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Brownbeauty123
Veteran Poster
Username: Brownbeauty123
Post Number: 1727
Registered: 03-2006
Rating: 
Votes: 3 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, February 15, 2007 - 09:37 am: | 
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Does anybody believe this? |
Latina_wi
Regular Poster
Username: Latina_wi
Post Number: 108
Registered: 08-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, February 15, 2007 - 11:00 am: |
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In what sense? As in their is no physical way you can classify groups et cetera?
As I always thought that is opinion. The racial classifying a lot of oridinary people go by now is down to popular concepts that were developed by scientists and 'social experts' hundreds of years ago. You can't really base the race of people by what someone thought up through his own personal opinion and theories (which remember, can be dispiuted) because it was HIS opinion, and a European aspect at that.
For example, the negroid racial group was blown wide open a couple hundred years ago because it classified negroids as people with 'dark hair, dark eyes, broad noses and big lips et cetera'. However, aboriginals were including in this group and many have natural blonde hair which leads me to think that through thororugh research you could debate a lot of the stuff which 'officially' classifies races of people. There is a general consensus but only to the extent of what we know as westerners and what we may or may not preach.
It is often objective to the individual. |
Latina_wi
Regular Poster
Username: Latina_wi
Post Number: 109
Registered: 08-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, February 15, 2007 - 11:02 am: |
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In what sense? As in their is no physical way you can classify groups et cetera?
As I always thought that is opinion. The racial classifying a lot of oridinary people go by now is down to popular concepts that were developed by scientists and 'social experts' hundreds of years ago. You can't really base the race of people by what someone thought up through his own personal opinion and theories (which remember, can be disputed) because it was HIS opinion, and a European aspect at that.
For example, the negroid racial group was blown wide open a couple hundred years ago because it classified negroids as people with 'dark hair, dark eyes, broad noses and big lips et cetera'. However, aboriginals were including in this group and many have natural blonde hair which leads me to think that through thororugh research you could debate a lot of what we are told 'officially' classifies races of people. There is a general consensus obviously, but only to the extent of what we know as westerners and what we may or may not preach.
It is often objective to the individual or different societies. |
Yukio
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Username: Yukio
Post Number: 1786
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, February 15, 2007 - 11:25 am: |
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thats not quite true. There is the human race. but there is no white, black, red, and yellow race. we have discussed this a long ass time ago, long a ago, and then recently...LOL!
There are no biological differences that constitute or make up racial difference. What does that mean?
It doesn't mean that there are no phenotypical differences, such as hair texture, eye color, skin [melanin]...among people. But the sum total of these differences to not equal racial difference.
The more 'cultured' i'm become, I have learned that there are alot damn apples out there, not just the red, the yellow, and the green apples...you can mixed dem bad boys, but they will still be apples! LOL!
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Latina_wi
Regular Poster
Username: Latina_wi
Post Number: 110
Registered: 08-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, February 15, 2007 - 11:29 am: |
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The more 'cultured' i'm become, I have learned that there are alot damn apples out there, not just the red, the yellow, and the green apples...you can mixed dem bad boys, but they will still be apples! LOL!
That is a brilliant saying yukio!
And I agree, the only reason we havephysical differences is due to weather - your so right about the sum total thing! |
Mzuri
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Mzuri
Post Number: 3481
Registered: 01-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, February 15, 2007 - 11:39 am: |
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If there are no biological differences between the races then why are Black people prone to diseases such as sickle cell anemia, hypertension, diabetes, etc? Why do some pharmaceuticals work differently in the different race groups? Why the differences in life expectancy? If people were all the same, then we wouldn't have these differences, would we??? |
Latina_wi
Regular Poster
Username: Latina_wi
Post Number: 111
Registered: 08-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, February 15, 2007 - 11:55 am: |
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Sickle cell is not just a black thing, it is something those who originate from hot countries are prone too. My Iranian friend uncle suffers badly from sickle cell.
Thus linking the whole 'weather' thing in relation to why people differ physically from place to place.
I always thought life expectancy was down to social circumstances. The life expectancy in Angola is 41 - which is put down to crime, disease and pverty. Whereas, in Japan it is 76 due to good and high quality living.
