[ExI] Well-roundedness and character

[Darin Sunley]

I don't think race, per se, was an issue with the Irish. The issue was that
they were, <gasp!> Catholic!

Catholics tended to be treated as a lower species, and it didn't matter
much whether they were pale redheads from the north or brown-skinned
Mediterranean types.

On Fri, Jun 12, 2020 at 3:42 PM Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> 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
>
>
>
> *>…*judging who's Black depends both on overall social rules and how
> people present themselves…Dan
>
>
>
>
> Hi Dan, since we have DNA tests now, why not just have a number?  Numbers
> are such marvelous things.
>
>
>
> 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.
>
>
>
> 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?
>
>
>
> 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.)))))
>
>
>
> Numbers are my friends.
>
>
>
> 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/
> _______________________________________________
> extropy-chat mailing list
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20200612/a824f812/attachment.htm>