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Hmm so if race is a social construct then racism doesn't truly exist so there should be no outcry about it? And if it isn't a social construct but a biological

by jsf666 11y ago

Hmm so if race is a social construct then racism doesn't truly exist so there should be no outcry about it? And if it isn't a social construct but a biological one then racism is justified. I can't really see the logic behind the far-left crowds thinking in this regard. And as for scientists and the "race is a social construct" by now you should now that opinions that contradict this notion (even whith any amount of proof) could mean the end of their career and a lot of harrasement from society.

dalke 11y ago
"Race" doesn't exist in the way that "democracy", "socialism", and "fascism" don't truly exist. For a large number of Christians, the Hindu gods don't "truly exist". Similarly, to may people the Christian God doesn't "truly exist." That doesn't mean there's no outcry about those topics. The Walt Disney Company is another social construct which doesn't 'truly exist', but there are real-world consequences should you try to infringe on their copyright ... copyright is another thing that doesn't 'truly exist'. "if it isn't a social construct but a biological one then racism is justified" "Biological" has many different meaning. People have different color eyes, based on biology. Given your logic, that justifies the general discrimination of people based on eye color, yes? (FWIW, I am alluding to the "Blue eyes-Brown eyes" exercise.) The underlying question you would need to address is why should some biological aspects merit categorical discrimination but not others, which sorts of discrimination are appropriate for each biologically traceable aspect, and when can technology (like my genetic disposition towards myopia) make it no longer reasonable to discriminate? Research hasn't identified a useful biological justification the racial categories we currently have, any more than separating people into blue/brown eye categories is useful.
- jsf666 11y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monoamine_oxidase_A https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monoamine_oxidase_A This clearly states that there is a major biological difference and that it has a major impact on why black people are more aggressive. The most base argument would be that they're black so they have a clear advantage when it comes absorbing large amounts of sunlight. Is that also a social construct?
  - dalke 11y ago
    Where does it say that black men are more aggressive, and further, that it's a strong enough association to be useful? It does say that “A deficiency in monoamine oxidase A (MAO-A) has been shown to be associated with aggressive behaviour in men of a Dutch family”, so it sounds like there are some Dutch people you wish to discriminate against. And '59% of Black men, 54% of Chinese men, 56% of Maori men, and 34% of Caucasian men carry the 3R allele'. Which form of discrimination do you want to apply to the men in the US with Chinese and Caucasian history which also have this allele? The category of "Black" is very diverse, because "Black" does not have a basis in biological diversity. If people of a Bantu heritage have very different allele distribution than those of Igbo heritage, then won't you be needlessly discriminating on the secondary aspect - black skin - rather than the primary one?
    - jsf666 11y ago
      You completely ignored the part about the 2R variant or just failed to understand the text. Also you cherry-picked one study (the Dutch family) and try to use it to discredit the rest (read the WHOLE page and more importantly the links with studies, also other pages on this issue with statistical data collected from humans/animals).
      - dalke 11y ago
        The word "Black" appears twice, "59% of Black men, 54% of Chinese men, 56% of Maori men, and 34% of Caucasian men carry the 3R allele. 5.5% of Black men, 0.1% of Caucasian men, and 0.00067% of Asian men carry the 2R allele". (I tried to verify the Wikipedia numbers, since "Black" has no meaning in terms of genetic diversity - if it was "African Americans", which come from Kongo, Bantu, Igbo, Temne, Wolof, Fon, Malagasy, and many other African people, then what is the variance between those sub-populations? But none of the links ended up saying what "Black" meant.) You wrote "and that it has a major impact on why black people are more aggressive". I don't see that characterization anywhere in the Wikipedia page. What I do see is: > Even in the absence of such interaction factors, the 3R allele has a small main effect on aggression and antisocial behavior, according to a large meta-analysis, which found no significant publication bias The phrase "small main effect" is not the same as "major impact". Where do you get "major impact on why black people are more aggressive" from that page? I went looking for something to back you up, but ended with things like http://abcnews.go.com/beta/Nightline/warrior-gene-tied-violence/story?id=12422661 http://abcnews.go.com/beta/Nightline/warrior-gene-tied-viole... : > having the gene alone is not enough to predict a violent personality. The gene must be linked with a history of childhood trauma ... But even with that combination -- the gene variant plus childhood trauma -- that is not a guarantee that someone will be violent. There can be choice That says that other issues have a bigger impact. I then looked toward published research articles. What I found directly contradicts your interpretation. I quote now from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3684565/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3684565/ (emphasis mine): > Before turning to a more detailed consideration of our model and hypotheses, we feel compelled to issue the following caveat. The DRD4, 5-HTT, and MAOA polymorphisms that are the focus of our study are widely prevalent among all racial and ethnic groups and there is virtually no evidence suggesting that they are directly associated with aggression and antisocial behavior (Hohmann et al. 2009; Rutter et al. 2006). Indeed, the