The word racist is ubiquitous, but the word race is forbidden (expect for check boxes on government forms). There was Saturday Night Live Episode years ago of a psychologist talking with Eddie Murphy about word associations, eventually using nothing but racially-loaded terms like "spearchucker." Murphy started out affable but grew more irritated, responding with things like "cracker," and "honky." Eventually, when quite angry he said "HONKY honky!!" It was a good illustration that there aren't equivalent words to insult white people with. Except, as I read a few years ago from a black humorist, the word "racist" is as insulting to white people as any previous slur against blacks, as measured by the amount of anger and energy put into defense against it.
Because race is so emotionally-loaded, I have read suggestions that it be avoided altogether in favor of more neutral terms such as ancestry group. I don't think it will do the least bit of good, as you will just be accused of Scientific Racism with quick reference to Nazis, rather than American slavery, but I have no little objection. We are already in a maze of contradictory statements, language-change won't make that much worse or better.
Can we blame Lewontin for his 1960s declaration that races don't exist and everyone who says they do is racist? He lent the weight of his white lab coat to that political declaration. He's up there for the nomination.
About twenty years ago the idea came in that race is a social construct, an idea that did not exist until about 500 years ago and the Age of Exploration. That seems calculated to conjure images of slaveships rather than discuss real history. People in Roman times and earlier certainly noticed the different colors of people. Until a hundred years ago, race was an even more restrictive term, referring to the Irish race, or the Slavic. So in some sense, yes, race is somewhat socially defined. The categories in the US Census have changed every time since 1970, for example.
Yet these are always definitions at the margins. Where we draw the lines are indeed a matter of opinion. Where do the Appalachian Mountains begin? When did Rome fall? What is a socialist? Is that color teal or green? But that does not mean there is no reality deeper in. I know plenty of people of mixed White/Oriental (or Caucasian*/Asian if you prefer) ancestry, but this is new. America has lots of mixes, but even here, there is remarkable continuity. If you look at the junk DNA, without reference to any skin color or facial features, you can tell what continent someone's ancestors lived on before 1500 for thousands of years back. What you say about Afghanis vs Mongols, or North Indians vs South, or border Mexicans vs Oaxacans is interesting - indeed, fascinating and the source of much additional information. But failing to acknowledge that Scots are genetically distinct from Koreans is just silly. And most of humanity still falls into the hard categories, not the fringe ones.
*Hah! Like I have significant Azerbaijani ancestry.
I had two thoughts that seem at least tangentially related to your point here come to mind. First, your comparison to Scots and Koreans reminds me of a commercial for Starburst candy from at least a decade ago. It was a Korean man dressed in traditionally Scottish clothing and speaking with a Scottish accent telling his son (dressed similarly), "You're Scotch-Korean. You don't make a lick of sense." There are just so many possible ways to explore that statement in the current cultural milieu that I don't even know where you'd start.
ReplyDeleteSecond, I was once told by a woman at a gas station (apropos of nothing) that I looked "rapey" on account of being a bald, white guy. "All bald, white guys look rapey to me." She was also white, so it's tough to say if there was racism going on there or not. More importantly, it's always had me wondering what's worse: for all practical purposes being called a rapist (regardless of your race) or a black person being called the n-word. I would argue the former is worse but I'm just a bald, white guy.
"All bald, white guys look rapey to me." I had a nurse supervisor years ago who would say in many situations "That sounds like a personal problem to me." I imagine HR would take her aside these days, but she had a strong point.
ReplyDelete@Deevs - amusingly enough, I used to work with a guy who was Scotch-Korean. His dad was Scottish, and his mom Korean. He was... odd-looking.
ReplyDeleteThere's at least one of everything in America, isn't there? I may have the only Romanian-Filipino granddaughters in the world.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if one could regard it as a triumph of unity that a patchwork of mutually hostile "races" (No Irish Need Apply) could all agree to call each other "white." Not an unalloyed triumph...
