Is this just how it’s gonna be till Election Day?
Is this just how it’s gonna be till Election Day?
- never signed up for anything like this,
- never donated to or signed up for emails from the DNC, et al.,
- political texts like this come all the time, and
- I hesitate to reply “stop” because I don’t want them to know this is a live number (is my instinct here outdated/inapplicable?)
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Yes! You're getting it. Ear size is an aspect of race. As is hair texture and height and all the other inheritable phenotypes. Skin color is just the most visibly obvious one.
So you're saying race == phenotype? Then you also have to say that race is a continuum, and, therefore, any arbitrary line on that continuum a social construct.
Which is btw blindingly obvious to Europeans, Harris is white in my book: There's plenty of Italians with darker skin. Funny how perception changes if you actually consider skin colour to be skin colour and not some grand overarching signifier for an in reality culturally defined group.
Then you also have to say that race is a continuum, and, therefore, any arbitrary line on that continuum a social construct.
Well by that definition fucking everything is a social construct. Which, sure, there's a decent philosophical argument that even reality is a social construct, but it makes it impossible to discuss anything if you get hung up on that.
I've got a secret to let you in on: aside from mathematics and some physics, literally everything is categorized based on arbitrary lines on a continuum. Taxonomic classification. Whether an object is a planet or not. "Ocean" vs "sea". Macro vs micro economics. Every single thing that is classified, a person or group of persons had to make a decision and in some cases that decision was not very clear or easy.
That doesn't mean it's a pure social construct, and it definitely doesn't mean the categories are invalid. It means they're blurry at the boundaries, like all things are. It means they're part of a continuum, like all things are. It does NOT mean or imply that the categories are invalid.
Well by that definition fucking everything is a social construct.
Nope. That humans generally have five fingers is not a social construct, it's an (emergent) property of our genome.
Whether Harris is sorted into "white" or "black" OTOH is based on a social construct: The US's conception of race is not based on physical traits but social realities. It harkens back to the one drop rule which is complete BS when it comes to biology, what matters in her being sorted into "black" is not her phenotype (quite light skin, temperate climate nose, ...), but that a portion, at least a drop, of her ancestry comes from black slaves. That's a social context, not a biological one.
Even more obvious is Obama, actually: He's not a descendant of slaves. So it's not even heritage which dictates whether you're black in the US, but whether your phenotype looks like you possibly could be.
Let me end with Epictetus:
These reasonings are unconnected: "I am richer than you, therefore I am better"; "I am more eloquent than you, therefore I am better." The connection is rather this: "I am richer than you, therefore my property is greater than yours;" "I am more eloquent than you, therefore my style is better than yours." But you, after all, are neither property nor style.
The US’s conception of race is not based on physical traits but social realities.
This is the fucking bullshit that makes me want to bitch slap all you academic morons who keep insisting that race is a social construct. It's so goddamn fucking annoying. YOU JUST FUCKING ASSERT THIS. FUCKING A PRIORI. And then you use that bullshit assertion to build the world's biggest fucking straw man.
It's so goddamn stupid and also so smug at the same time, which is a rage-inducing combination coming from anyone. But especially from Kaeieghlyyn who somehow spent 4 years in college studying racial inequality without ever stepping foot in a ghetto.
No one ever gave a shit about the "one drop law", not even in the racist South where it existed, unless someone needed an excuse to exercise power over someone else. If you pass as white you are, for all intents and purposes, white.
How does one get to the situation where they pass as white?
Their parents could pass as white! At least one of them. It's an inherited characteristic, which is what race is. That's it, that's the whole thing. Race is a bundle of inherited physical characteristics sorted by commonalities.
That humans generally have five fingers is not a social construct, it’s an (emergent) property of our genome.
But some humans have different numbers of fingers! Some have four, some have six! Some humans are born without hands! Therefore your entire system of categorization is invalid! You cannot classify things in any way, because exceptions might exist! Literally everything is a social construct!!!!
Or, you know. Alternatively. Categorizations are valid despite the fact that exceptions exist.
Don't "end with" a fucking quote from a fucking philosopher. It's the bitch icing on a giant cake of smugness. I'm happy to debate this with you but for the love of christ at least pretend to be fucking humble. Also your quote is stupid, because it's referring to the type of straw in your straw man. You're trying to explain some shit that doesn't matter, because your entire premise is wrong.
YOU JUST FUCKING ASSERT THIS. FUCKING A PRIORI.
No. Case in point: I mentioned how Harris has lighter skin than many a Sicilian, and also very much has a temperate climate nose. These are not, in the slightest, phenotype traits typical of sub-saharan Africa mostly Nigeria thereabouts where most of the slaves trafficked during the Atlantic slave trade where from.
