[Fasces]

Race is scientifically arbitrary. It was created by some guy named Linnaeus who did wonderful things for taxonomy, but he extended it and created five categories for race - white, red, yellow, black and monster. We sort of picked it up and ran with it, but these differences aren't scientifically valid. They're based on a single observable feature - skin color - but not much else. Genetic variance within races is just as varied as it is between races. A man from Ghana and an Aborigine from Australia have little in common genetically even if some guy on the street would call them both 'black'. Same with an Inuit and a Quechua, or a Scot and a Syrian, or a Korean and a Tamil. Race doesn't exist, but ethnicity does.

Black has two meanings in the US - it refers to a race, which does not exist independent of belief in its existence, and an ethnic group, which does. Black became an ethnic group during the 17th to 19th centuries, in a process of ethnogenesis. Music, culture, and yes, genetic mixture from breeding, led to the creation of a black ethnicity in the US*. A recent Nigerian immigrant to the US is perceived as black [race], but he isn't black [ethnicity]. White folks tend to have the luxury of remembering their actual ethnicity, so there wasn't a similar ethnogenesis for 'white'. A black American calling himself black is equivalent to an Irish American calling himself Irish - not an Irish American calling himself white.

You can say "I am proud of being Italian. Italian pride." There is nothing wrong with this.

You can say "I am proud of being Black. Black pride." There is nothing wrong with this.

These are equivalent to each other - but neither are equivalent to saying: "I am proud of being white. White pride."

*There are other black ethnicities in the US with more specific names, such as Gullah. There are other black ethnicities in other new world countries, especially in the Caribbean.

[FiveofSwords]

Race is scientifically arbitrary. It was created by some guy named Linnaeus who did wonderful things for taxonomy, but he extended it and created five categories for race - white, red, yellow, black and monster. We sort of picked it up and ran with it, but these differences aren't scientifically valid. They're based on a single observable feature - skin color - but not much else. Genetic variance within races is just as varied as it is between races. A man from Ghana and an Aborigine from Australia have little in common genetically even if some guy on the street would call them both 'black'. Same with an Inuit and a Quechua, or a Scot and a Syrian, or a Korean and a Tamil. Race doesn't exist, but ethnicity does.

Black has two meanings in the US - it refers to a race, which does not exist independent of belief in its existence, and an ethnic group, which does. Black became an ethnic group during the 17th to 19th centuries, in a process of ethnogenesis. Music, culture, and yes, genetic mixture from breeding, led to the creation of a black ethnicity in the US*. A recent Nigerian immigrant to the US is perceived as black [race], but he isn't black [ethnicity]. White folks tend to have the luxury of remembering their actual ethnicity, so there wasn't a similar ethnogenesis for 'white'. A black American calling himself black is equivalent to an Irish American calling himself Irish - not an Irish American calling himself white.

You can say "I am proud of being Italian. Italian pride." There is nothing wrong with this.

You can say "I am proud of being Black. Black pride." There is nothing wrong with this.

These are equivalent to each other - but neither are equivalent to saying: "I am proud of being white. White pride."

*There are other black ethnicities in the US with more specific names, such as Gullah. There are other black ethnicities in other new world countries, especially in the Caribbean.

Do black people tend to have bigger lips than white people?

[Fasces]

Bigger dicks than you, too.

[FiveofSwords]

Bigger dicks than you, too.

Is this genetic? What about their nose? It's flat and wide, isn't it? Is that genetic? Their hair? Isn't is very curly and black? Is that genetic?

So when you said it was identifiable from skin color, that was just a lie, right?

Why did you feel the need to tell that lie?

[Fasces]

Sure thing, Charles.

[FiveofSwords]

Sure thing, Charles.

So if lying doesn't work then you will try threats? That really is your ideology on a nutshell.

[Rich]

Race is scientifically arbitrary. It was created by some guy named Linnaeus who did wonderful things for taxonomy, but he extended it and created five categories for race - white, red, yellow, black and monster.

That's a lie. Human race is a biological reality. Linnaeus did not invent race, nor did he invent the concept of race. In the early colonisation of Americas the assignment of White Black and Red made some sense socio-politically. The assignment of the colour red to the native Americans or first races probably came from the First Races themselves. Different cultures assign different symbolic meanings to colours. The self assignment of the symbolic colour red did not mean that they thought their skin was red coloured. And note there almost certainly wasn't a one to one mapping between colours in native languages and English / Spanish / French / Portuguese.