Moreover, you get those who are from particular areas in Lagos, Nigeria who live to a ripe old age due to the fact that their tribes lead richer lives but Nigeria those in the mountains areas have a drastically low life expectancy in comparison. |
Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 7305
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: 
Votes: 1 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, February 15, 2007 - 01:11 pm: |
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Unless anthropologists have revised their classifications, there are 3 racial stocks: Negroid, Caucasoid and Mongoloid, and these stocks are subdivided into races. There is no such thing as the "white" race per se, but people commonly designated as white fall under the Caucasoid heading and include all people who are not of Asian or Negroid descent. Correct me if I am wrong because I am not positive if this is still the way it is. |
Tonya
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Tonya
Post Number: 4464
Registered: 07-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, February 15, 2007 - 01:14 pm: |
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I won't correct you cuz I don't think you're wrong; I will give you five stars tho!
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Yvettep
Veteran Poster
Username: Yvettep
Post Number: 1658
Registered: 01-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, February 15, 2007 - 01:18 pm: |
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Cynique, not only have anthropologists vastly updated this outdated notion, they currently have a traveling exposition about it. I'll post links in a bit... |
Tonya
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Tonya
Post Number: 4465
Registered: 07-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, February 15, 2007 - 01:22 pm: |
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Cynnique, did you say "notion" or "classification" as in category?
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Yvettep
Veteran Poster
Username: Yvettep
Post Number: 1659
Registered: 01-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, February 15, 2007 - 01:25 pm: |
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Exhibit: "RACE: Are We So Different?"
http://www.understandingrace.org/
AAA Statement on Race: http://www.aaanet.org/stmts/racepp.htm
Excerpts:
The following statement was adopted by the Executive Board of the American Anthropological Association, acting on a draft prepared by a committee of representative American anthropologists. It does not reflect a consensus of all members of the AAA, as individuals vary in their approaches to the study of "race." We believe that it represents generally the contemporary thinking and scholarly positions of a majority of anthropologists.
In the United States both scholars and the general public have been conditioned to viewing human races as natural and separate divisions within the human species based on visible physical differences. With the vast expansion of scientific knowledge in this century, however, it has become clear that human populations are not unambiguous, clearly demarcated, biologically distinct groups. Evidence from the analysis of genetics (e.g., DNA) indicates that most physical variation, about 94%, lies within so-called racial groups. Conventional geographic "racial" groupings differ from one another only in about 6% of their genes. This means that there is greater variation within "racial" groups than between them. In neighboring populations there is much overlapping of genes and their phenotypic (physical) expressions. Throughout history whenever different groups have come into contact, they have interbred. The continued sharing of genetic materials has maintained all of humankind as a single species.
Physical variations in any given trait tend to occur gradually rather than abruptly over geographic areas. And because physical traits are inherited independently of one another, knowing the range of one trait does not predict the presence of others. For example, skin color varies largely from light in the temperate areas in the north to dark in the tropical areas in the south; its intensity is not related to nose shape or hair texture. Dark skin may be associated with frizzy or kinky hair or curly or wavy or straight hair, all of which are found among different indigenous peoples in tropical regions. These facts render any attempt to establish lines of division among biological populations both arbitrary and subjective.
...From its inception, this modern concept of "race" was modeled after an ancient theorem of the Great Chain of Being, which posited natural categories on a hierarchy established by God or nature. Thus "race" was a mode of classification linked specifically to peoples in the colonial situation. It subsumed a growing ideology of inequality devised to rationalize European attitudes and treatment of the conquered and enslaved peoples. Proponents of slavery in particular during the 19th century used "race" to justify the retention of slavery. The ideology magnified the differences among Europeans, Africans, and Indians, established a rigid hierarchy of socially exclusive categories underscored and bolstered unequal rank and status differences, and provided the rationalization that the inequality was natural or God-given. The different physical traits of African-Americans and Indians became markers or symbols of their status differences.
As they were constructing US society, leaders among European-Americans fabricated the cultural/behavioral characteristics associated with each "race," linking superior traits with Europeans and negative and inferior ones to blacks and Indians. Numerous arbitrary and fictitious beliefs about the different peoples were institutionalized and deeply embedded in American thought.
Early in the 19th century the growing fields of science began to reflect the public consciousness about human differences. Differences among the "racial" categories were projected to their greatest extreme when the argument was posed that Africans, Indians, and Europeans were separate species, with Africans the least human and closer taxonomically to apes.
...At the end of the 20th century, we now understand that human cultural behavior is learned, conditioned into infants beginning at birth, and always subject to modification. No human is born with a built-in culture or language. Our temperaments, dispositions, and personalities, regardless of genetic propensities, are developed within sets of meanings and values that we call "culture." Studies of infant and early childhood learning and behavior attest to the reality of our cultures in forming who we are.
