CDZ What is Race? What is 'White Race'? Where do These Concepts Come From?

[320 Years of History]

The only functional value to the concept of race is in understanding cultural differences and biases.

I think the only functional use of the racial construct as we experience it in the U.S. is to provide a sophistic basis for folks to

• invent and promote derisive generalizations about other folks who are different from themselves, and
• invent and promote aggrandizing generalizations about other folks who are similar to themselves.

It may be that race is useful in guiding a small handful of medical regimens. For example, certain physiological maladies are far more common in one race than they are in others. It makes sense then that doctors would look for a "common to whites" ailment as the cause of a white person's illness before testing for a "common to Asians" ailment as the cause.

Race could be used over time to breed out of the human species the recessive genes that hinder each of the races. I don't know when or if folks will figure that out and use it to their advantage. I'm not suggesting that, say, black folks actively seek out, say, Asians, because Asians are less prone to sickle cell anemia, nor am I saying that Asians should actively seek black mates to increase body mass or penis size (humor), but I'm saying that it would be beneficial to both if they don't actively eschew such pairings. After all, we know that species survival is greatly enhanced my more cross breeding rather than less.

Every other species on the planet chooses mates based on demonstrated genetic superiority. Why humans have actively gone against Mother Nature's "good sense" is quite beyond me, especially as we, unlike every other creature on the planet, know beyond a shadow of doubt that one cannot fool or elude Mother Nature.

 

[Michelle420]

I have meant to try this thread for a long time, but something always seems to happen to prevent that. Maybe that was a good thing, I dont know, but I finally have a few moments so I thought I would go ahead and give it a shot.

First, there are two concepts to get nailed down first.

1. Classification of objects is for the purposes of function, mostly, and tends to sort things based on function and behavior. If we categorize vehicles we tend to sort them by categories like 'truck', 'sedan', 'van', coups, etc, as these are reflective of the function, purpose and the intended behavior of the vehicle buyer. The color of the vehicles paint job would be a latter consideration normally.

2. Gray scale is a continuum of gradual change, with few if any white pixels and nearly all black at one end to the other end with almost entirely white pixels. As o ne transitions from one end to the other there seems to be a clear gradual change of the scales darkness, but if you bent the page and placed the two ends side by side you see a contrast that might suggest a basic essential difference that is not really there.

That out of the way, we have to look at the simple fact that racial 'science' has never been much more than a pseudo science. While one can use scientific methods to ID a skeleton by racial criteria, the criteria itself is arbitrary and based on little more than geographical location.

There is also no clear delineation between races, how many races there are or what ethnic groups belong to which. Most people recognize the three basic races, Caucasoid, Negroid and Mongoloid, but few realize that there are other categorizations as well, such as the Polynesians who some consider Caucasian and others consider Mongoloid and yet others consider an entirely separate race. Some say that there are seven races, in addition to the previous three we would also have Amerindians, Australoids, Polynesians, and Dravidians.

Now the term 'white' was in the old days used to mean northern Caucasians, and yet few would say today that the Greeks and Italians are not white. Certainly the US Census bureau does not consider Italians to be nonwhite. And yet many consider Latin Americans to be a strange new race called 'Hispanic' though they are almost entirely Caucasian and Mestizo and the later has been long considered a subgroup of Caucasian.

The racialist 'Identity Politics' ideology uses racial categories to define its constituent groups and they like to split anyone away from the majority population by any means available, so if you are white Hispanic, then you are not white, just Hispanic. If you are half white half black like Obama, then you are black. To them you are anything you prefer to be, even a different species, if that is what your heart tells you that you are.

But there is nothing that essentially defines humanity along racial lines. It is just ethnicity grouped together into arbitrary categories, like whether Dravidians are Caucasian, Polynesian or their own separate race.

It seems to me that it is ethnicity and culture that most defines who we are by how we behave according to the things we have been taught to believe from childhood. Not what is in your DNA.

