Comic Discussion > QUESTIONABLE CONTENT
WCDT: 2226-2230 (9-13 July 2012) Weekly Comic Discussion Thread (SDCC Edition 1)
Wagimawr:
--- Quote from: Boxilar on 12 Jul 2012, 06:30 ---And from the preceding posts, Tumbler is something I probably don't want to dive into.
--- End quote ---
Tumblr is just a different kind of blogging; it's not that you want to avoid, but rather most unregulated (and even some regulated!) political and social discussion on the internet. It doesn't always end well. :-P
Akima:
--- Quote from: Near Lurker on 12 Jul 2012, 04:04 ---"Oh hey guys, let's coopt the rhetoric of a marginalized group to claim our brains are wired opposite to our bodies across a distinction that, biologically*, basically doesn't exist and is largely determined by an ancestry we don't have, so that we can try to reap the paltry advantages of another marginalized group that largely stem from our overarching culture's fetishization of marginality and the ruling class's attempts to mitigate and thereby maintain white privilege, without having to give up our own white privilege!" :psyduck:
(*I will point out the obvious that cultural distinctions between races are very real, just to stem accusations of total assimilationism.)
--- End quote ---
I don't know how far this was seriously meant, but it is freighted with massive unspoken and unexamined assumptions about race and culture.
The idea that there is no biological difference between races is extremely debatable, and normally forms part of a propaganda narrative that pretends that race does not exist, so racism can't exist, so that members of ethnic minorities can't be experiencing racial discrimination, and should just shut up. It is legitimate to argue that the biological differences between races are trivial compared to what they have in common, or that the differences should not matter outside a few specialised medical contexts, but to argue that there are no biological differences at all strikes me as extremely dubious on factual grounds. If there were no biological difference between the races, rates of lactose intolerance, or density of melanin in the skin, for example, would be statistically uniform across the global human population, and this is simply not so.
The very idea of human "races" is profoundly and inescapably tied to ethnic appearance, which is a matter of biology, and not simply a cultural construct. When I walk down the street in Sydney and people perceive me as "Asian", it is not my culture that they are observing, but my phenotypic ethnic appearance which is biological.
Tova:
--- Quote from: Method of Madness on 12 Jul 2012, 07:19 ---This needs a discuss thread.
--- End quote ---
cesariojpn:
Randy is not a shrew.
tabereins:
--- Quote from: Akima on 12 Jul 2012, 17:49 ---
--- Quote from: Near Lurker on 12 Jul 2012, 04:04 ---"Oh hey guys, let's coopt the rhetoric of a marginalized group to claim our brains are wired opposite to our bodies across a distinction that, biologically*, basically doesn't exist and is largely determined by an ancestry we don't have, so that we can try to reap the paltry advantages of another marginalized group that largely stem from our overarching culture's fetishization of marginality and the ruling class's attempts to mitigate and thereby maintain white privilege, without having to give up our own white privilege!" :psyduck:
(*I will point out the obvious that cultural distinctions between races are very real, just to stem accusations of total assimilationism.)
--- End quote ---
I don't know how far this was seriously meant, but it is freighted with massive unspoken and unexamined assumptions about race and culture.
The idea that there is no biological difference between races is extremely debatable, and normally forms part of a propaganda narrative that pretends that race does not exist, so racism can't exist, so that members of ethnic minorities can't be experiencing racial discrimination, and should just shut up. It is legitimate to argue that the biological differences between races are trivial compared to what they have in common, or that the differences should not matter outside a few specialised medical contexts, but to argue that there are no biological differences at all strikes me as extremely dubious on factual grounds. If there were no biological difference between the races, rates of lactose intolerance, or density of melanin in the skin, for example, would be statistically uniform across the global human population, and this is simply not so.
The very idea of human "races" is profoundly and inescapably tied to ethnic appearance, which is a matter of biology, and not simply a cultural construct. When I walk down the street in Sydney and people perceive me as "Asian", it is not my culture that they are observing, but my phenotypic ethnic appearance which is biological.
--- End quote ---
It is interesting to note that if you define races by how genetically similar the people are, there are several races in Africa, and one other race that includes everybody else. I, a white guy in America likely share as many genes with a black guy in South Africa as that guy shares with a black guy in Kenya, and I share more genes with an Asian guy in Korea than the previous South Africa and Kenya comparison. This is because people left Africa a lot earlier than the various splits of people going to the ends of Asia and Europe and crossing the ice bridge to America, so there was a lot more time for branching and variation.
Of course we define race mostly by skin color and various secondary characteristics, but from a biological standpoint, there's no reason to.
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