It is a basic tenet of anthropological knowledge that all normal human beings have the capacity to learn any cultural behavior. The American experience with immigrants from hundreds of different language and cultural backgrounds who have acquired some version of American culture traits and behavior is the clearest evidence of this fact. Moreover, people of all physical variations have learned different cultural behaviors and continue to do so as modern transportation moves millions of immigrants around the world.
How people have been accepted and treated within the context of a given society or culture has a direct impact on how they perform in that society. The "racial" worldview was invented to assign some groups to perpetual low status, while others were permitted access to privilege, power, and wealth. The tragedy in the United States has been that the policies and practices stemming from this worldview succeeded all too well in constructing unequal populations among Europeans, Native Americans, and peoples of African descent. Given what we know about the capacity of normal humans to achieve and function within any culture, we conclude that present-day inequalities between so-called "racial" groups are not consequences of their biological inheritance but products of historical and contemporary social, economic, educational, and political circumstances.
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Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 7307
Registered: 01-2004
Rating:
Votes: 1 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, February 15, 2007 - 01:59 pm: |
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OK in other words, "race" is a now a politically incorrect word and considered a social construct because it can be used to discriminate against certain groups. So what is the current term used to distinguish black and white and yellow people from each other?? We can change the definitions of words but can we change the biological characteristics of homo sapiens? I can accept the trend toward cultural classifications as oppposed to physical ones and it's not like the old designations didn't acknowledge the diversity within the stocks, which explains why Italians are different from Swedes, and Watusis different from pygmies, and Japanese different from Indians, the currrent explanation for which is more like voo-doo sociology. LOL Finally, if the phyicality of race wasn't visible, then people couldn't exploit it. You can't discriminate against people on the grounds of somethng that doesn't exist. IMO |
Yukio
Veteran Poster
Username: Yukio
Post Number: 1796
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, February 15, 2007 - 02:00 pm: |
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yes, cynique. I have been saying that 'race' is a social construct for years; this is all that that long article is saying...in other words, these many of years of exploitation, social and economic also include control over the language that we use to understand our condition! Did u think I was makin this info up? LOL! It is rare for me, you should now, to discuss something like "race" from a evidentiary-less opinion!
On the scientific side: we're just part of the human species. "Conventional geographic 'racial' groupings differ from one another only in about 6% of their genes. This means that there is greater variation within 'racial' groups than between them." In other words socalled blacks and socalled whites have more in common genetically than socalled blacks and blacks...LOL!
Anyways, this is all interesting, and ol to me actually. But it aint gonna stop racism. there doesn't have to be a such thing as race if:
a) the majority of the population can't even wrap their minds around the damn article.
b) they gonna have access to the damn information, and if they do, they aint gonna never read it.
c) can't intellectually differentiate the myth of race from the veracity of racism.
d) are apt to believe in that you have to "see it to believe it." |
Yukio
Veteran Poster
Username: Yukio
Post Number: 1797
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, February 15, 2007 - 02:09 pm: |
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no. you got it all wrong. ALL WRONG. its not political incorrectly. it just the truth! this info has been circulated within the academy for years, for yeeeeaaarrrsss!!!!!!
what is politically correct pertains to popular culture and the political realm, cynique.
Cynique:
You can't discriminate against people on the grounds of somethng that doesn't exist. IMO
NO, cynique:
c)can't intellectually differentiate the myth of race from the veracity of racism.
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Yvettep
Veteran Poster
Username: Yvettep
Post Number: 1660
Registered: 01-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, February 15, 2007 - 02:10 pm: |
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We can change the definitions of words but can we change the biological characteristics of homo sapiens?
But that is exactly what a lot of the more recent scientific critique against "race" as a marker is about. There is no known way to reliably distinguish what we commonly refer to as "race" on biological or genetic criteria. This is not voodoo sociology, but genetic science. What genetic markers can tell us is about what genes and patterns of genes we have inherited from our genetic ancestors--both near (e.g., parents and grandparents) and far (e.g., ancient common geographical ancestors). What they do not do is map onto 3 or 4 or 10 or 15 or any other number (>1) of "races."
Of course most of us will continue to use the word race as it continues to have useful--and very accurate--sociocultural meanings understood by a majority of folks. "Socially constructed" does not mean "fake" or "not real." It's just not rooted in any meaningful or precise way to genetics. |
Yukio
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Username: Yukio
Post Number: 1798
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, February 15, 2007 - 02:16 pm: |
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right Yvettep. Put simply, it means that racism is a social phenomena.
