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Racism is real, race is not (Read 13560 times)
mothra
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Racism is real, race is not
Sep 1st, 2017 at 12:59pm
 
Racism is real, race is not: a philosopher’s perspective

There are no races – biological or social – only racialised groups.

We live in a richly diverse country, populated by Indigenous Australians, recent immigrants, and descendants of relatively recent immigrants. Some feel threatened by this diversity; some relish it.

Most of us, I think, are unsure quite how to talk about it.

We have many words to describe diversity. We ask people about their ancestry, their ethnicity, and – most awkwardly – their “background”. We seem least comfortable asking people about their “race”, and with good reason.

Racial classification has been used to justify some of the most heinous crimes of modernity, including those committed on our own shores. Asking people about their “race” can make you sound a bit, well, racist.

Yet “racial” classification is still commonplace. Many articles in The Conversation use the term “race” to describe human diversity. For example, one asks what’s behind racial differences in restaurant tipping?, while another tells us that infants learn to distinguish between races.

Racialised groups

What justifies the continued use of racial classification? Nothing, or so I argue in Replacing Race, an open-access article published recently in the philosophy journal Ergo.

I argue that there are no races, only racialised groups – groups that have been misunderstood as biological races.

The reader may object – “surely, I can see race with my bare eyes!” However, it is not race we see, but the superficial visible biological diversity within our species: variation in traits such as skin colour, hair form and eye shape. This variation is not enough to justify racial classification. Our biological diversity is too small, and too smoothly distributed across geographic space, for race to be real.

This is not merely an opinion. From a scientific perspective, the best candidate for a synonym for “race” is “subspecies” (the classification level below “species” in biology). When scientists apply the standard criteria to determine whether there are subspecies/races in humans, none are found. In chimpanzees yes, but in humans no.

Racial classification is unscientific. However, humanities scholars have their own justifications for race-talk. Many argue that while there are no biological races, there are social races. Race, as philosophers put it, is a social kind.

In my view, the redefinition of race as a social kind has been a major mistake. Most people still think of race as a biological category. By redefining it socially, we risk miscommunicating with each other on this fraught topic.
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mothra
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Re: Racism is real, race is not
Reply #1 - Sep 1st, 2017 at 1:01pm
 
Race does not exist

Not only is the redefinition of race as a social kind confusing, I argue that  race does not exist even as a social kind. Racism is real, in both an interpersonal and a structural sense, but race is not.

Once the idea of race is divorced from biology, strange things start happening, conceptually. What makes a group a “race”, if race is social, rather than biological?

We could say that races are just the groups that are labelled as races, but this doesn’t work. Just as witches are not women accused of being witches, races are not merely groups labelled as races. There has to be something more to the group for it to qualify as a social kind.

Nobody has put their finger on this “something more”. Some tie “race” to “essentialism”. Essentialism is the view that groups have essenses: fixed traits that all members of a group have, and which are unique to that group. “Social races”, on this view, are groups treated as if they have some unchangeable essence.

This move fails. While racialisation is often essentialising, it is not always. If you look at current “scientific” racism, you’ll see that it’s all about alleged inborn average differences between the so-called “races”, not racial essences (which does not make it any less horrid, or more plausible).

Moreover, essentialist thinking is not only applied to racialised groups. Gender is also essentialised, and so is ethnicity.

Remember when I said strange things start happening when race is defined socially? Well, if races are social groups subject to essentialism, we would have to accept that men and women constitute de facto races!

Let’s abandon “race”

We should abandon attempts to save the category of race. There is no good way to make sense of the category from a biological or a social perspective. There are no races, only groups misunderstood as races: racialised groups.

Racialised groups are not biological groups, in the sense that they are not biological races. Yet how you are racialised does depend on superficial biological characteristics, such as skin colour. That is to say, racialised groups have biological inclusion criteria, vague and arbitrary as they may be.

These biological inclusion criteria are determined by social factors. Philosophical debates about “race” have relied on a dichotomy between the biological and the social. However, this is a false dichotomy: the biological and the social interact.

In racialisation, the biological and the social interact with a number of other factors: administrative, cultural, economic, geographic, gendered, historical, lingual, phenomenological, political, psychological, religious, and so on. I call this view “interactive constructionism about racialised groups”.

The category of the “racialised group” can be of great value, politically. It offers a way for those who have historically been treated as members of “inferior races” to assert and defend themselves collectively, while distancing themselves from the negative and misleading associations of the term “race”. “Race” is not needed for purposes of social justice.

