Is "race is a social construct" a form of censorsh

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Is "race is a social construct" a form of politically motivated censorship in the belief that the existence of race would promote racism?

I'd tend to take it as being told that we're so weak and childish that we can't call a spade a spade without that freeing up all kinds of illogical behaviors and that a lie needs to be there to reinforce our good ones. Liberal-isms I think can be broken down to a lot of the same complaints that an atheist would have about religion.

...and there are some places you'd better not use 'spade', as it's a perjorative...

As long as one group has advantages or disadvantages over another solely because of appearances, I'd say it's not a social construct.

Fair, call a thing what it is then.

I think my argument is really to say that if we can't both acknowledge that race exists, has positive diversity, and can't do that without taking it as license for racism or race supremacy - then we're really a species incapable of complex thought.

Not really. For the most part, that approach says that genes for skin color, hair color, eye color, etc simply are not important for explaining intelligence, creativity, work ethic, or other human traits. This perspective focuses on culture or the individual to explain general real world discrepancies between groups. It does not deny that there are some genetic differences between people and groups of people, merely that ideas about race that we generate from these superficial genetic differences are useless or dangerous. Of course, some post-modernists will take that basic approach and spin it various ways that may or may not be logical.

Studying the history of racism shows that most ideas about race are arbitrary and removed from what science objectively tells us is true. For example, consider the 'one drop theory" : if someone has any black ancestors, (or if someone is 1/16 black or more), they are no longer 'white.' Or consider the 'paper bag test' ... if a fair skinned black has skin no darker than a kraft paper bag, they have enough 'white' genes to be capable of a degree of civilization. Clearly, such ideas are social constructs divorced from reality.

The Irish, the Italians, and other groups were once thought of as distinct races. Today, they have been blended into larger groups. When I do see people of Italian or Irish descent displaying stereotypical "Irish" or "Italian" behaviors, I attribute it to culture ... their family, neighbors, and co-religionists continue to reproduce elements of those cultures, even as they become 'more American.' Adopt a kid from an Irish Catholic family into a Scottish or Greek family, and they will grow up to reproduce elements of Scottish or Greek culture.... it isn't genetic.

"Race" is not a biological term. Were you to sequence the DNA of an individual, without ever seeing the actual person, you would be unable to determine with any degree of precision what "race" of humanity the individual belonged to (admittedly, if you find a reinforced allele for blue or green eyes, or blond hair, this increases the likelihood that the individual would be considered caucasian; however, these traits are not unknown in other ethnic groupings).

The trickiness of this method of distinction among humans can be seen in my own spouse and children. My wife has skin the color of dark chocolate, yet is also proud of her descent from clan Murray of Athol, in Scotland (and doesn't hold it against me that some of my own ancestors were of clan Sumner, which was awarded some of Murray of Athol's lands after supporting the English king in one of the Scottish rebellions - the one with Charles Stuart, if I'm not mistaken). She is also proud of her recently deceased great-grandmother, who was born a slave in Georgia and carved a place for herself in the world later despite everything. Is she "white" or "black"?

I'm quite thoroughly pale of skin, as is my cohusband. We've both had children with our wife; my daughter is often taken for hispanic, while his son is just called "the cutest little boy I've ever seen" (and not just by me!). Are they "white", "black", or something else?

For that matter, some use "Jewish" as a racial term, as classic Judaism holds that one inherits one's status as a Jew from one's mother. However, it is also possible to convert to Judaism. Does this change one's "race"?

I expect you could assign a probability of them coming from a certain part of the world, and so of them being a particular race, however you wish to define that.


The main reason "trickiness" arises in distinction is because people from opposite ends of the world can now intermingle freely. That hasn't always been the case, and still doesn't apply universally -- just because your recent ancestors were drawn from different continents, doesn't mean everyone's were. I'm white, and my ancestors can be traced back generations to areas of the west of the British Isles.

Well then ascan, please give us a Definition of race. If cannot do so, then HOW can you claim something exists if you cannot even define what it is?

And BTW, your "white" (caucasoid) ancestors in the British Isles were descendants of early humans who originated in East Africa.
This is the SAME place and the SAME genestock that Australian Aboriginees and Native Americans are descended from as well.
If race exists, than AFAIC there are 3 major races of humans and subdivisions among them. Those 3 are: Caucasoid, Negroid, and Mongoloid.

*Yawn* Yes, I know. And several million years ago we were swinging around in the trees, but that doesn't mean there aren't significant differences between us and apes.