Mzuri:
Think of 2 cartons of eggs. One falls on the ground, and is damaged. And the other doesn't fall and, therefore, is not damaged....well African American are the fallen carton of eggs, the fall, that is racism by white people, had brought about hypertension and diabetes.
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Mzuri
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Mzuri
Post Number: 3483
Registered: 01-2006
Rating: 
Votes: 2 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, February 15, 2007 - 02:44 pm: |
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Y'alls response to my query is that the weather causes sickle cell and Blacks were damaged like a dropped carton of eggs?
So an Iranian has sickle cell anemia, there are exceptions to everything, but that doesn't change the fact that sickle cell anemia predominantly afflicts Blacks. Perhaps the Iranian is Black.
Okay Einsteins, let me rephrase my original question thus:
If there are no biological differences between the races then why are Black people prone to diseases such as sickle cell anemia, hypertension, diabetes, etc?
Why do some pharmaceuticals work differently in the different race groups?
Why the differences in life expectancy?
If people were all the same, then we wouldn't have these differences, would we???
Could you post a factual response please and not just your thoughts and personal opinions.
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Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 7310
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, February 15, 2007 - 02:45 pm: |
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Well of course we are all descended from a single ancestor so its not surprising that our DNA is more alike than different because we are all human. So what is being said is that although very distinguishable overt appearances do exist, "race" is not the word to define these differences. So what we need to do is to find another word to describe why people look different, even if they all have red blood. Bottom line, it's all about semantics. LOL. BTW, groups have been knowns to manipulate science for their own purposes which is why the creationists can find scientists to agree with their theories. |
Yvettep
Veteran Poster
Username: Yvettep
Post Number: 1661
Registered: 01-2005
Rating:
Votes: 2 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, February 15, 2007 - 03:02 pm: |
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If people were all the same, then we wouldn't have these differences, would we???
Mzuri, NO credible scientist is saying that "people are all the same." What genetics does is two simultaneous while also somewhat paradoxical things: Account for the (often, surprising) consistency in species members over time AND the fascinating and wide variation among individual humans.
there are no biological differences between the races
Again, this is a common misattribution of what genetic science tells us. There are biological differences between individuals, there are population-level biological differences between groups of people. But there are no biological markers that would map perfectly onto social notions of "races." Thus, there are wide differences within races (e.g., any two random Black people) that are often as or more startling than between races (e.g., a random Black person and a random White person).
I am sorry you think these are just my personal opinions. I haven't the time to post everything I have learned in my coursework about these things over the past 6+ years, but if you are interested you can find a lot of information on the web. I have also in the past posted a link to a conference I attended about the use of racial categories in biomedical research. If I can find it, I'll post it again.
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Mzuri
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Mzuri
Post Number: 3487
Registered: 01-2006
Rating:
Votes: 1 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, February 15, 2007 - 03:14 pm: |
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I wasn't even addressing my comments to you Yvette, but to the weather and carton of eggs posts.
Anyway, humans and chimpanzees have 99% of the same genetic components, but we're not chimpanzees and they're not human. So if there's a 6% difference in the genes of humans of different racial groups, then we're biologically different. It's not rocket science.
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Yukio
Veteran Poster
Username: Yukio
Post Number: 1802
Registered: 01-2004
Rating:
Votes: 1 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, February 15, 2007 - 03:20 pm: |
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Cynique: Thats right:
So what is being said is that although very distinguishable overt appearances do exist, "race" is not the word to define these differences.
it is all semantics, cynique. it is just another way of exploiting people. disagreement and exploitation is the nature of human history, based on the need for resources. first inequality came about from regional differences, then religious, then nation and "race," and now, all of the above.
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Mzuri: Since I read your post top down, I didn't see the last sentence until I completed my comments. My posts are almost always based on some kind of research. The notion of "fact" as in truth, is really up for question. I would say to you read Yvettep's post, first, where in the author of the piece lays out what I have tried to do by analogy. And then read my comments, here if you like. What Yvettep has posted, as she states, is OLD news in fact!
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LOL! You are funny. You mind is already made up, first of all. To understand, you must unlearn all that you have been taught and think that you know...LOL! Seriously!
*There are biological differences among human beings. BUT these differences do not equal distinct racial groups.
