Given the downvoting I received, I updated upwards on the possibility that I was wrong on my interpretation of the thread, and reread it from the start. As such I’m retracting my accusation of you as a troll—though I still don’t appreciate some of your communication tactics (next time please just ask whether I’m asserting something), and I still can’t tell if you’re arguing in good faith, I can see how you may indeed be doing that, given some unclear/badly communicated bits on my part, including how I didn’t clarify that I wasn’t necessarily agreeing with all the parts of the quote I provided.
I’m at work right now, but later today, I will try to briefly “unpack” my position again, from scratch, hopefully bridging the inferential gap between us.
Given how much karma you have on this site, and how reasonable most of your comments are, I’m updating upwards myself on the chance that I’ve been using some discussion tactics that needlessly put people on the defensive. I apologize for not clearly distinguishing my paraphrases and counter-arguments.
Also, I don’t think that quotation you cited is totally crazy. It does need some defending and unpacking, and if you want to jettison some parts of it, feel free. I’m familiar with some of the excesses people on both sides of the racialism debate can fall into, and part of my motivation for pushing you on this issue was an honest curiosity to see if you have examples of the kinds of excesses that give you such a dim view of the anti-racialist side of the issue. Since this seems to be essentially a terminological dispute, I don’t particularly care about whether we retain use of the word ‘race’ or not; but I do care about the deeper-level misconceptions fueling the controversy.
I’ll try here to clarify some points better than I did last time, and then I’ll bow out of this thread.
First of all, in regards to the George W. Gill quote—my primary desire in providing that quote was to indicate forensic anthropologists consider ‘race’ to be more than a cultural construct. The last part of the quote, which refers to the opposing views, I should have left out as I’m not actually informed enough about the academia to discuss the extent that the ‘cultural construct’ view is politically motivated or not.
Now trying to unpack my own views on the ‘race’ and ‘cultural construct’ issue. Some plain facts both yesterme believe and I still believe: “Race” as the word is typically meant, is a grouping of people, visually identified as such by other people—in this they differ from things like e.g. ‘nationalities’ which can’t be visually identified.
So effectively “racial categories” is a map. But a map may be drawn either
A) in non-arbitrary lines, according to some natural shape (e.g. a map of continents) -- in which it identifies some reality that an objective disinterested observer would map in roughly the same manner. In which case we can call said model a natural model. or B) it may be drawn almost entirely according to political/cultural and arbitrary criteria which no two observers would draw in the same way unless they both rested on the same cultural tradition. In which case we call it a “cultural construct”.
E.g. if someone is asked to divide human beings in two great categories according to biology that relates to reproductive functions, it’s easy enough to figure that the human species would “naturally” be divided into males and females—because there’s a biological reality under that. Such dividing lines, between people with XX and people with XY chromosomes is an obvious Schelling point.
But consider the calendar. The solar year is a natural enough division. A month so-and-so, roughly following the moon, but not quite. And a week or a century aren’t natural divisions at all—they’re dependent on cultural constructs.
If you try to divide human history into eras, the cultural construct becomes even more visible. Even if you go with “Hellenistic” “Classical” “Middle Ages” “Rennaisance” “Modern era” in one corner of the world, you’ll have to go with “Heian” and “Edo” eras in another corner. And even limited in one area of the world, it’d all be about what we as history-readers are supposed to consider significant.
Now going back to the issue of race—both the current me and the yesterme believe that what human beings call “race” is between (A) and (B) -- to significant part a cultural construct, but not completely. The difference between me and yesterme is that some years back I considered race to be almost entirely a cultural construct, -- because I saw no clear clusters (and therefore no “natural” categories) for any one characteristic and I hadn’t yet visualized how a combination of multiple characteristics could form “natural” clusters when any single characteristic by itself did not.
Having now visualized this, I realize that such clustering can actually form “natural” racial categories, some of which will match up really with what people identify as such.
That having been said, race in America at least is obviously still to some extent a cultural construct—which is why e.g. partly-African partly-European descent people are much more often grouped with completely-African people than with completely-European descent people.
Now any former belief of mine doesn’t need to have also been held by other people in order to treat ‘race’ as a cultural construct. They need have ONLY considered the particular clusters that our society calls “clusters” as cultural constructs, rather than as naturally occurring categories.
This certainly doesn’t mean that they need have disbelieved in “mountain ranges” or “continents” or even that there exist populations of largely differing genetic characteristics—they needn’t even disbelieve that a natural map can indeed be drawn. They need only disbelieve that society’s current map is natural.
Now I’m bowing out of this thread. I don’t think there’s anything to be gained by further elaboration of beliefs of my yesterme or even my current me on the subject.
