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'Whites Can Be Black if They Wish' says Lecturers' Union

Started by mahagonny, July 15, 2020, 11:10:26 PM

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mahagonny

#15
Quote from: Parasaurolophus on July 16, 2020, 08:09:01 AM

'Cool' is not a well-delimited concept, either. And you can't choose to be cool. (In fact, doing so would be paradigmatically uncool.) Conventions exert a lot of power over the human world, especially the social world.

Yes, many saxophonists copy Lester Young recordings, but they turn out all different ways. And some, not quite there yet.

If you're in the mood for a little levity, I find these interesting. Just a short time ago you it passed for comedy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R79yYo2aOZs

And now the claim gets push back only from those few who are brazen enough to challenge it. It's serious stuff the person who believes what we believed as kids had better have guts of steel if he/she wants to get into a conversation about it. I can't find it right now, but there's a video with Candace Owens arguing that transsexual is not a real thing. She is now boasting about getting kicked out restaurants for her views. (No such thing as bad publicity.)

Yet we see ourselves as tolerant of religion. Religion can tell you stuff like 'it's wrong to eat meat.' How is that not provocative?

And if you're in the mood for levity, I thought this was hilarious: https://www.google.com/search?source=hp&ei=cHUQX-HAE4PFytMPjPiH6AQ&q=dave+chappelle+the+racial+draft&oq=dave+chappelle+the+racial+draft&gs_lcp=CgZwc3ktYWIQAzICCAAyBggAEBYQHjIICAAQFhAKEB4yBggAEBYQHjoFCAAQsQM6CggAELEDEEYQ-wFQsg5YinJghHRoAHAAeACAAe8miAHcoAGSAQ8wLjEuMS4wLjIuMS45LTSYAQCgAQGqAQdnd3Mtd2l6&sclient=psy-ab&ved=0ahUKEwjhuOSfjtLqAhWDonIEHQz8AU0Q4dUDCAw&uact=5

[warning: n-word spoken]

Guess I am feeling my age and culture shock.




mahagonny

#16
delete

marshwiggle

Quote from: Parasaurolophus on July 16, 2020, 08:09:01 AM
Quote from: marshwiggle on July 16, 2020, 08:05:07 AM
Quote from: Parasaurolophus on July 16, 2020, 07:57:57 AM


Different racial concepts are applied differently to different peoples, depending on the interests involved. They don't track deep structure.

So race is not a well-defined thing....

Quote
But they do track deep-seated conventions, and as with conventions everywhere, different historical accidents and precedents result in different conventions. That's why you can change your gender to match your personal identity, but not your race. In a different world, the answer might be different. But we're not in that different world.

...but yet it's somehow something one cannot in any way "choose".

If those aliens care about consistency we're obviously doomed.


'Cool' is not a well-delimited concept, either. And you can't choose to be cool. (In fact, doing so would be paradigmatically uncool.) Conventions exert a lot of power over the human world, especially the social world.

So when the "conventions" of race were applied by white supremacists to oppress non-white people, they were bad, but if the "conventions" are applied by the equity and diversity proponents to do good things for non-white people, they're good.

In other words, the *distinctions are perfectly reasonable; it's only what they're used for that makes them good or bad. Is that it?

*So the white people had the right idea in making the distinctions, they just were nasty in what they used them for.
It takes so little to be above average.

mahagonny

#18
Quote from: Caracal on July 16, 2020, 04:11:42 AM
Quote from: mahagonny on July 15, 2020, 11:10:26 PM
If race is just made up, can't you just pick one and say 'I'm that?'

Sigh. These would be reasonable questions if you had just landed in your spacecraft. Race is socially constructed, which isn't the same as "made up." You can claim to be black if you want, but nobody else is likely to accept that identity, and your attempt to claim blackness is unlikely to be be met positively. That reaction is going to be bound up with the whole history of race in the United States. You and your claims and choices are bound up in that and you aren't going to be able to bypass it and simply choose some fantasy of a colorblind world.