As I suggested about Native Americans are first races, or at least claim to be, demanding the elimination of any evidence to the contra, not first nations. Elizabeth Warren had taken the racial privileges of nativa Americans and hence she took a biological race test, not a nationality test to back up her claims to the privilege.

Its racist Lefties and Liberals that continue to push this Black and White nonsense, because that's what it is in modern Britain and America. I was asked if I was White British yesterday in the opticians. I'm mixed race Anglo-Celtic indigenous British, not White, so I put down other for my ethnicity.

[Godstud]

Race is a social construct. We are all human, regardless of ethnicity or "race". Extremely minor biological differences occur only because of geographic location over Millenia. Not enough of a difference to matter, however.

These are equivalent to each other - but neither are equivalent to saying: "I am proud of being white. White pride."

Yes it is an equivalent. It's only because of a perceived(not real) victimhood amongst some people that it's seen by some as something completely different.

USA got rid of segregation to get rid of racism, but now some Universities are bringing back segregation to please a very tiny minority of people, and as a result are making their campuses more racist.

[FiveofSwords]

Race is a social construct. We are all human, regardless of ethnicity or "race". Extremely minor biological differences occur only because of geographic location over Millenia. Not enough of a difference to matter, however.

Yes it is an equivalent. It's only because of a perceived(not real) victimhood amongst some people that it's seen by some as something completely different.

USA got rid of segregation to get rid of racism, but now some Universities are bringing back segregation to please a very tiny minority of people, and as a result are making their campuses more racist.

Is there supposed to be something scientific about your arrogant assertion that the past few thousand years of our natural history is just irrelevant and did not change who we are in any meaningful way?

You certainly cannot 'prove' that. Indeed that assumption is based on absolutrly nothing.

In fact you are citing evidence yourself of the fact that despite all of your proclamations of race not mattering at all, it STILL matters very much to people. To basically everyone, in fact. Like yeah...western academia is dwelling on race and racial issues. And this could not be the case if everyone really was all the same. So your presumption of that must simply be false and you should adjust your world view.

[Potemkin]

Is there supposed to be something scientific about your arrogant assertion that the past few thousand years of our natural history is just irrelevant and did not change who we are in any meaningful way?

You certainly cannot 'prove' that. Indeed that assumption is based on absolutrly nothing.

In fact you are citing evidence yourself of the fact that despite all of your proclamations of race not mattering at all, it STILL matters very much to people. To basically everyone, in fact. Like yeah...western academia is dwelling on race and racial issues. And this could not be the case if everyone really was all the same. So your presumption of that must simply be false and you should adjust your world view.

Race is a social construct. It is used for social and political purposes, and always has been. It’s been used to justify slavery, to justify segregation, to justify affirmative action, to justify reparations, to justify this, to justify that. Objectively speaking, it’s all nonsense.

[Wellsy]

Perhaps the retort shouldn’t be on race as a representation but the basis on which it is used as a conceptual tool marked by sone utility than correspondence with reality.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4326670/

