Comment on Is this just how it’s gonna be till Election Day?

• Cryophilia@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Yes! You’re getting it. Ear size is an aspect of race. As is hair texture and height and all the other inheritable phenotypes. Skin color is just the most visibly obvious one.

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  • barsoap@lemm.ee ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    So you’re saying race == phenotype? Then you also have to say that race is a continuum, and, therefore, any arbitrary line on that continuum a social construct.

    Which is btw blindingly obvious to Europeans, Harris is white in my book: Her palms are not lighter than the back of her hands.

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    • Cryophilia@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Then you also have to say that race is a continuum, and, therefore, any arbitrary line on that continuum a social construct.

      Well by that definition fucking everything is a social construct. Which, sure, there’s a decent philosophical argument that even reality is a social construct, but it makes it impossible to discuss anything if you get hung up on that.

      I’ve got a secret to let you in on: aside from mathematics and some physics, literally everything is categorized based on arbitrary lines on a continuum. Taxonomic classification. Whether an object is a planet or not. “Ocean” vs “sea”. Macro vs micro economics. Every single thing that is classified, a person or group of persons had to make a decision and in some cases that decision was not very clear or easy.

      That doesn’t mean it’s a pure social construct, and it definitely doesn’t mean the categories are invalid. It means they’re blurry at the boundaries, like all things are. It means they’re part of a continuum, like all things are. It does NOT mean or imply that the categories are invalid.

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      • barsoap@lemm.ee ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Well by that definition fucking everything is a social construct.

        Nope. That humans generally have five fingers is not a social construct, it’s an (emergent) property of our genome.

        Whether Harris is sorted into “white” or “black” OTOH is based on a social construct: The US’s conception of race is not based on physical traits but social realities. It harkens back to the one drop rule which is complete BS when it comes to biology, what matters in her being sorted into “black” is not her phenotype (quite light skin, temperate climate nose, …), but that a portion, at least a drop, of her ancestry comes from black slaves. That’s a social context, not a biological one.

        Even more obvious is Obama, actually: He’s not a descendant of slaves. So it’s not even heritage which dictates whether you’re black in the US, but whether your phenotype looks like you possibly could be.

        Let me end with Epictetus:

        These reasonings are unconnected: “I am richer than you, therefore I am better”; “I am more eloquent than you, therefore I am better.” The connection is rather this: “I am richer than you, therefore my property is greater than yours;” “I am more eloquent than you, therefore my style is better than yours.” But you, after all, are neither property nor style.

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  • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Well, words can mean whatever you want, but usually race refers to the discrete-ish social categories that have been constructed. Black people were a discrete legal category for most of America’s history, and were nominally 3/5 of a person and treated as much less. Now, they have equal legal rights on paper, but the category is still there.

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    • Cryophilia@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      That’s an academic ivory tower definition that they invented and no one else uses. Even the blatant racists who sorted races into these social categories did so based on physical appearance. You didn’t see any dark skin people allowed to use facilities that said “whites only”.

      It’s based on physical appearance, which is based on phenotype.

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      • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        That’s what I said!

        but usually race refers to the discrete-ish social categories that have been constructed based roughly on specific phenotypes.

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