ReplyDeleteIt's funny the way language changes don't seem to do what Orwell thought they would. A century ago you might hear about white vs non-white. Now you hear about white vs POC. It's the same imposition of the categories of the powerful on the "other," who are all lumped together.
"That sounds like a personal problem to me."
ReplyDeleteMaybe: "The personal is political" = "My neuroses should be everyone's problem"
Assistant Village Idiot: Can we blame Lewontin for his 1960s declaration that races don't exist and everyone who says they do is racist?
ReplyDeleteTraditional racial definitions are social constructs, or, at the very least, outmoded. For instance, traditionally Bantu and Khoisan were considered "Negroid" even though genetic evidence indicates that the Khoisan diverged very early in human evolution.
Assistant Village Idiot: But failing to acknowledge that Scots are genetically distinct from Koreans is just silly.
Of course, and virtually no one holds such a view. Rather, humans are a single interbreeding population with many different sub-populations of varying degrees of isolation. The old racial definitions are long outdated.
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Joanna-Mountain/publication/232277216/figure/fig1/AS:279070739845126@1443547057270/Relationships-among-Khoisan-and-eastern-Africans-after-removing-non-Khoisan-admixtureWe.png
@ Zachriel - ..."and virtually no one holds such a view." It is what they hold publicly. I have heard that what they say amongst each other is a bit different, yes. But this is a cosmetic shine people put on their far more bigoted beliefs. Charles Murray is not canceled under threat of violence at Middlebury College (where he sent his daughter) for differing slightly from the "oh, yeah, of course subpopulations" idea with a slightly stronger version. Or the heat that premier researchers David Reich, Armand Leroi, and Robert Plomin get, or the popularisers Nicholas Wade, John Tierney (both NYTimes science editors), Spencer Wells, and Razib Khan get when they touch the third rail. John friggin' HAWKS gets skewered. Luigi Cavelli-friggin'-SFORZA gets disinvited. Steven Pinker treads lightly and still gets clobbered.
ReplyDeleteWhat "old racial definitions" are long outdated? Are Africans no longer the most diverse genetic population with multiple significant variations? Australian Aborigines are now known to be deeply related to Finns, or even to Pacific Islanders? No one ever said these were different species, so your "single interbreeding population" is the useless comment here. Again: from the junk DNA alone you can tell the which continent a person's ancestors lived in 500-2500 years ago. If you want to call that something other than a race, fine. But the reality is going to be the same.
I really don't understand why you continue to take liberals and academics at face value for what they say they believe when their actions are brutally and career-cancelling opposites. It is rather like the old Caribbean communists saying "No one here but us agrarian reformers boss." If they hold such mild, open-minded views, why do people with different views become unpopular, not only in the press but at professional conferences?
Assistant Village Idiot: It is what they hold publicly.
ReplyDeleteWho argues that ethnic Scots are not genetically distinguishable from ethnic Koreans?
Assistant Village Idiot: from the junk DNA alone you can tell the which continent a person's ancestors lived in 500-2500 years ago.
Sure. We can even remove admixtures to get a better idea of the deep ancestral relationships between groups.
Assistant Village Idiot: If you want to call that something other than a race, fine.
That's because the use of the term "race" tends to shoehorn people into boxes that distort the actual biological relationships.
Are the respected people I mentioned shunned, cancelled, and threatened, or are they not?
ReplyDeleteDo other academics, including college administrators, insist that races do not exist in any form or do they not?
Do prominent academics and popular figures - as in NYTimes columnists and authors - call people racist for noting that there are measurable differences between (whatever Zachriel thinks is a good name for these populations) or not?
Did I make the discussion of the possible idea of using different terms a part of my original post or not?
I could go on and on. You were hurt that I dismissed you without detailing what the issues with a week or two ago. Puzzled. Couldn't understand what I meant. Odd bits of what I write light up for you and the rest fades into the background, and you fail to address the rest. I don't say that they are untrue bits, only that you seize on those and ignore what is unpleasant to deal with. I would say "go at the main points," but I don't think you can discern what those are. the things you would like to argue with light up for you, and the rest does not. I have nothing to offer how you fix that. Sometimes you hit what is a mian point, sometimes not.