First, and foremost, to understand the concept of race as a tool rather than a representation, will mean that measuring race concepts against their capacity to portray faithfully some presumed reality will often miss the point. Tools do not need to bear any kind of similarity with the object they are supposed to affect.
…
The “color lines” that underlie Linnaeus’s racial classification are just that, lines that transect a terrain and provide a grid to map out its irregular and sometimes idiosyncratic contours.
…
A second lesson needs to be drawn out, once we look at race concepts as tools, rather than representations. Fuzziness and ambiguity should not be treated a priori as indications of failure, but rather as properties that can serve a function. Literally, malleability lies at the heart of the productivity of many tools, and sharpness or hardness may, but certainly do not have to belong to their defining qualities. Likewise, concepts can gain their power from being flexible enough to adapt to new contexts and uses. Peter Wade has pointed out in Race, Nature and Culture that most historical and sociological studies of race all too readily take for granted that this term is wedded to notions of fixity and indelibility. Yet part of the force of the race concept, as Wade argues convincingly, rather “lies in the ambiguous move between ideas of indelibility and ideas of malleability” (Wade 2002, 38).4
…
Linnaeus’s “constant varieties,” it should be noted, are not part of an eternal order, but on the contrary, come about as a consequence of historic events such as migrations into new territories, or past encounters and exchanges. The same is true for the race discourse more generally. From its inception in the early modern period, it tended to conceptualize race within a seemingly contradictory framework of contingent origins and collective destinies.
…
Over the past centuries, race has gained empirical substance and reality not because people differ by the color of their skin (this is as true as it is trivial), but because race has been applied in countless reiterations to locate and orient oneself and others against a grid outlining differences in genealogical descent, political allegiance, and social and economic status on a global scale. And these differences, of course, are the very elements of human history, not of natural history.
…
With race, differences among humans ceased to form part of a presumed divine and permanent order, and became part and parcel of an epic struggle for domination. Any analysis that misses this ideological thrust of the race concept will fail to understand why it is that this concept can wreak so much havoc.

Why do we accept the grounds on which race is sought to be legitimated?

It seems to me that race as a conceptual tool finds its basis as an explanation for inequality as permanent and essential difference. It not the case that race and variability need to be denied but one wants to defend that within the variability there are significant differences that have a reality.

Capitalist production produces a real notion of equality in exchange but produces inequality. Because of this, there needs to be explanation and people don’t automatically have great social theory as part of their education.

Then throw in the lost notion of progress that followed the enlightenment, and this cynicism produces a view of permanent difference rather than relative change.
https://www.marxists.org/subject/africa/malik/not-equal.htm

How things have changed. ‘Permanently different’ is exactly how we tend to see different, groups, societies and cultures today. Why? Largely because contemporary society has lost faith in social transformation, in the possibility of progress, in the beliefs that animated anti-imperialists like James and Fanon.
To regard people as ‘temporarily backward’ rather than ‘permanently different’ is to accept that while people are potentially equal, cultures definitely are not; it is to accept the idea of social and moral progress; that it would be far better if everybody had the chance to live in the type of society or culture that best promoted human advancement.
But it’s just these ideas — and the very act of making judgements about beliefs, values, lifestyles, and cultures — that are now viewed as politically uncouth. In place of the progressive universalism of James and Fanon, contemporary Western societies have embraced a form of nihilistic multiculturalism. We’ve come to see the world as divided into cultures and groups defined largely by their difference with each other. And every group has come to see itself as composed not of active agents attempting to overcome disadvantages by striving for equality and progress, but of passive victims with irresolvable grievances. For if differences are permanent, how can grievances ever be resolved?
…
In this fatalism lies a common thread that binds contemporary Western radicalism and fundamentalist Islam. On the surface the two seem poles apart: fundamentalists loathe Western decadence, Western radicals fear Islamic presumptions of certainty. But what unites the two is that both are rooted in contemporary nihilistic multiculturalism; both express, at best, ambivalence about, at worst outright rejection of, the ideas of modernity, universality, and progress. And both see no real alternative to Western power.
Most importantly, both conflate the gains of modernism and the iniquities of capitalism. In this way the positive aspects of capitalist society — its invocation of reason, its technological advancements, its ideological commitment to equality and universalism — are denigrated, while its negative aspects — the inability to overcome social divisions, the contrast between technological advance and moral turpitude, the tendencies towards barbarism — are seen as inevitable or natural.

So instead of fixed races such that people can’t mingle, the idea is that there are still at the core different incompatible groups who mist each be separate but equal.
[url]criticaltheorylibrary.blogspot.com/2011/02/slavoj-zizek-key-ideas.html?m=1[/url]

Zizek contends that today's racism is just as reflexive as every other part of postmodern life. It is not the product of ignorance in the way it used to be. So, whereas racism used to involve a claim that another ethnic group is inherently inferior to our own, racism is now articulated in terms of a respect for another's culture. Instead of "My culture is better than yours", postmodern or reflexive racism will argue that "My culture is different from yours". As an example of this Zizek asks "was not the official argument for apartheid in the old South Africa that black culture should be preserved in its uniqueness, not dissipated in the Western melting-pot? (The Fragile Absolute, or Why the Christian Legacy is Worth Fighting For) For him, what is at stake here is the fethishistic disawoval of cynicism: "I know very well that all ethnic cultures are equal in value, yet, nevertheless, I will act as if mine is superior".
…

