Woman calls cops another Black Jogger

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Turks, Punjabis and Japanese are all Asian, but they're not generally considered the same race. Genetically speaking, Ethiopians are more like their neighbours in Southwestern Asia then they are to Bantu speakers. Koisan are also genetically distinct from most other Africans, that's why I pointed out those 'three stems' earlier.

The concept of race as understood by Victorians falls apart when subjected to close scrutiny. It's mostly a leftover from the colonial era and often was redefined as needed. When Hitler needed allies, the Japanese became 'white'. American society historically has considered one black no matter how many white great-grandparents they might have, meanwhile Latin America tended to view those people as racially distinct from either group their ancestors were a part of. Conversely, folks with mixed indigenous ancestry were often considered white. Why? American law preferred to create more people who could be owned, and fewer people who were members of native groups.

Race is mostly pretend.

You're not the only one done with it... I think most people are.

As far as (i), yes. As far as (ii), sort of yes but with lots of persecution (they were burning talmuds, etc). As far as (iii), no: they were restricted to ghettos. As far as (iv), I am not sure, but I think there is a good chance its a no (particularly due to (iii) being a no). As far as (v), no. There were decrees that forbade Jews to be in a position of power over non-jews. As far as (vi), also no: there were decrees that forbade Jews from marrying non-jews.

I never thought of Turks as Asians. I always thought of them as Arabic, but people were correcting me that they aren't. So I guess its a gray area.

By Punjabis you mean a subgroup of Indians? So then the real question is not where Punjabis fall but rather where Indians fall: Indians look quite a bit different from other Asians. Actually, when I been to India there was one Indian guy who kept talking about races all the time (so yes he very much admitted the existence of races -- he was also racist against Africans), but he kept saying that Indians are genetically closer to Europeans than to Asians. I am not sure to what extend I would agree with him on this one.

But in any case, even if the number of races isn't 3, and we can't exactly count how many there are (due to all these gray areas), that doesn't mean that we should deny their existence altogether. I mean think of "autism spectrum". The fact that its a spectrum doesn't negate the existence of a concept of autism.

When I talked about autism spectrum on the other threads, I saw people insisting that "either you are autisitc or you aren't", and I disagree with it. I think there are plenty of people around the line between autism and NT and you can't really classify them in such a definite way. Yet I can still think of autism as the "thing". With races its similar. There are people that are close to dividing lines between races yet one can still talk about the race as the "thing", as vague as it might be.

I dont know what this thread is even about now

Turks are from Western China historically, the region known as Turkmenistan. They've assimilated everyone in their way as they migrated because historically nomadic people have had looser standards of who counted as 'them'. If your dad was a member of the tribe, the kids were too. Once they settled down they still were more open to assimilating peoples, the downside of this meant they were also more prone to forcefully assimilating subject peoples. Modern citizens of states with Turkic identities have a very wide range of appearances, from pale skin and blue eyes/blond hair all the way to quite dark or quite strongly East Asian in appearance.

Your Indian friend was likely referring to the grouping known as 'Indo-European peoples', speakers of the Indo-European family of languages. India is still part of Asia, so it's still fair to call Indians Asian even if in the US and Canada 'Asian' is cultural jargon for 'East Asian' and not 'South Asian'.

Punjabis are the people from the mountains of Northern India and the main group in Pakistan.

But, if we can't count them or define them, or if the definitions only are as coherent as we can make them, that suggests that it's a social construct that has no literal basis. Population groups exist, genetic populations exist, phenotypes exist; races in the historical understanding do not appear to stand up to scrutiny. The fact that lots of people buy into it isn't evidence that it's real.

Abandoning this understanding of humanity is likely to reduce some accusations of racism because it will change how you actually think of people.

I think KraftieK and cyberdad are having a tempestuous romance.
But I am not sure, anymore.

This paper might interest you
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10 ... 00462/full

How is that paper relevant to what I said? Even if Jews were not genetically distinct from other groups, they still knew the people that "identified themselves" as Jews -- whoever they happened to be -- and persecutted them. They could, for example, persecute them as a religious group.

On a side note, I do believe that there is a genetic distinction of Jews. Or else how would you explain why some (although not all) Jews have longer nose and curly hair, for example?

So then could it be that Turks started out as Chinese and then they "absorbed" a bunch of Arabic people and "ironically", the number of Arabic people they absorbed far outweighs the number of Chinese people they originally had. Thus, right now they are 1/8 Chinese 7/8 Arabic, yet historically they were Chinese since they used to be 1/8 of the current size (and it was the Chinese 1/8)?



Yes he was referring to Indo-Europeans. I know that India is part of Asia geographically, but he was talking about genetics not geography. So its possible for people in India to be genetically more similar to people in Europe despite the fact that India is geographically in Asia -- due to all the migration.



Thats interesting, because Punjab is one of the several states in India (my last two years in India I spent in Punjab). On the other hand, Pakistan is a separate country from India that is roughly the same size as the whole India. So Punjab is a lot smaller than Pakistan. Thats why it is a bit surprising that everyone in the Pakistan are the Punjabi.

Are you saying that Punjabis were really strong so they drove out everyone from Pakistanian territory and filled it themselves?