How it's met is a matter of timing and advocacy or lack of it. See Monty Python link upthread. To be really legitimate, one could say 'my feeling of kinship is with the black community, and most especially not with the white. It's my life's work to be bonded with them. My self-actualizing depends on my appropriate racial identity.' It could be music, cooking, study, religion, sports, neighborhoods, all sorts  of things.

Caracal

Quote from: marshwiggle on July 16, 2020, 09:02:31 AM
Quote from: Parasaurolophus on July 16, 2020, 08:09:01 AM
Quote from: marshwiggle on July 16, 2020, 08:05:07 AM
Quote from: Parasaurolophus on July 16, 2020, 07:57:57 AM


Different racial concepts are applied differently to different peoples, depending on the interests involved. They don't track deep structure.

So race is not a well-defined thing....

Quote
But they do track deep-seated conventions, and as with conventions everywhere, different historical accidents and precedents result in different conventions. That's why you can change your gender to match your personal identity, but not your race. In a different world, the answer might be different. But we're not in that different world.

...but yet it's somehow something one cannot in any way "choose".

If those aliens care about consistency we're obviously doomed.


'Cool' is not a well-delimited concept, either. And you can't choose to be cool. (In fact, doing so would be paradigmatically uncool.) Conventions exert a lot of power over the human world, especially the social world.

So when the "conventions" of race were applied by white supremacists to oppress non-white people, they were bad, but if the "conventions" are applied by the equity and diversity proponents to do good things for non-white people, they're good.

In other words, the *distinctions are perfectly reasonable; it's only what they're used for that makes them good or bad. Is that it?

*So the white people had the right idea in making the distinctions, they just were nasty in what they used them for.

Nope. Not what I wrote.

mahagonny

There are people today who have the opportunity to pick their race. My roommate some years ago, James, had a white mother and a black father. He self-identified as black. His brother Lawrence looked more like their mother. I don't know how he self-idenfied, but if he wasn't being seen with his family, he could have told people he was white, if the subject came up. On the other hand, if someone had said 'Lawrence, you need to confront your white privilege' he could have said 'I am black.'
In a just society, shouldn't we all have the same rights?

jerseyjay

Quote from: kaysixteen on July 15, 2020, 11:43:53 PM
Someone who is Irish is not by any reasonable sense of history or genetics, black.  So merely asserting that such a person is black, because for whatever reason said person wants it to be so, is a whackadox position not worthy of anything but scorn.

This is a rather ignorant statement. It assumes that nobody of African descent can be Irish. But if the president of Peru can be Japanese, and for that matter, the president of Ireland can be Indian, why cannot an Irish person be black? Or a black person be Irish? I mean, I remember in the early 2000s there were a fair number of African migrants working in Dublin. Certainly at least one of them must have stayed and had children, who could with a "reasonable sense of history or genetics" be considered black.

If I remember correctly, there is an episode in the Derry Girls where a student of Chinese descent transfers to the school and they keep asking her where she's from... Hong Kong? Beijing? Shanghai? And she replies with a perfect accent, Belfast.

It seems that in much of Europe, there is a conflation of ethnic heritage and national identity, and the argument that the son of an African cannot really be [fill in the blank for whatever European country you want].

Hibush

I see this situation more as the tension between self-determination and cheating. If some authority or social convention says that people have autonomy in deciding what they are going to be, then someone will come along and claim to be whatever is necessary to get some benefit.

As someone who uses genetics to study biological variation, I find the natural association between genetics and race or gender pretty obvious. But I don't find that association to be relevant to the question whether and individual's choice of which race to identify as should be socially acceptable. Two different contexts, needing different kinds of reasoning.

dismalist

This thread seems to be about definitions. Definitions are never right or wrong, they can only be more or less useful.
That's not even wrong!
--Wolfgang Pauli

mahagonny

#24
Quote from: Hibush on July 16, 2020, 02:15:24 PM
I see this situation more as the tension between self-determination and cheating. If some authority or social convention says that people have autonomy in deciding what they are going to be, then someone will come along and claim to be whatever is necessary to get some benefit.


