Blame on both sides

[dowie]

You're just falling back to a biological argument and ignoring the social one.

Is isn't exactly rocket science to state that this is a black person:



Or that this is a white person:



The existence of edge cases where populations converge or the existence of 'mixed race' people doesn't confuse that. The existence of say albinos among black people doesn't confuse that, the genetic diversity within Africa doesn't confuse that, the fact that Aboriginal Australians also have dark skin doesn't confuse that...

Trying to ignore or trivialise the existence of 'race' socially simply because it would be difficult/unclear where to draw the lines from a biological perspective is silly. Trying to equate differences in skin colour with differences in eye colour or hair type is also silly.

 

[TallPaul1878]

I love people desperately trying to make new definitions for commons words.


ask people to name 2 races and I bets the answer is "black and white"

100 metres

400 metres

Easy!

 

[stewski]

You're just falling back to a biological argument and ignoring the social one.

Is isn't exactly rocket science to state that this is a black person:



Or that this is a white person:



The existence of edge cases where populations converge or the existence of 'mixed race' people doesn't confuse that. The existence of say albinos among black people doesn't confuse that, the genetic diversity within Africa doesn't confuse that, the fact that Aboriginal Australians also have dark skin doesn't confuse that...

Trying to ignore or trivialise the existence of 'race' socially simply because it would be difficult/unclear where to draw the lines from a biological perspective is silly. Trying to equate differences in skin colour with differences in eye colour or hair type is also silly.

what you have posted isn't any science!

I have no problem with people self identifying by a colour, or entirely ignoring a trite dichotomy and not! That doesn't make skin colour a workable definition or indicator of race as far as I know!

How many 'colours/races' are there, how many 'mixed races' are there and are my friend and extended family 'edge cases' as you described them, all lumped in together in some huge (everyone really) mixed race, or a never ending multitude of races or what?

 

[dowie]

what you have posted isn't any science!

Again you're fixated on the biology aspect and the difficulty in drawing boundaries as already pointed out - you can still tell that the black guy and white guy above are a black guy and a white guy, so it is rather moot.

I have no problem with people self identifying by a colour, or entirely ignoring a trite dichotomy and not! That doesn't make skin colour a workable definition or indicator of race as far as I know!

It is a big factor and of course it is workable in the majority of cases - seemingly most people have no issues with obvious racial classifications such as the two images I posted above - the police don't tend to have much trouble identifying someone as an IC1 male, IC3 male etc.. etc.. (even if they occasionally misclassify someone)

a GP doesn't have any trouble recognising that a patient who is obviously 'black' has a higher chance of say having sickle cell anaemia or that an obviously 'East Asian' person has a very high chance of being lactose intolerant

Is the NHS incorrect in pointing out that black and asian people wait longer for organ donations because of a lack of suitable donors or to campaign for more organ donors from black and asian communities? Should they stop doing so because the lines are a bit blurred in a biological context re: where to draw boundaries... despite plenty of say Black British people quite obviously being black etc..

binding yourself to this issue with classification in biology and ignoring the existence or 'race' outside that context is pretty silly

 

[stewski]

Again you're fixated on the biology aspect and the difficulty in drawing boundaries as already pointed out - you can still tell that the black guy and white guy above are a black guy and a white guy, so it is rather moot.



It is a big factor and of course it is workable in the majority of cases - seemingly most people have no issues with obvious racial classifications such as the two images I posted above - the police don't tend to have much trouble identifying someone as an IC1 male, IC3 male etc.. etc.. (even if they occasionally misclassify someone)

a GP doesn't have any trouble recognising that a patient who is obviously 'black' has a higher chance of say having sickle cell anaemia or that an obviously 'Asian' person has a very high chance of being lactose intolerant

Is the NHS incorrect in pointing out that black and asian people wait longer for organ donations because of a lack of suitable donors or to campaign for more organ donors from black and asian communities? Should they stop doing so because the lines are blurred in a biological context re: where to draw boundaries... despite plenty of say Black British people quite obviously being black etc..

binding yourself to this issue with classification in biology and ignoring the existence or 'race' outside that context is pretty silly

You have again dodged all my questions and setup some straw man positions!

When the NHS are assessing my friends kids good luck with understanding his Asian/British heritage or the Columbian influence of their Mother based on their skin pigmentation. Or that going by skin tone my extended families kids would probably be placed by most against your bottom picture, but their late grandfather (a policeman no less)would be placed by most in the top category!

Frankly anyone in the NHS is likely to understand genetics enough to realise skin tone of the individual can show very little about genetic heritage!

If you'd like to catch up Dowie have a read here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/science/edexcel_pre_2011/genes/genesrev2.shtml

No why not answer how many colour/pigmentation based races are there?

 

[dowie]

No straw man from me, fact is that 'race' is used in plenty of contexts and racial classifications of people are nothing new, this is just going round in circles now as you seem to have dug your heels in and have an inability to move beyond the biological argument.

 

[stewski]

No straw man from me, fact is that 'race' is used in plenty of contexts and racial classifications of people are nothing new, this is just going round in circles now as you seem to have dug your heels in and have an inability to move beyond the biological argument.

You brought up Dr's and the NHS, I just asked some valid questions about how looking at skin pigmentation helps in the examples you gave!
Not that skin pigmentation is irrelevant genetically, (or blue eyes) it isn't tenable for race/genetic medicine as far as I know!

Any time, how many races and what are our pantones

 

[dowie]

Like I said, going around in circles, you're still fixated on the issue of biological classification...

 

[stewski]

Like I said, going around in circles, you're still fixated on the issue of biological classification...