According to researcher Victoria Grieves in her article Culture, not colour, is the heart of Aboriginal identity,

Being of Aboriginal descent is crucial because this is our link to country and the natural world. But at the same time, Aboriginal people do not rely on a race-based identity … continuing cultural values and practice are the true basis of Aboriginal identity in the whole of Australia today
The category of race is not needed for cultural identity or political action.


We need to be talking about racism, racialisation, and racialised groups, not “race”. Given that “race” fails as both a biological and a social category, let’s consign it to the dustbin of history’s bad ideas.


https://theconversation.com/racism-is-real-race-is-not-a-philosophers-perspectiv...
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Re: Racism is real, race is not
Reply #2 - Sep 1st, 2017 at 1:20pm
 
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Re: Racism is real, race is not
Reply #3 - Sep 1st, 2017 at 1:21pm
 
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Re: Racism is real, race is not
Reply #4 - Sep 1st, 2017 at 3:49pm
 
I think Gandalf once tried to argue that he could not possibly be racist because races do not exist.
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Re: Racism is real, race is not
Reply #5 - Sep 1st, 2017 at 5:53pm
 
mothra wrote on Sep 1st, 2017 at 12:59pm:
Racism is real, race is not: a philosopher’s perspective

I argue that there are no races, only racialised groups – groups that have been misunderstood as biological races.

The reader may object – “surely, I can see race with my bare eyes!” However, it is not race we see, but the superficial visible biological diversity within our species: variation in traits such as skin colour, hair form and eye shape. This variation is not enough to justify racial classification. Our biological diversity is too small, and too smoothly distributed across geographic space, for race to be real.



Well, how DO you categorise people who share those 'superficially visible' traits?

Should we say next, 'there are no blondes and brunettes, these are superficially visible traits'.
Or 'don's call me tall/short, that's only a superficially visible trait'.


Race IS about visible difference, pretty closely mapped onto culture, origin, background etc. Visible racial characteristics are inherited so it;'s no use saying they have nothing to do with biology.

It is entirely right to say that race is not everything. But to say that it's nothing is just stupid - and so it takes a young philosopher, eager to be noticed, to propose such stupidity.




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Re: Racism is real, race is not
Reply #6 - Sep 1st, 2017 at 5:57pm
 
What to do when the ching chong do not read The Conversation??


Beyond the pale: China’s cheerful racists
Ideas about racial hierarchies are not outdated ­anathema here but unquestioned belief
Carola Binney   19 August 2017

Setting off to spend a year teaching English in Zhejiang province in south-eastern China, I expected plenty of surprises. But what struck me most was something they tend not to tell you about in the guidebooks: the racism.

It started when I went around the classroom, asking pupils which city they were from. When I got to a slightly darker-skinned boy, his classmates thought it was hilarious to shout ‘Africa!’ It’s a theme. A girl with a similar complexion was taunted with monkey sounds; her peers refused to sit next to her, saying she smelt bad. I apparently erred when, teaching the word for wife, I showed my students a picture of Michelle Obama. The image of the then First Lady was greeted with exaggerated sounds of repulsion: ‘So ugly!’ they said. ‘So black!’

Such comments would have been treated harshly in a British classroom a quarter-century ago, let alone today. But my own protestations were met with confused faces — crestfallen that they’d disappointed their teacher, but clueless as to the nature of their mistake. And this stretches far beyond the classroom. To many Chinese, ideas about racial hierarchies are not outdated anathema but unquestioned belief.

In Britain, a politician who uses a defunct idiom like ‘black person in the woodpile’ loses the whip. In China, racism is a standard undercurrent of public debate. A few months ago, Pan Qinglin, a Tianjin politician, announced to reporters that he had found out how to ‘solve the problem of the black population in Guangdong’ — a province with a small amount of African migration. Warning that the new arrivals brought drugs, sexual assault and infectious diseases, he urged local policy-makers to tighten controls to prevent China turning ‘from a yellow country to a black-and-yellow country’.

The Chinese don’t make a big deal about their racism: it’s so commonplace it can seem almost cheerful. An advert for a detergent shows a black man chatting up a Chinese woman, only for her to shove him in the washing machine until he emerges a fair-skinned Asian. The advert aired for months before it was picked up by an English-language website and caused uproar. The company, Qiaobi, apologised — to its non-customers. Its analogy of black skin and dirty laundry made perfect sense to the Chinese.


Chinese racism is, in part, the extension of a long-standing association of wealth and pale skin: a near-universal construct that is particularly acute in a country that was for centuries ruled by various subsections of its pallid northern population.

