The myth called "Race"

Originally posted by think GCLE Human beings differ from one another on a large number of criteria. Choosing which criteria to select as 'important' is a totally subjective matter. Why skull shape should be considered as 'important' leaves me totally baffled. Why not foot shape? Or arm length? Or height? Or relative ability at sprints, distance running, jumping and throwing things? When you talk to someone are you talking to their foot.

Agreed. But you also aren't talking to the back of their head either.
I accept that visible things, in a primitve society, are going to take precedence - you can't use blood type as a racial designator if you don't know there are blood types. Yet blood type is a very important factor in distinguishing between human beings.

But anyway sprinting ability is just as visible a factor as skin colour. And feet are just as visible as heads.

(I admit I was being rhetorical about foot shape, which seem to me just as stupid a criterion as head shape.)

I accept that human beings can be clustered into what you can call 'races' or 'ethnic groups' or 'families' or whatever. It's the idea that any particular set of characteristics are particularly important in mapping them, or any particular clustering technique or distance measure is the 'best' for doing so, that leaves reality far behind.

Why are you baffled, the face is the first thing we notice aswell as phenotypes so when we talk about race we dont talk about arms or jumping.Arms are relatively the same anyway.

Actually there's probably more difference between arms than between faces.

Thats like saying when talking about breeds of dogs why dont we talk about their feet

We do. One of the things we don't talk about though is skin colour. Breeds of dogs can be classified hierarchically in various ways in the same way as human beings can, and, again, that classification is carried out in different ways for different purposes.

Predisposal to be vicious is for instance an important characteristic for some purposes, whereas length of hair may be more important for others. Similarly classifying people according to their criminal behaviour would seem a much more useful thing to do than classifying them by colour. Or head shape.

    

The only people who rave on an on about Race is nothing more than a social contruct brewed up by racist imperial powers are White people, generally speaking.

The only people who rave on about the supreme importance of racial differences in all matters, are white people, generaly speaking. Half of black people in the UK have white partners, they obviously don't think its that big a deal. And thats despite being on the recieving end of racist bullsh*t.

Racism is NEVER going away, thats the bitter truth.

Well yeah, so long as people like you exist, its gonna stay here.

Way to miss the point. Though not suprising i guess.

I don't see many black kids measuring their skulls to prove how black they are, seems to be a big hobby on certain forums frequented by white kids though.
When it comes to race from a biological perspective, its overwelmingly whites who are most obsessed with it, from skin colour to penis envy.
Non-whites on the other hand are overwleming more concerned with the social conseciences of living in socieities dominated by those same biology obsessed whites.
Thats the difference, which, if you had anywher near as many non-white friends as you claimed above, you'd realise.


Edited by Cywr - 10-Dec-2006 at 03:46

Man i dont what too say, your arguments are so anti-white that if you werent White you would be classified as racist..

LMAO.
That just had to be quoted, for prosperity's sake.

yet im sure yours tell you how racist Whites are

No, they do however, point out when certian individuals are racist, both whites and non-whites alike.
And i'm not limiting myself to the internet and small clubs of online whiners for generalisations, thats too easy.

It took quite a while before the explorers and scientisits found out that the black creatures they met in Africa were humans and not apes.

Actualy, they knew that straight away, they just decided to forget it in later centuries.

People discriminate on all kinds of grounds. I had a black Jamaican woman friend once (platonic), Radcliffe-educated with a Harvard MBA, who wouldn't be seen dead with an American black when she was in college.

She didn't mind dating West Indian blacks or European whites (or Chinese or Indians as far as I know - she certainly had a close Indian woman friend).

Eventually she married a Frenchman and came to live in Paris and London.

I don't think 'race' in the sense of skin colour even entered into her thinking.

delete


Edited by think - 10-Dec-2006 at 08:50

"Wasnt Luther a Red, look what communism has bought the world."

No, Martin Luther King, Jr. was not a communist. The bogus attempt to prove that he was a communist was somewhat of an attempt to associate the Civil Rights Movement with communism. The only reason he was accused of communism was because one of his aids, Stanley Levinson, was a communist. Calling Martin Luther King, Jr. a communist on that basis is like calling Senator Rick Santorum gay because one of his workers was gay.

"but i could agree with him on the fact that we are different, we arent the same an hell we prefer our own neighbourhoods with people of similar ethnicity."

No, that is completely false. As a white, I do not care of what ethnicity my neighbors are, just how they act. Besides a different skin color, and a somewhat different skull, there is no difference between any of the so called "races".  Each of these "races" has shown that they share intelligence, innovation, philosophy, etc.