "intelligent", they are natural born rapists and murderers, they are animalistic etc.) because their "race" is distinguished from others by certain unique DNA that predetermines these characteristics.

And yes, exactly--we are all "mixed" genetically, I'm as "mixed" genetically as someone who has one Irish parent and one black parent. Sicilians and southern Italians (which is only part of my background) are incredibly "mixed" with the impact of all sorts of Mediterrannean people evident (you can see, for example, some southern Italians and Sicilians that look very Greek or northern African) in the different features and looks you see there.

Dominican or Puerto Rican ethnicity is tangible only insofar as it is based on national origin. Saying you're Dominican is like saying you're Japanese or French. Not all that meaningful "racially" but very much so "ethnographically."
 
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nomadologist

Guest
Mr. Tea said:
Umm, dark skin? Or light skin?

You keep saying "Which protein?" or "which gene?" or "which gene cluster?", which is a complete red herring since you know as well as I do, or better, that physical appearance is determined by a huge collection of genes.

The fact biologists haven't found many "direct links" probably has more to do with the almost inconceivable complexity of huiman genetics than anything else.
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Exactly. Human genetics are incredibly complex. It is not a "red herring" to point out that you cannot find any direct, distinct, or one-to-one-corresponding biological origins for socially constructed race norms. We may one day find out which genetic markers (eg) make some people have red hair and fair skin with freckles and a certain height-weight ratio, but that STILL would not be tantamount to having found a genetic origin for "Irishness" or the sort of traits that comprise "Irish" identity.

The point is that our genes and the sort of things that comprise racial or ethnic identity have little to do with one another in any scientifically valid way, EXCEPT in the minds of racists. It is very important in the fight against racism to be sure destroy what many racists use as the MAIN JUSTIFICATION or conceptual basis for their belief in the "inherent" superiority or inferiority of certain groups of people.
 
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nomadologist

Guest
Everyone here has read about how many descendants of Genghis Khan they've found all over the world, using (I believe) patrilineal DNA via genome mapping? Tons and tons, and very notably, several who look as white as white can be.

Here are a couple of stories I remember pretty vividly from around the time this was a popular topic:

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpa...932A25751C0A9659C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=2

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/06/AR2006060601312.html

Even if the people in question are descendants of random membersof the Mongol horde, this still goes to show that what you look like, what your "racial" makeup may appear to be, is not a very foolproof indication of who your actual ancestors were, in many cases. This guy doesn't look Mongolian at all. But if you're going to talk about his "race", he is certainly "Asian" if you want to include complex DNA analyses. For all intents and purposes, however, before he had this analysis, he was "white", identified with other white people, presumably identified mostly with white culture, checked off the "caucasian" box on official forms.

As this example illustrates, a person's race, which we are forced to look at from a limited perspective due to the overall complexity and overwhelming amount of uncertaintly invovled in the science behind genome mapping, is 100% SOCIALLY CONSTRUCTED. Were "race" really something that had a biological factual basis, Tom Robinson would have been considered "mixed" race and partially Asian. But since our notion of "race" is NOT based on any real reference to our biological makeup, Tom Robinson was and is considered "white."
 
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Eric

Mr Moraigero
Mr. Tea said:
Umm, dark skin? Or light skin?
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Exactly what I was thinking. Nomad, you seem to be conflating cultural and physiological factors and at the same time claiming that genes determine nothing that can be called race ... Plainly some physiological factors are genetically determined though?

[Instead of `absurd' above, I should have said `disingenuous', which is what I meant. Sorry.]
 
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nomadologist

Guest
No, I am not conflating them. If you are going to talk purely about physical factors that people tend to use to group people into "races", there is no biological basis for this concept. There isn't one.
There is none. You can keep trying to claim that there must be, but ask any biologist. There is nothing in our DNA or in human genome mapping so far that suggests that "race" as we think of it has anything to do with genes, nor does there exist so far any tangible correlation between genetic data we have on populations that have similar features and "racial" information in DNA.