Actually, sickle cell is regional, particularly those of africa and the mediterranean from what I recall.
You ask:
Why do some pharmaceuticals work differently in the different race groups?
Pharmaceuticals work differently because overtime African Americans--a cultural group that was created through the confluence of the transatlantic slave trade, many African tribes, a exploitative experience in the Americas--have taken a psychological and physiological that has afflicted those who are part of that group.
Why the differences in life expectancy?
Same as above. What we call African Americans are poorer because of this history and the continued presence of racism.
If people were all the same, then we wouldn't have these differences, would we??? |
Yvettep
Veteran Poster
Username: Yvettep
Post Number: 1662
Registered: 01-2005
Rating:
Votes: 2 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, February 15, 2007 - 03:20 pm: |
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Reading over these posts I see that some of us may be talking about vastly different things even as we are arguing similar points. Yukio, I do not agree with your analogy--or, I should say, I would amplify it:
Think of 2 cartons of eggs...
Think of two cartons of eggs, one roughly containing people with a more or less common ancestry tracing to various sub-Saharan African ethnic groups and one containing people with more or less common ancerstry tracing back to Europe.
One falls on the ground, and is damaged. And the other doesn't fall and, therefore, is not damaged....
The former may be damaged because the "carton" (=group classification for those inside) was subjected to certain treatment. Yes. However...
well African American are the fallen carton of eggs, the fall, that is racism by white people, had brought about hypertension and diabetes.
No. Actually, some eggs in the fallen carton (the "USDA brown eggs" LOL) will not develop hypertension and diabetes: because of different genetics as the impacted eggs and/or different environments and/or lifestyles and/or experiences of racism as the impacted eggs and/or different access to medical care, etc. Similarly, some of the eggs in the non-fallen carton (the "USDA white eggs") will develop hypertension and diabetes. And for many of the same reasons as the impacted brown eggs.
But where the racial stuff comes in: Just because the brown eggs have greater disease prevalence than the white egss, does not mean that there is a deeper biological and genetic substrate that we could call "X" and have it mean something very similar to what we understand as "race." Perhaps one day something precise will be found that is isomorphic in this way. But on that great day, we will necessarily know so much about causes that it will be more efficient just to individually evaluate each individual egg than to use the egg's brown or white status as a proxie for whatever this deeper "X" is.
(Dagg. Now I'm hungry for scrambled eggs LOL)
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Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 7314
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, February 15, 2007 - 03:22 pm: |
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How does all of this scientific data impact on society? This is esoteric knowledge. What Mzuri and I are carping about is the notion of race that manifests itself in the everyday world, - how the differences are more pervasive than the similarities. All humans have eyes and brains, and these eyes transmit to the brain how a person looks, not what his genetic map is. |
Yvettep
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Username: Yvettep
Post Number: 1663
Registered: 01-2005
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, February 15, 2007 - 03:24 pm: |
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I wasn't even addressing my comments to you Yvette, but to the weather and carton of eggs posts.
Aight, girl! I didn't think so, but I dint wanna assume LOL
So, let me know what you think of my expansion on Yukio's eggs!
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Yukio
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Username: Yukio
Post Number: 1803
Registered: 01-2004
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, February 15, 2007 - 03:31 pm: |
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Yvettep: I got you. Your clarification is more precise, but the point doesn't change, that is, these greater affliction of one socalled racial group for a disease than another is NOT based on racial difference BUT the burden of generational exploitation and history.
This morning, in fact, I cut up some onions, salami, and scrambled the eggs w/cheese and made a sandwich for breakfast...this is, ironically, the birth of my analogy...LOL! |
Mzuri
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Mzuri
Post Number: 3490
Registered: 01-2006
Rating:
Votes: 2 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, February 15, 2007 - 03:35 pm: |
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We're carping??? LOL!!!
I don't really give a care what anybody says because the last time I looked in the mirror I was still blackity black with crazy hair and the negroid nose and lips and all the rest of it. Which I LOVE, BTW, along with the double dees.
But when scientists and philosophers publish their "new" theories, the shit needs to make sense. Because you can't pull the wool over most Black people's eyes so easily.
Race is a "social construct." What a load of crap.
We're different. In many ways which cannot be explained. That's just the way it is.
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Yukio
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Username: Yukio
Post Number: 1804
Registered: 01-2004
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, February 15, 2007 - 03:36 pm: |
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Cynique: right...my points above. It is esoteric. But what it tells us, is that black people aren't poor because of their genetic make-up. That poverty is the result over a war for resources, that we are losing, clearly.
