"Unlike biological sex, which predates humans by eons, race is a social construct and is fairly arbitrary. Yet "woke" activists claim the exact opposite, talking about sex as if it's something we can take on and off like a sweater, and race as if it determines every facet of our being."
Absolutely nailed it. I'm going to write about his at some point soon.
Your son, a trans man, didn't bubble up in the conversation. Perhaps trans men are not thought to be threatening, or as vocal, but I've really heard very little about them. Some time when it fits into the conversation it could be informative. Issues different from the issues of trans women. Does he share your views on the separation of sexual biology and gender dysphoria? Part of a trans community or living life as "normally" as possible? By that I mean not having "trans" as a primary focus. Is that possible in today's zeitgeist? If it's too personal, feel free to ignore my questions.
Race is no more a "social construct" than biological sex.
The fact that there is something of a continuum in melanin content doesn't justify this soft-headed notion because there is more to race than melanin. Had the major races been geographically separated long enough they would be mutually infertile and literally different species.
What terrible times we are living through, so barren.
*actual* transgender people, OK. I will not use those "cis" and "trans" words except in derision. I've known several genuinely transgendered people and know them to be real. I've been intimate with two. And I know the medical statistics on dysphoria and am away that about a thousand times as many are making the claim than those statistics would predict. So it is statistically defensible to take the default position that "they're all fake," which I would but for those few I have actually known. Because "fake" is over 99%
Ig dysphoria is not prerequisite for transgender then transgender is elective and to so elect is to adopt what is clearly nothing more than a fad, an adoption for the sake of attention. I don't like fads, I don't like attention whores, and I detest people who feel the need to tell everyone what pronouns need to be used to refer to them .... when they aren't around. I'm glad to not live in a country where I am likely to run into this crap, I couldn't stand it.
"Race is no more a "social construct" than biological sex"
I mean, it pretty trivially is. Even if you just consider the fact that if people from two "races" have a kid, that kid will always be a mixture of the two "races", you see how quickly the concept becomes fuzzy. This in contrast to biological sex where no such ambiguity exists except in vanishingly rare cases.
Also I've no idea where you're getting the idea that if the "major races" had remained separated (the "five races" concept of humanity has been throughly debunked. We all came from the same place) we'd be mutually infertile. This is an absolutely extraordinary claim! Homo sapiens were able to mate with neanderthals despite evolving separately for hundreds of thousands of years. Modern humans haven't faced anything like enough evolutionary pressure to make us into different species.
Whatever ideas people have in their heads about race, it's probably fair to say that there is no such thing as a racially "pure" human being on the planet today. But 99.98% of us are unambiguously male or female.
As for transgender being elective, I think we agree that there are many people, especially young people today, who don't have gender dysphoria but identify as trans. I'm more inclined to see these young people as confused or simply struggling to find identity than attention seeking. Though, I guess, most teenagers are attention seeking to some degree. We just didn't used to unthinkingly medicalise them for it.
But whatever the percentages are, I don't want genuinely dysphoric people to suffer because of the idiots. Precision in how we talk about trans issues will help genuine trans people as much as it will help the confused teens. Everybody wins if we can shut down the fanatics.
I can't completely get on board with the 'race is a social construct, but sex is not' train. Sex sets limits biologically. The purpose of life, from the very beginning of primordial soup, is to perpetuate more life, by any evolutionary means necessary. Today, we mammals are a sexually binary species. We've evolved to reproduce in a specific, widely spread way because it's been so successful. We have specific roles to play regarding impregnation and gestation/production. Biology says transwomen can't have babies and transmen can't get anyone pregnant, even if they buy the best vagina/penis money can buy.
The 'limitations' of race are different, and less remarkable. There's very little black and white people can do that the other can not and only one 'limitation' I can think of: Producing a baby other than what they look like. White people can't produce black or Chinese babies, black people can't produce white or Chinese babies, Chinese people can't produce white or black babies.
And when two people of different races get together, they produce a baby that isn't strictly one race or the other, regardless of how it looks. How that baby gets treated is due to the construct of humans deciding that one look/race is superior to another. But men and women have much more pronounced biological differences. Biology rules in the end.
And eventually, I think transracialism will become a thing, and it will be much easier to accomplish than convincing gender-switching. Like it or not, it's coming. For everyone.
"And when two people of different races get together, they produce a baby that isn't strictly one race or the other, regardless of how it looks."
I mean, you've pretty much made the argument for race being (mostly) a social construct here. I'd just go a step further and point out that pretty much nobody is strictly one race of the other in 2022. Regardless of how they look.
There are biological realities to ancestry, of course. I don't think any serious person is denying this. But the notion of "race" (note how you slipped into calling Chinese people a "race" here) is a lazy, scientifically debunked and largely counterproductive way of addressing the actually complexity of geographical ancestry.
I could get into this in detail and not only bore most readers but risk being called a racist. But I do believe that there are racial differences that are not explained away by upbringing. Dave mentioned his wife's nose for the freshness of food. I have seen that too. It is beyond doubt. OK, freshness has been an imperative for 2500 years if not longer. That is enough to have a genetic effect.
I will name another, and I am as certain on this.
We all love to eat, and we love food that tastes good. But for Asians of all cultures, as unlike as Japanese and Hmong, food can entail what I will call arousal. I am an astute observer of this; I see Asians abruptly ordering another dish in restaurants because they are aroused by what they are eating. It's usually a seafood dish.
