Steve,
Just as very few people share the high quality of your brain/education, very few people will understand or appreciate the thoughts and ideas your brain produces. Your logic and empiricism are impeccable. Sadly, that will make almost no difference. I could count on the fingers of both hands the number of Medium writers who would…
Just as very few people share the high quality of your brain/education, very few people will understand or appreciate the thoughts and ideas your brain produces. Your logic and empiricism are impeccable. Sadly, that will make almost no difference. I could count on the fingers of both hands the number of Medium writers who would even understand, much less internalize, these ideas.
Part of the reason for that, I fear, is that lots of people benefit from the twisted logic of race. It has become a social cudgel. "Race consciousness" is on a virtually vertical upward trajectory now. "White identity" is now a "thing" in the US. Division is growing by the day, fueled by anti-racism and white grievance.
So, what can we do? I honestly don't know, except help the people who need help regardless of what they look like
What I do know is that it is very valiant of you to be this lonely voice of reason. Stay safe.
"I could count on the fingers of both hands the number of Medium writers who would even understand, much less internalize, these ideas."
Yeah, I don't usually go too hard on the idea that race doesn't exist precisely because I know how strongly it conflicts with what most people have been taught to think. Popular culture spends so much time subtly and not-so-subtly dividing people into "blacks" and "whites" that it's not easy for some people to think outside those boxes.
In fact, J had already acknowledged that race isn't real in an earlier part the conversation. He just couldn't see how much the idea still dominated his thinking. And yes, today, "race consciousness" is reaching heights not seen since Jim Crow, all in the name of "anti-racism." It's incredibly frustrating.
The level that most people can wrap their heads around is that skin colour doesn't (or at least shouldn't) matter. So that's generally where I pitch things. It would be nice if more people fully understood *why* it doesn't matter, but changes in thinking always happen slowly.
This is fascinating. The first European humans had the same appearance as Africans. Lack of Vitamin D in early agricultural diets in Europe led to selection pressure for whiter skin. This is all really new stuff.
You can say that race doesn't really exist by equivocation. It's not a scientific term any more than "natural" is, but it is a societal distinction of extreme potency. It doesn't do an American black a lot of good to point out that "race is a social construct" as two men point guns at him while a third tosses a rope over a tree branch.
I've said all I care to say about "social constructs" and to continue arguing it would just make for bad blood, but I don't buy it. Find another way to express it and I may unbend a little but that phrase just offends me like crazy. So does "cis."
But what matters is that most bad people see race as a fundamental difference between people and a lot of them nurture murderous hatred over what you say doesn't exist. I leave it to the reader to decide which formulation matters more in daily life.
Jean Piaget developed a stage theory of cognitive development; Lawrence Kohlberg developed a stage theory of moral development (what he learned about humanity led him to take his own life). I have one of my own, for matters of bigotry, which I choose to express in terms of race since that's what this column is about, but it could as well apply to other bigotry. You needn't subscribe to either formulation to track my stages.
As with Piaget's and Kohlberg's, not all people begin lives at the lowest stage and not everyone progressed to the highest one.
1) plain old bigot. White supremacist, thoughtless, believes with complete conviction that one race is superior to the others, that the others are only fit for menial labor and are less than human.
2) woke. There are no races, any suggestion that there are any differences between people is bigotry, trans women are women, everyone has a 100 IQ, social constructs, Asians don't eat any more rice than anyone else, etc. etc. etc. Have a Coke and a smile.
3) biological or societal, there are such things as races again, unscientific, and there are differences between them. These differences are not inferiority or superiority, they just are, and we can accept them without looking down our noses Cultural differences, biological differences, who cares, move on and forget about it, in any metric you care to mention (melanin, intelligence, penis length) there is huge overlap in the bell curves and right now there are more important things to think about.
I have striven all my life to be at (3). I've mostly succeeded.
I don't have to say anything about (1) but I don't have a lot of esteem for (2) either.
Within the last few decades, there has developed a general consensus among geneticists that there exists vastly greater genetic diversity within the group of human beings colloquially referred to as "Black" than there is between Eurasians and Blacks or any other grouping. In other words, while there are genetic markers for dark skin, they do not meaningfully correspond with other genetic markers that are phenotypically expressed; rather, it is utterly self-referential.
So, the scientific view is that race, like religion, is a social construct and, like religion, an extremely powerful one at that. Check out the citations in the Wikipedia article I cut and pasted above. And there are lots more I can supply on request.
As you point out, views on "race" have been quite lethal, and far more influential in affecting most human behavior than mere scientific evidence will ever be.
But there is simply no equivalence between those trans ideologues who insist that transwomen are truly women and the other bullshit you mentioned on the one hand, and those who assert that "race" is not a scientifically meaningful grouping on the other.
And you will find less genetic difference between a randomly-chosen human and a randomly-chosen chimpanzee than you can find between two not so randomly selected humans. That there is enormous genetic heterogeneity within a nominal "race" is hardly surprising; otherwise they would all be the same height, look exactly alike, etc. And the human genome was fully sequenced, what, less than a generation ago, this is a fledgling science.
