Human “races” in its original conception meant what we would call “species” today. That taxonomy included chimpanzees and orangutangs as human “races”. Scientific knowledge has progressed considerably since that time. We now only call the genus homo “human” and exclude the other apes. But those other human races no longer exist. The Neanderthals are extinct. Only Homo Sapiens remains.
That said, I will grant that IQ is largely heritable and includes genetic factors, and that IQ somewhat below average is correlated with criminality, including the violent type. Is that satisfactory?
Have a couple of videos that go over a related concept—racialization is a false, noncausal correlation that generates correlations by nature of people assuming its structure. If you look more closely, you find a wide variety of features, some of which become correlated through prejudices. It’ll be interesting to see if that applies to genetics; the racelessness activists I know all insist that there’s negligible variation in iq from genetics, whereas I’d insist that variation in iq is definitionally a disease to be treated, and that within-lifetime genetic interventions are a major focus we need to have with transhumanism.
Yeah, that summary is not great, but the longer video was worthwhile. It gave names to categories I was not able to put my finger on before.
The three schools of thought about what “race” is were,
Naturalism (“it’s biological reality”)
Social constructionism (“it’s a social reality, but the bio part is fake”)
Skepticism (“The things you’re calling ‘race’ have always been something else: culture, nationality, ethnicity, etc.”)
Because I said,
“race does not exist”. It’s a mistaken categorization; it does not carve reality along its natural joints.
I think that would make me a race skeptic.
The three schools of thought about what should be done about the “race” concept were,
conservationists (“Keep it.” They’re pretty much Naturalists.)
reconstructionists (“Reinterpret it.”)
eliminativists (“Get rid of it. The whole concept just perpetuates Naturalism, and therefore racism.”)
I find myself most agreeing with the eliminativism, which is the position most congruent with my sckepticism. Although I see that I had been a reconstructionist in the past, because that’s the default in my cultural milieu, and because I formerly lacked the concepts necessary for eliminativism. Perhaps many other reconstructionists would move towards eliminativism once they had the concepts to think about it. These memes are worth spreading.
I liked the distinction made between colorblindness (a position I considered ideal, but unworkable) and racelessness. The former is the position that race ultimately doesn’t/can’t/shouldn’t matter, at the cost of perhaps ignoring the current racism problem, in the hopes that this will eventually make it go away. The later acknowledges racism exists (and is a problem and calls racialization/the whole “race” concept as symptoms of this problem), without admitting that race exists.
Human “races” in its original conception meant what we would call “species” today. That taxonomy included chimpanzees and orangutangs as human “races”. Scientific knowledge has progressed considerably since that time. We now only call the genus homo “human” and exclude the other apes. But those other human races no longer exist. The Neanderthals are extinct. Only Homo Sapiens remains.
This is what I mean when I say, “race does not exist”. It’s a mistaken categorization; it does not carve reality along its natural joints.
That said, I will grant that IQ is largely heritable and includes genetic factors, and that IQ somewhat below average is correlated with criminality, including the violent type. Is that satisfactory?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YL6D3iNlt6I (short)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UoFjme1Sec (long; crappy ai summary—hit expand to see the individual (janky) summaries)
Have a couple of videos that go over a related concept—racialization is a false, noncausal correlation that generates correlations by nature of people assuming its structure. If you look more closely, you find a wide variety of features, some of which become correlated through prejudices. It’ll be interesting to see if that applies to genetics; the racelessness activists I know all insist that there’s negligible variation in iq from genetics, whereas I’d insist that variation in iq is definitionally a disease to be treated, and that within-lifetime genetic interventions are a major focus we need to have with transhumanism.
Yeah, that summary is not great, but the longer video was worthwhile. It gave names to categories I was not able to put my finger on before.
The three schools of thought about what “race” is were,
Naturalism (“it’s biological reality”)
Social constructionism (“it’s a social reality, but the bio part is fake”)
Skepticism (“The things you’re calling ‘race’ have always been something else: culture, nationality, ethnicity, etc.”)
Because I said,
I think that would make me a race skeptic.
The three schools of thought about what should be done about the “race” concept were,
conservationists (“Keep it.” They’re pretty much Naturalists.)
reconstructionists (“Reinterpret it.”)
eliminativists (“Get rid of it. The whole concept just perpetuates Naturalism, and therefore racism.”)
I find myself most agreeing with the eliminativism, which is the position most congruent with my sckepticism. Although I see that I had been a reconstructionist in the past, because that’s the default in my cultural milieu, and because I formerly lacked the concepts necessary for eliminativism. Perhaps many other reconstructionists would move towards eliminativism once they had the concepts to think about it. These memes are worth spreading.
I liked the distinction made between colorblindness (a position I considered ideal, but unworkable) and racelessness. The former is the position that race ultimately doesn’t/can’t/shouldn’t matter, at the cost of perhaps ignoring the current racism problem, in the hopes that this will eventually make it go away. The later acknowledges racism exists (and is a problem and calls racialization/the whole “race” concept as symptoms of this problem), without admitting that race exists.