What is the scientific basis behind racism? Is it surmountable?

[Bronzeage]

Because the person who says, "Hey, if blacks can do it, then what about whites?", appear simple minded and poorly socialized when they say stuff like that. It's as if they have missed an important lesson and don't actually understand the problem at all.

Right. The spontaneous thoughts can be corrected only with that extra training.

Probably not. You never get a second chance to make a first impression.

 

[ApostateAbe]

Right. The spontaneous thoughts can be corrected only with that extra training.

Probably not. You never get a second chance to make a first impression.

Good point. Much of the time, you can't train away the racial mentality.

 

[noble brown]

Well dismissing it as myth is an interesting response. It is indeed difficult to support this myth claim without some rearranging of what we mean by racism. Simply considering your people to be the chosen ones doesn't amount to racism. But like I said we may just be arguing semantics at this point.

 

[ApostateAbe]

Well dismissing it as myth is an interesting response. It is indeed difficult to support this myth claim without some rearranging of what we mean by racism. Simply considering your people to be the chosen ones doesn't amount to racism. But like I said we may just be arguing semantics at this point.

"Racism" does have a flexible meaning. I would normally take the belief that one's own race is favored by God to be the core essence of racism, but it may not quite match all definitions.

 

[Speakpigeon]

We can claim that racism is not instinctive, but it would be misleading at best. It would be analogous to the claim that liking fast food is not instinctive. Maybe, but an instinctive preference for dense calories is largely the reason why McDonald's sells fries instead of raw broccoli, and we had best consider the point that tribalism seems to be closely related to racism.

I seems to me it is definitely more misleading to claim that liking fast food is instinctive, which would suggest there's nothing you could possibly do about it, which is of course not true.

A claim that liking fast food is not instinctive may be misleading but only because the sentence is ambiguous. I could enjoy the food served in fast food outlets but I prefer to eat elsewhere. Do I like fast food?

Eating, not necessarily food, can be said to be instinctive. The choice of what you eat is not. You learn what kind of food to eat based on culturally acquired tastes and taboos and possibly pleasant or unplaisant effects.
EB

 

[Speakpigeon]

Well dismissing it as myth is an interesting response. It is indeed difficult to support this myth claim without some rearranging of what we mean by racism. Simply considering your people to be the chosen ones doesn't amount to racism. But like I said we may just be arguing semantics at this point.

"Racism" does have a flexible meaning. I would normally take the belief that one's own race is favored by God to be the core essence of racism, but it may not quite match all definitions.

The term "race" itself seems to come from 16th-century French and Italian roots, so quite a modern notion.

In historical terms, it may be difficult to distinguish racism proper from neighbouring notions such as tribalism, nationalism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism etc. because in ancient times these would have been essentially overlapping most of the time. But the causes of racism that exist today must have existed in the past just the same when an alien group mixed with the local population. But even in those possibly very frequent cases, racism is likely to have gone unreported for lack of interest of the intellectuals of the time in the popular culture. It seems likely that the term "race" has been invented around 1600 not because racism appeared at this point in time but because the period was struggling to classify a world it was discovering through the first expeditions to other continents. Also, I don't think sexism suddenly appeared at some point in the 20th century either even though the absence of discussion of it before the 20th century is rather conspicuous.
EB

 

[ApostateAbe]

"Racism" does have a flexible meaning. I would normally take the belief that one's own race is favored by God to be the core essence of racism, but it may not quite match all definitions.

The term "race" itself seems to come from 16th-century French and Italian roots, so quite a modern notion.

In historical terms, it may be difficult to distinguish racism proper from neighbouring notions such as tribalism, nationalism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism etc. because in ancient times these would have been essentially overlapping most of the time. But the causes of racism that exist today must have existed in the past just the same when an alien group mixed with the local population. But even in those possibly very frequent cases, racism is likely to have gone unreported for lack of interest of the intellectuals of the time in the popular culture. It seems likely that the term "race" has been invented around 1600 not because racism appeared at this point in time but because the period was struggling to classify a world it was discovering through the first expeditions to other continents. Also, I don't think sexism suddenly appeared at some point in the 20th century either even though the absence of discussion of it before the 20th century is rather conspicuous.
EB

Seems reasonable, no disagreement.