It seems to me that you are rebutting things I didn't say, arguing points I clearly conceded.
I think the "not" in your last sentence is backward.
Yet you can lose your job if someone runs across your social media post insisting that "trans" women are not truly women.
I’m not sure I understand your response. All humans share well over 99% of their DNA--all genetic variation among humans is attributable to .01 or .02 percent. They share about 98.7% of their DNA with chimps. Also chimps have 48 chromosomes while humans have 46.
So humans are more like each other than they are like chimps. However, because chimps have been around longer than humans, there is much greater genetic diversity among chimps than among humans. Was this what you were referring to?
I was taking issue with your equating genetic reality with wacko transgender ideology. Your statement 2 to be specific. Did I misunderstand you?
What exactly did you think I meant when I said that race is not a scientific concept? And said twice how the significance of the concept is social and behavioral?
What I meant in (2) was a wanton denial of any and all objective reality masquerading as some sort of sagacity. People who say everything is a "social construct" regardless of the scientific truth, since they think that logical thought itself is "eurocentric cisnormativity" or whatthefuck ever. It does not advance scientific understanding of race or anything else by mixing it in with this pseudointellectual pot of mud. So when someone yaps that "race is a social construct" instead of, oh, "race is not a scientifically-founded concept" then it adulterates the argument.
Because "social construct" is part of the language of postemodernism, where "trans" looniness is right at home.
I probably could have made my post a little clearer but we've talked about this stuff enough and I thought we were already, if I may coin a phrase, "on the same page."
I am as far off the grid as I can manage, increasingly distant from any contemporary zeitgeist as I can make myself, and lately have become aware of just how much this shit-thought has metastasized. I mean, I know the "trans" activists are functionally insane but I had no idea how firmly established this "everything is subjective" nonsense has become.
I had a friend, a guy I talked with every week, a former manager I have stayed in contact with for many years, pull the "trans teen suicide" shit on me a few days ago. This guy is plenty smart enough to figure out that since history prior to the Affirmation Generation is not a killing field of teen suicide then something is wrong with the idea, but instead he excoriated me as some sort of bigoted moon-calf ready to support warehouses of dead kids and even more homeless ones because of bigoted parents. He was so derisive and nasty about it that I had to block him and doubt our weekly talks will continue (and it isn't like I can afford to lose many human contacts). I awoke the next morning so angry I was kicking things over all around the house and that isn't like me.
Steve,
Just as very few people share the high quality of your brain/education, very few people will understand or appreciate the thoughts and ideas your brain produces. Your logic and empiricism are impeccable. Sadly, that will make almost no difference. I could count on the fingers of both hands the number of Medium writers who would even understand, much less internalize, these ideas.
Part of the reason for that, I fear, is that lots of people benefit from the twisted logic of race. It has become a social cudgel. "Race consciousness" is on a virtually vertical upward trajectory now. "White identity" is now a "thing" in the US. Division is growing by the day, fueled by anti-racism and white grievance.
So, what can we do? I honestly don't know, except help the people who need help regardless of what they look like
What I do know is that it is very valiant of you to be this lonely voice of reason. Stay safe.
"I could count on the fingers of both hands the number of Medium writers who would even understand, much less internalize, these ideas."
Yeah, I don't usually go too hard on the idea that race doesn't exist precisely because I know how strongly it conflicts with what most people have been taught to think. Popular culture spends so much time subtly and not-so-subtly dividing people into "blacks" and "whites" that it's not easy for some people to think outside those boxes.
In fact, J had already acknowledged that race isn't real in an earlier part the conversation. He just couldn't see how much the idea still dominated his thinking. And yes, today, "race consciousness" is reaching heights not seen since Jim Crow, all in the name of "anti-racism." It's incredibly frustrating.
The level that most people can wrap their heads around is that skin colour doesn't (or at least shouldn't) matter. So that's generally where I pitch things. It would be nice if more people fully understood *why* it doesn't matter, but changes in thinking always happen slowly.
https://medium.com/alternative-perspectives/a-deep-history-of-white-people-daa3587148d
This is fascinating. The first European humans had the same appearance as Africans. Lack of Vitamin D in early agricultural diets in Europe led to selection pressure for whiter skin. This is all really new stuff.
You can say that race doesn't really exist by equivocation. It's not a scientific term any more than "natural" is, but it is a societal distinction of extreme potency. It doesn't do an American black a lot of good to point out that "race is a social construct" as two men point guns at him while a third tosses a rope over a tree branch.
I've said all I care to say about "social constructs" and to continue arguing it would just make for bad blood, but I don't buy it. Find another way to express it and I may unbend a little but that phrase just offends me like crazy. So does "cis."
But what matters is that most bad people see race as a fundamental difference between people and a lot of them nurture murderous hatred over what you say doesn't exist. I leave it to the reader to decide which formulation matters more in daily life.
Jean Piaget developed a stage theory of cognitive development; Lawrence Kohlberg developed a stage theory of moral development (what he learned about humanity led him to take his own life). I have one of my own, for matters of bigotry, which I choose to express in terms of race since that's what this column is about, but it could as well apply to other bigotry. You needn't subscribe to either formulation to track my stages.