I've never once in my life seen anyone do that, unless still hungry.
"But for Asians of all cultures, as unlike as Japanese and Hmong, food can entail what I will call arousal."
We've talked about this before. I've seen this in Asian people. But I've also seen it in Caribbean people and African people and Italian people. I really don't see the argument for a love of food, even a particularly acute love of food, being genetic. It seems much more likely to be about home environment and culture to me.
I'm not talking about loving good food. Who doesn't? I am talking explicitly about a state of arousal, an excitement. But I don't want to get any more into it save to say that I am sure what I've seen. I have after all had thirty years of watching.
What do you want to call the mildly interesting limitations the thingy formerly known as 'race' was? It doesn't matter what you call it, there are differences between us and while they *should* be no more remarkable than hair colour or eye shape, there are a few biological limitations to what our bodies can do. I can only think of a few, and they don't account for much in this day and age but here it goes: Black people's skin is better at protecting against skin cancer, white people's skin is better at facilitating Vitamin D production, my nose is probably better designed for northern climates, your nose might be better designed for African climates (I don't know what it looks like but as I understand it, the broad African nose evolved in response to some need to respire better. Same with my peeps.)
Those 'limitations' are considerably less pronounced than a biological man who wants to have a baby and a transman who wants to impregnate a woman with her seed. Also, as we've all noted, transmen aren't exactly scrambling to get onto men's sports teams. Gee, I wonder why.
So yes, 'race' or whatever is mostly a social construct, and yes, I doubt any of us are 'pure' at this point, and I don't care if the Chinese are a 'race' or not, but they are also a biologically distinct type of human who can't produce anything except Chinese babies if they only reproduce with other Chinese. And yes who the hell knows what 'pure' Chinese is.
I don't think we should pretend there are NO differences between people of - race, haplotype, genotype, whatever. The diffs are there and instead of pretending they're not, let's just accept them for what they are. Racially speaking, they're not all that remarkable in the long run, but they're there - biological limitations on various things that sex also imposes on us.
Maybe I'll just start calling all of us 'skin critters' :)
What's on my list of 2-writes is an article about how we need to bring back asking each other where we're from, because it's interesting, and is often a conversation piece, and since we can't shut up about race adn differences we might as well talk about them freely, and I suspect they'll start to matter a lot less.
"It doesn't matter what you call it, there are differences between us"
Of course! But there are *lots* of differences between us. Again, no serious person is pretending there are no differences based on geographical ancestry. I'm certainly not. My issue is, and always has been, that too many people think that skin colour is some kind of special, unique and defining difference.
Also, I don't understand why you describe the traits you identified as limitations. They're just inherited traits, no? What's limiting about them? Many black people don't have broad noses. Look at a typical Somali or Ethiopian nose. Some white people have huge noses. Look at some Geek or Italian noses. Again, geographical ancestry. Not "race." I think people get so fixated on skin colour sometimes that they don't actually look at people's faces. There's huge diversity in how black or Asian or European faces look.
UV protection is literally the only reliable trait all black people have in common.
p.s. Chinese people produce Chinese babies in the same way that German people produce German babies. That's a nationality issue, not a genetic one, right? If a white Belgian and a white Australian have a baby in Australia, that child isn't Belgian.
They're 'limitations' in the sense that one skin colour is good for facilitating Vitamin D, which means the darker-skinned folks might have to take supplements, and the lighter-skinned folks have to use more sunscreen since white skin isn't conducive to skin cancer prevention. They're minor inconveniences. They don't limit who we are as human beings, or our value, just certain things we can and can't do, because of biology. It's just more dramatic when you compare male to female, because men clearly are much stronger and historically far more of a threat to women (and also other men).
Noses evolved to suit the environment, as did eyes & other features. It only makes you 'better' at living in that environment. Look, dude, I put on sunscreen when I go to the beach because I'd be an idiot not to. Have you ever had your D levels checked? From what I found the other day when I got to wondering, "Are black people at risk for Vitamin D deficiency?" it was yes, although I couldn't be arsed to find out if that meant you got anemic, or grew a second head out of your shoulder, or what.
Why is it such a big deal to accept that there are certain differences between people with The Element Formerly Known As Race Before It Became A Political Clusterfuck? Call it whatever you like, it's evolutionary differences that exist between people and they're clearly an obsession for some and engage Sudden Visual Blindness in others. "What? What? the guy in the red shirt! The guy with the poufy hair! The guy in the red shirt and the poufy hair! That guy there! By the water fountain! That's the guy who can help you!"
'Race' differences are clearly a thing, one side wants to talk about them and the other side doesn't...and I say, why not just acknowledge it and move on. Why argue about whether 'race' is a social construct or not when in fact what we call 'race' is surficial differences that will only stop being a big deal when we stop making it a big deal. But let's not pretend those differences aren't there because they clearly are. Maybe we'd all care more if Josh Hawley tried to join the Nation of Islam and Kanye West tried to join the Klan. (Well, they'd find common ground on Jews anyway, I guess.)
Pretending 'race' doesn't exist strikes me as bizarre as claiming 'sex' doesn't exist or isn't real.
There's nothing wrong with saying "the black guy." I've never even hinted at the idea that there is. Black, in this case, is a descriptor. Like 'tall" or "blond." I'm not being touchy about being called black.