 

[Speakpigeon]

If this were accurate then racism would've been evident long before chattel slavery, which it is not. It's is a very recent social phenomena. It's easy to assume to much casual correlation without a comprehensive study of the history of chattel slavery and the history of racism as a whole, which incidentally begins with chattel slavery

There is a myth that racism did not exist before European colonialism, but it fact the pattern of racism plainly existed in ancient history. You see it in the Old Testament, with Jews regarding themselves as God's chosen people.

That's not necessarily racism. It sounds more like sectarianism. The idea of the chosen people must have evolved from the situation of the Jews in Egypt and the hope to extricate themselves from it, rather than some negative judgement on other peoples. So the idea seems to have started as a positive judgement on the Jews rather than a negative one on the (other) Egyptians and ultimately on other Jewish sects. I'm quite convinced Jews are and were just as racist as other people but that's not necessarily exemplified by the idea of the chosen people.
EB

 

[4321lynx]

The term "race" itself seems to come from 16th-century French and Italian roots, so quite a modern notion.

In historical terms, it may be difficult to distinguish racism proper from neighbouring notions such as tribalism, nationalism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism etc. because in ancient times these would have been essentially overlapping most of the time. But the causes of racism that exist today must have existed in the past just the same when an alien group mixed with the local population. But even in those possibly very frequent cases, racism is likely to have gone unreported for lack of interest of the intellectuals of the time in the popular culture. It seems likely that the term "race" has been invented around 1600 not because racism appeared at this point in time but because the period was struggling to classify a world it was discovering through the first expeditions to other continents. Also, I don't think sexism suddenly appeared at some point in the 20th century either even though the absence of discussion of it before the 20th century is rather conspicuous.
EB

Seems reasonable, no disagreement.

And the peoples in the past drew a parallell between the various perceived races of man and the various races of the same animals: different races of horses, dogs, cattle etc., each race having its own characteristics, advantages, peculiarities, faults.

 

[ApostateAbe]

Seems reasonable, no disagreement.

And the peoples in the past drew a parallell between the various perceived races of man and the various races of the same animals: different races of horses, dogs, cattle etc., each race having its own characteristics, advantages, peculiarities, faults.

And that is still a common way to think. It didn't go away, except now people would use only the word "breed" or "strain," not "race," to describe those genetic classes among domestic animals or plants that would correspond to human "races." "Race of dog" was a thing, for example. It was in Darwin's book. Now it is just "breed of dog," but the same idea.

 

[fromderinside]

And the peoples in the past drew a parallell between the various perceived races of man and the various races of the same animals: different races of horses, dogs, cattle etc., each race having its own characteristics, advantages, peculiarities, faults.

And that is still a common way to think. It didn't go away, except now people would use only the word "breed" or "strain," not "race," to describe those genetic classes among domestic animals or plants that would correspond to human "races." "Race of dog" was a thing, for example. It was in Darwin's book. Now it is just "breed of dog," but the same idea.

Let me reintroduce the idea of life as a difference machine, a machine that identifies difference from same, as a primary method for it discriminating sustenance from threat. Just how long will we trust something that is different from those nearest to us, kin, as sustainers and not threats. Stage set. Is perceived difference something in nature or is it something we superstitiously use to discriminate others form us. I see little or no science here.

 

[ApostateAbe]

And that is still a common way to think. It didn't go away, except now people would use only the word "breed" or "strain," not "race," to describe those genetic classes among domestic animals or plants that would correspond to human "races." "Race of dog" was a thing, for example. It was in Darwin's book. Now it is just "breed of dog," but the same idea.

