[barend]

That's because Americans are wrong. I don't have time right now to expand, by Civ, 'Asian' is not a racial group. That's my whole point.

You have 'Caucasian' for white people who exisit all over the shop, but people got lazy with the rest. I"m sure there's anthopolicial terms for everyone else, why not use those.

I"m not using "Theory" as "gueswork" I"m mearly keeping seperate from "fact"

To boil down less offensivley. Theory is basically, the stradegy of attempting to inconclusivley solve an equasion that has more than one unresolved or undetermined factor or unit. Theory is when you line up a bunch of items that amount to less than all but one and try to complete the picture NOT when you have only one number left in a join-the-dots puzzle.

Jordan, I would know what you meant but I'd still be annoyed that the word had fallen into such misuse.

Civ, I do use words for their meaning. the adeptation of it to mean something else, no matter how popular, is still technically slang. "Asian" meaning anything else other than descendant from an Asian country is SLANG. and when educated people start doin as such, one can only shake their head in grief.

[civilian_number_two]

Ok, so you only use words according to the meaning AS YOU SEE IT. Hence your use of "theory" and the way you casually ignored my explanation that it does not singularly mean "hypothesis,' as you think it does. For instance, Gravity is a FACT, an ther Theory of Gravity is the body of knowledge pertaining to it. "Theory of Gravity" doesn't imply that scientists really don't know whether gravity exists. So to bring it back to your initial use, "Anthropological Theory" doesn't imply that maybe there is no anthropology. Or more to the point, it doesn't imply that whenever you encounter some well-documented fact that has no guesswork attached, as many people do in say, the Evolution debate, that you can dismiss it as one of the parts of the science that is in dispute, and that you can use the word "theory" as your sole justification for your dismissal. At least if you're going to say "this is one of the things that scientists aren't really sure of," then the onus is on you to show that.

But moving away from that, I see that you will never allow that "Asian" could ever mean anything other than someone born in or descended from persons born in Asia. In that sense, then, it is valueless as a descriptor of a racial group, since there is more than one racial group living in Asia. So too "African."

Out of curiosity, since you mentioned it, do you accept the word "Caucasian," Barend? Is that acceptable as a descriptor for a racial group? Would you use that word for German-Americans living in Missouri, or at least not attempt to correct someone else who did so?

This post has been edited by civilian_number_two: 09 October 2007 - 09:48 PM

[Jordan]

Since i've already mentioned it here, why not post it. Skin lightening commercial hahah

http://www.youtube.c...h?v=zgu96y6o5No

[barend]

Ok, so you only use words according to the meaning AS YOU SEE IT. Hence your use of "theory" and the way you casually ignored my explanation that it does not singularly mean "hypothesis,' as you think it does. For instance, Gravity is a FACT, an ther Theory of Gravity is the body of knowledge pertaining to it. "Theory of Gravity" doesn't imply that scientists really don't know whether gravity exists. So to bring it back to your initial use, "Anthropological Theory" doesn't imply that maybe there is no anthropology. Or more to the point, it doesn't imply that whenever you encounter some well-documented fact that has no guesswork attached, as many people do in say, the Evolution debate, that you can dismiss it as one of the parts of the science that is in dispute, and that you can use the word "theory" as your sole justification for your dismissal. At least if you're going to say "this is one of the things that scientists aren't really sure of," then the onus is on you to show that.

Gravity is a fact. The 'theory of gravity' was originally the proposition that gravity existed before it was officially proven. And current 'theroy of gravity' relates not to the validity of its existance but to it's cause and what maintains it, which has yet to be adequatley explained given that theories on the matter conflict with previously proven facits of physics.

The use of the word 'theory' is not my basis for dismissal, but a strong reason to appraoch a suggestion or proposition with caution. The problem is that too many Theories that have yet to take the neccessary steps to be come scientific fact have enjoyed the piety of such because of intellectual laziness. And becuase too many people believe the word 'theory' too mean 'conclusivley complete scientific established fact'. I'm not suggesting that theory is nothing but guesswork, merely that some guess work is required no matter how much statisitcal or conclusive study is used to construct the argument.

But moving away from that, I see that you will never allow that "Asian" could ever mean anything other than someone born in or descended from persons born in Asia. In that sense, then, it is valueless as a descriptor of a racial group, since there is more than one racial group living in Asia. So too "African."

That was my whole point, yes.

That's it exactly. That's all I've been trying to say. Thankyou.

Out of curiosity, since you mentioned it, do you acept the word "Caucasian," Barend? Is that acceptable as a descriptor for a racial group? Would you use that word for German-Americans living in Missouri, or at least not attempt to correct someone else who did so?

Why would I correct somone for describing a white person as a white person? I'm starting to think you're getting someone elses posts mixed up with mine. You seem to be trying to catch me out on something I"m not trying to say...