It also says that the legacy of slavery has been both poverty and a real psychological, cultural, and physiological toll on the African. That is all people of African descent who have been objects of slavery and colonialism...that our poor health as a group goes back to both what we do now and the future, but what was done to us in the long past! |
Yukio
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Username: Yukio
Post Number: 1805
Registered: 01-2004
Rating:
Votes: 1 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, February 15, 2007 - 03:39 pm: |
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Mzuri: WE ARE different than socalled white people but it is not a difference based on race. You chose not to get it. And that too is fine. LOL! |
Mzuri
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Mzuri
Post Number: 3492
Registered: 01-2006
Rating:
Votes: 1 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, February 15, 2007 - 03:51 pm: |
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Yukio - Thanks for attempting to address my concerns but some things simply do not have an answer. There's nothing to "get." You can't change the philosophical anthropology that there are separate and distinct racial groups (classified by hair texture - not skin color - and in Asians the distinction is that they produce a different type of ear wax than Caucasoids and Negroids) and then turn around and say that it's all just a matter of perception.
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Brownbeauty123
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Username: Brownbeauty123
Post Number: 1730
Registered: 03-2006
Rating: 
Votes: 4 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, February 15, 2007 - 03:53 pm: |
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Yukio,
what are the differences based on? I just don't get it. |
Tonya
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Tonya
Post Number: 4473
Registered: 07-2006
Rating: 
Votes: 3 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, February 15, 2007 - 03:54 pm: |
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I'm still waiting to see the evidence. All scientists including anthropologists still use race based terms to distinguish between categories, as illustrated by the study above.
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Yvettep
Veteran Poster
Username: Yvettep
Post Number: 1664
Registered: 01-2005
Rating:
Votes: 1 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, February 15, 2007 - 05:13 pm: |
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The opening post to this thread was vague as to what was meant by "no such thing as race." I was responding to the idea that there were scientifically valid categories that map onto "race." As I said, we--everyone, including scientists--still use "race based terms" because they are important, well-understood, fairly accurate categories in many conversational and other contexts.
What I am talking about is not considered "theoretical" nor is it very new. Like I said, these issues are readily researchable, though maybe not all of it is very well presented in laypeople's terms.
What Mzuri and I are carping about is the notion of race that manifests itself in the everyday world, - how the differences are more pervasive than the similarities.
At no time have I ever disputed this. This is, in fact, part of the definition of "social realities," "social constructions" and similar terms and--I repeat--they are VERY REAL.
If what the opening post meant was "Does 'race' have real consequences" then I likely would not have even brought up that other stuff, because the answer is definitely "YES" as far as I am concerned and as far as I experience and have experienced things as a babyboomer Black woman in the US of A.
And I continue to depart somewhat from Yukio: It's not that "disease...is based on...the burden of generational exploitation and history"--but that differences are due to these things AND genetics. But the "genetics" breaks down when you do more than use "race" as a rough proxy for other, deeper genetic things, whatever those hypothetical "things" may be. (Which is where Yukio and I seem to converge again...)
So:
Of course race is real.
~and~
Of course race is not real.
It depends, for me, on what is meant by "race" and "real." And for me it is not just semantics: The second "of course" is key to combating scientific racism purporting to show that "Blacks" are "naturally inferior" to "Whites." The first is important in combating "colorblind" racists who want to say we do not need affirmative action because we should all be treated equally. |
Yvettep
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Username: Yvettep
Post Number: 1665
Registered: 01-2005
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, February 15, 2007 - 05:17 pm: |
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This morning, in fact, I cut up some onions, salami, and scrambled the eggs w/cheese and made a sandwich for breakfast...this is, ironically, the birth of my analogy...
And here I thought you were truing to trick us again into thinking that, because of all this talk of eggs, you were female rather than male LOL! |
Yvettep
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Username: Yvettep
Post Number: 1666
Registered: 01-2005
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, February 15, 2007 - 05:20 pm: |
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Oh: One point of full disclosure:
I do not mean to imply that I am some sort of "super expert" about all this. My educ/prof background relates to the study of genetics from a behavioral and social science perspective. Put me in a lab and I couldn't show you an allele from aloe vera. |
Tonya
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Tonya
Post Number: 4479
Registered: 07-2006
Rating:
Votes: 1 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, February 15, 2007 - 06:35 pm: |
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quote:The opening post to this thread was vague as to what was meant by "no such thing as race." I was responding to the idea that there were scientifically valid categories that map onto "race." As I said, we--everyone, including scientists--still use "race based terms"...
