Comment on Is this just how it’s gonna be till Election Day?
barsoap@lemm.ee 3 months agoWell 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.
Cryophilia@lemmy.world 3 months ago
This is the fucking bullshit that makes me want to bitch slap all you academic morons who keep insisting that race is a social construct. It’s so goddamn fucking annoying. YOU JUST FUCKING ASSERT THIS. FUCKING A PRIORI. And then you use that bullshit assertion to build the world’s biggest fucking straw man.
It’s so goddamn stupid and also so smug at the same time, which is a rage-inducing combination coming from anyone. But especially from Kaeieghlyyn who somehow spent 4 years in college studying racial inequality without ever stepping foot in a ghetto.
No one ever gave a shit about the “one drop law”, not even in the racist South where it existed, unless someone needed an excuse to exercise power over someone else. If you pass as white you are, for all intents and purposes, white.
How does one get to the situation where they pass as white?
Their parents could pass as white! At least one of them. It’s an inherited characteristic, which is what race is. That’s it, that’s the whole thing. Race is a bundle of inherited physical characteristics sorted by commonalities.
But some humans have different numbers of fingers! Some have four, some have six! Some humans are born without hands! Therefore your entire system of categorization is invalid! You cannot classify things in any way, because exceptions might exist! Literally everything is a social construct!!!
Or, you know. Alternatively. Categorizations are valid despite the fact that exceptions exist.
Don’t “end with” a fucking quote from a fucking philosopher. It’s the bitch icing on a giant cake of smugness. I’m happy to debate this with you but for the love of christ at least pretend to be fucking humble. Also your quote is stupid, because it’s referring to the type of straw in your straw man. You’re trying to explain some shit that doesn’t matter, because your entire premise is wrong.
barsoap@lemm.ee 3 months ago
No. Case in point: I mentioned how Harris has lighter skin than many a Sicilian, and also very much has a temperate climate nose. These are not, in the slightest, phenotype traits typical of sub-saharan Africa mostly Nigeria thereabouts where most of the slaves trafficked during the Atlantic slave trade where from.
If you can’t see that then I suggest you visit an optometrist.
Then why is Harris considered black? What does “passing” mean, here? Does it really have anything to do with phenotype, or is it cultural?
That’s a misexpression, the genome codes for five. And even then: Having six fingers is a physical, objective, trait. Harris being black isn’t, phenotypically she could just as well be Italian.
Cryophilia@lemmy.world 3 months ago
As I have said, picking individual outliers does not invalidate a category. I think you’ve got it backwards. We interpret racial characteristics through a social lense. But the characteristics do, themselves, exist. And they are easily grouped (not exclusively, but generally) into the categories we call “race”. And we’re not randomly picking traits. They’re inherited via a common ancestry. As you said, physical, observable traits.
Could Harris pass as Sicilian? Probably not, but even if she could, she doesn’t have any Sicilian ancestry to my knowledge, so it would be inaccurate to call her Sicilian. Or Indian or Korean or whatever. She could call herself Nordic and we would laugh at her.
barsoap@lemm.ee 3 months ago
I didn’t say anything about validity.
So it would be inaccurate to call Obama black because he has no slave ancestry?
“African American” is a subculture identified with people freed from slavery. It is not a thing of ancestry, or Obama wouldn’t be part of it. It is not a matter of phenotype, or Harris wouldn’t be part of it. And both aren’t outliers, they’re simply prominent examples. At the same time, you have more recent African immigrants to the US who very much insist that they are not part of that group identity.
Noone, at least no American, is questioning Harris’ and Obama’s identity as African American, and that’s precisely because it’s neither about ancestry nor phenotype but subcultural belonging. They’re African American because they stay vibing that way.
Plenty of people with much darker skin in the Nordics. If she had gone to school and studied in Norway or something Nordic would be absolutely accurate. See here on the other side of the Atlantic we don’t sort ethnicities by phenotype because phenotype has nothing to do with ethnicity. Correlation, yes, causation, fuck no. Double triple fuck no.