We've had this same conversation numerous times over the months, and I'm not sure how to be any clearer. I don't deny that there are differences between black people and white people. I never have. My point is that there are also differences between black people and black people. And between white people and white people.
My issue with the race is nothing to do with the politics, it's not the word, it's that the entire concept is simplistic and reductive. Or better yet, flat out wrong and scientifically debunked.
When people talk about race, generally speaking (maybe you're not doing this and we're talking past each other), they mean White, Black, Asian, Native American and what? Maybe South East Asian?
My point is that there is no meaningful sense in which white people are a "race." There is huge diversity across the different ancestries of white people. Same for black people. Same for Asians. Are you the same "race" as somebody from Iceland just because you both have white skin? I don't think the makes any sense.
The point you make about the nation of Islam and the KKK is salient. The reason Kanye and Josh would have a hard time joining these groups is that they're both *virulently racist groups*! They too believe, incorrectly, that race is meaningful concept. I don't think we can use them as support for the idea.
And as for sex vs race, I already explained why they're different. When a man and a woman have a baby, it will be immediately obvious that it's a boy or a girl 99.98% of the time. Not a mixture, one or the other. The only exception is when something goes wrong.
If people of two "races" have a baby (and as I think we've agreed, there's no such thing as a racial pure person anyway), their baby will be a mixture of these two races 100% of the time. No exceptions. It's immediately impossible (and simplistic) to racially categorise that child as simply one or the other.
I guess some would argue that the baby is a new hybrid race? Which I think would be silly. But even here, how many races are there then? Is this making sense? I really don't understand how I'm not being clear. Race is nothing like sex.
"I guess some would argue that the baby is a new hybrid race?"
Interestingly, to those who make such distinctions, my daughters would be Eurasian (a mixture of European and Asian stock). In Saudi Arabia a Saudi man asked me if my daughters were Saudi, thinking that I was their martial arts teacher rather that their father. They were 2nd Poom in Taekwondo with a box full of medals and popular in the expat martial arts tournament community. I sometimes taught rich kids, including little Prince Turky at the Ritz Carlton in Al Khobar.
Of course, due to politics and the shame of the children GIs left behind there was another name, Amerasian. I hated that word. I suppose Chris could say a bit about those children's fate. I only heard stories perhaps not reliable.
I get why you don't like differentiating between people, but it sort of sounds a little like the folks who deny sex is real. What's important is not that we come in a lot of colours that are sure, yeah, really mixed but you look black and i look white and Dave's wife looks Asian. Isn't that interesting, but not a good argument for enslaving, bombing, or genociding anyone. I say the differences are there and you can call it race or not, but the diffs are there, the groups are there, and why is it such a clusterfuck to find the language for that?
I mean yeah, we can talk about the diversity within what we 'look' like - hey, let's have a 23andMe Reveal Party where we all get together, open our envelopes and reveal our genetic ancestry for the first time. We'll have some laughs, esp about what we 'think' we are or what we 'think' others look like, and then we'll go home and watch Netflix. The diffs are visual, and all I'm arguing for is saying that we're going to classify people in groups (just like we classify birds as flying, swimming, flying/swimming, strictly land/useless wings, etc. Ostriches aren't 'better' than songbirds, they're both different but but they're still birds. It's what we *do*. We sort stuff, critters and people. 'Race' differences aren't as obvious as sex differences but they're still there and we can talk about 'race' stuff, but we can't call it anything? How about 'The Concept Formerly Known As Race'?
"I get why you don't like differentiating between people"
This is so crazy!! ЁЯШЕ My whole point is that we *need* to differentiate between people more precisely. And that race does a horrible job of this. I must be doing a horrible job of explaining myself and I'm not sure why.
I'm saying that calling everybody with black skin or white skin or whatever skin a particular "race" is the failure to differentiate. It's like saying that everybody with blond or brown hair is the same race. No! They're not! It would be incredibly simplistic to claim this.
I have ancestry form Sierra Leone. If you lumped me in with all other Sierra Leoninans, I'd understand where you were coming from. It still wouldn't quite be accurate, but much more sensibly differentiated than simply saying, "oh, his skin is black, so we can just lump him in with every other human being on the entire continent of Africa and anywhere in the Caribbean and the Aboriginies in Australia."
Again, I have no issue with the notion of differences Of course there are differences. But "race" is far too blunt a concept to understand these differences.
Speaking of 23andMe, I just shared this link with Chris. Maybe it will do a better job of explaining than I have.ЁЯШЕ
As to what to call "the concept formerly know as race" other than "wrong" or "simplistic" I'm not really sure. It's not easy being a race writer and knowing that the concept of race is completely wrong.ЁЯШД
It's such a commonly understood term that I just say "race" usually with scare quotes. But whenever possible, I avoid it. I talk about skin colour because really, that's what people usually mean when they mention it.
That continuum from poles to equator directly reflects equilibria established by the balance between promoting ergosterol to vitamin D and insulation from melanoma.
Slightly tangential. Years ago, my melanated wife who could tolerate the sun laughed when I got a sunburn and "peeled like a snake." A strange thing to her. Now, with age and less collagen in her skin (thinning skin comes with age) she wears long sleeves and a brimmed hat in the Arizona sun. She can burn now. Has little to do with adaptive racial traits except that they give tendencies rather than gold plated imperviousness.