The subject of racism, be it a Jew, a Muslim, a Latino, an African-American, gay or lesbian, Chinese, is a fantasy figure, someone who embodies the void of the Other. The underlying argument of all racism is that "if only they weren't here, ife would be perfect, and society will be haromious again". However, what this argument misses is the fact that because the subject of racism is only a fantasy figure, it is only there to make us think that such a harmonious society is actually possible. In reality, society is always-already divided. The fantasy racist figure is just a way of covering up the impossibility of a whole society or an organic Symbolic Order complete unto itself:
What appears as the hindrance to society's full identity with itself is actually its positive condition: by transposing onto the Jew the role of the foreign body which introduces in the social organism disintegration and antagonism, the fantasy-image of society qua consistent, harmonious whole is rendered possible. (Enjoy Your Symptom! Jacques Lacan in Holliwood and Out)
Which is another way of saying that if the Jew qua fantasy figure was not there, we would have to invent it so as to maintain the illusion that we could have a perfect society. For all the fantasy figure does is to embody the existing impossibility of a complete society.

[Tainari88]

@Wellsy this article is interesting. Many just want to say but you look African or European....etc. DNA is complex. But as this article directly states race does not have a code that is specifically saying....you are this race. It does not work that way.

What is real are the consequences for being in a society that is highly racially conscious and does assign entire people who look physically a certain way, certain generalizations. Such as Chinese looking people must be good at math or work at Chinese restaurants or are the owners of the Chinese restaurant. Chinese people speak with a Chinese accent that is thick on their spoken English.

African Americans are poor and uneducated. Crime only is what they do. That is a stereotype. It has social consequences.

The reality is that many people are racially mixed. It is continuing to happen and the trend that it is accelerating in the USA. Simply because air travel is cheaper than before and more frequent. People are coming in and out of almost every modern nation with an airport and a harbor or a highway and people are going to be meeting each other over video chats, and long distance communication with great ease now.

We are destined to be more mixed over time. How we see the people in the social hierarchy in capitalism has to do a lot with how much money a person makes or what kind of wealth inheritance the family is from....or has.

The poor of all ethnicities are looked down upon and not respected in general. In all nation states with capitalism as the economic system as the driver of social and economic status.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/so ... story.html

[Tainari88]

Race is a social construct. It is used for social and political purposes, and always has been. It’s been used to justify slavery, to justify segregation, to justify affirmative action, to justify reparations, to justify this, to justify that. Objectively speaking, it’s all nonsense.

You think it is nonsense but to a Nazi it is the big deal. The reason to get up in the morning and fight another day. Because being white is the ONLY thing they have to say they are important in this world. It is pathetic I know...but like Toni Morrison stated:

That is all they are. A color in their mind that has to be on top and pure. Or what are they without it? Are they any good? Do they like themselves? Do they think they are more than a color that is meaningless because they never did anything to earn that color. Lol. It is ridiculous shit Potemkin.

But they hold on to it. Because as she stated in another video, they are BEREFT. People without a sense of standing on their own without some kind of illness that says I have to be tall and make the others be on their knees. If I can't be the ones on top? I have no meaning outside of something I never controlled in the first place.

It is crazy. Really.

[Fasces]

So if lying doesn't work then you will try threats? That really is your ideology on a nutshell.

[Tainari88]

They look a bit like the Spanish when they go through the Roman Catholic festival days. Do you see the similarities?

[FiveofSwords]

Race is a social construct. It is used for social and political purposes, and always has been. It’s been used to justify slavery, to justify segregation, to justify affirmative action, to justify reparations, to justify this, to justify that. Objectively speaking, it’s all nonsense.

If race really was a 'social construct' like you say, then it could not have been used to justify those things. You contradict yourself. It is exactly because there is something real about race that people can possibly be inspired to acts of heroism or indeed cruelty on its behalf.

[Fasces]

People kill for beliefs all the time. The race belief is no different.

[Tainari88]

:lol:

People kill for beliefs all the time. The race belief is no different.