The point I was making was that "race" is never just about features, it is a complex set of social norms and attitudes. It is not something that can be "reduced" to biology--only racists think that "blackness" and having black skin are both ultimately caused by "genes."
 
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nomadologist

Guest
You people just don't seem to get basic biology, let alone genetics.

There is no biological basis for "race" until we can find DNA specific to people we've already grouped into "races" (of course based on socially constructed prejudices and whims) that can be shown to be the basis for these characteristics as a *package deal*--everything that makes a person look black would have to be present in all the DNA of each "black" person.

The problem with this idea is that all humans are so mixed genetically that any reference to "race" is always based on how people *look*, which any scientist who studies the genome will tell you often has VERY little to do with human ancestry proper.
 
fokse vektaire xeven

fokse vektaire xeven

Arab Nazi
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nomadologist

Guest
My computer says I don't have the right ActiveX download to watch this video, and I don't know how to fix it.

Anyway, "race" as a concept has been debunked, no matter what its neutral origins may have been. Now all it does is prop up outdated notions about heriditary traits and what have you...
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
nomadologist said:
There is no biological basis for "race" until we can find DNA specific to people we've already grouped into "races" (of course based on socially constructed prejudices and whims) that can be shown to be the basis for these characteristics as a *package deal*--everything that makes a person look black would have to be present in all the DNA of each "black" person.
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But that's a big straw man, since no-one (certainly no-one on here, anyway) is claiming that 'black people' represent a single, well-defined and homogeneous population. That notion of 'race' has indeed been debunked, if indeed anyone ever held it in the first place. Of course there are characteristics shared by East Africans that are not shared by West Africans, and vice-versa. Exactly the same goes for people from all parts of the world.
 
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nomadologist

Guest
What does "race" mean if it doesn't mean "race"? If people from different parts of Africa vary in terms of genetic makeup, of what use is a concept of a black "race" except by people who believe in biological determinism?

I have no idea what racism looks like in countries that didn't have such a massive slave trade as the U.S.--here, however, there are still plenty of people (unfortunately) who use the long-debunked concept of race to further their own "Curse of Caanan" idea. I'm not making this up, it's just the truth. I'm sure if you spent some time here you'd realize.
 
fokse vektaire xeven

fokse vektaire xeven

Arab Nazi
nomadologist said:
Anyway, "race" as a concept has been debunked, no matter what its neutral origins may have been. Now all it does is prop up outdated notions about heriditary traits and what have you...
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Its origins were far from neutral...at least in the sense i thought we were discussing(?) they were justificatory really...or at least that's what i meant.

the divx plugin is on the stage6 frontpage. it's a good series.
 
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nomadologist

Guest
fokse vektaire xeven said:
Its origins were far from neutral...at least in the sense i thought we were discussing(?) they were justificatory really...or at least that's what i meant.

the divx plugin is on the stage6 frontpage. it's a good series.
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Yes, that's what I thought, and what I've read--that there were a couple different sets of "races" decided upon by scientists a couple hundred years ago (or more like 160-180) that were all basically justifications for the idea that "white man" was the most civilized and sophisticatd.

I will try to make this divx plugin work...i have a mac that is getting old and hates updates
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
nomadologist said:
What does "race" mean if it doesn't mean "race"?
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Well the meaning of words changes, doesn't it? As I said before, the word 'atom' has a meaning very different for today's scientists from the meaning it had for Democritus or Dalton, but we still use the same word: as long as everyone knows what's meant by it, it's not problematic. I think you're deliberately using the word 'race' in its most old-fashioned, obsolete sense in order to make a political point.
 
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nomadologist

Guest
But there is no scientific use of the term "race" anymore. So there's really no definition of "race" to cling to that's not obsolete.
 
M

martin

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I always thought Joe Schmo should have been banned permanently, but he stopped posting anyway, so it as good as happened (in my twisted mind)
 
S

stelfox

Beast of Burden
i don't know whether padrag deserved to be banned or not because i can never read any of his posts from start to finish, but the kind of banning i'm advocating should be done according to much more abitrary criteria than that anyway. as in whether or not i feel like it...
 
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