Yeah I read the whole argument on rationalwiki, but it's pilpul. They argue that the existence of mixed people on the edges of geographic racial zones proves there is no such thing as race.
I hesitate to even say this as it's maybe obvious, but yeah anthropologists may want to use better proxies for genetic makeup than "white" or "black". But it's still a useful political concept because that's how people act.
I feel like if they used actual genetic analysis, they'd just get shut down harder. I mean so they find the "violence" gene. You know where that gene is going to be disproportionately expressed.
There are ton of words and categories that have ambiguous margins. Even something like "chair" is infamously difficult to define truly accurately. It doesn't mean the words mean nothing.
The internet has had a whole meme war over "Is a taco a hot dog?".
Language is, be design, vague, so that it can deliver concepts quickly and concisely. "There is a chair over there you can sit on", you look, and there is a padded cylinder with a slight concave top, but no other objects, you will likely correctly assume it is some type of stool, a chair subtype, to sit upon.
Likewise, if I said "there's an asian guy over there who you should talk to", you're not going to ask for phenotype tests of the red-haired white guy and the ebon-black afro-man while a fellow of clear Chinese ancestry stands beside them. Race may be ambiguous to an extent, but arguing that it doesn't exist is arguing that hot dogs don't exist because tacos also are bread product in a curve holding a meat product with toppings.
Races are very large groups, and, I point this out often, race is determined by self-identification. What race is then, from a research perspective, is the most you can get a person to tell you about their genetic ancestry based on a multiple choice. And from a political perspective, it tells you how they see themselves.
So I totally see why a scientist would look at this as low grade data, which is why I say by all means feel free to study people genetically along other lines. But sociologists also want to pretend race doesn't exist. Which is weird because that's people telling you how they identify. Which I thought was something sociologists tried to respect and study.
They say the existence of clines prove that race doesn't exist. They repeat things that scientists have said about race not being a useful concept to them and claim that that means that race doesn't exist.
I don't know any simpler way to put it than that.
I like rationalwiki for opposition research sometimes. I'm not using it for information about the world.
I know one of these college-educated NPCs. Not so much a leftist as he is an actual fucking robot. Last time we were having an argument and I used the word "race" in the context of modern racial politics, it triggered that huge spiel about race not existing...even though it had absolutely zero relevancy to the conversation.
I'd have pointed that out to him, but he's honestly too fucking stupid to have understood.
Anyways, yes, they're pushing hard for this, because they don't have any way to account for racial disparities at this point. They're at the point where they have to suppress the very idea of race, and in the process, breaking their lesser model NPCs.
"Race is a made up concept invented by the white race."
If you are so stupid you read this and don't see what's happening, there's no hope for you.
And yet they spend most of their time arguing about race. And wasn't it just a decade ago that they started saying "not seeing race is racist"?
If there’s no race, then we were all enslaved and there’s no need for reparations or priority college admission.
Yeah I read the whole argument on rationalwiki, but it's pilpul. They argue that the existence of mixed people on the edges of geographic racial zones proves there is no such thing as race.
I hesitate to even say this as it's maybe obvious, but yeah anthropologists may want to use better proxies for genetic makeup than "white" or "black". But it's still a useful political concept because that's how people act.
I feel like if they used actual genetic analysis, they'd just get shut down harder. I mean so they find the "violence" gene. You know where that gene is going to be disproportionately expressed.
There are ton of words and categories that have ambiguous margins. Even something like "chair" is infamously difficult to define truly accurately. It doesn't mean the words mean nothing.
The internet has had a whole meme war over "Is a taco a hot dog?".
Language is, be design, vague, so that it can deliver concepts quickly and concisely. "There is a chair over there you can sit on", you look, and there is a padded cylinder with a slight concave top, but no other objects, you will likely correctly assume it is some type of stool, a chair subtype, to sit upon.
Likewise, if I said "there's an asian guy over there who you should talk to", you're not going to ask for phenotype tests of the red-haired white guy and the ebon-black afro-man while a fellow of clear Chinese ancestry stands beside them. Race may be ambiguous to an extent, but arguing that it doesn't exist is arguing that hot dogs don't exist because tacos also are bread product in a curve holding a meat product with toppings.
Races are very large groups, and, I point this out often, race is determined by self-identification. What race is then, from a research perspective, is the most you can get a person to tell you about their genetic ancestry based on a multiple choice. And from a political perspective, it tells you how they see themselves.
So I totally see why a scientist would look at this as low grade data, which is why I say by all means feel free to study people genetically along other lines. But sociologists also want to pretend race doesn't exist. Which is weird because that's people telling you how they identify. Which I thought was something sociologists tried to respect and study.
They say the existence of clines prove that race doesn't exist. They repeat things that scientists have said about race not being a useful concept to them and claim that that means that race doesn't exist.
I don't know any simpler way to put it than that.
I like rationalwiki for opposition research sometimes. I'm not using it for information about the world.
There are even people here who spout that shit.
I know one of these college-educated NPCs. Not so much a leftist as he is an actual fucking robot. Last time we were having an argument and I used the word "race" in the context of modern racial politics, it triggered that huge spiel about race not existing...even though it had absolutely zero relevancy to the conversation.
I'd have pointed that out to him, but he's honestly too fucking stupid to have understood.
Anyways, yes, they're pushing hard for this, because they don't have any way to account for racial disparities at this point. They're at the point where they have to suppress the very idea of race, and in the process, breaking their lesser model NPCs.
To be fair, it's supposed to be read to children.
That makes it worse...