Why do you have to be so logical sometimes Fasces, for the ones who live with fantasies it is harsh!

[Fasces]

Race ideology is undeniably a product of belief. When the first planters arrived in the New World, they enslaved the local indigenous people - until the Church declared them innocents that had not been exposed to the word of God. Thus, they began to import Africans - pagans and Muslims who knew of the Bible and rejected it - guilt-free. At first there was no effort to convert the slave classes to Christianity, but eventually the Protestant Dutch and English in the Caribbean and American South started to do so en masse. How do you justify slavery then, if they are your fellow Christian? You invent the idea of race and racial heirarchy.

[Tainari88]

Race ideology is undeniably a product of belief. When the first planters arrived in the New World, they enslaved the local indigenous people - until the Church declared them innocents that had not been exposed to the word of God. Thus, they began to import Africans - pagans and Muslims who knew of the Bible and rejected it - guilt-free. At first there was no effort to convert the slave classes to Christianity, but eventually the Protestant Dutch and English in the Caribbean and American South started to do so en masse. How do you justify slavery then, if they are your fellow Christian? You invent the idea of race and racial heirarchy.

This is true. But it is more complex as well. The first African Spanish free men arrived on the first voyage to the New World Fasces. Many Taino and Carib Caciques and groups who inhabited the Caribbean islands had no resistance either to European diseases. It took a lot of lives. The other part was the enslavement of Indian peoples. Many refused to work in the encomienda system. Or mining gold for the Spanish. Fraile Bartolome de las Casas documented the abuse with many details. It is still in the archives in Spain. He describes unspeakable cruelties. And the Spanish crown disapproved.

Many Tainos would commit infanticide and also would commit suicide to run from that life. A life that was totally different than what they were used to. African slaves had exposure to Europe for centuries and had immunity to many European diseases because they interacted with Europe during the Black Plague and many other disease issues in the Medieval world. So, they brought the West Africans in chains and the indentured Spanish underclass caught stealing bread in the plazas and who were considered vagrants. They wound up in Cuba, Puerto Rico and Española. So? Over time the Spanish men had children with African woman and Indian women. And they baptized them and set them free. Some inherited their Spanish father's lands and others were landless peasants because their Spanish fathers were indentured servants with no rights.

Many of the ones who hated the Spanish Crown and its incessant taxes and administration fled to the tropical mountains and hid from the officials and the courts. They created mixed race societies. After a while Puerto Rico issued a sanctuary order for other islands that if they were fleeing slavery that they could reside in the mountains and live there undisturbed.

Most of the plains of Puerto Rico were fertile ground for some agricultural crops. Like sugar cane made for sugar and molasses and also rum products. World famous in the Caribbean islands.

The mountain regions of the island that were about 75% of the island was unfit for sugar cane only. So the other crops became increasingly important. In Puerto Rico's case coffee was one of them, and so were bananas, citrus, and yams and other original plants from Africa brought on the ships. Puerto Rico also was reknown for thoroughbred horses from Andalucia and over time were called paso fino horses. Smooth riding animals with great beauty and intelligence. They still roam the island freely in many towns in the mountains. It is called la Cabalgada.

De las Casas described the Tainos as good looking people of copper skin, white teeth, and sunny disposition with a deep belief in sharing everything with others. He thought them of extreme generosity of spirit. Columbus described them as generous and gentle people in general that loved living in freedom. That it would be easy to make them slaves. Instead, they preferred death to enslavement. Some other Spanish recorded that the Taino never took well to subjugation. Too used to living their lifestyle for thousands of years and to think they had to live in some mine in the dark or working and sweating without the ability to sail in the canoes or live communally and celebrate their gods in the rivers and mountains of Boriken was a fate worse than death.

It is a sad tale. The interesting thing though is they gave something to the Spanish that was very bad for their health. Tobbacco. All of Europe got addicted to smoking it. And it caused cancer of the lung in millions since 1493. The Tainos and Caribs would smoke it for ritual purposes and exchanges. Along with hurricanes, barbeque and so on its origins are with the Tainos and Caribs of the Caribbean islands. Yuracán was the name of the Angry God that visited the islands when his people were not respecting his authority as they should have done. Yuracán became Hurricane in English.