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

[Mister Agenda]

'You are white' is not racist. 'You are white, therefore you have white privilege' is not racist. 'You are white, therefore you are an oppressor of minorities' IS racist.

I knew someone would bring up 'white privilege' eventually Seems to be a new buzz word. I cannot put my finger on why I find it so problematic. Perhaps because it makes it possible to attribute any personal success or failure solely to sociopolitical factors. It seems to encourage envy and downplay grit, as in "You didn't build that."

Maybe you don't like it because you're white and you don't like to admit that being white gives you any advantages in your culture.

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:et me preface this by noting that my original post was a rant. I was pissed. I don't expect other people to work with my ideas of racism.

No worries, everyone rants sometimes and we tend to not be at our most precise when ranting.

'You are white' is not racist. 'You are white, therefore you have white privilege' is not racist. 'You are white, therefore you are an oppressor of minorities' IS racist. Essentially, racism is ascribing attributes to a person because of the race they belong to, to which their race is irrelevant. Merely acknowledging what race you (apparently) belong to is not racist. A race is a regional variation of a species. In humans, you can often determine what continent a person's ancestors were from at fifty paces. But also in humans, there is no evidence that race alone affects character.

The problem is that you are utterly wrong. You are using the vernacular of racists. This is Wikipedia, but all dictionaries concur:

Racialism is the belief that the human species is naturally divided into distinct biological categories called 'races.' According to the Oxford English Dictionary, racialism is synonymous with racism.[1]

All dictionaries concur? I am using the vernacular of racists? I call shenanigans. Literally the first definition of 'racism' to come up on Google is:

rac·ism/ˈrāˌsizəm/
noun
the belief that all members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race, especially so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races.

And I never said 'racialism' is not racist. I said 'race' is a regional variation of a species. That is actually what it is. Why did you bring up 'racialism'? Just to make it sound like I'm 'utterly wrong' instead of factually correct?

And no, you can't, well, it's highly unlikely. You can't tell a Siberian from a Kwakiutl, a Khoisan from a Negrito, a Vietnamese from a Cherokee. The variations in the real world are along a spectrum with no fine lines.

If 'no you can't' was true instead of 'often determine' being true, you wouldn't have had to cherry-pick ambiguous cases. Although you must not know many Cherokees or Vietnamese if you can't tell them apart or figure out what continent their ancestors are from. The more familiar you are with the groupings involved, the more accurate you will be in such matters. For instance, I lived in Japan for 18 months and can generally distinguish them from people of other Asian ancestry by appearance, though it's not quite as easy as telling a clan Somali from an Innuit.

If you picked 100 Americans at random (I choose that country because a wide variety of people can be found there), you could break it up along the lines of African, Asian, or European ancestry with a good degree of accuracy. If I was unaware of ambiguous cases, I wouldn't have used the word 'often' as a modifier for the word 'determine'.

I want to be able to use 'human' as my definition. That's all.

That's odd. It should go without saying that you're human.

I'm the conscientious objector. The terms are not particularly useful in describing appearances.

If you leave out race as a descriptor, people can get very confused when they're trying to pick out the person you're talking about. They usually assume you're speaking of someone of the race that's most predominant in the area. If they make no assumptions about race at all, they wind up being even less likely to pick the correct person. The results of not mentioning race in someone's description leads to silliness, like lineups of people of the same rough age, height, weight, and apparant gender but of different races.

Now we need some words. I don't see white anywhere there, or black. I'd say 1-9 are Bloodless to Sallow, I've never seen anybody healthly like that. 10-18, Cream, Fawn, Beige, Almond? 19-27 Tan, Bronze, Cafe au Lait, Buff...you get the picture.

Yes. You're capable of describing a variety of shades and tones of skin, but are unwilling to admit that it's actually possible to do so.

Huh? They don't agree. I don't expect them to. That was one instance about a technical point. Well, you can demand that I refrain from insisting that Scientific Atheism is a religion and the belief in no god is still just a belief and a form of theology....just for instance.

Yes, but I can't reasonably expect you to comply without first persuading you that it is incorrect to so insist.

So when a person looks at my opinions about the Rwanda genocide, having never met or seen me, and decides I'm white?

Were they wrong?

In that context, it means supporter of the Capitalist Imperialist EuroAmerican Christian Patriarchy ™ and yeah, that's annoying.

It sounds like you're racist against white people.

I did correct him, and in fact gave him a summary ofmy people's history. It didn't fit race theory, so he ignored it.

Does your summary show you to not be of European extraction?

Race theory is a cultural convention, and I don't belong to the culture that uses it.

You keep using 'race theory' as a synonym for 'race'. It isn't, but it suits your purposes to pretend that it is, apparently.

My people have their own theory - we're the Realpeople and y'all are the ColoredPeople (because of how you describe yourselves). For most of human history, race theory amounted to "our tribe is The People, everyone else is a cannibal". Yeah, I can imagine what you think of that, but it's irrelevant. Anyway, its exactly the same way I feel about American race theory.

