Human (specie) not to be confused with humans

[Babbylonian]

Well thanks for injecting "racism" into the context, but it merely proves you've blinded yourself to reality while seeking some political ideology.

Racism is a matter of unjustly judging (as in prejudice) against some races and/or in favor of others. No one was talking abt or even suggesting that until you ... skunk at a garden party ...

Racism is a little more complex and encompasses a lot more than you apparently want to admit. It's not uncommon for people who deny their own racism in the second place to not understand it in the first place.

For the record, I consider everyone (including myself) racist to some degree or another. It's an expected result of divisions, both real and imagined, between groups of people.

I find particularly racist those who get indignant when someone finds their choice of words offensive, especially when their particular word choice has been out of favor for a long time. The healthy reaction, of course, is to take the criticism on board and find other words.

 

[UnrepentantSinner]

"Black" isn't a race, it's a color. I don't understand why Americans seem to treat it as if it were.

When I look at a Sudanese immigrant, and then at an Aborigine, it's clear to me that they're completely different races. The fact that they both share a single attribute (dark skin) is hardly relevant.

Yeaaaaah. I put "Black" in quotes for a reason. Go back and read the entire paragraph.

What is it about this place where one can try and craft a paragraph that clearly conveys what I'm trying to say and people myopically focus on a single word and respond as if that was the entirety of one's post?

 

[UnrepentantSinner]

"Oriental" is not considered politically correct anymore, as others have pointed out. But I think Asian is still acceptable.

Just as an aside, I still see the word oriental or its Japanese equivalent used fairly often here in Japan. For example the Japanese company that runs Tokyo Disneyland is called Oriental Land Co., Ltd. because their original idea was to make a theme park called Oriental Land. Instead they scrapped that idea and decided to just buy the rights from Disney to make another Disneyland in Tokyo, pretty much exactly the same as the one in California. Various other companies use "Orient" or "Oriental" in their names.

Fun fact - in ancient Greece the Orient started in Turkey.

As has been pointed out a few times in this thread, Oriental when decribing things is still O.k. (carpets, ramen soup flavor), but not O.k. when decribing a person. Occidental has found similar use.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occidental_College
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occidental_Petroleum

 

[Brian-M]

Yeaaaaah. I put "Black" in quotes for a reason. Go back and read the entire paragraph.

What is it about this place where one can try and craft a paragraph that clearly conveys what I'm trying to say and people myopically focus on a single word and respond as if that was the entirety of one's post?

I wasn't arguing with the content of your post, just outlining a separate train of thought that your post reminded me of. I apologize if it seemed like I was taking unjustified issue with your wording. I should have provided a few words of explanation for this tangent in my post.

 

[UnrepentantSinner]

I wasn't arguing with the content of your post, just outlining a separate train of thought that your post reminded me of. I apologize if it seemed like I was taking unjustified issue with your wording. I should have provided a few words of explanation for this tangent in my post.

Ah, gotcha.

 

[Ryokan]

Fun fact - in ancient Greece the Orient started in Turkey.

Even a while after - the Orient Express stopped in Istanbul.

 

[Maurice Ledifficile]

Yeaaaaah. I put "Black" in quotes for a reason. Go back and read the entire paragraph.

What is it about this place where one can try and craft a paragraph that clearly conveys what I'm trying to say and people myopically focus on a single word and respond as if that was the entirety of one's post?

It is very hard for the myopic to focus without glasses. Your entire post makes no sense.

 

[Delvo]

I attended the University of Tennessee and trained in forensic science. The characteristics we studied in bones showed ancestry. Race is imaginary.

What are you saying "race" means other than ancestry? And more importantly, why does your alternative, non-ancestry definition of "race" never appear in real-world use of the word or in any dictionary I know of?

I've heard that there is a greater genetic difference between two people of different African ethnic groups than there is between either of them and the average European. Is this true?

Presuming you don't mean to include northern Africa, where the population is caucasoid just like in Europe and western Asia...

Yes if one of the Africans is Khoi/San; the division between the Khoi & San and everybody else is the oldest, so each of the resulting groups (Khoi-San on one hand, everybody else on the other) has had the most time to accumulate genetic changes independently since then. The two Africans in your sample then would have few or no common ancestors since before any humans even migrated out of Africa.

But if both of the Africans in your question are black, then, back to your question, I'm not sure but I don't think so. After some people left central & southern Africa, even the non-Khoi-San in Africa didn't remain a single population entirely leading straight to the modern black population. Until about three millennia ago, black people only lived in the Congo area, so they would only have had some fraction of central and southern Africa's non-Khoi-San genetic diversity. When they expanded and overran whatever other humans lived on the lands they now live on, the effect on central and southern Africa's non-Khoi-San genetic diversity was essentially the same as if there had been a sharp decline in the overall population: a bottleneck event, after which the population descends only from some fraction of the gene pool that had been there before.