Just had my dna done on ancestry and it didn't say anything about my race just gave me all the areas countries my dna/historically says I am from. Also I was able to upload my dna results to see potential diseases I am pre disposed to. But race didn't really come up.

 

[Elvis Obama]

Race is a by-product of fear, ignorance and guilt. We are, slowly, coming to realize this, but it's gonna take a looong time before we're gonna be blind to these minor differences.

Part of the problem is we have tens of thousands of years of xenophobia programmed into our genes. It's natural for tribal groups to be leery of strangers or those who are "different". Not correct, but natural as a survival trait.

It's also important to remember that where these external differences are not present, homogeneous populations have still managed to find reasons to kill and enslave each other. An obvious physical difference just makes it a little easier.

 

[Divine Wind]

Race is a by-product of fear, ignorance and guilt. We are, slowly, coming to realize this, but it's gonna take a looong time before we're gonna be blind to these minor differences.

Part of the problem is we have tens of thousands of years of xenophobia programmed into our genes. It's natural for tribal groups to be leery of strangers or those who are "different". Not correct, but natural as a survival trait.

It's also important to remember that where these external differences are not present, homogeneous populations have still managed to find reasons to kill and enslave each other. An obvious physical difference just makes it a little easier.

Agreed, but the xenophobia factor still holds.

 

[320 Years of History]

Yes, like the Crepe Myrtle, is it a tree or a bush trimmed to look like a tree?

Off Topic:
Well, that depends on how one prunes it. LOL Seems to me, based totally on my love-hate relationship with them, that they would prefer to be bushes even though I like them better as trees.

 

[JimBowie1958]

I think the only functional use of the racial construct as we experience it in the U.S. is to provide a sophistic basis for folks to

• invent and promote derisive generalizations about other folks who are different from themselves, and
• invent and promote aggrandizing generalizations about other folks who are similar to themselves.

Mostly true, but harsh to characterize it as sophistry in all cases, isnt it?

It may be that race is useful in guiding a small handful of medical regimens. For example, certain physiological maladies are far more common in one race than they are in others. It makes sense then that doctors would look for a "common to whites" ailment as the cause of a white person's illness before testing for a "common to Asians" ailment as the cause.

I think ethnicity and body type are more useful, and genetic testing makes even that obsolete.

Race could be used over time to breed out of the human species the recessive genes that hinder each of the races.

1. Not all recessive genes are harmful or less adapted to the environment.

2. I think it is mathematically impossible to breed out recessive traits unless you use genetic testing. You cannot tell if the brunette, for example, is carrying recessive blonde hair traits. So recessive traits will always be with us and provide for diversity at least skin deep, unless we use genetics to remove them. A decidedly bad idea as various banana industry experiences would suggest.

3. I do agree with what you seem to be driving at, and that is that the process of heterosis will strengthen the human race as a species and I am fairly sure it already has to a great degree.

I don't know when or if folks will figure that out and use it to their advantage. I'm not suggesting that, say, black folks actively seek out, say, Asians, because Asians are less prone to sickle cell anemia, nor am I saying that Asians should actively seek black mates to increase body mass or penis size (humor), but I'm saying that it would be beneficial to both if they don't actively eschew such pairings. After all, we know that species survival is greatly enhanced my more cross breeding rather than less.

I think that happens naturally as we instinctively find those who have a rough resemblance to our family but with significant variances to be more attractive.

Nature seems to innately spur us toward heterosis.

Every other species on the planet chooses mates based on demonstrated genetic superiority. Why humans have actively gone against Mother Nature's "good sense" is quite beyond me, especially as we, unlike every other creature on the planet, know beyond a shadow of doubt that one cannot fool or elude Mother Nature.

Because there is strength in group unity that Nature also supports; 'birds of a feather' and all that.

