Come Oh Ye Rational Thinkers...and explain race theory to me

[tantric]

I just got banned from another board for being racist, in that I asserted that another poster calling me 'white' as in the culture was racist and offensive. I got dinged, saying "calling you white when you are white isn't racist, look it up". I did. Merriam Webster says, racialism: a theory that race determines human traits and capacities; also : racism. First definition, one is a synonym for the other...bam, banned for life.

This isn't about cross sniping. I utterly fail to see my sin, except that I think race theory is illogical and self-defeating and prefer, for myself only, the status of conscientious objector - my race is human and that's as far as it goes.

I don't force my views on other people - if you want to be Black and rally for Black Power, good. If you prefer Chican@, I can do that. I manage trans-pronouns with native grace (deal with it, Ms Thing). I have erudite opinions on Gay Cinema and French Impressionism. Groovy. But I insist that be two way. I don't make an issue of it, but 'race theory' is a twisted, evil, sick-to-the-core mindvirus/memeplex and I do not care to have it applied to me. If you look at me and call me 'white' I will respond with something highly provocative and there we go.

My analysis of racialism and race theory as it exists in my culture:

The system of racial classification, which most people see as some kind of natural law, seems to be a sociopolitical construct designed to chart how alien a given person is to the cultural standard, using a mixed metric of skin color, native language and ethnic origin, while consistently refusing to define those units. For instance, while 'black' and 'white' are considered natural classes, nowhere is there to be found a display showing the various existing human skin colorations and the correct term for each.In fact, the language itself lacks terms for those shades, despite have tens of thousands of other color terms. It seems that when a 'black' person has a skin tone lighter than many 'white' people, the term 'black' shifts to mean an ethnicity. In other cases, persons with any skin tone may be assigned to the 'Hispanic' or 'Latino' race based on their native language. This leaves persons from countries in 'Latin America' who speak English, Portuguese or other languages in racial limbo - or perhaps not, as the category was clearly added to exclude persons from the Americas outside of the USA and Canada from being 'white'. In some situations, the word 'Caucasian' is used, but rather than referring to natives of the Caucus Mountains, it appears to be a synonym for 'white' based on a theory discredited a century ago. Likewise, 'Mongoloid' is a nice term that can mean 'of East Asian extraction' or 'congenitally retarted'. The terms 'Black', 'African-American' and 'Negro' superficially refer to persons who are ethnically sub-Saharan African, while 'white' likewise pretends to mean 'of European extraction'. However, when a White and a Black produce offspring, all are Black, rather than Gray or Half-Black as one might expect. This can be repeated ad infinitum with the same results: if you take the F1 Black offspring, crossed with a new White, you still get only Black, despite the actual skin tones of the children, which by now are well within the range present in Southern Europe. This pattern applies only to Black - the F1 of a WhitexAsian cross are 'half asian' or 'mixed'. The only possible analysis of this is that 'White' means 'pure' and 'Black' means 'polluted'. The system of hyphenated names to refer to ethnicity seems to be an alternative, but upon inspection shows glaring inconsistency. A 'Japanese-American' is a person with a Japanese cultural heritage who is either born in or a resident of America, but 'African-American' isn't reducible, but a fixed term to refer to persons with cosmopolitan American cultural roots and dark skin, and significantly does not refer to a person with African cultural heritage in the USA. Or maybe it means both. Logically, an Afrikaner or Egyptian immigrant to the USA is also an African-American? Notable for its absence is the term European-American, which should be the proper term for 'white' but isn't used at all. This could go on for hours.

[Alex K]

Sentences to long. Brain overflow.

[Aoi Magi]

Racism is a way to stereotype people, which is bad, however stereotypes can sometimes be used in a debate while discussing the characteristics of a specific group of people. So it kind of depends on the context.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

This could go on for hours.

And we're all glad it didn't.

What's your point?