If it was 'American' race theory, a person from Mongolia wouldn't be able to tell you're white. And in case you were unaware of it, you're still ranting, and still using the etymological fallacy of applying obsolete meanings to modern terms.

Okay, let's have some context.

Should that not have been with what you led?

I'm writing a setting for RPG's based on Bantu Africa. I've included a few Pygmy cultures on the borders. Since the point of the setting is to see how cultures might develop in best possible setting, I gave some of the pygmies a leg up. The guy who's arguing with me insists that the geSera pygmies in Rwanda live in egalitarian harmony with their Bantu neighbors and that I'm imagining their persecution so that I can feel noble by reimagining them as not nearly extinct.

That sounds unfair.

The problem is the 1/3 of the total population of the geSera were murdered in the genocide, which this guy flatly denies happening. You can Wiki it, but all the pygmies have suffered enormous persecution. So, based on this, he decides I'm part of the White Power Structure.

That's offensive on so many levels I don't know where to start. I went with 'racist' because I swore never to use Nazi analogies in an internet debate.

Did he use those words or did he just guess that you're white? It's the conclusions he draws from you being white that would be the racist part. Even if some of his conclusions were in part true. If a black man likes watermelon, it doesn't make it less offensive or racist to correctly guess that based on racial stereotypes. And it would be racist to conclude someone is black because they like watermelon. But it's not racist to say they are black.

From what you describe, the person was being racist, but not for calling you 'white' or subscribing to 'American racial theory'. He concluded you were white based on a stereotype, THAT was the racist part.

Close. I have low latent inhibition.
and a 160 IQ. I have no filters. I can't just classify something and tune it out. For instance, if I'm in a room with books, I'll read the spine of each and every one.

At least you come by it honestly, then.

That applies to people. I can't look at a person, say 'black' and stop.

Most people don't.

I look at grooming, posture, clothing, facial expression, etc, etc. Human beings are like a fire hose of information. I don't see the world like other people.

So do most of the rest of us. In experiments, clothing counted more for how people were judged than race did.

Shorthand classifications are useless - the best I can do is try to evaluate what 'race' a person identifies with.

There is a vast gulf between 'of limited use' and 'useless'.

But of course, other people look at me and see the shorthand. I can't expect them to see like I do, and wouldn't want them to, so I just offer another shorthand - 'human'.

Most of them see the other stuff, too. You are being uncharitable when you assume they don't. And 'human' is literally a useless classification. It has no use in distinguishing you from anyone else. If we were in contact with lots of alien species, describing you as 'that human in the jeans' might be useful, or in some scenario where it's possible you could be mistaken for an animal or mannikin or something I suppose it might: 'no, not the mannikin in the gray suit, the human!'.

I was responding to a specific incident that really pissed me off. I don't normally care.

Glad to hear it. And I get it, it sounds like someone was being unfair to you on a sensitive issue, I don't blame you for being upset about it.

I was very privileged and entitled during the two years I spent in a maximum security prison. Yeah, I know LOTS about race relations. I sat down at a table with an MS13, who had '13' tattooed across his forehead in Mayan numerals and showed him my Jaguar tat. Ojale. Since I could only have religious books, I got a bilingual copy of the Koran and got the Nation of Islam guy next door to teach me. I think that gangster rap is a disease, a sick scam where 'rappers' sell the idea that violence and crime are part of artistic integrity and prison is the road to being a star. I played DnD in prison with a protoAryan and a Nuwabian and a babyraper turned hyperchristian. And all of them are people to me. I don't think I could have done those things if I stopped at race. This is not some ivory tower theory - it's life experience.

Life experience is not a good source of information about millions of people, and prison is not a mcrocosm of the real world. I'm sorry you had bad experiences, but they do not qualify you as an expert on race.

And WTF? My species is Homo sapiens. My race is human - the other options being Martian, Vulcan and Alien Transvestite Robot? Want to know how deepset this is for me? Here's a nifty little anecdote.

Yeah, that you're human is so obvious that it conveys no actual information at all and is utterly useless as a classification. And please stop peppering me with links, I don't follow them. I'm only interested in your own words.

I like rational, efficient systems. I live in the USA and use metric. The name 'USA' bugs me, but so what. I call all over the counter medicines by their chemical names. I reject Abrahamic religious concepts - I tried my damnedest (humor) to edit out of my language, but its useless. I say "the data are" when talking science and "the data is" when using computer jargon. I spent several months learning Lojban. When I was in HS I invented a script for phonetic English so I could record people's dialects accurately. Even though I grew up in the deep South with VERY southern parents, I've never had a Southern accent. I had a three way with ChiChi LaRue. I taught myself organic chemistry and set up an MDMA lab so I could give it away, fighting the War on Some Drugs. That's me. Human, Reincarnated pygmy, one of the Rainbow people.

You sound like a real pill to be around. For what were you incarcerated, if you don't mind my asking?