Group unity makes the group more effective in the ability to act and react to its outside competition, but it also, in the case of tribes, weakens the group through inbreeding as the nobility of Europe demonstrates in the 1900 to 1914 era.

 

[JimBowie1958]

Yes, like the Crepe Myrtle, is it a tree or a bush trimmed to look like a tree?

Off Topic:
Well, that depends on how one prunes it. LOL Seems to me, based totally on my love-hate relationship with them, that they would prefer to be bushes even though I like them better as trees.

When we bought my current house, we planted a couple in the front yard with the intention of getting them to look more like intertwined trees about 12 years ago.

Now they are finally looking like what I wanted them to look like and we are going to move away in 4 years to our retirement cottage, God willing.

Trees do give one an appreciation for the future.

 

[ptbw forever]

The White race is the lineage of Europe....

 

[Unkotare]

RACE - The Power of an Illusion . Background Readings | PBS

 

[JimBowie1958]

The White race is the lineage of Europe....

So that would include Hispanic Berbers from Spain or Turks from the balkans?

 

[ptbw forever]

The White race is the lineage of Europe....

So that would include Hispanic Berbers from Spain or Turks from the balkans?

Nope.

 

[D Truth]

I have meant to try this thread for a long time, but something always seems to happen to prevent that. Maybe that was a good thing, I dont know, but I finally have a few moments so I thought I would go ahead and give it a shot.

First, there are two concepts to get nailed down first.

1. Classification of objects is for the purposes of function, mostly, and tends to sort things based on function and behavior. If we categorize vehicles we tend to sort them by categories like 'truck', 'sedan', 'van', coups, etc, as these are reflective of the function, purpose and the intended behavior of the vehicle buyer. The color of the vehicles paint job would be a latter consideration normally.

2. Gray scale is a continuum of gradual change, with few if any white pixels and nearly all black at one end to the other end with almost entirely white pixels. As o ne transitions from one end to the other there seems to be a clear gradual change of the scales darkness, but if you bent the page and placed the two ends side by side you see a contrast that might suggest a basic essential difference that is not really there.

That out of the way, we have to look at the simple fact that racial 'science' has never been much more than a pseudo science. While one can use scientific methods to ID a skeleton by racial criteria, the criteria itself is arbitrary and based on little more than geographical location.

There is also no clear delineation between races, how many races there are or what ethnic groups belong to which. Most people recognize the three basic races, Caucasoid, Negroid and Mongoloid, but few realize that there are other categorizations as well, such as the Polynesians who some consider Caucasian and others consider Mongoloid and yet others consider an entirely separate race. Some say that there are seven races, in addition to the previous three we would also have Amerindians, Australoids, Polynesians, and Dravidians.

Now the term 'white' was in the old days used to mean northern Caucasians, and yet few would say today that the Greeks and Italians are not white. Certainly the US Census bureau does not consider Italians to be nonwhite. And yet many consider Latin Americans to be a strange new race called 'Hispanic' though they are almost entirely Caucasian and Mestizo and the later has been long considered a subgroup of Caucasian.

The racialist 'Identity Politics' ideology uses racial categories to define its constituent groups and they like to split anyone away from the majority population by any means available, so if you are white Hispanic, then you are not white, just Hispanic. If you are half white half black like Obama, then you are black. To them you are anything you prefer to be, even a different species, if that is what your heart tells you that you are.

But there is nothing that essentially defines humanity along racial lines. It is just ethnicity grouped together into arbitrary categories, like whether Dravidians are Caucasian, Polynesian or their own separate race.

It seems to me that it is ethnicity and culture that most defines who we are by how we behave according to the things we have been taught to believe from childhood. Not what is in your DNA.

There is another forum on this site for racist stuff.
Also, why do you call out the so called "white" race only? There are many another haplotype as well?

Otherwise, race is a discussion of biology. Not much there for clean debate, just room for discussion over biology I guess.

 

[320 Years of History]

Mostly true, but harsh to characterize it as sophistry in all cases, isnt it?