About ten years ago I went to the Pride Parade with a very black-skinned friend and I offered him some of my sunscreen, which he refused. And I said, "Doctors think *everyone* should be wearing it now, even black people, even really black black people, they're not 100% impervious to skin cancer either." He refused. It was a bright, hot day that day. I do wish they'd come up with sunscreen that doesn't make you feel dirty while it's on.
Take macaws. Every species can mate with any other, even between genera, and produce hardy and fertile offspring. I had a Harlequin Macaw, Blue and Gold x Scarlet.
Yet there are still distinct macaw species, no question about it, though they rarely hybridize in the wild, sometimes they flock together.
To say that race mixing invalidates the idea of race is not an argument.
As for "trans," if they are nor dysphoric then they are fake. Pitiable desperate people but not transgendered. And, from all I have seen, attention freaks.
Why on Earth are we talking about macaws? Are you arguing that black people are a different species to white people? I suspect not. So I'm not sure what point you're making here. I'm not saying that race mixing invalidates the concept of race. The point I was making there is that race is different to sex.
The idea of race has already long been invalidated by the fact that we understand genetics far better than we did when these concepts originated.
Although I hate the racism that falls out of othering people of different racial groups and I am a race mixer, I like the beauty of the diversity. I do not wish to see the logical extreme of vanishing race thru that mixing. That's not some replacement theory crap. There is so much beauty in the shades of skin tones, the various colors of hair and eyes, facial features, etc. that I do not relish the idea of it all vanishing. I think we should be able to rid society of the bigotry without ending all that beauty in its splendid diversity.
"I think we should be able to rid society of the bigotry without ending all that beauty in its splendid diversity."
I don't think mixing will eliminate diversity, there's plenty of variation amongst people of the same "race" today. Though yes, it will inevitably smooth off the extremes. But I think we have plenty of time before we've even come close to mingling out our diversity. Hopefully we'll have long since gotten rid of the bigotry before then.
Darwin's finches ended up as separate species. As it happens we were never separated geographically at all.
Look, Steve, I'm not Heinrich Himmler. But separated populations of one species over time become separate species. There is no reason to think humans would be any different.
I had a good smeck when that supremacist learned he was 17% black.
Your last graph got to the point I have been trying to make. The fakes are taking resources that the authentically transgendered need. I saw one video about some idiot girl who had storned out of work in tears because her coworker refused to "they" her. I wanted to slap her face SO bad.
"Look, Steve, I'm not Heinrich Himmler. But separated populations of one species over time become separate species"
ЁЯШБ I know that. I'm just saying that evolution is far more complex than you're portraying it. Yes, some species diverge to the point where they can't interbreed. Others, lions and tigers for example, are still able to breed despite significant time evolving separately.
Yes, it's *possible* that some groups of humans might, after an enormous amount of time and under some currently unknown evolutionary pressure, have become mutually infertile. This is just as likely to have happened within groups of humans we erroneously think of today as the same "race." But I see no justification at all for the certainty with which you made the claim.
Well the fact that we were able to cross vast distances in boats assured that it didn't happen.
I am a firm believer that humans are just as much an animal species as any other. and not exempt from any biological factors. And if groups of humans had been separated for 25, 50,000 years then there would have been enough diversification to result in mutually infertile species.
Don't forget that humans are known to have had at least seven distinct species. Species are not defined by mutual infertillity, there are even mutually fertile genera, maybe even families. We know that Neanderthals and Cro-Magnon were compatible; I have a distinctly Neanderthal look myself.
I hope you don't think I'm trying to make some racist point here, I absolutely am not, but I take offense at the notion that humanity is "above" biology. that animals have, for example, instincts but that we don't. Like Dave I find the diversity of humanity to be enriching.
"I hope you don't think I'm trying to make some racist point here, I absolutely am not, but I take offense at the notion that humanity is "above" biology. that animals have"
I know you more than well enough to know you're not a racist. I just think you're making assumptions without grounds.
I share your conviction that humans are an animal species like any other. But while I'll take your word for it that there were at least seven human species, all modern humans, regardless of their skin colour or geographical ancestry, are the same species.
Would we become mutually infertile if enough time passed? The only honest answer is "who knows?" But again, for that to happen, we'd almost certainly need to experience some currently unknown evolutionary pressure. Or wait millions and millions of years, in which case the point is kind of moot, since nobody knows what could happen over the course of millions of years.
Humans aren't finches. So it's not a simple matter of assuming that what's true for one species is true for another.
Some of these varieties are known from a small number of fossils and so mutual fertility is guesswork. But, yes, there have been at least seven species of humans.
Know why ours ended up at the top?
Because we could imagine. We could invent stories. We could do fiction.
You put a lot of effort into that. The fly in the ointment is that the genes that go with nothing about human traits that a value can properly be assigned to are the ones that make "race" visible. Racists latch on to that.
"Unlike biological sex, which predates humans by eons, race is a social construct and is fairly arbitrary. Yet "woke" activists claim the exact opposite, talking about sex as if it's something we can take on and off like a sweater, and race as if it determines every facet of our being."
Absolutely nailed it. I'm going to write about his at some point soon.
Your son, a trans man, didn't bubble up in the conversation. Perhaps trans men are not thought to be threatening, or as vocal, but I've really heard very little about them. Some time when it fits into the conversation it could be informative. Issues different from the issues of trans women. Does he share your views on the separation of sexual biology and gender dysphoria? Part of a trans community or living life as "normally" as possible? By that I mean not having "trans" as a primary focus. Is that possible in today's zeitgeist? If it's too personal, feel free to ignore my questions.
