CDZ Gender vs. Race

[Votto]

Why are we led to believe that we can choose our gender but not our race when both are dictated to us by genetics?

I mean, you call Catalyn Jenner a man and it is hate speech, but someone like Rachel Dolezal can be fired from the NAACP for saying she identifies as black but genetically is not.

It makes no sense.

 

[well named]

Why are we led to believe that we can choose our gender but not our race when both are dictated to us by genetics?

I think the premise in your question is slightly wrong, although I also think people are generally really confused on these topics.

But for example, many people who support transgender rights activism would not agree that transgender people are choosing their gender. They believe that the mismatch which transgender people feel between their assigned gender and their self perception is natural, something that is just intrinsic to their sense of identity. They aren't choosing to be transgender any more than you are choosing to be cisgender.

On race, anthropologists and social scientists would disagree with the statement that race is dictated by genetics. For example, the anthropologist John Relethford writes that race is a "culturally constructed label that crudely and imprecisely describes real variation" (2009). This topic gets a little complicated in terms of how racial categories "crudely and imprecisely" describe real variation, but the point is that the racial categories we use are not based in accurate measures of genetic difference. The size of the genetic variation between two people identified as "black" is often much larger than between either individual and others who we identify as "white", because there is more genetic variation between African sub-populations than between other sub-populations. If racial categories were determined by genetics instead of skin color, they would be different. The other obvious evidence for the lack of a solid genetic basis for race is simply that racial categories change over time.

But, what I think you are accurately getting at in your post is the idea that race is an ascribed status. We don't get to choose it for ourselves. Other people look at us and decide what race we belong to. The categories are dependent on cultural background, but they exist objectively, they are independent of our self-perception. That's also obviously true of gender as well, and if that were not the case then the existence of transgender people would not create any social issue. So another mistake I think people make is confusing "social constructionism" as individual choice.

I think the difference between gender and race, at least in relation to transgender people, is that gender categories are much closer approximations of biological realities (sexual dimorphism) than racial categories are. There really is no such thing as "feeling white" in a biological sense. The idea of "feeling like a white person" only makes sense against some cultural background, because the biological basis of race is especially weak. The biological basis of gender (in sexual dimorphism) is much stronger, but we also know that there are lots of interesting ways in which biology can vary and that people can have a combination of sexually male and sexually female traits, both at birth and in later development (see this thread for some links). It makes more sense, then, for people who have been ascribed male sex to legitimately feel like they are female, as the result of some biological considerations.

 

[Meathead]

Why are we led to believe that we can choose our gender but not our race when both are dictated to us by genetics?

I mean, you call Catalyn Jenner a man and it is hate speech, but someone like Rachel Dolezal can be fired from the NAACP for saying she identifies as black but genetically is not.

It makes no sense.

If Pocahontas can be an Indian then we cn all be whatever we want I guess. Sorry, not as cerebral as the previous post but more to the point.

 

[well named]

I mean, you call Catalyn Jenner a man and it is hate speech, but someone like Rachel Dolezal can be fired from the NAACP for saying she identifies as black but genetically is not.

To be clear, this also just reflects cultural considerations more than biological realities, and I'm not saying otherwise. In contemporary American society we are more sensitive to the potential for racism than for bigotry against transgender people, for a variety of reasons. All of these things are socially contested, and it's not as if most people have a good understanding of the science involved. But, there is some basis in that science for thinking that transgender identification has a physiological basis where transracial identification does not.

Which, incidentally is not quite the same as saying that there is no such thing as transracial identification. Lots of people are socialized into multi-racial communities. Barack Obama, for example, writes about his experiences in those terms. W.E.B. Dubois writes about the "double consciousness" of black Americans, and although he didn't mean it in terms of belonging to two races (he meant identity as an American, but also as a black person, and the tension between the two given our history of racism), the analogy is clear. The difference is that one is biological and the other is social.

 

[Votto]

Why are we led to believe that we can choose our gender but not our race when both are dictated to us by genetics?