Of if you're stuck with the race you were dealt at birth then you are considered to be cheating, e. g. white privilege, institutional racism.

Quote from: Hibush on July 16, 2020, 02:15:24 PM

As someone who uses genetics to study biological variation, I find the natural association between genetics and race or gender pretty obvious.

So is gender a continuum or is it one thing or the other?

QuoteBut I don't find that association to be relevant to the question whether and individual's choice of which race to identify as should be socially acceptable. Two different contexts, needing different kinds of reasoning.

But that's a scholar's erudite view. What happens when people on Main Street or their appointed judges decide is what I wonder.




marshwiggle

Quote from: Hibush on July 16, 2020, 02:15:24 PM
As someone who uses genetics to study biological variation, I find the natural association between genetics and race or gender pretty obvious. But I don't find that association to be relevant to the question whether and individual's choice of which race to identify as should be socially acceptable. Two different contexts, needing different kinds of reasoning.

I'm not sure I understand this. As long as there is a concept that has a historically objective basis, (such as sex), sugesting there is a closely related concept (such as gender) but that is totally subject to self-identification is going to meet with a lot of opposition, since it's very logically inconsistent. It's not two different contexts, it's two different (and intentionally unrelated) concepts.
It takes so little to be above average.

Hibush

Quote from: mahagonny on July 16, 2020, 02:47:51 PM

Quote from: Hibush on July 16, 2020, 02:15:24 PM

As someone who uses genetics to study biological variation, I find the natural association between genetics and race or gender pretty obvious.

So is gender a continuum or is it one thing or the other?


The way I find it helpful to think about (i.e. no claims to this being the social norm) is that nature makes lots of variation. While the basic design is to have two sexes determined genetically, it doesn't work that way all the time. Thus you have the great majority of XX people thinking of themselves as women and the great majority of XY people thinking of themselves as men. However, there are what some people term "edge cases" where the sex chromosomes didn't assort normally, or some sex-identity related genes don't turn on or off in the typical way, and evironmental interactions with all of that, and other things we don't really understand the basis of. The result is varying degrees of physically or psychologically intermediate (or off-axis) results. I don't know that "continuum" is the right concept even for this extra variation.

Nature is like that. We come up with categories, she throws us exceptions.

Acknowledging that it exists is one step. People vary a lot in how they deal with things that don't fit in their categories, so that is a constant challenge.

Accepting that the variation is normal in nature may be easier for biologists who see it all the time. Some people like to classify the variation further in hope of increasing understanding. Those who find themselves not fitting in the usual categories are often especially curious about some angle.

Then the tricky part, the actual question you posed: how does gender map onto this variation? With lots of nuance! Beyond that, I'm not sure. I hope those most affected have enough space to figure out workable answers.






dismalist

That's not even wrong!
--Wolfgang Pauli

kaysixteen

I spoke with appreciably less accuracy than I should have.  But it remains true that, until very very recently, Ireland was a very genetically homogeneous place, relatively speaking (and acknowledging that there were various European strains in the Irish population matrix), and most other countries were as well.   In no serious sense, then, historically, were Irish people black.

financeguy

Much easier explanation for why people are much more receptive to self identifying gender than race:

Humans exhibit TONS of in group preference racially and almost none of it for gender. We know that people by the numbers vote their race to an astonishingly disproportional amount. Gender? If the same were true on this side, women would hold every single office for which a female candidate was running since they are around 51% of the population.

The reason for this is that throughout history women have had the option to "lay down for the victors" in any combat situation. There are many stories throughout history of women bearing several children to their previous mate's executioner on the battlefield. Not so much the other way around. Race on the other hand? Much more important militarily through most parts of history to maintain in group solidarity since at many points in history males were simply killed off en masse at the conclusion of a conflict, less frequently being given the option to "join the other team." This same tribal in group preference is apparent today by anyone who simply looks at the numbers. Go into any district in the country that is heavily racially homogeneous among one minority group and try to run as a different minority on "superior policy for the district." Good luck with that one!