Race is no more a "social construct" than biological sex.
The fact that there is something of a continuum in melanin content doesn't justify this soft-headed notion because there is more to race than melanin. Had the major races been geographically separated long enough they would be mutually infertile and literally different species.
What terrible times we are living through, so barren.
*actual* transgender people, OK. I will not use those "cis" and "trans" words except in derision. I've known several genuinely transgendered people and know them to be real. I've been intimate with two. And I know the medical statistics on dysphoria and am away that about a thousand times as many are making the claim than those statistics would predict. So it is statistically defensible to take the default position that "they're all fake," which I would but for those few I have actually known. Because "fake" is over 99%
Ig dysphoria is not prerequisite for transgender then transgender is elective and to so elect is to adopt what is clearly nothing more than a fad, an adoption for the sake of attention. I don't like fads, I don't like attention whores, and I detest people who feel the need to tell everyone what pronouns need to be used to refer to them .... when they aren't around. I'm glad to not live in a country where I am likely to run into this crap, I couldn't stand it.
"Race is no more a "social construct" than biological sex"
I mean, it pretty trivially is. Even if you just consider the fact that if people from two "races" have a kid, that kid will always be a mixture of the two "races", you see how quickly the concept becomes fuzzy. This in contrast to biological sex where no such ambiguity exists except in vanishingly rare cases.
Also I've no idea where you're getting the idea that if the "major races" had remained separated (the "five races" concept of humanity has been throughly debunked. We all came from the same place) we'd be mutually infertile. This is an absolutely extraordinary claim! Homo sapiens were able to mate with neanderthals despite evolving separately for hundreds of thousands of years. Modern humans haven't faced anything like enough evolutionary pressure to make us into different species.
Whatever ideas people have in their heads about race, it's probably fair to say that there is no such thing as a racially "pure" human being on the planet today. But 99.98% of us are unambiguously male or female.
As for transgender being elective, I think we agree that there are many people, especially young people today, who don't have gender dysphoria but identify as trans. I'm more inclined to see these young people as confused or simply struggling to find identity than attention seeking. Though, I guess, most teenagers are attention seeking to some degree. We just didn't used to unthinkingly medicalise them for it.
But whatever the percentages are, I don't want genuinely dysphoric people to suffer because of the idiots. Precision in how we talk about trans issues will help genuine trans people as much as it will help the confused teens. Everybody wins if we can shut down the fanatics.
I can't completely get on board with the 'race is a social construct, but sex is not' train. Sex sets limits biologically. The purpose of life, from the very beginning of primordial soup, is to perpetuate more life, by any evolutionary means necessary. Today, we mammals are a sexually binary species. We've evolved to reproduce in a specific, widely spread way because it's been so successful. We have specific roles to play regarding impregnation and gestation/production. Biology says transwomen can't have babies and transmen can't get anyone pregnant, even if they buy the best vagina/penis money can buy.
The 'limitations' of race are different, and less remarkable. There's very little black and white people can do that the other can not and only one 'limitation' I can think of: Producing a baby other than what they look like. White people can't produce black or Chinese babies, black people can't produce white or Chinese babies, Chinese people can't produce white or black babies.
And when two people of different races get together, they produce a baby that isn't strictly one race or the other, regardless of how it looks. How that baby gets treated is due to the construct of humans deciding that one look/race is superior to another. But men and women have much more pronounced biological differences. Biology rules in the end.
And eventually, I think transracialism will become a thing, and it will be much easier to accomplish than convincing gender-switching. Like it or not, it's coming. For everyone.
"And when two people of different races get together, they produce a baby that isn't strictly one race or the other, regardless of how it looks."
I mean, you've pretty much made the argument for race being (mostly) a social construct here. I'd just go a step further and point out that pretty much nobody is strictly one race of the other in 2022. Regardless of how they look.
There are biological realities to ancestry, of course. I don't think any serious person is denying this. But the notion of "race" (note how you slipped into calling Chinese people a "race" here) is a lazy, scientifically debunked and largely counterproductive way of addressing the actually complexity of geographical ancestry.
I could get into this in detail and not only bore most readers but risk being called a racist. But I do believe that there are racial differences that are not explained away by upbringing. Dave mentioned his wife's nose for the freshness of food. I have seen that too. It is beyond doubt. OK, freshness has been an imperative for 2500 years if not longer. That is enough to have a genetic effect.
I will name another, and I am as certain on this.
We all love to eat, and we love food that tastes good. But for Asians of all cultures, as unlike as Japanese and Hmong, food can entail what I will call arousal. I am an astute observer of this; I see Asians abruptly ordering another dish in restaurants because they are aroused by what they are eating. It's usually a seafood dish.
I've never once in my life seen anyone do that, unless still hungry.
"But for Asians of all cultures, as unlike as Japanese and Hmong, food can entail what I will call arousal."
We've talked about this before. I've seen this in Asian people. But I've also seen it in Caribbean people and African people and Italian people. I really don't see the argument for a love of food, even a particularly acute love of food, being genetic. It seems much more likely to be about home environment and culture to me.
