[ExI] Well-roundedness and character

[Dan TheBookMan]

On Jun 7, 2020, at 5:06 PM, spike jones via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
> 
> From: extropy-chat <extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org> On Behalf Of Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat
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> >…judging who's Black depends both on overall social rules and how people present themselves…Dan
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> 
> Hi Dan, since we have DNA tests now, why not just have a number?  Numbers are such marvelous things. 
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> We can find a SubSaharan African group where we can be confident there is little outside genetic material, get some DNA tests, get some from here, from there, then when one does the test, we just see how much DNA they share with an identifiable group.
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> This would be completely objective and independent on how one presents herself.  This latest part is particularly of interest, because of the recent comment and apology by a politician (whose name I cannot recall) who suggested one’s political choices determines one’s race.  Dan, regarding the comment “…depends…how people present themselves…” I ask: does that determine in any way one’s race?
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> These DNA tests are really only reliable back about 6 generations or so, but my own African ancestor is only 5 generations back.  The 60 dollar DNA tests picked it up in all of us who are on that branch of the family tree.  So I have an actual number (verified by multiple DNA tests (two different services for several relatives (rather than a breezy claim (or a dark complexion (which can be faked.)))))
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> Numbers are my friends.
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> spike

What would the number signify and why would it matter? The everyday concept of race really doesn't map onto biological concept of a population group. In fact, any clear look at the numbers here shows, for instance, that everyday racial groups overlap different biological populations. And if one were to use a ruthlessly population biology view, there are some serious problems. How many populations are there? There's no clear line between populations, but are there five or fifty or a thousand? And the highest level of genetic differences is between sub-Saharan African populations. So, if you knew nothing else about humans and were just armed with genomic evidence, you might conclude there were dozens of "races" but most of them were in sub-Saharan Africa.

Consider here the work of Joshua Glasgow and Sally Haslander. In particular, I recommend the former's “Another Look at the Reality of Race, by which I Mean Racef” in _New Waves in Metaphysics_ and the latter's "(What) Are They? (What) Do We Want Them to Be?" The latter is available online at:

http://www.mit.edu/~shaslang/papers/WIGRnous.pdf

On how people present themselves, I bring up again the Rachel Dolezal case. She presented herself as Black or African American and up until her parents "outed" her as White, she was very successful at this. I'm guessing had you met her before she was outed, you might have simply thought her a light-skinned African American. Add to this, the everyday concept of race (the one most people use and mean when they say person X is a member of race Y; and all this varies by community*) tends to look for social markers as well as physical ones. This doesn't mean everyone can pass, but it shows that the everyday concept of race isn't really related to underlying DNA or such. (How would an Australian aborigine be classified if they moved to the US, spoke English like an American, and lived in, say, LA or Seattle, but didn't tell anyone that they were an Australian aborigine? My guess is you and almost everyone else would see them as African American without question.)

The everyday concept, too, when it underlies racism, tends to also put certain psychological traits into the same bucket. Thus, members of a given race might be seen as lazy, dishonest, criminally inclined, of lesser intelligence, cowardly, violent, overly emotional, and the like. (Or their opposites, if the race is seen as a superior one.)

Another interesting phenomena with regard to race is how the view of a given group changes over time. I mentioned the Irish in America above. There's also the case of Italians. Initially, they were seen as basically non-White and during the middle of the 20th century, this view started to shift. Thaddeus Russell goes over this in his popular book _A Renegade History of the United States_. The pattern is basically new groups generally get identified as Blacks or near Blacks and move up over time, eventually even being accepted as Whites in cases like the Irish and Italians. (Older people I know can attest to this too: they viewed Italians and other immigrants from Southern Europe basically basically as Blacks or semi-Blacks.)

Regards,

Dan

* Why would the Irish be thought of as of another race by US-Americans when they first started immigrating here? Do you know of Ben Franklin's views of Germans and Swedes? He didn't think they were related to the British at all and that they were inferior. This is at a period when modern racism and modern racial concepts were forming. Historian Anthony Comegna discusses some earlier Colonial origins of American racism here:

https://reason.com/2020/05/31/i-got-tear-gassed-at-baltimores-city-hall/
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