Boru

[tantric]

I object to having that crap applied to me, especially by people who take it as natural law. Likewise, I don't appreciate being classified as an infidel my Muslims. It's technically correct, but it's irrational crap and I find it offensive on that basis. I don't like being seen as an archetype based on my Zodiac. So? Don't look at me and call me 'white'. Don't read my genome and call me 'black'. And please note that my status as an Asian is only honorary. I want to be classed, racially, as Human.

[Aoi Magi]

I object to having that crap applied to me, especially by people who take it as natural law. Likewise, I don't appreciate being classified as an infidel my Muslims. It's technically correct, but it's irrational crap and I find it offensive on that basis. I don't like being seen as an archetype based on my Zodiac. So? Don't look at me and call me 'white'. Don't read my genome and call me 'black'. And please note that my status as an Asian is only honorary. I want to be classed, racially, as Human.

But your avatar suggests you are a White Ape(not human) with Black facial hair.

[pocaracas]

Human races exist... people, get over it.
And, statistically speaking, some races excel on some tasks, while others excel on other tasks... may be a cultural thing, though, but the correlation is there.

That said, I have no problem if you apply a statistically relevant stereotype, like... blacks have longer penises than any other race.
But the wrong kind of stereotype grinds gears.... like... native americans are dumber than asians.

Apart from that... anything is game.
Did you know that, in portuguese, the polite word to describe a black person is "negro" (same word as in english, but the 'e' reads a bit like eh and all 'o's at the end of words sound like a curt 'u')? And if you use the translation of "black" (preto), you get the non-politically correct version!
These are just two words that describe the same color we use when painting... and with paint, no one cares if you use preto or negro.
We have another color that also gets two words to describe it, red: encarnado, vermelho.... yeah, none of them are even remotely similar to the spanish rojo, or the french rouje. Although the portuguese "roxo" (reads like rho-chu) is purple... Kinda makes you wonder that we went a bit sideways when we decided to name colors, compared with the rest of Europe.

[Alex K]

Human races exist... people, get over it.
And, statistically speaking, some races excel on some tasks, while others excel on other tasks... may be a cultural thing,

Ayyyyup.

[tantric]

Human races exist... people, get over it.
And, statistically speaking, some races excel on some tasks, while others excel on other tasks... may be a cultural thing, though, but the correlation is there.

That said, I have no problem if you apply a statistically relevant stereotype, like... blacks have longer penises than any other race.
But the wrong kind of stereotype grinds gears.... like... native americans are dumber than asians.

Apart from that... anything is game.
Did you know that, in portuguese, the polite word to describe a black person is "negro" (same word as in english, but the 'e' reads a bit like eh and all 'o's at the end of words sound like a curt 'u')? And if you use the translation of "black" (preto), you get the non-politically correct version!
These are just two words that describe the same color we use when painting... and with paint, no one cares if you use preto or negro.
We have another color that also gets two words to describe it, red: encarnado, vermelho.... yeah, none of them are even remotely similar to the spanish rojo, or the french rouje. Although the portuguese "roxo" (reads like rho-chu) is purple... Kinda makes you wonder that we went a bit sideways when we decided to name colors, compared with the rest of Europe.

Human races *don't* exist, at least in the categories we recognize. Hindi's are Indo-Europeans. The Japanese don't seem to be related to anyone, nor or the Basque. In the real world, you most often find very fuzzy borders. There is more genetic diversity in one African village than all of medieval England - a sequence will tell you that two people from the same African village are more different than any two people in England. It's CULTURALLY DEFINED and exists for the purpose of discrimination. Do you think on Japanese forms the Nihonjin check Asian? In India, your religion is registered with the government and you have to fill out forms to change it - it's their version of race.

It's crap and I don't subscribe to it. My race is human - you can labelled yourself however you like, it's good with me.

[paulpablo]

aren't certain races supposed to be more prone to certain illnesses, and I think I heard people of east asian decent are more sensitive to alcohol aswell?