If race is nothing more than a "social construct".....

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Ethnicity and genetic haplotypes are real, race is a social construct. Identifying someone as a member of a race based on their external appearance or other identifiers doesn't give insight into their genetic background; someone who you identify as 'white' or 'black' or whatever may well have mixed ancestry. Two mixed people of similar genetic backgrounds may well be lumped into different races based on other considerations like appearance and self-identification.

That may be true, but people pushing the ideology of race being a "social construct" ignore any of those factors. Their idea is that everyone is the same "we all bleed red blood". Well, yes, of course. But genetic heritability is a very strong factor- among a wide spectrum of individuals belonging to the same race. We can see it manifest in culture, IQ, and even personality characteristics. Again, its not 100%, but its very profound and palpable. The reason people get paranoid about these findings is because they compare it to "racial purity" politics pushed by the Nazis. If you admit that races are different- and sometimes profoundly so, you get a called a Nazi who wants to exterminate 6 million Jews. Ask any SJW, and they will rant on about race doesn't even exist. Its part of the globalist agenda to brainwash the minds of people to accept a 3rd world . This is why they push the concept of "climate change".

Once again the "x is a social construct" descends into a meaningless semantic argument.


It is not a smart or nuanced to do this, and in my experience such proponent often cherry pick as it suit what is a social construct, or what is something they are born with. Sometimes it is the exact same attribute, just expressed differently in a different context.

A much better argument to say that racial classification of the type done by the nazis is a flawed process, and there is no such thing as a 'pure' race. We only have models. However what is also true that the genetic modeling also corresponds to some common physical attributes, but this is not a simple code. It may also correspond with increased likelihood of certain genetics for certain attributes like athleticism. I know it is not popular to say this but nature doesn't have to fit popular ideals.

However to say that race is entirely a social construct is kind of absurd, as advocate of this freely admit this purely about influencing social attitudes to race, not what race is itself. That may be an admirable cause, but it is a completely different concept.

Social conservatives and SJW alike are guilt of doing this stuff time and time again. Claiming something is purely one a social construct or purely biological, becuase of trying to gain the moral high ground.

Nature isn't moralising, it doesn't need to follow our ideals. Take sexuality for example. It doesn't have to be purely something you are born with or purely something that can change. It can be both, and the current research suggest this. We have a bases sexuality but there can be to lesser or greater extent a degree of futility in someone life depending on circumstance. A moral stance on this doesn't determine nature any more than any other external factor, or at least not as far as we know. If sexuality was purely a choice, in my morality it is not my business what people do in private.

People have define what they are mean by a tern, however there are commonly understood term which sociologists redefine knowing full well there will be a conflation between the commonly held definition and their obscure ones.

This is what leads people to say thing like "black people can't be racist".

IMO such tactic are exactly what George Orwell wrote about "Newspeak", "Doublethink", etc.

This is not the way to change social attitudes by controlling their language and the confines of thought.

How does race determine IQ, or personality characteristics?
Such thinking, even without bringing the Nazis into the discussion, feeds into homegrown American racism, in which one group of people aren't as intelligent or are more inclined to violence and crime, than others.
By the way, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, one of the preeminent astrophysicists of the day, is a black man, and so hardly falls into the stereotype of dumb, violent blacks.

Last edited by Kraichgauer on 15 Jul 2017, 5:14 pm, edited 1 time in total.

There was a drift in the thread from the topic of "race" to that of "racism".
Back to the original topic.

A "race" presumably would be a "subspecies" of the human species.

Therefore to have scientific meaning there would have to be identifiable subdivisions within homosapiens that could be identified as subspecies, or races. Actual entities.

Human variation is real. And certain traits are more common in some geographic locales than in other. But if you map out the distribution of traits its impossible to see "concordance"- see variation clumping together in ways that indicate coherent subspecies units that could be called "races".

For example if you use skin color then you would be forced to lump together the two darkest groups: sub-Saharan Africans, with Australian Aboriginies. But not only are those two groups have homelands thousands of miles apart, DNA testing shows that those two are the two LEAST related human groups.

Someone mentioned Whites being varied in eye color.

But whats so special about eye color? Just because eyes are visible doesn't make eye color anything but a superficial indicator of anything.

Whites may vary in eye color, but Blacks of African descent have a harder time finding matches for skin grafts than do Whites because of the greater genetic variety Africans than of Europeans.

Eye shape is also used to type folks by race. And if you go by eye shape then East Asians (like the Chinese) would be lumped with American Indians, and would be split from Asian Indians. Asian Indians would be lumped with round eyed Europeans.

But if you ignore eye shape and use blood type then you would lump Asian Indians with East Asians, and divorce American Indians from East Asians and lump American Indians with White Europeans. That because Indians and Chinese have a similar distribution of blood types that are dissimilar to that of American Indians (but American Indians have a similar distribution of blood types to that of White Eurpeans). The point being that if you use different traits as classifiers you get different combinations of human groups lumped together as "races". So variation is real, but races - rather subjective to say the least.

So humans take only a small number of traits (traits that are real, and indeeded coded by DNA and influenced by ancestry) to type each other into "races". But humans ignore vast numbers of other DNA coded traits that lack social significance in typing folks by "race". We use skin color, but not skin proteins that provoke antibodies in skin grafts, to type each other by race. We use eye color, and eye shape, but not blood type, shape of incisors, or shape of your liver, or how lactose tolerant you are, to type you by race. So because we only use a small number of socially significant traits to type race race is thus a "social construct".