differential plasticity perspective predicts the absence of such direct effects (Belsky et al., 2007; Belsky & Pluess, 2009). Thus our concern is not with the main effects of genetic variation; rather our focus is on whether environmental conditions interact with 5-HTT, DRD4, and MAOA alleles in a “for better or worse” manner to predict commitment to the street code and involvement in violent behavior during early adulthood This is deliberately saying that the variation does not have "a major impact on why black people are more aggressive." I also found this news article about crime in Finland, which isn't known for its large black population, from http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-29760212 http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-29760212 : > The authors of the study, published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry, said at least 5-10% of all violent crime in Finland could be attributed to individuals with these genotypes. > But they stressed the genes could not be used to screen criminals. > Many more genes may be involved in violent behaviour and environmental factors are also known to have a fundamental role. > Even if an individual has a "high-risk combination" of these genes the majority will never commit a crime, the lead author of the work Jari Tiihonen of the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden said. > "Committing a severe, violent crime is extremely rare in the general population. So even though the relative risk would be increased, the absolute risk is very low," he told the BBC. This says that even if you know that someone has a gene (not secondary information like skin color), you still can't use that information usefully. So if you could break it down for me - how to you conclude from the Wikipedia page that "there is a major biological difference and that it has a major impact on why black people are more aggressive"? Because I've spent the last hour researching the topic and can't find how you drew your conclusion.
andyjohnson0 11y ago
"Hmm so if race is a social construct then racism doesn't truly exist so there should be no outcry about it?" If race is a social construct then the thing that racism is itself based on doesn't objectively exist. That doesn't stop racism existing - people are quite capable of having false beliefs. The problem with this particular false belief (as opposed to, say, the false but harmless belief that the earth is flat) is that racism causes suffering for the people it is directed at. "And if it isn't a social construct but a biological one then racism is justified." That doesn't follow. If human racial distinctions were biologically "real" then that still wouldn't justify racism.
- jsf666 11y ago
  Why blacks on every continent they are (talking now mostly about the US, Africa and Europe) statistically earn less, perform worse in school and commit more crime per capita than white/asians? Even with the sometimes absurd amount of affirmitive action and tax money pumped into social programs directed at them? Why I never seen such problems with east asian immigrants?
  - dalke 11y ago
    For most of the world - remnants of colonialism and slavery. In the US, this includes systemic racism like racial steering and redlining. The Home Owners' Loan Corporation policies between the 1930s and 1950s gave "absurd amounts" of money primarily to white home owners. So-called "Sundown towns" prohibited non-white people from living there. Levittown, the first and most famous mass-produced suburb in the US, did not accept applications from black people. The white population has therefore been able to take advantage of the long-term real estate boom in the US, with the generous financial support from the government. The black population has not. It takes more than a generation or two for these differences to go away. "Why I never seen such problems with east asian immigrants?" Perhaps because you don't know much about the topic? The Hmong people, who supported the US in Vietnam and fled to the US as refugees when the US pulled out, have had problem integrating. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hmong_American#Hmong_in_the_U.S https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hmong_American#Hmong_in_the_U..... . You also have to remember that the US was anti-Asian immigration for a long time. We feared the "Yellow Peril". We had some pretty nasty and strict laws in place to keep most of them out. Quoting from the Wikipedia page on the topic, which quotes Horace Greeley: > The Chinese are uncivilized, unclean, and filthy beyond all conception without any of the higher domestic or social relations; lustful and sensual in their dispositions; every female is a prostitute of the basest order In 1923, the US Supreme Court in United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind found that an Indian Sikh man, despite being Caucasian, was not the right kind of 'white'. As the Naturalization Act of 1906 allowed only "free white persons" and "aliens of African nativity and persons of African descent" to be naturalized citizens, his naturalization was revoked. With the Immigration Act of 1917 we banned immigration from much of Asia and the Pacific Islands. It wasn't until the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 that we let Japanese, Koreans, and other Asians become naturalized in the US. With the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, the old quota system was replaced with a "preference system that focused on immigrants' skills and family relationships with citizens or U.S. residents." So you're only talking about relatively recent immigration from East Asia to the US, and with a preference for those who have skills the US wants. That's a very different background than the generations of blacks who were taken or born into slavery, followed by another century of racist social and government policies. It's therefore meaningless to make the direct comparison you want.
PhasmaFelis 11y ago
> Hmm so if race is a social construct then racism doesn't truly exist so there should be no outcry about it? I refuse to believe that you're that stupid. Don't feed the troll, guys.