If you can't see that then I suggest you visit an optometrist.
If you pass as white you are, for all intents and purposes, white.
Then why is Harris considered black? What does "passing" mean, here? Does it really have anything to do with phenotype, or is it cultural?
But some humans have different numbers of fingers! Some have four,
That's a misexpression, the genome codes for five. And even then: Having six fingers is a physical, objective, trait. Harris being black isn't, phenotypically she could just as well be Italian.
As I have said, picking individual outliers does not invalidate a category. I think you've got it backwards. We interpret racial characteristics through a social lense. But the characteristics do, themselves, exist. And they are easily grouped (not exclusively, but generally) into the categories we call "race". And we're not randomly picking traits. They're inherited via a common ancestry. As you said, physical, observable traits.
Could Harris pass as Sicilian? Probably not, but even if she could, she doesn't have any Sicilian ancestry to my knowledge, so it would be inaccurate to call her Sicilian. Or Indian or Korean or whatever. She could call herself Nordic and we would laugh at her.
As I have said, picking individual outliers does not invalidate a category.
I didn't say anything about validity.
Probably not, but even if she could, she doesn’t have any Sicilian ancestry to my knowledge, so it would be inaccurate to call her Sicilian.
So it would be inaccurate to call Obama African American because he has no slave ancestry?
"African American" is a subculture identified with people freed from slavery. It is not a thing of ancestry, or Obama wouldn't be part of it. It is not a matter of phenotype, or Harris wouldn't be part of it. And both aren't outliers, they're simply prominent examples. At the same time, you have more recent African immigrants to the US who very much insist that they are not part of that group identity. Dunno how Obama's father identified but he had that kind of heritage.
Noone, at least no American, is questioning Harris' and Obama's identity as African American, and that's precisely because it's neither about ancestry nor phenotype but subcultural belonging. They're African American because they stay vibing that way.
She could call herself Nordic and we would laugh at her.
Plenty of people with much darker skin in the Nordics. If she had gone to school and studied in Norway or something Nordic would be absolutely accurate. See here on the other side of the Atlantic we don't sort ethnicities by phenotype because phenotype has nothing to do with ethnicity. Correlation, yes, causation, fuck no. Double triple fuck no. This man is Oldenburger. How could I claim otherwise his Low Saxon is better than mine! ...and Harris is African American, even she doesn't fit the phenotype, because it's only correlation, and Obama is African American, he fits the phenotype and chose to vibe that way, but also might've chosen otherwise. Which probably would not have exactly been the path of least resistance because America, overall, is racist AF with their subcultural identifications.
Phenotype has nothing to do with nationality. Nationality =/= ethnicity.
See here on the other side of the Atlantic
You force migrant Africans to drown in the Mediterranean, get off your high horse dude.
So it would be inaccurate to call Obama African American because he has no slave ancestry?
It would be debatable. That's the point I've been trying to make. You take a set of physical characteristics and common heritage and you classify people based on that. Some people won't neatly fall into those classifications and that's okay, but the classifications are still valid.
I didn’t say anything about validity.
That's the whole point of the phrase "race is a social construct". Attacking the validity of race as a concept.
Nationality =/= ethnicity.
I never claimed them to be equal. Also, "Nordic" isn't a nationality, Norwegian would be. If Harris was born in the US, moved to Norway when she was 3, went to school in Norway, studied in Norway, then returned to the US, what ethnicity do you think she would identify with? And yes bi-ethnic people exist, very common in fact because people do move around.
You force migrant Africans to drown in the Mediterranean, get off your high horse dude.
Did you just call me Italian. Or Greek. Or whatever. You force migrant Latinos to drown in the Rio Grande.
You take a set of physical characteristics and common heritage and you classify people based on that.
Why would you connect such unconnected things as phenotype and heritage? Why not have separate classifiers for both things? Why, then, on top of that, sort people into subcultures based on those classifiers?
That’s the whole point of the phrase “race is a social construct”. Attacking the validity of race as a concept.
Democracy is a social construct. Freedom is a social construct. The only thing that's getting attack, and should and must be attacked, is a purported biological basis for ascribing properties to people based on phenotype because that's complete BS. And with that, I repeat the Epictetus quote:
These reasonings are unconnected: "I am richer than you, therefore I am better"; "I am more eloquent than you, therefore I am better." The connection is rather this: "I am richer than you, therefore my property is greater than yours;" "I am more eloquent than you, therefore my style is better than yours." But you, after all, are neither property nor style.
Do you now, finally, understand what he's saying there? The connection is not "You have black skin, therefore, you are African American", the connection is rather "You have black skin, therefore, you get sunburnt less easy than me".