Given the downvoting I received, I updated upwards on the possibility that I was wrong on my interpretation of the thread, and reread it from the start. As such I’m retracting my accusation of you as a troll—though I still don’t appreciate some of your communication tactics (next time please just ask whether I’m asserting something), and I still can’t tell if you’re arguing in good faith, I can see how you may indeed be doing that, given some unclear/badly communicated bits on my part, including how I didn’t clarify that I wasn’t necessarily agreeing with all the parts of the quote I provided.
I’m at work right now, but later today, I will try to briefly “unpack” my position again, from scratch, hopefully bridging the inferential gap between us.
Given how much karma you have on this site, and how reasonable most of your comments are, I’m updating upwards myself on the chance that I’ve been using some discussion tactics that needlessly put people on the defensive. I apologize for not clearly distinguishing my paraphrases and counter-arguments.
Also, I don’t think that quotation you cited is totally crazy. It does need some defending and unpacking, and if you want to jettison some parts of it, feel free. I’m familiar with some of the excesses people on both sides of the racialism debate can fall into, and part of my motivation for pushing you on this issue was an honest curiosity to see if you have examples of the kinds of excesses that give you such a dim view of the anti-racialist side of the issue. Since this seems to be essentially a terminological dispute, I don’t particularly care about whether we retain use of the word ‘race’ or not; but I do care about the deeper-level misconceptions fueling the controversy.
I’ll try here to clarify some points better than I did last time, and then I’ll bow out of this thread.
First of all, in regards to the George W. Gill quote—my primary desire in providing that quote was to indicate forensic anthropologists consider ‘race’ to be more than a cultural construct. The last part of the quote, which refers to the opposing views, I should have left out as I’m not actually informed enough about the academia to discuss the extent that the ‘cultural construct’ view is politically motivated or not.
Now trying to unpack my own views on the ‘race’ and ‘cultural construct’ issue. Some plain facts both yesterme believe and I still believe: “Race” as the word is typically meant, is a grouping of people, visually identified as such by other people—in this they differ from things like e.g. ‘nationalities’ which can’t be visually identified.
So effectively “racial categories” is a map. But a map may be drawn either
A) in non-arbitrary lines, according to some natural shape (e.g. a map of continents) -- in which it identifies some reality that an objective disinterested observer would map in roughly the same manner. In which case we can call said model a natural model.
or B) it may be drawn almost entirely according to political/cultural and arbitrary criteria which no two observers would draw in the same way unless they both rested on the same cultural tradition. In which case we call it a “cultural construct”.
E.g. if someone is asked to divide human beings in two great categories according to biology that relates to reproductive functions, it’s easy enough to figure that the human species would “naturally” be divided into males and females—because there’s a biological reality under that. Such dividing lines, between people with XX and people with XY chromosomes is an obvious Schelling point.
But consider the calendar. The solar year is a natural enough division. A month so-and-so, roughly following the moon, but not quite. And a week or a century aren’t natural divisions at all—they’re dependent on cultural constructs. If you try to divide human history into eras, the cultural construct becomes even more visible. Even if you go with “Hellenistic” “Classical” “Middle Ages” “Rennaisance” “Modern era” in one corner of the world, you’ll have to go with “Heian” and “Edo” eras in another corner. And even limited in one area of the world, it’d all be about what we as history-readers are supposed to consider significant.
Now going back to the issue of race—both the current me and the yesterme believe that what human beings call “race” is between (A) and (B) -- to significant part a cultural construct, but not completely. The difference between me and yesterme is that some years back I considered race to be almost entirely a cultural construct, -- because I saw no clear clusters (and therefore no “natural” categories) for any one characteristic and I hadn’t yet visualized how a combination of multiple characteristics could form “natural” clusters when any single characteristic by itself did not.
Having now visualized this, I realize that such clustering can actually form “natural” racial categories, some of which will match up really with what people identify as such.
That having been said, race in America at least is obviously still to some extent a cultural construct—which is why e.g. partly-African partly-European descent people are much more often grouped with completely-African people than with completely-European descent people.
Now any former belief of mine doesn’t need to have also been held by other people in order to treat ‘race’ as a cultural construct. They need have ONLY considered the particular clusters that our society calls “clusters” as cultural constructs, rather than as naturally occurring categories.
This certainly doesn’t mean that they need have disbelieved in “mountain ranges” or “continents” or even that there exist populations of largely differing genetic characteristics—they needn’t even disbelieve that a natural map can indeed be drawn. They need only disbelieve that society’s current map is natural.
Now I’m bowing out of this thread. I don’t think there’s anything to be gained by further elaboration of beliefs of my yesterme or even my current me on the subject.