The history of China is also the history of proud isolationism: it has been keeping outsiders outside for generations. China was long the most developed country in Asia, and just as the Greeks stigmatised their neighbours as barbarians, the Chinese scorned theirs. The turn of the 20th century brought the grudging acknowledgement of western technological superiority, and with it a shift from the general policy of viewing all foreigners as inferior: an exception was made for westerners.

The racism begins with the assumption that all westerners are white. In the words of my black Cameroonian colleague, the Chinese are prone to think that ‘all blacks are from Africa, and everyone in Africa has AIDS’.

The notion of a black Briton is puzzling, when to be Chinese is to be Han and vice versa: the Party believes itself to be the legitimate government not just of all the Han in China, but everywhere else as well. In 2015, five Hong Kong-based Han booksellers were arrested for allegedly selling seditious works. One man was a British citizen and another a Swede, but their foreign passports did nothing, in the government’s eyes, to counteract their Chinese blood: both men were denied consular support. The Swede announced on state television, probably under duress, that ‘I truly feel that I am still Chinese’.

Conversely, a non-Han Chinese person is considered a contradiction in terms, and the Chinese apply the same logic to the citizens of other countries. When I showed my class my own school photograph, I expected them to remark on how terrible my hair looked. Instead, their first response was ‘Why are there those black girls in England?’

China’s government says it is ‘a unified multi-ethnic country’. It is not. To a British visitor, China appears astonishingly ethnically homogeneous: the Han ethnic group make up 92 per cent of the population, but walk the streets of almost any city and you’ll wonder where the other 8 per cent are hiding. The answer is: in ethnic minority enclaves on the fringes of some of the country’s poorest provinces. China has almost no citizens of non-Chinese descent: it is extremely difficult for expats to secure Chinese citizenship, so most are forced to leave as soon as their employment visas expire. China’s non-Han residents are members of the country’s indigenous minorities, who are almost always darker-skinned than their Han neighbours.

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Re: Racism is real, race is not
Reply #7 - Sep 1st, 2017 at 5:57pm
 
Treated variously as a security risk or as purveyors of quaint cultural curiosities, China’s minorities have been left behind by the economic progress of the last half century. Most work in the fields, and a few find employment performing folk dances to Han tourists. One study found that the per capita income gap between Han and minority Chinese increased by almost 17 percentage points between 1988 and 1995, when the Chinese economy began to skyrocket. While the incidence of poverty in China has decreased by a jaw-dropping 92 per cent in the past 40 years, almost half of those still living on less than $1.50 per day reside in minority enclaves.

When development does come, it is often seen as centrally imposed Sinicisation. Efforts to ensure that Tibetan children speak fluent Mandarin, for example, have resulted in the arrest of those who promote the local language. The approach to minorities is cruel and contradictory: most Han Chinese don’t see minority citizens as their fellow country-men, but still maintain that Beijing has a right to govern them.

My time in a Chinese classroom didn’t instil much hope of an enlightened next generation, but there are a few signs that things might be starting to change. Chinese teenage boys idolise the African-American basketball star Kobe Bryant, for instance — posters of him festooned the dormitory walls.

If China wants to realise its aspiration of replacing America as the country the world looks up to, it will need to sort out its race problem. It is an issue which fuels unrest at home, and damages the country’s reputation abroad. Xi Jinping has talked about a ‘Chinese dream’ — let’s hope it exports tolerance, not racism.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/2017/08/beyond-the-pale-chinas-cheerful-racists/
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Re: Racism is real, race is not
Reply #8 - Sep 1st, 2017 at 6:00pm
 
Sprintcyclist wrote on Sep 1st, 2017 at 1:21pm:

Obviously an indiginous person.
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Re: Racism is real, race is not
Reply #9 - Sep 1st, 2017 at 6:05pm
 


mothra,

If moslems are permitted, and encouraged          by their religion        to HATE Jews and to HATE Christians and to HATE Hindus and Buddhists, BECAUSE they are not moslems,
then why would many moslems call me a racist,
simply because i criticise ISLAM and those who are followers of ISLAM, as being hateful and intolerant ?

And please tell me, why is it wrong for me to broadcast that fact, and to tell everyone that i know that,
moslems are encouraged by their religion to HATE Jews and to HATE Christians and to HATE Hindus and Buddhists, and to HATE all persons who reject ISLAM ?



mothra,

Aren't moslems,     IN BEING MOSLEMS [and in being followers of ISLAM],        participating in the spread of religious hatred and intolerance, and the spread violent religious bigotry ?



I am    NOT    a racist [for telling that truth].

And, i am not a racist.    Period.