Well, from the last statement you seem to accept the possibility that it does exist. Clearly, before humans were able to freely travel around the world, then if you'd taken a sample of people from, say, Australia, and a sample from, say, Europe, and compared them, you'd notice distinct differences physiological and genetically. Those differences you extracted statistically from your data would define each race. Obviously on the periphery of populations where they adjoined others, there'd be gradual changes in that statistical profile, but that no more invalidates the concept of race, any more than it does of the concept of speciation. Just because you can't accurately define something in the way, for example, you'd mathematically define the area of a circle, doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Spring changes into summer, and summer days can seem like spring ones, but that doesn't mean spring and summer don't exist, does it? Similarly there are Africans, and there are Englishmen: black people and white ones, and shades in between.

No, it’s just reality. To understand this you need to know what “race” actuallymeans. It has to do with stuff like some bloke looking at his father naked. Unless you are a creationist or biblical literalist the concept of race is actually obviously nonsense.

Ethnicity and hereditary traits are very real. Gene pools exist and experience varying levels of isolation. But that God ordained and created distinct groups that stand in a God ordained hierarchy, is very obviously nonsense. This is actually what “race” means though.

The best definition I could give or "race" is a set of physical traits that are all inherited as one *package*. For instance, black skin coincides with dolichocephaly, wooly hair, thick lips, and blunt noses. From the standpoint of physical anthropology and population genetics, the concept of 'race' has very little meaning. There is NO definitive evidence that suggests a genetic correlation between physical appearance and the genetics of brain development. Trying to suggest that people with certain physical features are smarter is pseudoscience.

I'm not saying that the reasons are biological, but certain races do tend to seem to be generally much more intellectual than others. Whites, asians and east indians tend to be smarter. Blacks and arabs are almost always wannabe gangster jocks. BTW, I do come from very multicultural school where only like half the people are white, so I have experience.

Interestingly, there was a paper from 2002 published in Science (link) which I have seen brought up a number of times since then which based its analysis on genetic clustering. Anyway, I'm not too savvy on the specifics (for the very good reason that I don't know jack about genetics and also that I simply didn't bother reading it), but the overall conclusion was "Nevertheless, without using prior information about the origins of individuals, we identified six main genetic clusters, five of which correspond to major geographic regions, and subclusters that often correspond to individual populations." Specifically, the 6 clusters they found corresponded crudely to African, Caucasian, East Asian, Pacific Islanders, Amerindian, and (go figure) the Kalash (although I find it interesting that at k=3 the one could assign a cluster to each of 3 branches of the mtDNA migration tree, ignoring another one of the original migration out of Africa). There may be sampling effects here, but the problem I see with refuting the idea of a biological correlate to race is that it relies on choosing a definition of race and then refuting it, which I like to call "appeal to definition".

And if you want to reason by anecdote, Timothy McVeigh, Charles Manson, and that schmuck at the Holocaust Museum the other day were all white; Colin Powell, Samuel "Chip" Delany, and Dr. Michael Davis (my brother-in-law) are all black; therefore, whites tend to be violent criminals, while blacks tend to be highly educated and intelligent.

You fail to take into account fairly simple cultural differences here in the United States. Here, black children who do well in school, speak clearly, and dress in a fashion most Americans associate with success are accused of trying to "act white", and disdained and shunned by their fellows (which is about the worst thing you can do to an NT). Asian and East Indian children are pushed by their parents to excel; this process is enhanced by the fact that the newer immigrants to this country are hardly a representative sample of their home nations. Rather, they tend to be from among their home regions' top echelons, either intellectually or socially.

And your experience is, at best, limited, drawn as it is from the population of a school. When you go out into the world, you'll find it's a good deal more complicated than school would lead you to believe.

Reading the paper does produce some interesting information. For instance, of the genetic variance observed, between 93% and 96% was among individuals, even individuals of the same genetic background; so-called "racial" distinctions tend to be swamped by individual distinctions, which is why it took so many recursions for their analysis to pinpoint any groupings at all.

The last paragraph is also interesting, and, I believe, relevant to the discussion here:

In short, the researchers set out to find these differences - and had to manipulate the frak out of their data to find them.

I don't think anyone has in recent memory ever contended that the genetic variance was not overwhelmingly larger within populations than between them. There's no news there.

Your distorting the paper; the idea was to find population structure. The fact that at k=3 there is any correspondence with mtDNA descent is interesting in itself. That an intuited "race" should show any correspondence with patterns of human descent should give some reason to look more seriously at the concept.

If you're here to knock down some tired third grade strawman about "race" then there is nothing interesting to derive from this exchange.