by jsf666 11y ago

dalke 11y ago

"Race" doesn't exist in the way that "democracy", "socialism", and "fascism" don't truly exist. For a large number of Christians, the Hindu gods don't "truly exist". Similarly, to may people the Christian God doesn't "truly exist." That doesn't mean there's no outcry about those topics. The Walt Disney Company is another social construct which doesn't 'truly exist', but there are real-world consequences should you try to infringe on their copyright ... copyright is another thing that doesn't 'truly exist'. "if it isn't a social construct but a biological one then racism is justified" "Biological" has many different meaning. People have different color eyes, based on biology. Given your logic, that justifies the general discrimination of people based on eye color, yes? (FWIW, I am alluding to the "Blue eyes-Brown eyes" exercise.) The underlying question you would need to address is why should some biological aspects merit categorical discrimination but not others, which sorts of discrimination are appropriate for each biologically traceable aspect, and when can technology (like my genetic disposition towards myopia) make it no longer reasonable to discriminate? Research hasn't identified a useful biological justification the racial categories we currently have, any more than separating people into blue/brown eye categories is useful.

jsf666 11y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monoamine_oxidase_A https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monoamine_oxidase_A This clearly states that there is a major biological difference and that it has a major impact on why black people are more aggressive. The most base argument would be that they're black so they have a clear advantage when it comes absorbing large amounts of sunlight. Is that also a social construct?
- dalke 11y ago
  Where does it say that black men are more aggressive, and further, that it's a strong enough association to be useful? It does say that “A deficiency in monoamine oxidase A (MAO-A) has been shown to be associated with aggressive behaviour in men of a Dutch family”, so it sounds like there are some Dutch people you wish to discriminate against. And '59% of Black men, 54% of Chinese men, 56% of Maori men, and 34% of Caucasian men carry the 3R allele'. Which form of discrimination do you want to apply to the men in the US with Chinese and Caucasian history which also have this allele? The category of "Black" is very diverse, because "Black" does not have a basis in biological diversity. If people of a Bantu heritage have very different allele distribution than those of Igbo heritage, then won't you be needlessly discriminating on the secondary aspect - black skin - rather than the primary one?
  - jsf666 11y ago
    You completely ignored the part about the 2R variant or just failed to understand the text. Also you cherry-picked one study (the Dutch family) and try to use it to discredit the rest (read the WHOLE page and more importantly the links with studies, also other pages on this issue with statistical data collected from humans/animals).
    - dalke 11y ago
      The word "Black" appears twice, "59% of Black men, 54% of Chinese men, 56% of Maori men, and 34% of Caucasian men carry the 3R allele. 5.5% of Black men, 0.1% of Caucasian men, and 0.00067% of Asian men carry the 2R allele". (I tried to verify the Wikipedia numbers, since "Black" has no meaning in terms of genetic diversity - if it was "African Americans", which come from Kongo, Bantu, Igbo, Temne, Wolof, Fon, Malagasy, and many other African people, then what is the variance between those sub-populations? But none of the links ended up saying what "Black" meant.) You wrote "and that it has a major impact on why black people are more aggressive". I don't see that characterization anywhere in the Wikipedia page. What I do see is: > Even in the absence of such interaction factors, the 3R allele has a small main effect on aggression and antisocial behavior, according to a large meta-analysis, which found no significant publication bias The phrase "small main effect" is not the same as "major impact". Where do you get "major impact on why black people are more aggressive" from that page? I went looking for something to back you up, but ended with things like http://abcnews.go.com/beta/Nightline/warrior-gene-tied-violence/story?id=12422661 http://abcnews.go.com/beta/Nightline/warrior-gene-tied-viole... : > having the gene alone is not enough to predict a violent personality. The gene must be linked with a history of childhood trauma ... But even with that combination -- the gene variant plus childhood trauma -- that is not a guarantee that someone will be violent. There can be choice That says that other issues have a bigger impact. I then looked toward published research articles. What I found directly contradicts your interpretation. I quote now from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3684565/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3684565/ (emphasis mine): > Before turning to a more detailed consideration of our model and hypotheses, we feel compelled to issue the following caveat. The DRD4, 5-HTT, and MAOA polymorphisms that are the focus of our study are widely prevalent among all racial and ethnic groups and there is virtually no evidence suggesting that they are directly associated with aggression and antisocial behavior (Hohmann et al. 2009; Rutter et al. 2006). Indeed, the differential plasticity perspective predicts the absence of such direct effects (Belsky et al., 2007; Belsky & Pluess, 2009). Thus our concern is not with the main effects of genetic variation; rather our focus is on whether environmental conditions interact with 5-HTT, DRD4, and MAOA alleles in a “for better or worse” manner to predict commitment to the street code and involvement in violent behavior during early adulthood This is deliberately saying that the variation does not have "a major impact on why black people are more aggressive." I also found this news article about crime in Finland, which isn't known for its large black population, from http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-29760212 http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-29760212 : > The authors of the study, published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry, said at least 5-10% of all violent crime in Finland could be attributed to individuals with these genotypes. > But they stressed the genes could not be used to screen criminals. > Many more genes may be involved in violent behaviour and environmental factors are also known to have a fundamental role. > Even if an individual has a "high-risk combination" of these genes the majority will never commit a crime, the lead author of the work Jari Tiihonen of the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden said. > "Committing a severe, violent crime is extremely rare in the general population. So even though the relative risk would be increased, the absolute risk is very low," he told the BBC. This says that even if you know that someone has a gene (not secondary information like skin color), you still can't use that information usefully. So if you could break it down for me - how to you conclude from the Wikipedia page that "there is a major biological difference and that it has a major impact on why black people are more aggressive"? Because I've spent the last hour researching the topic and can't find how you drew your conclusion.

