Comment on Is this just how it’s gonna be till Election Day?
Cryophilia@lemmy.world 1 month agoPhenotype has nothing to do with nationality. Nationality =/= ethnicity.
See here on the other side of the Atlantic
You force migrant Africans to drown in the Mediterranean, get off your high horse dude.
So it would be inaccurate to call Obama African American because he has no slave ancestry?
It would be debatable. That’s the point I’ve been trying to make. You take a set of physical characteristics and common heritage and you classify people based on that. Some people won’t neatly fall into those classifications and that’s okay, but the classifications are still valid.
I didn’t say anything about validity.
That’s the whole point of the phrase “race is a social construct”. Attacking the validity of race as a concept.
barsoap@lemm.ee 1 month ago
I never claimed them to be equal. Also, “Nordic” isn’t a nationality, Norwegian would be. If Harris was born in the US, moved to Norway when she was 3, went to school in Norway, studied in Norway, then returned to the US, what ethnicity do you think she would identify with? And yes bi-ethnic people exist, very common in fact because people do move around.
Did you just call me Italian. Or Greek. Or whatever.
Why would you connect such unconnected things as phenotype and heritage? Why not have separate classifiers for both things? Why, then, on top of that, sort people into subcultures based on those classifiers?
Democracy is a social construct.
Cryophilia@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Identity with, or identify as? You can choose the former to an extent, but the latter is biologically inherited.
Fine, since you’re getting hung up on definitions, instead of “phenotype” say “inherited physical characteristics”. I don’t feel like getting into an argument about genetics, it’s beside the point. The point is, people inherit physical characteristics common to their enthnicity, and that is what “race” is. It’s not a bad thing, just a descriptor.
The connection is “you have black skin, and wiry hair, and African ancestry, and X and Y and Z, therefore you are Black.” And it’s less a connection than a definition. No value judgment, just a statement.
It sounds like what you should be arguing against is “you are Black, therefore you are inferior”. Which would be a really easy and common argument to make without all this bullshit “race is imaginary” crap.
barsoap@lemm.ee 1 month ago
So Obama isn’t African American, got it.
Ethnicity is not genetic. Are you one of those yanks spewing nonsense such as “I’m 23% French that’s why I like mayonnaise”.
That anyone said that is something you’re imagining. As to why, see my previous reply.
Cryophilia@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I told you, ignore the genetic bit if you want to quibble about it. I’m talking about inherited physical characteristics. What would you call it? Pick a word, whatever. That’s what I’m talking about, and that’s the basis for race.