As with Piaget's and Kohlberg's, not all people begin lives at the lowest stage and not everyone progressed to the highest one.
1) plain old bigot. White supremacist, thoughtless, believes with complete conviction that one race is superior to the others, that the others are only fit for menial labor and are less than human.
2) woke. There are no races, any suggestion that there are any differences between people is bigotry, trans women are women, everyone has a 100 IQ, social constructs, Asians don't eat any more rice than anyone else, etc. etc. etc. Have a Coke and a smile.
3) biological or societal, there are such things as races again, unscientific, and there are differences between them. These differences are not inferiority or superiority, they just are, and we can accept them without looking down our noses Cultural differences, biological differences, who cares, move on and forget about it, in any metric you care to mention (melanin, intelligence, penis length) there is huge overlap in the bell curves and right now there are more important things to think about.
I have striven all my life to be at (3). I've mostly succeeded.
I don't have to say anything about (1) but I don't have a lot of esteem for (2) either.
https://www.bing.com/search?q=race+and+genetics&form=ANNTH1&refig=47a79e38bf484d678bdcab291c138014
Within the last few decades, there has developed a general consensus among geneticists that there exists vastly greater genetic diversity within the group of human beings colloquially referred to as "Black" than there is between Eurasians and Blacks or any other grouping. In other words, while there are genetic markers for dark skin, they do not meaningfully correspond with other genetic markers that are phenotypically expressed; rather, it is utterly self-referential.
So, the scientific view is that race, like religion, is a social construct and, like religion, an extremely powerful one at that. Check out the citations in the Wikipedia article I cut and pasted above. And there are lots more I can supply on request.
As you point out, views on "race" have been quite lethal, and far more influential in affecting most human behavior than mere scientific evidence will ever be.
But there is simply no equivalence between those trans ideologues who insist that transwomen are truly women and the other bullshit you mentioned on the one hand, and those who assert that "race" is not a scientifically meaningful grouping on the other.
And you will find less genetic difference between a randomly-chosen human and a randomly-chosen chimpanzee than you can find between two not so randomly selected humans. That there is enormous genetic heterogeneity within a nominal "race" is hardly surprising; otherwise they would all be the same height, look exactly alike, etc. And the human genome was fully sequenced, what, less than a generation ago, this is a fledgling science.
It seems to me that you are rebutting things I didn't say, arguing points I clearly conceded.
I think the "not" in your last sentence is backward.
Yet you can lose your job if someone runs across your social media post insisting that "trans" women are not truly women.
https://www.facebook.com/1517954111/videos/1342557583254781/
I’m not sure I understand your response. All humans share well over 99% of their DNA--all genetic variation among humans is attributable to .01 or .02 percent. They share about 98.7% of their DNA with chimps. Also chimps have 48 chromosomes while humans have 46.
So humans are more like each other than they are like chimps. However, because chimps have been around longer than humans, there is much greater genetic diversity among chimps than among humans. Was this what you were referring to?
I was taking issue with your equating genetic reality with wacko transgender ideology. Your statement 2 to be specific. Did I misunderstand you?
The last part I don’t think I understand.
What exactly did you think I meant when I said that race is not a scientific concept? And said twice how the significance of the concept is social and behavioral?
What I meant in (2) was a wanton denial of any and all objective reality masquerading as some sort of sagacity. People who say everything is a "social construct" regardless of the scientific truth, since they think that logical thought itself is "eurocentric cisnormativity" or whatthefuck ever. It does not advance scientific understanding of race or anything else by mixing it in with this pseudointellectual pot of mud. So when someone yaps that "race is a social construct" instead of, oh, "race is not a scientifically-founded concept" then it adulterates the argument.
Because "social construct" is part of the language of postemodernism, where "trans" looniness is right at home.
Is that clearer?
Yes, it is clearer. Point taken. I think we actually agree---just both a bit ornery.
I probably could have made my post a little clearer but we've talked about this stuff enough and I thought we were already, if I may coin a phrase, "on the same page."
I am as far off the grid as I can manage, increasingly distant from any contemporary zeitgeist as I can make myself, and lately have become aware of just how much this shit-thought has metastasized. I mean, I know the "trans" activists are functionally insane but I had no idea how firmly established this "everything is subjective" nonsense has become.
I had a friend, a guy I talked with every week, a former manager I have stayed in contact with for many years, pull the "trans teen suicide" shit on me a few days ago. This guy is plenty smart enough to figure out that since history prior to the Affirmation Generation is not a killing field of teen suicide then something is wrong with the idea, but instead he excoriated me as some sort of bigoted moon-calf ready to support warehouses of dead kids and even more homeless ones because of bigoted parents. He was so derisive and nasty about it that I had to block him and doubt our weekly talks will continue (and it isn't like I can afford to lose many human contacts). I awoke the next morning so angry I was kicking things over all around the house and that isn't like me.
Hey, take a run. Do something outside and enjoy the day. There are lots of good people out there.
"Where are they?" — Enrico Fermi
I meant 0.1 or 0.2 percent. Oops