andyjohnson0 11y ago

"Hmm so if race is a social construct then racism doesn't truly exist so there should be no outcry about it?" If race is a social construct then the thing that racism is itself based on doesn't objectively exist. That doesn't stop racism existing - people are quite capable of having false beliefs. The problem with this particular false belief (as opposed to, say, the false but harmless belief that the earth is flat) is that racism causes suffering for the people it is directed at. "And if it isn't a social construct but a biological one then racism is justified." That doesn't follow. If human racial distinctions were biologically "real" then that still wouldn't justify racism.

jsf666 11y ago
Why blacks on every continent they are (talking now mostly about the US, Africa and Europe) statistically earn less, perform worse in school and commit more crime per capita than white/asians? Even with the sometimes absurd amount of affirmitive action and tax money pumped into social programs directed at them? Why I never seen such problems with east asian immigrants?
- dalke 11y ago
  For most of the world - remnants of colonialism and slavery. In the US, this includes systemic racism like racial steering and redlining. The Home Owners' Loan Corporation policies between the 1930s and 1950s gave "absurd amounts" of money primarily to white home owners. So-called "Sundown towns" prohibited non-white people from living there. Levittown, the first and most famous mass-produced suburb in the US, did not accept applications from black people. The white population has therefore been able to take advantage of the long-term real estate boom in the US, with the generous financial support from the government. The black population has not. It takes more than a generation or two for these differences to go away. "Why I never seen such problems with east asian immigrants?" Perhaps because you don't know much about the topic? The Hmong people, who supported the US in Vietnam and fled to the US as refugees when the US pulled out, have had problem integrating. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hmong_American#Hmong_in_the_U.S https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hmong_American#Hmong_in_the_U..... . You also have to remember that the US was anti-Asian immigration for a long time. We feared the "Yellow Peril". We had some pretty nasty and strict laws in place to keep most of them out. Quoting from the Wikipedia page on the topic, which quotes Horace Greeley: > The Chinese are uncivilized, unclean, and filthy beyond all conception without any of the higher domestic or social relations; lustful and sensual in their dispositions; every female is a prostitute of the basest order In 1923, the US Supreme Court in United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind found that an Indian Sikh man, despite being Caucasian, was not the right kind of 'white'. As the Naturalization Act of 1906 allowed only "free white persons" and "aliens of African nativity and persons of African descent" to be naturalized citizens, his naturalization was revoked. With the Immigration Act of 1917 we banned immigration from much of Asia and the Pacific Islands. It wasn't until the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 that we let Japanese, Koreans, and other Asians become naturalized in the US. With the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, the old quota system was replaced with a "preference system that focused on immigrants' skills and family relationships with citizens or U.S. residents." So you're only talking about relatively recent immigration from East Asia to the US, and with a preference for those who have skills the US wants. That's a very different background than the generations of blacks who were taken or born into slavery, followed by another century of racist social and government policies. It's therefore meaningless to make the direct comparison you want.

PhasmaFelis 11y ago

> Hmm so if race is a social construct then racism doesn't truly exist so there should be no outcry about it? I refuse to believe that you're that stupid. Don't feed the troll, guys.