Really? Because for the degree to which I can 'push' that idea, I do. Maybe you know what I think better than I know what I think?

You're right that some people try to argue very strongly for a 'race-blind' worldview, but those people aren't typically the same people who push the idea of race as a social construct. The people who argue race as a social construct typically do so as a criticism of the 'race-blind' worldview, that's why so often you'll hear the meme 'race isn't real, racism is' or similar. Using myself as an example if you went by a picture you'd conclude I'm white, if you went by my dental records East Asian or Amerind (due to sinodonty), or by my wallet Amerind - ultimately the genes I carry aren't what determines how people perceive me, generally agreed upon understandings of what label is applicable for me do.

I tend to agree here....I certainly don't see it as making anyone superior or inferior on the basis of race, but that it just simply doesn't exist seems a little far fetched. I mean there are some fairly visible differences, and not just skin color alone. Also I feel like the idea it doesn't exist kind of puts a damper on the idea of diversity...the idea that people of various races can interact and coexist to me is a lot better than the idea race doesn't exist so therefore people can coexist...if that makes sense.

IQ is also a social construct

People of African descent are in the same sub-species as "white" people.

There are blue-eyed "black" people.

Obviously, in most "white" populations, brown eyes predominate.

People of the "black race" in a physical sense frequently have predominately so-called "white" characteristics if they're raised by, and live among, people of European descent.

There are people of the "white race," raised among people of African descent, who have predominately "black" characteristics.

Racism, by those of any "race" or ethnicity, is usually present in a situation where the person is raised among one "race," and is isolated from other "races."

There is a biological component to race, however genetically there is no such thing as race. What I mean by that is, obviously people of a particular race tend to share a group of particular phenotypical features, but there isn't a single gene that determine's one race, nor a consistent group of genes which would define someone as being of a particular race.

Ancestry tests actually compare people with modern sample population and not ancient populations. When a test says that X person is 61% Estonian, what that test is saying is 61% of the genetic markers examined are found in the greatest frequency among modern Estonians.

In many instances, a person's phenotype can be misleading as to their genetic composition. For example, take a look at the man below.



If post people saw this man at a bus stop in an American city, they would likely think that he is African American. He's not. In fact he is Melanesian, from the Island Nation of Vanuatu, and is more genetically distant from modern day Africans than Europeans are.

These girls below are full siblings, in fact, they are non-identical twins.


Based on phenotype, one would be considered white and the other would be considered black. Their father is caucasian and their mother is Jamaican of mixed African and European heritage. The girl on the left just happened to get the genes that code for light skin, red hair, and caucasian features, and the girl on the right has some of the genes that code for a darker complexion and less caucasian features.

From a social and phenotypical standpoint, it would be easy to claim that the girl on the left is white and the girl on the right isn't, but genetically the girl on the left may very well have more genes in common with modern African populations than the girl on the right, but those genes aren't ones that manifest outward physical traits.

Because we are dealing with groups of genes, how would you define a race genetically? How many genes should people of the same race have in common and which genes? What happens if a genetic mutation spontaneously occurs in one of those genes and spreads to half of the population in question such that that population no longer meets the definition of whatever race you genetically have defined them belonging to, even though their physical phenotype hasn't changed?

This actually happens quite a bit in Africa such that though most sub-Saharan Africans look similar to each other, there is more genetic diversity between the people of sub-Saharan African than populations elsewhere.

Attempts to formally define race have always been met with inconsistencies because phenotype and genetics among groups of people are inherently inconsistent. The Nazis famously ran into this problem in their quest to eradicate jews and make a master race of "aryans". The Nazis decided to define as a jew anyone who had 3 jewish grandparents. But Ashkenazi jews do not always posses distinguishing features and the Nazis were met with the problem of how to deal jews with features that met their ideal of the model aryan. In fact, the poster baby for the model Aryan was jewish baby.



So they devised an exception that anyone who looked sufficiently aryan could receive a special certificate making them so.

So much for their claim of scientific principals.

How can a man NOT dig this woman? ❤️

Of course, the "Aryan" race of Nazi Germany is a purely false "construct."

The same sort of "science" which determined criminal tendencies and intelligence based upon bumps on the head.

How is the living heck can actual "Aryan" people have "Nordic" features?

The "Aryans" migrated from the Caucasus area to the Indian Subcontinent around the third millennium BC or so.

When I was a young boy, I was a racist. I even thought black people smelled differently (the "smell," actually, emanated from products which straightened "kinky" hair.

When I started hanging out with black people and even shared a bunk with them in summer camp, my racism pretty much disappeared.

Social sciences, and mainstream media communication, and all that is "public"/"Politic"/"social" have nothing to do with any truth, instead with the management of people.

In our days, this management has a mass dimension, and -- not a surprise, is it? -- the Managers would like it a lot to make it global, world management.

You have to tell all groups of people what they psychologically need be told... it's oil in the machine, provides smoothness for the manager's job.

That's all.

Thanks, Chronos. Well written.

Hey there Reb. How bout just admit you are a racist and be done with it?