Comment on Is this just how it’s gonna be till Election Day?
CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 3 months agoRight, so what’s the Hispanic phenotype? As far as anyone can tell it’s a language, and until someone brown opens their mouth they could just as easily be an Arab or a particularly tawny Italian.
Or are Arabs Hispanic, too?
Phenotypically? Yes, they’re very close. The whole Mediterranean is which shouldn’t be terribly surprising. I guess the reason USians use “Hispanic” and not “Greek” is because Mexico speaks Spanish.
The reason Europeans can reliably tell Sicilians and Arabs apart is not because of phenotype, but because Arabs tend to look like they visit the barber five times a day. Probably because they do.
Yeah, but to be a phenotype, and not just a social construct based partially on a phenotype, it has to go the other way. If having the phenotype isn’t enough on it’s own to guarantee a race, it’s not just about phenotypes. Kind of like how having wheels doesn’t make a suitcase a car.
(Also, FWIW Spaniards are mostly white - I know because I’ve actually been there. The brown in Latin America comes from admixture with other local populations)
No category is absolute. By your logic, it’s impossible to call anything a car, because cars have wheels but suitcases ALSO have wheels, therefore the entire idea that cars exist is just a made up social construct.
Or for a less ridiculous example: is a battery-powered bicycle actually an electric moped? Or the ever classic, is a hotdog a sandwich? We can discuss these questions without questioning the validity of concepts such as bicycles, mopeds, hotdogs and sandwiches. Categories exist. They are useful descriptors despite the existence of edge cases and blurry boundaries.
And we’re back!
Yes, categories are useful but (outside of mathematics) imprecise. A car needs to be motorised and able to carry at least one passenger. Arguably, it also needs at least 4 wheels or to be 3-wheeled and enclosed, to include Reliant Robins. There’s still probably edge cases, but it’s fair to say it’s a subset of wheeled objects that generally applies and is needed both in economics and engineering, as well as everyday life.
Racial categories aren’t useful for science, though. Did you know, for example, that most human genetic variety occurs within Africa, because of the common out-of-Africa ancestry everyone else has? Phenotypically, I have less information, but you have tiny pygmies as well as the Maasi (with an average male height of 6’4), and every skin colour from Sudanese literal black to Egyptian/Berber olive, so I’m guessing it’s the same.
Maybe that’s the point of contention here. They’re relevant socially, but biology has moved on.
Cryophilia@lemmy.world 3 months ago
…if all brown people look the same to you, you might need to start meeting more people from different races.
CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 3 months ago
Hmm. How good is your eye for heritage? Can you pick apart Telugu from Hindi, for example? Mongol from Chinese?
It’s a total continuum so there is no perfect, but mine might be bad, it’s true. I have an uncle with mixed ancestry, and I didn’t pick up on it until someone told me, lol.
Cryophilia@lemmy.world 3 months ago
I think I actually can pick Mongol from (Han) Chinese, actually.
As for your edit, you responded to me, dude. I didn’t jump over here.
CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 3 months ago
Ah sorry, I replied to the wrong user with that edit. How embarrassing. Deepest apologies for that.