My bad, I didn't catch that. All I caught was your direct response to Cynique's post where she referred to several racial terms as stocks and then later implied that by "stock" she meant "heading". And last I heard no one ever scientifically invalidated a (qute) "heading," or racial term, categories maybe, but not terms. I mean, if this really is the case, the study above is outdated therefore invalid. |
Yukio
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Username: Yukio
Post Number: 1808
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, February 15, 2007 - 08:09 pm: |
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Damn...I go to target to get some cheap socks, and bam!
I'll go backwards:
Yvettep: never tried to trick anyone, by the by. And, my women have always loved that I can cook [wouldn't say burn, though]! LOL!
I'm not sure what your degree is in, but it certainly illustrates that you have better hand than I on science. So, I will not dispute you there. I will, however, attempt to explain what I meant. If yout syllogism is meant to describe my posts, its not quite right.
I distinguish race from racism. The noun from the verb. So race is not real but racism is very real.
Tonya: Unless, you do some kind of actual experiment what you have read above will be all the evidence you will get. The problem with that excerpt above is that it is purely scientific. But the idea of race is not only a scientific issue but also an historical, economic, and sociological issue. See:http://www.pbs.org/race/000_General/000_00-Home.htm
Concerning the usage of term: I think the hegemony of the word "race" is because it has been in usage for hundreds of years, and it is difficult for us, as it is for scientists, to not think in "racial" terms. I do think that they use quotes for a reason, which is typical when words or terms are loaded. Finally, while there is no scientific basis for there being racial differentiation. There is social, that is what we see, experience, etc...and this is easier to understand, for it is tangible, immediate, and seems to be self-evident.
Brownbeauty123: There is only one race, the human race. As Cynique describes it better than I, "although very distinguishable overt appearances do exist, "race" is not the word to define these differences."
Mzuri: I'm not talkin about perception. I don't know where you get that idea from. The differences that you identify do not equate to distinct human racial groups. have made a choice to accept what is old hat.
You have made the choice to believe that those differences equate to racial differences.
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Mzuri
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Mzuri
Post Number: 3496
Registered: 01-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, February 15, 2007 - 08:17 pm: |
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What Ever. Social constructs are based upon perceptions. |
Yukio
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Username: Yukio
Post Number: 1810
Registered: 01-2004
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, February 15, 2007 - 09:11 pm: |
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Thats one way of understanding "social constructs." But when I mean "social construct," I'm talking about society creating certain "realities" that we accept as truth.
Lets do some basic African American and US history, shall we?
In 1619, the Africans who were brought here were enslaved; but this was not based on “race.” In fact, for the first 50 or so years in Virginia, Africans could purchase their freedom, become Christian, and assimilate the language and customs of the British. Race was not the determinant for servitude, it was class and religion or being from a different country or nation or tribe.
Now, in Virginia there was no laws of servitude based on “race,” and for the British, color did not equate to race. Thus, Africans and Europeans worked alongside each other, drank together, and fought together against landholders. By the 1670s and 1680s, this began to change.
Tobacco began to dominate Virginia's economy, which was initially diversified. In addition, British indentured labor became more difficult to obtain because British laborers remained home to work in the burgeoning industrial economy. British labor was then difficult to obtain as well as expensive. Thus, the loss of British labor and the profit of tobacco, as well as the burgeoning transatlantic slave trade that the Portuguese had dominated, created opportunities for the British, the French, and the Dutch to obtain cheap labor.
Only then would the colonists in Virginia begin to pass laws that codified life long servitude based on "race."
Historians use Bacon's Rebellion of 1676 to illustrate that transitional moment when black and white servants fought together against the propertied [ironically, some claim that both white and black poor were in fact tricked by the machinations of Nathaniel Bacon who used the workers grievances for his own purposes].
At any rate, it is then that we begin to identify how "black" was codified into laws. After that, so-called scientists tried to establish race based on cranium size, and more recently it has been based on I.Q. LOL! Science is as much socially constructed as race is, because people in the 19th c. believed all that we know to be silliness! It is no different from believing that the world is flat! Scientists had a theory for this too! This is why, it is more useful to assess this issue along with examining the social history . . . For evidence, you can go to that website from PBS; you can also read some rather engaging articles by Barbara J. Fields a historian at Columbia University.
