[ExI] Race Biology

Lee Corbin lcorbin at rawbw.com
Sat Mar 22 18:55:51 UTC 2008


Damien writes

> At 05:00 AM 3/21/2008 -0700, Lee wrote, adding his own gloss in brackets:
> 
>> > or [continuing the litany of Western thought-crime] despised Asians
>> > as "lesser breeds without the law",
>>
>> and I suppose you never heard what the inhabitants of the Central
>> Kingdom under Heaven thought of Westerners, and, in fact anyone
>> not Chinese?  Looking down your nose at other tribes or other
>> peoples was hardly invented by just the detested Europeans.
> 
> It is mischievous, Lee, to say this, *having just deleted the end of 
> my sentence* which made exactly that point:

Sorry.  It  *was*  an honest mistake. On the other hand, it wouldn't
surprise me if the entire bulk of your paragraphs might make one
point, and then with a few words "and of course vice-versa" appended
at the very end.

But again, I think myself to be better than to delete any part of a sentence
or a paragraph that would cause a reader to get the wrong impression,
so sorry, again, and thanks for the correction.

> > or were despised in their turn.

Hmm.  Yes, "were despised in their turn" hardly has a subject, and no
object.  I.e., *who* despised them?  Some third party entirely?
I believe I've see you do the same as me or worse.

>> Do you have any examples of someone on this list claiming that?
>> Or is that just a straw man?
> 
> >> >>### Race is not in the least determined by culture. It is a property
> >> >>related to common descent.

Again, Rafal and Stuart were discussing the biological notion. What is
ambiguous here is what Rafal meant in the above sentence by "Race".

It's possible for me to see why we are at loggerheads. To you,
*race* is *intrinsically* a social reality. Almost by definition.
It's the way you find people using the words.

Rafal and I, (I don't know about Stuart), on the other hand, are
merely and always thinking of what the science is---at least when
we *discuss* it openly somewhere, like on this list. We want to
refer to the objectively true fact that these gene clusters are not
a product of perception or faulty science.

Now yes, it is entirely possible that when we go out in the world
and mention to someone that "Barack Obama may be the first black
president", we are unconsciously using your form---after all,
we in the U.S. when talking to ourselves or to western Europeans
are trying to communicate what everyone takes for granted in
our societies.   In our western societies, as you know, people who
have any but vanishing traces of African "blood" in their veins are
seen as black.  Again, not from racism, but simply because of who
is "pure" on the one hand, and who is "mixed" and "minority" on
the other.

Can you see from an objective viewpoint what is really going on
here, and why we are having so much trouble agreeing?

Rafal did not mean, and was not thinking of what you're thinking of, 
or what people in Brazil mean.  He was thinking of the scientific reality.
For example, if you asked Rafal in a careful discussion what race 
Jesse Jackson is, he would guess 40%/60%, or whatever. He would
instantaneously---unlike the Brazilians or you, evidently---claim 
he is talking about the actual, extant, true, clustering that perhaps
Stuart isn't so willing to acknowledge is 100% real.

Lee




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