I'm not talking about loving good food. Who doesn't? I am talking explicitly about a state of arousal, an excitement. But I don't want to get any more into it save to say that I am sure what I've seen. I have after all had thirty years of watching.
What do you want to call the mildly interesting limitations the thingy formerly known as 'race' was? It doesn't matter what you call it, there are differences between us and while they *should* be no more remarkable than hair colour or eye shape, there are a few biological limitations to what our bodies can do. I can only think of a few, and they don't account for much in this day and age but here it goes: Black people's skin is better at protecting against skin cancer, white people's skin is better at facilitating Vitamin D production, my nose is probably better designed for northern climates, your nose might be better designed for African climates (I don't know what it looks like but as I understand it, the broad African nose evolved in response to some need to respire better. Same with my peeps.)
Those 'limitations' are considerably less pronounced than a biological man who wants to have a baby and a transman who wants to impregnate a woman with her seed. Also, as we've all noted, transmen aren't exactly scrambling to get onto men's sports teams. Gee, I wonder why.
So yes, 'race' or whatever is mostly a social construct, and yes, I doubt any of us are 'pure' at this point, and I don't care if the Chinese are a 'race' or not, but they are also a biologically distinct type of human who can't produce anything except Chinese babies if they only reproduce with other Chinese. And yes who the hell knows what 'pure' Chinese is.
I don't think we should pretend there are NO differences between people of - race, haplotype, genotype, whatever. The diffs are there and instead of pretending they're not, let's just accept them for what they are. Racially speaking, they're not all that remarkable in the long run, but they're there - biological limitations on various things that sex also imposes on us.
Maybe I'll just start calling all of us 'skin critters' :)
What's on my list of 2-writes is an article about how we need to bring back asking each other where we're from, because it's interesting, and is often a conversation piece, and since we can't shut up about race adn differences we might as well talk about them freely, and I suspect they'll start to matter a lot less.
"It doesn't matter what you call it, there are differences between us"
Of course! But there are *lots* of differences between us. Again, no serious person is pretending there are no differences based on geographical ancestry. I'm certainly not. My issue is, and always has been, that too many people think that skin colour is some kind of special, unique and defining difference.
Also, I don't understand why you describe the traits you identified as limitations. They're just inherited traits, no? What's limiting about them? Many black people don't have broad noses. Look at a typical Somali or Ethiopian nose. Some white people have huge noses. Look at some Geek or Italian noses. Again, geographical ancestry. Not "race." I think people get so fixated on skin colour sometimes that they don't actually look at people's faces. There's huge diversity in how black or Asian or European faces look.
UV protection is literally the only reliable trait all black people have in common.
p.s. Chinese people produce Chinese babies in the same way that German people produce German babies. That's a nationality issue, not a genetic one, right? If a white Belgian and a white Australian have a baby in Australia, that child isn't Belgian.
I think you're a little fixated on race.
They're 'limitations' in the sense that one skin colour is good for facilitating Vitamin D, which means the darker-skinned folks might have to take supplements, and the lighter-skinned folks have to use more sunscreen since white skin isn't conducive to skin cancer prevention. They're minor inconveniences. They don't limit who we are as human beings, or our value, just certain things we can and can't do, because of biology. It's just more dramatic when you compare male to female, because men clearly are much stronger and historically far more of a threat to women (and also other men).
Noses evolved to suit the environment, as did eyes & other features. It only makes you 'better' at living in that environment. Look, dude, I put on sunscreen when I go to the beach because I'd be an idiot not to. Have you ever had your D levels checked? From what I found the other day when I got to wondering, "Are black people at risk for Vitamin D deficiency?" it was yes, although I couldn't be arsed to find out if that meant you got anemic, or grew a second head out of your shoulder, or what.
Why is it such a big deal to accept that there are certain differences between people with The Element Formerly Known As Race Before It Became A Political Clusterfuck? Call it whatever you like, it's evolutionary differences that exist between people and they're clearly an obsession for some and engage Sudden Visual Blindness in others. "What? What? the guy in the red shirt! The guy with the poufy hair! The guy in the red shirt and the poufy hair! That guy there! By the water fountain! That's the guy who can help you!"
"You mean the BLACK GUY?"
<muttering> "Well...uh.............................yeah."
'Race' differences are clearly a thing, one side wants to talk about them and the other side doesn't...and I say, why not just acknowledge it and move on. Why argue about whether 'race' is a social construct or not when in fact what we call 'race' is surficial differences that will only stop being a big deal when we stop making it a big deal. But let's not pretend those differences aren't there because they clearly are. Maybe we'd all care more if Josh Hawley tried to join the Nation of Islam and Kanye West tried to join the Klan. (Well, they'd find common ground on Jews anyway, I guess.)
Pretending 'race' doesn't exist strikes me as bizarre as claiming 'sex' doesn't exist or isn't real.
"I think you're a little fixated on race."
You think *I'm* fixated on race?ЁЯШЕ
There's nothing wrong with saying "the black guy." I've never even hinted at the idea that there is. Black, in this case, is a descriptor. Like 'tall" or "blond." I'm not being touchy about being called black.
We've had this same conversation numerous times over the months, and I'm not sure how to be any clearer. I don't deny that there are differences between black people and white people. I never have. My point is that there are also differences between black people and black people. And between white people and white people.
My issue with the race is nothing to do with the politics, it's not the word, it's that the entire concept is simplistic and reductive. Or better yet, flat out wrong and scientifically debunked.