I think the premise in your question is slightly wrong, although I also think people are generally really confused on these topics.

But for example, many people who support transgender rights activism would not agree that transgender people are choosing their gender. They believe that the mismatch which transgender people feel between their assigned gender and their self perception is natural, something that is just intrinsic to their sense of identity. They aren't choosing to be transgender any more than you are choosing to be cisgender.

On race, anthropologists and social scientists would disagree with the statement that race is dictated by genetics. For example, the anthropologist John Relethford writes that race is a "culturally constructed label that crudely and imprecisely describes real variation" (2009). This topic gets a little complicated in terms of how racial categories "crudely and imprecisely" describe real variation, but the point is that the racial categories we use are not based in accurate measures of genetic difference. The size of the genetic variation between two people identified as "black" is often much larger than between either individual and others who we identify as "white", because there is more genetic variation between African sub-populations than between other sub-populations. If racial categories were determined by genetics instead of skin color, they would be different. The other obvious evidence for the lack of a solid genetic basis for race is simply that racial categories change over time.

But, what I think you are accurately getting at in your post is the idea that race is an ascribed status. We don't get to choose it for ourselves. Other people look at us and decide what race we belong to. The categories are dependent on cultural background, but they exist objectively, they are independent of our self-perception. That's also obviously true of gender as well, and if that were not the case then the existence of transgender people would not create any social issue. So another mistake I think people make is confusing "social constructionism" as individual choice.

I think the difference between gender and race, at least in relation to transgender people, is that gender categories are much closer approximations of biological realities (sexual dimorphism) than racial categories are. There really is no such thing as "feeling white" in a biological sense. The idea of "feeling like a white person" only makes sense against some cultural background, because the biological basis of race is especially weak. The biological basis of gender (in sexual dimorphism) is much stronger, but we also know that there are lots of interesting ways in which biology can vary and that people can have a combination of sexually male and sexually female traits, both at birth and in later development (see this thread for some links). It makes more sense, then, for people who have been ascribed male sex to legitimately feel like they are female, as the result of some biological considerations.

Well thanks for the response but I still don't understand why it is legally OK and PC to berate and fire someone who says they self identify as black but that same person would be defended if she identified as another gender.

I still got noth'in.

 

[well named]

Well thanks for the response but I still don't understand why it is legally OK and PC to berate and fire someone who says they self identify as black but that same person would be defended if she identified as another gender.

AFAIK there are no legal consequences either way, it's only a question of social norms. Those norms reflect the history of our society and our struggles with race, more than anything else. We could make a discussion about social norms and identity as complicated as we like, but I think looking at it from this perspective should at least make things roughly understandable. Which isn't to say it will make them entirely satisfying or perfectly rational.

 

[Votto]

I mean, you call Catalyn Jenner a man and it is hate speech, but someone like Rachel Dolezal can be fired from the NAACP for saying she identifies as black but genetically is not.

To be clear, this also just reflects cultural considerations more than biological realities, and I'm not saying otherwise. In contemporary American society we are more sensitive to the potential for racism than for bigotry against transgender people, for a variety of reasons. All of these things are socially contested, and it's not as if most people have a good understanding of the science involved. But, there is some basis in that science for thinking that transgender identification has a physiological basis where transracial identification does not.

Which, incidentally is not quite the same as saying that there is no such thing as transracial identification. Lots of people are socialized into multi-racial communities. Barack Obama, for example, writes about his experiences in those terms. W.E.B. Dubois writes about the "double consciousness" of black Americans, and although he didn't mean it in terms of belonging to two races (he meant identity as an American, but also as a black person, and the tension between the two given our history of racism), the analogy is clear. The difference is that one is biological and the other is social.

I'm not even sure why it matters to people to be labelled a certain race.

I mean, why did Elizabeth Warren feel the need to tell people she was part Indian?

Now for Rachel Dolezal, she was given special perks for being black and was hired by the NAACP, assumingly because she was black on a genetic basis of her DNA. is this not racist?