Even your own examples of police identity codes isn't a classification of race, ethnicity is generally collected in official data and is self identified, which in the case of your fictional Dr would probably prove more useful than generalising by skin pigmentation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classification_of_ethnicity_in_the_United_Kingdom

I'll keep asking, when you have any sort of workable collection of 'races' and how they are related to skin pigmentation, let me know, just a number and the shades (like some sort of human dulux chart) would be a start.

 

[TallPaul1878]

The UN stopped using the term "race" in 1950 and preferred to use the term "ethnic group". At this time they recognise around 5,000 different ethnic groups.

If you really want to group people up though then anthropologists determined race like this. A human race is defined as a group of people with certain common inherited features that distinguish them from other groups of people.

Classically there are 3 major groups, these are Caucasian (white), Mongolian (Asian) and Negroid (black). These groups can be split into further subgroups and some anthropologists used to classify Australoid (aboriginal) as a fourth "race".

Anthropologists tend not to group human beings on eye colour or the length of their noses. Only Nazis do that.

 

[dowie]

Even your own examples of police identity codes isn't a classification of race, ethnicity is generally collected in official data and is self identified, which in the case of your fictional Dr would probably prove more useful than generalising by skin pigmentation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classification_of_ethnicity_in_the_United_Kingdom

I'll keep asking, when you have any sort of workable collection of 'races' and how they are related to skin pigmentation, let me know, just a number and the shades (like some sort of human dulux chart) would be a start.

I'm not sure why you keep asking as it completely misses the point, you're still just getting hung up on biological classification. I'm not generalising by skin pigmentation alone, I am however objecting to you trivialising things by drawing a false equivalence between black skin and say eye colour, having straight hair etc..

In the context of racism someone discriminating against people with 'black' skin is being 'racist' - that doesn't require your human deluxe chart... to be true on the other hand discriminating against curly haired people in general, while perhaps bigoted and irrational isn't 'racist'.

I've acknowledge several times that there are difficulties in drawing boundaries to classify humans into specific racial groups from a purely biological perspective yet regardless of that you seem to ignore the point and repeatedly ask for the very same. Are you really unable to see that in the previous example on the other page the black guy is clearly a black guy and the white guy is clearly a white guy? I'd say the vast majority of black people are perfectly able to identify as such and be identified by others as such and ditto to white people. Sure there are people who no doubt 'pass' as other 'races' or people who are mixed etc..etc..

 

[Angilion]

You're just falling back to a biological argument and ignoring the social one.

Is isn't exactly rocket science to state that this is a black person:



Or that this is a white person:



The existence of edge cases where populations converge or the existence of 'mixed race' people doesn't confuse that. The existence of say albinos among black people doesn't confuse that, the genetic diversity within Africa doesn't confuse that, the fact that Aboriginal Australians also have dark skin doesn't confuse that...

Trying to ignore or trivialise the existence of 'race' socially simply because it would be difficult/unclear where to draw the lines from a biological perspective is silly. Trying to equate differences in skin colour with differences in eye colour or hair type is also silly.

It's not rocket science. It's not any kind of science. The idea that an obviously inaccurate description of the colour of a person's skin is a meaningful way to classify people, let alone what people are, is not science. It's less foolish to classify people by differences in eye colour or hair type because those don't naturally change throughout the year as a result of exposure to varying levels of UV radiation.

I ignore the existence of "race" because it doesn't exist. It's not a real thing. It's an idea people have made up and partly attached to skin colour in an ad hoc and irrational way. The variation in skin colour is real. The idea sloppily tacked onto it is not.

Neither of those people are black or white. That's not real. What's real is that the first person has a baseline melanin production considerably higher than the second person. The first person has medium brown skin and the second person has light pink skin and neither of them are the colour of their skin. Their skin is only part of them and the melanin in their skin is only part of their skin. It's irrelevant to nearly everything. The idea that it defines them is not science. It's silly.

 

[dowie]

again I'm not making a biological argument here... 'race' does exist though in a social context which is what I'm referring to

 

[Angilion]

again I'm not making a biological argument here... 'race' does exist though in a social context which is what I'm referring to

Only because enough people pretend it's something real. They can stop doing that (and they should). They could also start doing it on the basis of eye colour, which would be slightly less obviously silly. Or they could start classifying people by the hairstyle of the invisible tiny pixies that live in everybody's left ear, which would be no more silly. If reality doesn't matter, anything anyone dreams up can be used.

 

[Tefal]

lol at "SCIENCE!!!" for defining the common usage of words.

 

[dowie]

Only because enough people pretend it's something real. They can stop doing that (and they should). They could also start doing it on the basis of eye colour, which would be slightly less obviously silly. Or they could start classifying people by the hairstyle of the invisible tiny pixies that live in everybody's left ear, which would be no more silly. If reality doesn't matter, anything anyone dreams up can be used.

but reality does matter and in our current reality, in a social context, skin colour is not comparable in this context to eye colour or how straight your hair is - being black and being discriminated for it is very real for some black people whether you think it ought to be so, or is rational for it to be so etc.. or not

 

[Tefal]

this last week has made me realise just how disjointed many posters understanding of the world is from actually reality.

 

[DAIR]

I'm all for random checks if they are actually random.

And what if stats show that those who look or behave a certain are more likely to be up to mischief.... Do you ignore those facts?

Like I said. I had absolutely nothing to hide. So it was fine with me

 

[stewski]

this last week has made me realise just how disjointed many posters understanding of the world is from actually reality.

You mean the reality based on evidence and reason, not blind faith and tradition, that reality?

 

[Aa83]

And what if stats show that those who look or behave a certain are more likely to be up to mischief.... Do you ignore those facts?

You mean people who have been speeding? Or drive a certain car? Then yes that's fine. And if they happen to be more likely to be black that's fine in this context. But it's not ok if the only reason they are picked up is because they are black.