When people talk about race, generally speaking (maybe you're not doing this and we're talking past each other), they mean White, Black, Asian, Native American and what? Maybe South East Asian?
My point is that there is no meaningful sense in which white people are a "race." There is huge diversity across the different ancestries of white people. Same for black people. Same for Asians. Are you the same "race" as somebody from Iceland just because you both have white skin? I don't think the makes any sense.
The point you make about the nation of Islam and the KKK is salient. The reason Kanye and Josh would have a hard time joining these groups is that they're both *virulently racist groups*! They too believe, incorrectly, that race is meaningful concept. I don't think we can use them as support for the idea.
And as for sex vs race, I already explained why they're different. When a man and a woman have a baby, it will be immediately obvious that it's a boy or a girl 99.98% of the time. Not a mixture, one or the other. The only exception is when something goes wrong.
If people of two "races" have a baby (and as I think we've agreed, there's no such thing as a racial pure person anyway), their baby will be a mixture of these two races 100% of the time. No exceptions. It's immediately impossible (and simplistic) to racially categorise that child as simply one or the other.
I guess some would argue that the baby is a new hybrid race? Which I think would be silly. But even here, how many races are there then? Is this making sense? I really don't understand how I'm not being clear. Race is nothing like sex.
"I guess some would argue that the baby is a new hybrid race?"
Interestingly, to those who make such distinctions, my daughters would be Eurasian (a mixture of European and Asian stock). In Saudi Arabia a Saudi man asked me if my daughters were Saudi, thinking that I was their martial arts teacher rather that their father. They were 2nd Poom in Taekwondo with a box full of medals and popular in the expat martial arts tournament community. I sometimes taught rich kids, including little Prince Turky at the Ritz Carlton in Al Khobar.
Of course, due to politics and the shame of the children GIs left behind there was another name, Amerasian. I hated that word. I suppose Chris could say a bit about those children's fate. I only heard stories perhaps not reliable.
Now that I think about it, I'm actually beginning to think a 23andMe party is actually a cool idea....
I get why you don't like differentiating between people, but it sort of sounds a little like the folks who deny sex is real. What's important is not that we come in a lot of colours that are sure, yeah, really mixed but you look black and i look white and Dave's wife looks Asian. Isn't that interesting, but not a good argument for enslaving, bombing, or genociding anyone. I say the differences are there and you can call it race or not, but the diffs are there, the groups are there, and why is it such a clusterfuck to find the language for that?
I mean yeah, we can talk about the diversity within what we 'look' like - hey, let's have a 23andMe Reveal Party where we all get together, open our envelopes and reveal our genetic ancestry for the first time. We'll have some laughs, esp about what we 'think' we are or what we 'think' others look like, and then we'll go home and watch Netflix. The diffs are visual, and all I'm arguing for is saying that we're going to classify people in groups (just like we classify birds as flying, swimming, flying/swimming, strictly land/useless wings, etc. Ostriches aren't 'better' than songbirds, they're both different but but they're still birds. It's what we *do*. We sort stuff, critters and people. 'Race' differences aren't as obvious as sex differences but they're still there and we can talk about 'race' stuff, but we can't call it anything? How about 'The Concept Formerly Known As Race'?
"I get why you don't like differentiating between people"
This is so crazy!! ЁЯШЕ My whole point is that we *need* to differentiate between people more precisely. And that race does a horrible job of this. I must be doing a horrible job of explaining myself and I'm not sure why.
I'm saying that calling everybody with black skin or white skin or whatever skin a particular "race" is the failure to differentiate. It's like saying that everybody with blond or brown hair is the same race. No! They're not! It would be incredibly simplistic to claim this.
I have ancestry form Sierra Leone. If you lumped me in with all other Sierra Leoninans, I'd understand where you were coming from. It still wouldn't quite be accurate, but much more sensibly differentiated than simply saying, "oh, his skin is black, so we can just lump him in with every other human being on the entire continent of Africa and anywhere in the Caribbean and the Aboriginies in Australia."
Again, I have no issue with the notion of differences Of course there are differences. But "race" is far too blunt a concept to understand these differences.
Speaking of 23andMe, I just shared this link with Chris. Maybe it will do a better job of explaining than I have.ЁЯШЕ
https://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2017/science-genetics-reshaping-race-debate-21st-century/
"The Concept Formerly Known As Race"
As to what to call "the concept formerly know as race" other than "wrong" or "simplistic" I'm not really sure. It's not easy being a race writer and knowing that the concept of race is completely wrong.ЁЯШД
It's such a commonly understood term that I just say "race" usually with scare quotes. But whenever possible, I avoid it. I talk about skin colour because really, that's what people usually mean when they mention it.
That continuum from poles to equator directly reflects equilibria established by the balance between promoting ergosterol to vitamin D and insulation from melanoma.
Slightly tangential. Years ago, my melanated wife who could tolerate the sun laughed when I got a sunburn and "peeled like a snake." A strange thing to her. Now, with age and less collagen in her skin (thinning skin comes with age) she wears long sleeves and a brimmed hat in the Arizona sun. She can burn now. Has little to do with adaptive racial traits except that they give tendencies rather than gold plated imperviousness.