It's surely not, but then I only said it provides a basis for the sophistry, not that every use of race as a basis for "whatever" is necessarily sophistic.

I think it is mathematically impossible to breed out recessive traits unless you use genetic testing. You cannot tell if the brunette, for example, is carrying recessive blonde hair traits.

The timeframe I had in mind is an evolutionary scale one. I realize that with ~7B people on the planet, it's going to take tens of thousands of years. Given that, now wouldn't be too soon to start. LOL

Because there is strength in group unity that Nature also supports; 'birds of a feather' and all that.

I don't know if herding is a genetic trait or not. I do know that among humans, at least 99% of the DNA between any two individuals on the planet will be identical.

I know that human races don't constitute a species or subspecies level distinction, and insofar as we are innately social primates, we "flock together" already sometimes with regard to man made constructs, sometimes with regard to language, sometimes with regard to common strengths and weaknesses, and unfortunately, sometimes with regard to race. Were it so that being of race X innately meant we

In the U.S. we basically think of race as readily observable physical differences rather than in terms of Negroid, Mongoloid and Caucasian classifications. In line with the American penchant for oversimplification to make things easy, we've oversimplified race and equated it with skin pigment. Accordingly, we think of Latinos and Arabs as something apart from African Americans or whites. Yet Latinos are presumably Mongoloid and Arabs are presumably Caucasian, this even as lots of Latinos and Arabs have the exact same skin tones as whites and blacks. I'm sure you see the incongruity.

When we look at feral domestic dogs instead of birds, we see they "flock together" without any regard for what each of them looks like. Why? Because they are all dogs and they know they are all dogs, even though they don't all look alike. We are all humans, yet some of us actively eschew interactions with other humans explicitly because others of us don't look like ourselves. I just don't see any sense in our doing that.

 

[jwoodie]

When I was a graduate business student, I was a graduate teaching assistant. I had my own classes and ran/taught them as I saw fit given the general guidelines of the department and professor to whom I was attached. In the early part of my career as a management consultant, I designed, developed and led many training programs. These days, the limit of my actual teaching activities pertains to mentoring selected young folks who show promise and who don't have the familial resources that can or will do so.

LOL, that explains a lot.

My better judgment is screaming at me right now, but I'm going to take a risk and ignore it....

What, for you, does the brief summary of my didactic and research experience explain?

Simply that it is no replacement for facts and logic. I am intellectually superior to almost everyone on this site, yet I do not cite my personal background to bolster my conclusions.

 

[Dogmaphobe]

I see race is simply a construct applied to people much like the term cultivar might apply to plants or breed to pets. It is part of that binomial process of distinguishing certain characteristics from most general down to most specific.

In taxonomy, the nomenclature starts at kingdom, and works its way down the phylum, class, order genus and species as distinctions are made from most general to most specific. The species represents a stable breeding population.

We are a species, as are dogs and petunias. Just as people distinguish between an Irish Setter and a poodle or a Crazytunia Sparky and a Poutunia Papaya, people distinguish each other through certain sub traits.

I see nothing wrong with it, myself.

 

[320 Years of History]

When I was a graduate business student, I was a graduate teaching assistant. I had my own classes and ran/taught them as I saw fit given the general guidelines of the department and professor to whom I was attached. In the early part of my career as a management consultant, I designed, developed and led many training programs. These days, the limit of my actual teaching activities pertains to mentoring selected young folks who show promise and who don't have the familial resources that can or will do so.

LOL, that explains a lot.

My better judgment is screaming at me right now, but I'm going to take a risk and ignore it....

What, for you, does the brief summary of my didactic and research experience explain?

Simply that it is no replacement for facts and logic. I am intellectually superior to almost everyone on this site, yet I do not cite my personal background to bolster my conclusions.

Logic would tell you I was asked.

I don't know my I resisted the urge to follow my better judgment....I won't make that mistake again.