We are all such a hodgepodge of races, the focus of how and what you identify as is nonsensical to me. Why should it matter?

Now in the instance of RD, it meant money in the bank for identifying as black, that much is clear. The only question becomes, was that the only motivation.

Now getting back to Pocahontas. She did this genetic test to prove that she did not lie by saying that she was 1/1024 Indian. However, Native Americans retorted that she needed to be at least a quarter Indian to be a real Indian.

So was Elizabeth lying or should we take the word of the racial purists in the Indian tribes?

This becomes even more important when you consider things like free college being given to Native Americans.

There is big money on the line concerning these issues, so who is to decide, so should Elizabeth's offspring be given free college?

In fact, I know people who have had their genetics tested to see if they could qualify for free college.

 

[Votto]

Well thanks for the response but I still don't understand why it is legally OK and PC to berate and fire someone who says they self identify as black but that same person would be defended if she identified as another gender.

AFAIK there are no legal consequences either way, it's only a question of social norms. Those norms reflect the history of our society and our struggles with race, more than anything else. We could make a discussion about social norms and identity as complicated as we like, but I think looking at it from this perspective should at least make things roughly understandable. Which isn't to say it will make them entirely satisfying or perfectly rational.

No, there are legal consequences. For example, Affirmative action dictates because you are a certain race that you should be given preferential treatment.

As for Racheal, she lost her job with no legal recourse because she lied about being black. However, she would have legal recourse if the organization only hired men and they refused to hire here because she looked like and had the body parts of a woman, even though she may have self identified as a man.

 

[Hellbilly]

Why are we led to believe that we can choose our gender but not our race when both are dictated to us by genetics?

I mean, you call Catalyn Jenner a man and it is hate speech, but someone like Rachel Dolezal can be fired from the NAACP for saying she identifies as black but genetically is not.

It makes no sense.

If Pocahontas can be an Indian then we cn all be whatever we want I guess. Sorry, not as cerebral as the previous post but more to the point.

One of these women is Pocahontas.
The other is Elizabeth Warren
Learn the difference.

 

[Meathead]

One of these women is Pocahontas.
The other is Elizabeth Warren
Learn the difference.
View attachment 226962View attachment 226963

They both look Indian to me. You can hardly tell the difference.

 

[Votto]

Why are we led to believe that we can choose our gender but not our race when both are dictated to us by genetics?

I mean, you call Catalyn Jenner a man and it is hate speech, but someone like Rachel Dolezal can be fired from the NAACP for saying she identifies as black but genetically is not.

It makes no sense.

If Pocahontas can be an Indian then we cn all be whatever we want I guess. Sorry, not as cerebral as the previous post but more to the point.

One of these women is Pocahontas.
The other is Elizabeth Warren
Learn the difference.
View attachment 226962View attachment 226963

Ok, which is which?

 

[Votto]

One of these women is Pocahontas.
The other is Elizabeth Warren
Learn the difference.
View attachment 226962View attachment 226963

They both look Indian to me. You can hardly tell the difference.

Dunno, they all look alike to me.

 

[well named]

No, there are legal consequences. For example, Affirmative action dictates because you are a certain race that you should be given preferential treatment.

As for Racheal, she lost her job with no legal recourse because she lied about being black. However, she would have legal recourse if the organization only hired men and they refused to hire here because she looked like and had the body parts of a woman, even though she may have self identified as a man.

I meant there are no laws against claiming to be a member of a particular race. Dolezal being fired is a social consequence and not a legal one. She wasn't fired because it's illegal to claim to be black, but because you can be fired for lying to your employer. That would be true in every other analogous situation too. Most people can be fired for any number of reasons, and anti-discrimination suits are difficult to win.

I'm not even sure why it matters to people to be labelled a certain race.