And neither ISLAM, nor moslems, are a 'race' of people.

Moslems are just latent, wanna-be, homicidal maniacs.

....if they were not,         moslems would renounce the religious HATRED and the religious BIGOTRY which ISLAM promotes [against those who do not believe as they [moslems] believe].



Google;
muslims, persecution of religious minorities

Google;
muslims, persecution of christians





"......the curse of Allah is on those without Faith."
Koran 2.089


"....Lo! Allah is an enemy to those who reject Faith."
Koran 2.98


"....take not the Jews and the Christians for your friends....
......he amongst you that turns to them (for friendship) is of them."
Koran 5.51


"There is for you an excellent example (to follow) in Abraham and those with him, when they said to their people: "We are clear of you and of whatever ye worship besides Allah: we have rejected you, and there has arisen, between us and you, enmity and hatred for ever,- unless ye believe in Allah and Him alone"....."
Koran 60:4



.






THE HADITH....

"...the Prophet said, 'If somebody (a Muslim) discards his religion, kill him."
- DEAD.
hadithsunnah/bukhari/ #004.052.260



ALL MOSLEMS CLAIM TO CHERISH THE FREEDOM OF RELIGION [i.e. TO PRACTICE ISLAM].....

BUT MOSLEMS, THROUGHOUT THE WORLD, ARE SEEN TO DENY, EXACTLY THAT RIGHT TO OTHERS!

Even in a so-called liberal moslem nation like Malaysia.



.




Quote:

"Malaysia's Prime Minister: LGBTs, liberalism, and pluralism are enemies of Islam"

"Last Malaysian Hindu temple in central Kuala Lumpur condemned, given five days to vacate"

"Malaysian temple condemned, temple staff and devotees given 15 minutes to leave"

"Malaysian government views LGBT community as a 'spreading problem' to be stopped"

"Malaysian deputy prime minister: Islam not compatible with freedom, liberal thought"

"Yet another Malaysian non-Muslim house of worship demolished"

"Malaysian state holding seminar on "threat of Christianity" "

"A message from Malaysia's king: "Muslims need to emulate Prophet Muhammad" "


http://www.jihadwatch.org/category/malaysia/


Q.
But why is it that the views      ABOVE     being expressed        BY MOSLEMS       within a nation like Malaysia, almost never make our nightly TV news reports ????




mothra,

Q.
Are moslems in Malaysia, 'RACISTS' ?

Or are they just religious bigots ?




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"....And he said unto him, If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead."
Luke 16:31
 
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Re: Racism is real, race is not
Reply #10 - Sep 1st, 2017 at 6:09pm
 
you know if an Aboriginal comedian  were to stand up and ridicule his "race"   we would all laugh and have a jolly good time...hopefully the aboriginal community would join in.

I know of two Muslim comedians and really they are the funniest of people because they mock their own...and we love it....

black comedians always mock their own people..

not withstanding the poms of course... who laugh the longest and the loudest at themselves...

this is the trouble with today...its all to serious and searching for answers..

laugh guys have a good bloody laugh  but mostly at yourself...it will do you the world of good..


race or racists....gawd was he paid for that?
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Re: Racism is real, race is not
Reply #11 - Sep 1st, 2017 at 6:12pm
 



mothra said....
http://www.ozpolitic.com/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1480468849/106#106
Quote:

It's not up to any of us to decide what a person is or is not offended by.


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"....And he said unto him, If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead."
Luke 16:31
 
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Re: Racism is real, race is not
Reply #12 - Sep 1st, 2017 at 6:56pm
 
Grin Grin Grin Grin Grin
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Re: Racism is real, race is not
Reply #13 - Sep 1st, 2017 at 7:40pm
 
freediver wrote on Sep 1st, 2017 at 3:49pm:
I think Gandalf once tried to argue that he could not possibly be racist because races do not exist.



Because you give such reliable recounts of people's actual arguments?
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Re: Racism is real, race is not
Reply #14 - Sep 1st, 2017 at 7:44pm
 
cods wrote on Sep 1st, 2017 at 6:09pm:
you know if an Aboriginal comedian  were to stand up and ridicule his "race"   we would all laugh and have a jolly good time...hopefully the aboriginal community would join in.

I know of two Muslim comedians and really they are the funniest of people because they mock their own...and we love it....

black comedians always mock their own people..

not withstanding the poms of course... who laugh the longest and the loudest at themselves...

this is the trouble with today...its all to serious and searching for answers..

laugh guys have a good bloody laugh  but mostly at yourself...it will do you the world of good..


race or racists....gawd was he paid for that?



X2
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