Let me reintroduce the idea of life as a difference machine, a machine that identifies difference from same, as a primary method for it discriminating sustenance from threat. Just how long will we trust something that is different from those nearest to us, kin, as sustainers and not threats. Stage set. Is perceived difference something in nature or is it something we superstitiously use to discriminate others form us. I see little or no science here.

The scary political consequences play a big role in the judgment, and that is central to the problem. Maybe the world would be a better place if we all refused to distinguish human races much like we distinguish breeds and strains of domestic species. It may prevent many wars and racial divisions. Maybe we should suspend that willful blindness, however, when it is about science or when it is necessary to make objective sense of reality.

 

[fromderinside]

Refuse to distinguish? Oh that's the ticket. Did you hear that dogs salivate to food and the bell signalling food? Humans likewise for us and them. What we're seeing is the race bell being wrung and the standard reactions to that wringing. Its almost as fundamental as association. So refusing is not an option.

Expanding acceptance circles is an option which can be trained. We'd hope that what one does with an expanded acceptance of others in group is that they'd eventually become a little color blind, a little face blind, a little religious blind. Not likely to move much at first, but, hell, western culture got knives out of the social acceptance picture mitigating opportunities for murder. Maybe we'll succeed with guns like seems to be the case in western Europe.

The tripe of which you speak is pure politics complete with buzz. Problem, refuse to distinguish races like other we don't do for other species. Topper willful blindness related to science. Come on. Gr'up.

 

[ApostateAbe]

Hypothetically, maybe there is a way to keep race out of the science of evolutionary biology without evolutionary biology become completely incoherent. For example, maybe speciation happens when one population all of sudden changes its genetics and becomes a completely different species from the neighboring population. No intermediate gradual changes in gene frequencies are required. If that were possible, then we would not need to make political arguments that races do not exist. We would not need to talk about the political consequences of accepting this belief. fromderinside, maybe I got the wrong idea, but your argument against races seems to depend on politics. If I get the wrong idea, then try making the argument purely in terms of biology, not in terms of politics or morals.

 

[fromderinside]

fromderinside, maybe I got the wrong idea, but your argument against races seems to depend on politics. If I get the wrong idea, then try making the argument purely in terms of biology, not in terms of politics or morals.

Eyup. You got the wrong idea. I argue that you make the race argument as a political argument based on an illegitimate generalization incorporating racial terms. That's what eugenicists did in the nineteen teens. It is one thing to note that it is a property of living things to operate on the basis of difference leading to evolutionary change therewith.

It is quite another to generalize that any differences arising during such a process is indication of new thread to speciation since most of those changes are short lived in evolutionary terms and don't continue building divergences finally ending with reproductive cleavage. As long as selection either favors or doesn't discriminate against interbreeding these difference wash out. A limited set of difference whilst they may be obvious and cause for much competitive intercourse usually become a passage of assimilation such as the current browning of human civilization.

 

[ApostateAbe]

fromderinside, maybe I got the wrong idea, but your argument against races seems to depend on politics. If I get the wrong idea, then try making the argument purely in terms of biology, not in terms of politics or morals.

Eyup. You got the wrong idea. I argue that you make the race argument as a political argument based on an illegitimate generalization incorporating racial terms. That's what eugenicists did in the nineteen teens. It is one thing to note that it is a property of living things to operate on the basis of difference leading to evolutionary change therewith.

It is quite another to generalize that any differences arising during such a process is indication of new thread to speciation since most of those changes are short lived in evolutionary terms and don't continue building divergences finally ending with reproductive cleavage. As long as selection either favors or doesn't discriminate against interbreeding these difference wash out. A limited set of difference whilst they may be obvious and cause for much competitive intercourse usually become a passage of assimilation such as the current browning of human civilization.

OK, so do you have a set of criteria for judging that the differences of genetics between two geographically different populations are important and when they are not important? Like, if they eventually become two difference species, then the genetic differences are important, but until then they are not important? Or the differences practically don't exist? Or something like that?