I gone!
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Tonya
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Tonya
Post Number: 4482
Registered: 07-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, February 15, 2007 - 11:21 pm: |
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As I said awhile back, it is my opinion that (all) language is what form truth and/or reality. No matter how true or false a truth and/or a reality is it all goes back to language, imo. So, unless racial terms and the language associated with them are completely eliminated from the vocabularies of the vast majority of people on the planet, there will always be such a thing as race. And like Yvette pointed out, and also as her study demonstrated, these terms are still needed for some very legitimate formal & informal reasons. 'Til all this change... |
Doberman23
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Username: Doberman23
Post Number: 773
Registered: 01-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, February 15, 2007 - 11:31 pm: |
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how did carl lewis get all those medals then? |
Yukio
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Username: Yukio
Post Number: 1812
Registered: 01-2004
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, February 16, 2007 - 02:08 am: |
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I dont know what you mean by "language." I do think, however, that we can go on forever believing something as long as it makes sense to us; and at the end of the day, it is about what we think, that is what is in our heads, and how this effects action....not at all "truth"!
In other words, I think it and therefore it is fact...funny to me. Like the world is flat...I wonder how long this was accepted as the truth? And how long it took for people to accept that it was not...LOL! |
Yukio
Veteran Poster
Username: Yukio
Post Number: 1813
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, February 16, 2007 - 02:09 am: |
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doberman23: because blacks have no intellect, only physical prowess. |
Latina_wi
Regular Poster
Username: Latina_wi
Post Number: 113
Registered: 08-2006
Rating:
Votes: 1 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, February 16, 2007 - 08:33 am: |
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Y'alls response to my query is that the weather causes sickle cell and Blacks were damaged like a dropped carton of eggs?
So an Iranian has sickle cell anemia, there are exceptions to everything, but that doesn't change the fact that sickle cell anemia predominantly afflicts Blacks. Perhaps the Iranian is Black.
Mzuri: It isn't an exception at all. Sickle cell occurs in countries where malaria is, or was, common. The Iranian is not black or part black at all. Which is why I was saying it is a location thing.
Just wanted to clear that up.  |
Latina_wi
Regular Poster
Username: Latina_wi
Post Number: 114
Registered: 08-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, February 16, 2007 - 08:36 am: |
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I thought the whole 'social construct' thing was to do with culture? So, it meant that humans biggest difference is the various cultures that differ so much from eachother, these are the biggest differences between us as opposed to race....?
Hmmm...I am confused now! |
Misty
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Username: Misty
Post Number: 698
Registered: 02-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, February 16, 2007 - 10:56 am: |
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Does anybody believe this?
i believe that race doesnt exist biologically....but ive had this same debate a million times before and dont really feel like getting into it. but yeah the race theory has been disproven since the 60s |
Mzuri
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Mzuri
Post Number: 3503
Registered: 01-2006
Rating:
Votes: 2 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, February 16, 2007 - 12:21 pm: |
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LW - To be honest, I don't really give a shit about any Iranians. Here in the United States of America sickle cell anemia is an affliction of BLACK PEOPLE. NOT WHITE PEOPLE. In other words, it is a BLACK PEOPLE'S DISEASE. If one white person happens to acquire it, that doesn't make it a WHITE PEOPLE'S DISEASE.
And BTW, the sickle cell question was just one issue. I had several.
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Yukio
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Username: Yukio
Post Number: 1814
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, February 16, 2007 - 02:37 pm: |
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Latina_wi: to say something is "socially constructed" means that the "thing," in this case racial differences, is something that was created by society--individuals, institutions, governments, scientists, lay people, the common jack, jill, leroy, and shante. Social[society] construct[build/create]...
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Yukio
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Username: Yukio
Post Number: 1815
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, February 16, 2007 - 02:39 pm: |
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actually, I wonder to what degree Africans are afflicted with sickle cell. I wonder, in other words, if E. Africans also suffer from it. |
Latina_wi
Regular Poster
Username: Latina_wi
Post Number: 125
Registered: 08-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, February 17, 2007 - 09:08 am: |
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Thanks for clearing that up yukio, I was on the right path then.
And Mzuri, my point was - sickle cell is a disease that affects mostly sub-saharan africans because of malaria being most common there BUT it is a problem for any country that has had a problem with malaria. Therefore, it is not exclusively a black problem.
And most Iranians are not white. |
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