 

[JimBowie1958]

When I was a graduate business student, I was a graduate teaching assistant. I had my own classes and ran/taught them as I saw fit given the general guidelines of the department and professor to whom I was attached. In the early part of my career as a management consultant, I designed, developed and led many training programs. These days, the limit of my actual teaching activities pertains to mentoring selected young folks who show promise and who don't have the familial resources that can or will do so.

LOL, that explains a lot.

My better judgment is screaming at me right now, but I'm going to take a risk and ignore it....

What, for you, does the brief summary of my didactic and research experience explain?

Simply that it is no replacement for facts and logic. I am intellectually superior to almost everyone on this site, yet I do not cite my personal background to bolster my conclusions.

Logic would tell you I was asked.

I don't know my I resisted the urge to follow my better judgment....I won't make that mistake again.

that'll learn ya

 

[OldLady]

Race is a by-product of fear, ignorance and guilt. We are, slowly, coming to realize this, but it's gonna take a looong time before we're gonna be blind to these minor differences.

I think JimBowie's point that, "It seems to me that it is ethnicity and culture that most defines who we are by how we behave according to the things we have been taught to believe from childhood. Not what is in your DNA," is more on target. Culture shock is a real thing. The exaggeration of different groups' behavior by others who feel threatened or shocked by it is on this board 24/7, and is what we typically call "racism." But what we learn to be "normal" social behavior as children in our homes and communities is so fundamental to our outlooks that a group living by different norms is not easily embraced without practice and actual effort on our parts.
That is a GOOD reason to give young kids as many opportunities to learn about different cultures and attend school with different groups as possible.
I remember distinctly the first time I met a grandmother (a friend's) who wasn't old and overweight and didn't wear orthopedic shoes and a house dress. I was scandalized. Didn't want to accept that this woman was a grandmother at all. I certainly viewed her with great distrust.
The black community's emphasis on oral/verbal expression drives a taciturn Yankee like me NUTS. Shut up already and stop with the histrionics; you're holding up the line! We don't even cry in public, let alone carry on with the shrieking and wailing and fainting. Good lord.
Am I racist because I see differences in their culture? I don't THINK so. I would never treat a black student differently; I have black friends and have dated black guys. But there are differences and it takes some effort to accommodate those differences.

 

[OldLady]

What's informative about my post, JWoodie?

 

[jwoodie]

Race is a by-product of fear, ignorance and guilt. We are, slowly, coming to realize this, but it's gonna take a looong time before we're gonna be blind to these minor differences.

I think JimBowie's point that, "It seems to me that it is ethnicity and culture that most defines who we are by how we behave according to the things we have been taught to believe from childhood. Not what is in your DNA," is more on target. Culture shock is a real thing. The exaggeration of different groups' behavior by others who feel threatened or shocked by it is on this board 24/7, and is what we typically call "racism." But what we learn to be "normal" social behavior as children in our homes and communities is so fundamental to our outlooks that a group living by different norms is not easily embraced without practice and actual effort on our parts.
That is a GOOD reason to give young kids as many opportunities to learn about different cultures and attend school with different groups as possible.
I remember distinctly the first time I met a grandmother (a friend's) who wasn't old and overweight and didn't wear orthopedic shoes and a house dress. I was scandalized. Didn't want to accept that this woman was a grandmother at all. I certainly viewed her with great distrust.
The black community's emphasis on oral/verbal expression drives a taciturn Yankee like me NUTS. Shut up already and stop with the histrionics; you're holding up the line! We don't even cry in public, let alone carry on with the shrieking and wailing and fainting. Good lord.
Am I racist because I see differences in their culture? I don't THINK so. I would never treat a black student differently; I have black friends and have dated black guys. But there are differences and it takes some effort to accommodate those differences.

The question is whether we have common norms of behavior. Without them, we are merely co-inhabitants within a particular geographic location.