So modern black people's genetic diversity depends not only on how much difference there was between them and those other Africans in the first place, but also on how much they interbred with the others while generally wiping them out. And if there's ever been a study which found that kind of information, I haven't read about it.

 

[Wuglife]

But they are. Suggesting that the difference in human skin color has such significance is like looking at two of the same breed of cat but claiming that their different fur color means they're different animals.

Ethnic Japanese people look different from ethnic Norwegians, who look different from ethnic Khoisan, who look different from ethnic Baka pygmy people. Even if their skin color were exactly the same, they would still look noticeably different.

 

[Wuglife]

I find particularly racist those who get indignant when someone finds their choice of words offensive, especially when their particular word choice has been out of favor for a long time. The healthy reaction, of course, is to take the criticism on board and find other words.

I don't think that's racist at all. Maybe "firm", at best, or "rude and stubborn" at worst, but "racist"...not really.

 

[Wuglife]

I thought the word 'species' applied to the fact that members can inter-breed. When one species has evolved into two separate ones so that they can no longer breed with those of the other species, they become a new one.

Not really. The horse and zebra are different species, but they can interbreed. The coyote and domestic dog also are different species who can interbreed. Also the lion and tiger.

There are actually hundreds of species which can crossbreed and produce offspring--sometimes fertile offspring, sometimes sterile offspring.

 

[phiwum]

Maybe you could get past any negative connotations by saying, "Asian-looking" or a similar construction. Then, if questioned, you could add: "Well, they looked like the completely false mischaracterization and stereotype often advanced for people with the morphology I observed."

You aren't really identifying them as Asian, just comparing them to a standard, albeit insulting, stereotype. Similar to, "He looks a lot like a turtle."

Sorry, but I don't see calling someone Asian as insulting really. Not even if you're mistaken.

My wife is Chinese. She looks (and is) Asian. I'm white, or of European descent, or however you want to say it (though, my lineage isn't really all that clear anyway). If you call my kid "white", fine. If you call him "Asian", fine. If you call him mixed race, fine. As it turns out, Westerners are more likely to see him as Asian, and Asians more likely to see him as white.

I agree that race is a social construct, and so on. But I don't find it particularly insulting to use race to describe a person. In fact, I've never been clear on why "Oriental" fell so out of vogue. At least it allowed one to distinguish East Asians from Southern Asians, etc.

But I suppose the term was too closely associated with racism.

Anyway, I admit I'm not the most sensitive of souls.

 

[UnrepentantSinner]

I agree that race is a social construct, and so on. But I don't find it particularly insulting to use race to describe a person. In fact, I've never been clear on why "Oriental" fell so out of vogue. At least it allowed one to distinguish East Asians from Southern Asians, etc.

I'm sure it sounding bigotted was the primary reason, but also because it was associated with items (carpets, furniture, noodle soup flavoring) as well as people. Asian is also more accurate because it has a geographic context while Oriental simply means to the east of wherever the person saying it is located. You do make a great point though because we Americans use Asian to refer to East Asians to the exclusion of other Asian (geographically) ethnicities.

At least in communities that celebrate an Asian festival some make them more inclusive and have South Asians participate as well.
http://asianfestivaldallas.com/?gclid=CMyL7qDJsLcCFY3m7AodSg8APw
http://asianfestivaldallas.com/performers/

 

[mike3]

I notice something in these "is race real or not" threads. It seems that the ones arguing "race is real" are more likely to have a "conservative" political viewpoint, while the ones arguing "race is fake" ( ) are less likely to. But what does this mean? Whether race is real or fake ( ) is a scientific question, and thus in theory should not be influenced by politics... yet there it is. So which comes first: is it that the person's beliefs about race feed into their choice of political position, or is it that the political position leads them to side with one or the other view of this scientific question (which is not a scientific thing to do!)?

 

[Brian-M]

I notice something in these "is race real or not" threads. It seems that the ones arguing "race is real" are more likely to have a "conservative" political viewpoint, while the ones arguing "race is fake" ( ) are less likely to.

How does that translate to those of us outside the US? Is the "conservative" political viewpoint closer to "Labor" or "Liberal" here in Australia?

 

[Delvo]

Asian is also more accurate

we Americans use Asian to refer to East Asians to the exclusion of other Asian (geographically) ethnicities.