No it doesn't. There are plenty of things in archaeology that are vague with conflicting data, but that doesn't mean that archaeology is a social construct. Quite the opposite in fact. If something "was" a social construct, it would be very neat along well defined lines. But if something is natural, it would be complicated since life is complicated.



There are genetic traits that involve a combination of genes as opposed to a single gene, and they would also have the same gray areas as you are talking about in case of race.



Well, its something you can see rather than tooth faries. Here is an example. I don't remember anybody telling me that Asians like to pry into things. But my experience with them shown that they do. Now here comes the inconsistency. I saw this trait both in Chinese and in Indians. But remember how I said that Indian guy talked about Indo-European genetics that excludes the Chinese? So -- in case of genetics -- Indians are close to Europeans -- but in case of Personality (at least this aspect of it) -- to Chinese! You are now going to say "aha, so you just proven races don't exist". No I haven't! Because you see, I didn't make either of these two things up, I saw it. So if it wasn't real and I was just making stuff up, I would make something up that fits more neatly into the boxes. But the very fact that I just described something that does *not* fit into the boxes so neatly confirms that it is something that I *saw* outside my own head. So that means that -- whatever it is -- it "is" real. It is just not as simple as some people wish it was.



Altering one's understanding to avoid accusations is intellectual dishonesty. And, in any case, like I just pointed out, life is complicated. So the more angles you look at it from the more complete understanding you have. I guess people assume that if one of the angles is race then it means race is all I care about. But that is simply not true. They are the ones who oversimplify things and say "either race is everything or it doesn't exist". On the other hand I like to look at the whole complexity of everything, race being one of several variables.

Not really, most of the people they would have assimilated would have been Iranic peoples (Persians, Parthians, etc), not Arabs. Iranic peoples are Indo-European speakers. Your insistence on labelling them with modern nationalities will make any discussion inaccurate because those terms don't really apply. Turkic peoples aren't Chinese, they're just from land that is currently part of the PRC, just like Tibetans and Tibet.



They'd certainly be linguistically tied, as for genetics Central Asia in between Eastern Europe and northern (Greater) India would have traces of those Indo-European speakers, assimilated into Turkic speakers sometimes, but then again Tajikistan still mostly speaks an Indo-European language. The genetics would be a lot harder to untangle, especially once you're beyond looking at mitochondria and Y chromosomes.



Lol, not at all.
Punjabis straddle the border of the two countries. They're mostly Muslim; Muslim Punjabis mostly live in Pakistan, Sikh Punjabis mostly live in India, although there's also Punjabis who follow Hinduism and live in India. Both nations have multiple ethnic groups within them. Neither country has a single ethnic identity.



There's a reason archaeologists refer to 'material cultures' and not to ethnic groups. You're not actually supporting your point with this argument, you're undermining it.



The thing is, two people can share a number of genes but be viewed as different races, because race largely boils down to an unspoken agreement about how to categorize people.




If you need to utterly water down and add hundreds of exceptions to the way your system of understanding the topic in order to make it remain viable, it's time to question if the issue is that your system of understanding never really worked to begin with.

I say this from experience, I used to view the topic of race similar to how you do, then I realized it was an incorrect understanding and let go of it.

With the stereotype you're stating you agree with regarding 'Asian people', among things you're dealing with a small sample and describing a pattern of behaviour that a culture can normalize. You don't think they're genetically prone to behaving in that manner, do you? Further, how many interactions would it take to build an objective picture of how an entire group of people behaves? What if people immediately assumed you were a certain way based on stereotypes of white people?

I like your comparison with tooth fairies, actually. You're using finding money under your pillow as proof of the tooth fairy. I'm suggesting the money isn't proof of that and to consider that it was just your mom who put it there.



Altering one's understanding to accommodate reality isn't intellectual dishonesty, it's actually what's called learning.

If you read the paper you will come across a phylogentic pie graph which reveals an interesting statistic that Ashkenazi jews in Israel (who claim to be middle eastern) are actually 81% European stock. This would mean European jews are probably even higher. This demonstrates two things i) Judaism is a cultural-religious movement that is has no connection to race, this is problematic for jews in America and Israel who believe in a concept of a jewish race, for example giving Ethiopians DNA tests ii) your premise that jews were forbidden to marry non-jews self-evidently did not work as jews are phenotypically and genetically European and are no longer representative of the biblical jews

81% is not 100%. If you say it is, then explain observable differences, such as the shape of the nose.



*Even if* they were 100% the same as Europeans (I am not saying they were, I am saying "even if") that does not contradict the possibility of them being forbidden from marrying them. The most this is implies is that they *should not* have been forbidden. But *should not* does not imply *did not*. History says they did.

Here is a link for you https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_antisemitism

And here is where they were forbidden from marriage:

I’m an Ashkenazi Jew. I don’t have the stereotypical nose.

Romans sometimes had that sort of nose, too.

I am Ashkinazi Jew too, and I don't have that nose either. I was talking about statistics. Jews have it more often, so that should point to their genetic difference.

I wouldn’t be surprised if they are similar to the Roma aka “Gypsies”, in the sense that they migrated west after migrating east.