Identity is a complicated topic, and one I doubt I can sum up satisfactorily in a few sentences. One thing that's certain is that identities are also social. We understand ourselves in relation to others, so it's not surprising that we identify ourselves by our belonging to groups, whether religious, ethnic, or otherwise. But, those identities also involve our tendency towards in-group/out-group biases, so I'd agree they are not always optimal. It's also true that "black" as an identity is ethnic and not just racial. The distinction is shared history and experience, e.g. African-Americans have a shared history that's not the same as someone who lived her entire life in Senegal. We also know that marginalization plays a role in the formation of shared ethnic identity too, and that this plays a positive role in how people cope with marginalization. I think the ideal of a world where our concepts of race have disappeared is a good world, but cultural identities are probably with us to stay, and history doesn't disappear just because we wish it would.

I mean, why did Elizabeth Warren feel the need to tell people she was part Indian?

Now getting back to Pocahontas. She did this genetic test to prove that she did not lie by saying that she was 1/1024 Indian. However, Native Americans retorted that she needed to be at least a quarter Indian to be a real Indian.

It's a good example of how identity is complicated. As I understand it, she grew up being told stories about her native american ancestry. The stories we're told shape how we think of ourselves, and she obviously found some value in that sense of identity. That is hardly an uncommon story for Americans to tell. Now, I think Warren made several mistakes, the most important of which was not reflecting sufficiently on how the role that native american ancestry played in her story reflected a romanticized view of history which whitewashes colonialism. I think she should have made more of an effort to appreciate how native peoples might see it differently, especially with regard to using DNA testing to try to establish ancestry. I think that was a bad decision which reflected a poor understanding of the issues, but it seems to be mostly a sin caused by naïvety, rather than being malicious. I am sympathetic to the way she must have felt by the attacks on her character, which seem mostly opportunistic and unjustified. I cringed at the DNA test because it's a misguided response to the situation. But it's not a malicious response.

Now for Rachel Dolezal, she was given special perks for being black and was hired by the NAACP, assumingly because she was black on a genetic basis of her DNA. is this not racist?

Dolezal never took a genetic test before being hired, AFAIK. She could pass as black because she looked "black enough" to other people. It's a good demonstration of the social construction of race, if nothing else. It certainly does appear that she exploited anti-racist sentiments for personal gain in an abusive way, so I think it's good that she was ostracized for doing so. Not because there's anything sacrosanct about racial categories, but because her behavior is anti-social. She seems to have committed some actual crimes along the way as well.

I should try to address the topic of affirmative action as well, but this post is pretty long, so I'll try to be brief. Again the history matters. I think you overestimate the importance of affirmative action or other civil rights era legislation; it applies in relatively few situations. But it's an attempt to redress previous wrongs caused by racism. Obviously if someone does not think there is a need for compensation for those wrongs than they will think AA is unfair. It's also possible to think it's fair but maybe not the best approach. I definitely think there are limits to this approach to racial justice, as is evident for example in the recently completed Harvard admissions case. However you evaluate the question though, you have to do it in historical context or you're just missing the point. There's a danger to what Eduardo Bonilla-Silva called "abstract liberalism" (in Racism Without Racists), which is the tendency to evaluate these problems from a perspective that assumes erroneously that racism just doesn't exist or has no social consequences in the present.

 

[Hellbilly]

One of these women is Pocahontas.
The other is Elizabeth Warren
Learn the difference.
View attachment 226962View attachment 226963

They both look Indian to me. You can hardly tell the difference.

Dunno, they all look alike to me.

I feel the same way about white people.

 

[oldsoul]

Why are we led to believe that we can choose our gender but not our race when both are dictated to us by genetics?

I mean, you call Catalyn Jenner a man and it is hate speech, but someone like Rachel Dolezal can be fired from the NAACP for saying she identifies as black but genetically is not.

It makes no sense.

You actually nailed it, without even knowing it:

It makes no sense.

That's the point. Confusion. It really is just that simple. People have taken two, relatively, simple concepts and made them infinitely confusing. The more one tries to understand, the less attention/time one has to focus on other things. Things that actually matter. Such as, as you pointed out, why does it even matter?