These two statements contradict each other. A word for a whole continent can't be more accurate for referring to only a part of that continent plus some islands associated with it. There's no other word for the region called "the Orient". The substitution with just "Asian" is simply false. The closest that could be done would be to specify "eastern Asian" but that still excludes the Oriental islands.

which comes first: is it that the person's beliefs about race feed into their choice of political position, or is it that the political position leads them to side with one or the other view of this scientific question (which is not a scientific thing to do!)?

Given the fact that the deniers never muster one single tiny speck of an argument that isn't a lie, their motivation must be something other than truth/accuracy. Politics is the only other explanation I know of that fits the bill, especially in light of their tendency to resort to "Racism! RAAAY-CISMMMM!".

 

[Maurice Ledifficile]

How does that translate to those of us outside the US? Is the "conservative" political viewpoint closer to "Labor" or "Liberal" here in Australia?

I'm not familiar with the parties in Australia, but here is what you do:
Watch a few minutes of Rush Limbaugh, then decide what party his followers would vote for in your country. Those would be your conservatives. The opposite viewpoints should qualify as liberal.

 

[Brian-M]

Watch a few minutes of Rush Limbaugh, then decide what party his followers would vote for in your country.

Hmmm.... the One Nation party, probably.

 

[Wuglife]

I notice something in these "is race real or not" threads. It seems that the ones arguing "race is real" are more likely to have a "conservative" political viewpoint, while the ones arguing "race is fake" ( ) are less likely to. But what does this mean? Whether race is real or fake ( ) is a scientific question, and thus in theory should not be influenced by politics... yet there it is. So which comes first: is it that the person's beliefs about race feed into their choice of political position, or is it that the political position leads them to side with one or the other view of this scientific question (which is not a scientific thing to do!)?

I think whether "race" be real or not is a semantic and philosophical question.

To determine whether "race" is (biologically) real, one must first define "race"--for existence is a secondary predicate, and without a clear-cut semantic value for the word "race", to say that it exists or does not exist is meaningless.

 

[Vortigern99]

I think the following post makes a fair amount of sense, but many of Stevea's quite reasonable points are getting lost in a wider, more polarized debate.

Whether we call it "phenotype", "population" or "race", there are clearly physiological distinctions among people of different geographic origins. Using these different "types" as descriptors in everyday language should not be publicly discouraged, or cause for shaming the speaker with cries of "racism!".

Skin color is an especially effective descriptor. We need to move past the fear of giving offense and use terms that help communication rather than block it.

FAIL - OP never suggested skin color was a main factor. There are hundreds of visible phenotypes that tend to group and therefore categorize people by origin. It's clear enough that skeletal remains can often be identified by racial origin. I expect most ppl can make an accurate guess in a large fraction of cases, between (for example) Chinese, Korean and Japanese East Asians after seeing the fully clothed individual.

[Deleting two paragraphs quoted by Babbylonian, upthread.]

Species is generally defined by distinct groups than can't successfully interbreed, while 'race' is an old but correct term for populations with a species that generally exhibit distinct phenotypes. So Oats and Wheat are distinct species, but all across Europe in the middle ages there were distinct 'land-races' of wheat. More commonly called 'varietals.

Yes it's always absurd when people are so cowed by political thinking that the deny reality, and agree that 2+2=5 for political reasons.



No. I once suggested to a small group that Hillary Clinton didn't look particularly Greek, and all the politically blinded Lefty zealots gasped and whined as tho' I had used the N' word toward her. I don't think her features, hair, skin tone are particularly Mediterranean (tho' I'd be the first to admit low accuracy on this categorization). I harbor no negative stereotypes wrt Greek ppl generally.

It's silly, but no - it is not acceptable in this Liberal PC gulag to suggest national/regional origins.



Why is this a "problem" ? Yes, we are one species and individuals interbreed across phenotypic boundaries and therefore introduce added genetic variability into sub-populations. "Black" isn't just skin color - for example it isn't used to refer to Hindus with much darker skin color than Obama. The term seems to mean something like "some significant African ancestry" (where African means the more West/Central/South excluding perhaps Berbers and more recent S.African migrants from Euope & India.

The problem is that SOME overly-sensitive people take offense at any sort of categorization, and also in recent decades we entertain the PC nonsense POV that no one should ever be offended. It's sort of a passive-aggressive anger, derail the conversation thing.

Yes ppl should take umbrage at false or over-inclusive generalizations, abt any groups, including ethnic, national or racial groups. I'd argue that false elevation of groups is at least as harmful as false denigration. OTOH there are evidenced generalization that really do need to be discussed and nearly impossible when some of the dishonest participants in the national debate believe that the term "racism" roughly means "doesn't agree with me" and use the accusation of racism to derail discussions of fact.