Yeah, i think the moral of the story is we're all dumbasses when we're young and immortal :) Actually, *everyone* is encouraged to use sunscreen now, regardless of how dark your skin is, because *everyone* is susceptible to the effects of the sun: https://www.winchesterhospital.org/health-library/article?id=157004#:~:text=Health%20experts%20advise%20everyone%2C%20regardless,spots%20and%20wrinkles%E2%80%94and%20cancer%20.
About ten years ago I went to the Pride Parade with a very black-skinned friend and I offered him some of my sunscreen, which he refused. And I said, "Doctors think *everyone* should be wearing it now, even black people, even really black black people, they're not 100% impervious to skin cancer either." He refused. It was a bright, hot day that day. I do wish they'd come up with sunscreen that doesn't make you feel dirty while it's on.
тАЬThe diffs are there and instead of pretending they're not, let's just accept them for what they areтАЬ
This
Weak argument, Steve.
Take macaws. Every species can mate with any other, even between genera, and produce hardy and fertile offspring. I had a Harlequin Macaw, Blue and Gold x Scarlet.
Yet there are still distinct macaw species, no question about it, though they rarely hybridize in the wild, sometimes they flock together.
To say that race mixing invalidates the idea of race is not an argument.
As for "trans," if they are nor dysphoric then they are fake. Pitiable desperate people but not transgendered. And, from all I have seen, attention freaks.
Why on Earth are we talking about macaws? Are you arguing that black people are a different species to white people? I suspect not. So I'm not sure what point you're making here. I'm not saying that race mixing invalidates the concept of race. The point I was making there is that race is different to sex.
The idea of race has already long been invalidated by the fact that we understand genetics far better than we did when these concepts originated.
https://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2017/science-genetics-reshaping-race-debate-21st-century/
Although I hate the racism that falls out of othering people of different racial groups and I am a race mixer, I like the beauty of the diversity. I do not wish to see the logical extreme of vanishing race thru that mixing. That's not some replacement theory crap. There is so much beauty in the shades of skin tones, the various colors of hair and eyes, facial features, etc. that I do not relish the idea of it all vanishing. I think we should be able to rid society of the bigotry without ending all that beauty in its splendid diversity.
"I think we should be able to rid society of the bigotry without ending all that beauty in its splendid diversity."
I don't think mixing will eliminate diversity, there's plenty of variation amongst people of the same "race" today. Though yes, it will inevitably smooth off the extremes. But I think we have plenty of time before we've even come close to mingling out our diversity. Hopefully we'll have long since gotten rid of the bigotry before then.
Darwin's finches ended up as separate species. As it happens we were never separated geographically at all.
Look, Steve, I'm not Heinrich Himmler. But separated populations of one species over time become separate species. There is no reason to think humans would be any different.
I had a good smeck when that supremacist learned he was 17% black.
Your last graph got to the point I have been trying to make. The fakes are taking resources that the authentically transgendered need. I saw one video about some idiot girl who had storned out of work in tears because her coworker refused to "they" her. I wanted to slap her face SO bad.
"Look, Steve, I'm not Heinrich Himmler. But separated populations of one species over time become separate species"
ЁЯШБ I know that. I'm just saying that evolution is far more complex than you're portraying it. Yes, some species diverge to the point where they can't interbreed. Others, lions and tigers for example, are still able to breed despite significant time evolving separately.
Yes, it's *possible* that some groups of humans might, after an enormous amount of time and under some currently unknown evolutionary pressure, have become mutually infertile. This is just as likely to have happened within groups of humans we erroneously think of today as the same "race." But I see no justification at all for the certainty with which you made the claim.
Well the fact that we were able to cross vast distances in boats assured that it didn't happen.
I am a firm believer that humans are just as much an animal species as any other. and not exempt from any biological factors. And if groups of humans had been separated for 25, 50,000 years then there would have been enough diversification to result in mutually infertile species.
Don't forget that humans are known to have had at least seven distinct species. Species are not defined by mutual infertillity, there are even mutually fertile genera, maybe even families. We know that Neanderthals and Cro-Magnon were compatible; I have a distinctly Neanderthal look myself.
I hope you don't think I'm trying to make some racist point here, I absolutely am not, but I take offense at the notion that humanity is "above" biology. that animals have, for example, instincts but that we don't. Like Dave I find the diversity of humanity to be enriching.
"I hope you don't think I'm trying to make some racist point here, I absolutely am not, but I take offense at the notion that humanity is "above" biology. that animals have"
I know you more than well enough to know you're not a racist. I just think you're making assumptions without grounds.
I share your conviction that humans are an animal species like any other. But while I'll take your word for it that there were at least seven human species, all modern humans, regardless of their skin colour or geographical ancestry, are the same species.
Would we become mutually infertile if enough time passed? The only honest answer is "who knows?" But again, for that to happen, we'd almost certainly need to experience some currently unknown evolutionary pressure. Or wait millions and millions of years, in which case the point is kind of moot, since nobody knows what could happen over the course of millions of years.
Humans aren't finches. So it's not a simple matter of assuming that what's true for one species is true for another.
Some of these varieties are known from a small number of fossils and so mutual fertility is guesswork. But, yes, there have been at least seven species of humans.
Know why ours ended up at the top?
Because we could imagine. We could invent stories. We could do fiction.
We could lie.
You put a lot of effort into that. The fly in the ointment is that the genes that go with nothing about human traits that a value can properly be assigned to are the ones that make "race" visible. Racists latch on to that.
? You went from verbose to terse. What do you mean by that?