If Harris was born in the US, moved to Norway when she was 3, went to school in Norway, studied in Norway, then returned to the US, what ethnicity do you think she would identify with?
Identity with, or identify as? You can choose the former to an extent, but the latter is biologically inherited.
Why would you connect such unconnected things as phenotype and heritage?
Fine, since you're getting hung up on definitions, instead of "phenotype" say "inherited physical characteristics". I don't feel like getting into an argument about genetics, it's beside the point. The point is, people inherit physical characteristics common to their enthnicity, and that is what "race" is. It's not a bad thing, just a descriptor.
The connection is not “You have black skin, therefore, you are African American”
The connection is "you have black skin, and wiry hair, and African ancestry, and X and Y and Z, therefore you are Black." And it's less a connection than a definition. No value judgment, just a statement.
It sounds like what you should be arguing against is "you are Black, therefore you are inferior". Which would be a really easy and common argument to make without all this bullshit "race is imaginary" crap.
Well, words can mean whatever you want, but usually race refers to the discrete-ish social categories that have been constructed based roughly on specific phenotypes. For example Black people were a discrete legal category for most of America's history, and were nominally 3/5 of a person and treated as much less. Now, they have equal legal rights on paper, but the category remains informally.
That's an academic ivory tower definition that they invented and no one else uses. Even the blatant racists who sorted races into these social categories did so based on physical appearance. You didn't see any dark skin people allowed to use facilities that said "whites only".
It's based on physical appearance, which is based on phenotype.
That's what I said!
but usually race refers to the discrete-ish social categories that have been constructed based roughly on specific phenotypes.
For example Black people were a discrete legal category
THAT is not a race. That is treatment of a race. That is 100% a social construct.
Race itself is a real biological thing that exists. Not a pure social construct.
Stop conflating them.
I really don't think most people use this definition. Like, would you say "what race are you" is a grammatically incorrect question, then? And what about "hispanic" as a racial descriptor? How do you be hispanic-er than someone else?
Like, would you say “what race are you” is a grammatically incorrect question, then?
No? That question is totally in line with the definition of race I gave.
The census says "hispanic" is an ethnicity rather than a race. I disagree; I think that's splitting hairs.
How do you be hispanic-er than someone else?
I'm 1/4 Hispanic. My mom was half Hispanic (Mexican mother, European father...not saying the country = race before you get your panties in a twist, it's just a fucking shorthand, everyone knows that most Mexicans are Hispanic and most Europeans are not). My mom is more Hispanic than me. Fairly simple concept.
Right, so what's the Hispanic phenotype? As far as anyone can tell it's a language, which isn't a phenotype, and until someone brown opens their mouth they could just as easily be an Arab or a particularly tawny Italian. Or are Arabs Hispanic, too?
and until someone brown opens their mouth they could just as easily be an Arab or a particularly tawny Italian.
...if all brown people look the same to you, you might need to start meeting more people from different races.
Hmm. How good is your eye for heritage? Can you pick apart Telugu from Hindi, for example? Mongol from Chinese?
It's a total continuum so there is no perfect, but mine might be relatively bad, that's true. I have an uncle with mixed ancestry, and I didn't pick up on it until someone told me, lol.
Re-edit: Aaand federation broke. My apologies to this user for the misaimed accusation. I've apologised in private messages, which hopefully go through normally.
Or are Arabs Hispanic, too?
Phenotypically? Yes, they're very close. The whole Mediterranean is which shouldn't be terribly surprising. I guess the reason USians use "Hispanic" and not "Greek" is because Mexico speaks Spanish.
The reason Europeans can reliably tell Sicilians and Arabs apart is not because of phenotype, but because Arabs tend to look like they visit the barber five times a day. Probably because they do.
Yeah, but to be a phenotype, and not just a social construct based partially on a phenotype, it has to go the other way. If having the phenotype isn't enough on it's own to guarantee a race, it's not just about phenotypes. Kind of like how having wheels doesn't make a suitcase a car.
(Also, FWIW Spaniards are mostly pale-skinned - I know because I've actually been there. The brown in Latin America comes from admixture with other local and imported populations)
No category is absolute. By your logic, it's impossible to call anything a car, because cars have wheels but suitcases ALSO have wheels, therefore the entire idea that cars exist is just a made up social construct.
Or for a less ridiculous example: is a battery-powered bicycle actually an electric moped? Or the ever classic, is a hotdog a sandwich? We can discuss these questions without questioning the validity of concepts such as bicycles, mopeds, hotdogs and sandwiches. Categories exist. They are useful descriptors despite the existence of edge cases and blurry boundaries.