Similarly, you went for an odd backwater recently about Clinton and Gore. I give some credit to Clinton, but the surplus was a surprise to him and better attributed to the GDP growth from the Republican congress. But he was okay. But for Gore you mentioned this as a thing about running on putting the money in a Social Security lockbox. That was always a scam, as even liberal HuffPo noted. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-social-security-lock-_b_830563 . But even more, Gore ran on global warming and having more foreign policy knowledge than Bush. I think both of those blew up in his face, but you can disagree. But he did not run on SS lockbox. That is a retrospective view, digging for things to make him look good. He hammered those other two issues, everything else was politeness and checking boxes.
So you pick the offhand comment to refute, get it 70% wrong because cliches, and think this is somehow moving the discussion forward. Sometimes you hit the main point and I might agree and say so, might think you are wrong. On the minor points, sometimes I make the effort to refute it, sometimes I ignore it. I can't think of a better approach at present. Maybe reading Boethius or something will give me ideas.
Assistant Village Idiot: Do other academics, including college administrators, insist that races do not exist in any form or do they not?
ReplyDeleteIt's your claim, so it would make sense for you to support it. As pointed out above, there is a social construct about race that relates roughly but not very exactly to genetic sub-populations. For instance, Cushitic people may be more closely related to Semitic people than to Congolese people. The following phylogenetic tree might be of value in showing the relationships. Note that Semitic and Cushitic people may share a more recent common ancestor than either do with Bantus.
https://media.springernature.com/lw685/springer-static/image/art%3A10.1038%2Fsrep29890/MediaObjects/41598_2016_Article_BFsrep29890_Fig3_HTML.jpg?as=webp
Most people use "race" as a social construct, especially in the U.S., e.g. the Black experience.
Assistant Village Idiot: (whatever Zachriel thinks is a good name for these populations)
You ignored our comment on this: The use of the term "race" tends to shoehorn people into boxes that distort the actual biological relationships.
Assistant Village Idiot: Do prominent academics and popular figures - as in NYTimes columnists and authors - call people racist for noting that there are measurable differences between (whatever Zachriel thinks is a good name for these populations) or not?
No one denies that there are differences between sub-populations of humans. To which differences are you referring? IQ scores perhaps? You didn't say.
If you are referring to IQ, then keep in mind that IQs may or may not be a particularly accurate measure of intelligence, that IQs are not static in populations but are quite changeable, and that populations that were once considered very backwards have in a few centuries become very advanced.
{If you are interested in continuing the discussion of Clinton, we would prefer to continue it in the previous thread where are found the previous comments.}
My stepson is the offspring of a Scots-Irish father and a Korean mother. I don't think that combination is all that rare given the racial make-up of the military stationed in Korea during the 70s and 80s. He is quite handsome.
ReplyDeleteEric..your comment about looks is rude and gross.
ReplyDeleteThe race issue only comes to light when a country tries to be multi- racial. America became a multi-ethnic country, and now has to deal with the problems that creates. My understanding of history is that multi-ethnic countries eventually have conflict which results in single ethnic countries. Maybe America will be different.
ReplyDeleteOne of my favorite points. Most cou tries have little experience of other races and have not done well with the little they have seen. Europe: Jews, Gypsies for example. China and Japan vs absolutely everyone. Russia and Uzbeks and other Central Asians. Latin America and the suspicious lightness of the dominant people in these supposedly mixed, non-racist nations. Americans and Canadians do very, very well in comparison. That this is still not wonderful is not surprising, given the historical context of the Flemish not even liking the Walloons all that much.
ReplyDeleteJust a minor nit-pick. It was Richard Pryor in the SNL sketch, with Chevy Chase as the interviewer.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure you are correct. Thanks.
ReplyDelete