EXTRA: holy crap... I typed this ages ago and went off to do something. oops.

[Spoon Poetic]

So, I just learned in sociology that there are 5 races (which are actually sociological constructions, nothing to do with biology): White, Black, Latino, Native American, and Asian. Therefore Indians are Asian, but I don't know what Egyptians are. I find this to be rather stupid.

This post has been edited by Spoon Poetic: 18 October 2007 - 08:05 PM

[civilian_number_two]

Gravity is a fact. The 'theory of gravity' was originally the proposition that gravity existed before it was officially proven.

No it wasn't. That's not how the word "theory" is used scientifically. Again, "Number theory" was never used to postulate that their may be numbers. "Theory" denotes a discipline, a body of knowledge. BUT! Many words have more than one meaning. Those letters in that order may also be used to mean "hypothesis," but you'll never find a science text that mixes the two up. For instance, as much as religious types would like it otherwise, there is no "Hypothesis of Evolution."

Why would I correct somone for describing a white person as a white person? I'm starting to think you're getting someone elses posts mixed up with mine. You seem to be trying to catch me out on something I"m not trying to say...

Well, I only asked because you don't like racial groupings to be based on Geography. Yet you allow "Caucasian," which was created when it was hypothesised that white people evolved in the Caucasus, a geographic region. "Caucasian" is not some obscure scientific term, you see, yet you seem willing to allow it and have used it yourself, while at the same time you object to using "Asian" to denote anything other than continental nationality. In my example, anyway, you'd be talking about people not living remotely near the Caucasus whoe ascestry was also not Russian, but German. Yet you'd let us call them "Caucasian," while disagreeing with the idea that an American man, whose father and family line as far back as he could tell was from Nigeria, could call himself "African-American." According to you, he's just "American," and if he likes, "Black."

So naturally I put it to you that you don't have a consistent set of rules, but rather a series of knee-jerk over-reactions.

Spoon: I don't know what sociology you're learning, but generally Indians are grouped with Aryans, a group that includes Caucasians as well as the poeple of the Middle East. And you're right, those categories don't seem to have any place for Middel-Easterners.

[Spoon Poetic]

Well, according to my Soc book and teacher, those are THE 5 races.

Of course, my Soc teacher also said that Hindus worship cows, and that the Middle East is made up of countries that support terrorism.

However, I agree with the idea that "race" is just a sociological construct.

[Cobnat]

General Question: What are Americans?

[civilian_number_two]

However, I agree with the idea that "race" is just a sociological construct.

Well, let's not throw the baby out with the bath water. If two Black people have a baby and there are exclusively Black people in both family histories, I don't think it's a sociological construct that will determine that the baby will have sickle cells. Oh, and Black skin.

I don't know why PC Liberalism and fear of Racism always have to figure into discussions of race. "Sociological construct" my ass. You'd never hear words like that at a horse breeder's. We're just animals, and we have breeds. We call our breeds "races." And just like the other animals, our breeds fall into different sorts of categories, large and small.

And maybe Egyptians weren't African.

[Spoon Poetic]

See, I see "race" and "ethnicity" as different. Race isn't biological; I mean, to call people that are really dark and from the Caribbean the same race as really dark people from Africa or really dark people from the Middle East all the same race ("black") makes no sense. Especially if you start in with this "only five races" thing; then you're grouping everyone with medium coloured skin that's not a Native American or from Central/South America "Asian," and groups everyone that's not black and lives in the West under the equator as "Latino," and while I know you personally, Civ2, don't agree with that, apparently that's a big sociological thing, and tons of people DO do that. I hate using Wikipedia as a source but even it says "The most widely used human racial categories are based on visible traits (especially skin color, facial features and hair texture), and self-identification."

I feel like "Asian" should be described for people that are from the continent of Asia, but only when needing to reference that they are from Asia, and the adjective should be available to everyone for that. However, that's not what they should be identified as, unless that's what they want. Most of my several Indian friends, they call themselves Indian, everyone calls them Indian for the most part; but they get really upset when someone tries to say "oh you're not Asian, you're Indian." Because they are both. Also, the handful of Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese friends I have, they would sometimes resent the fact that all they ever were was "Asian," and not "Chinese," "Japanese," or whatever, which is what they are and are very different from one another.

Something else from Wikipedia, because I'm too lame to follow their references and pick everything out myself when it's already been done:

Since 1932, some college textbooks introducing physical anthropology have increasingly come to reject race as a valid concept: from 1932 to 1976, only seven out of thirty-two rejected race; from 1975 to 1984, thirteen out of thirty-three rejected race; from 1985 to 1993, thirteen out of nineteen rejected race. According to one academic journal entry, where 78 percent of the articles in the 1931 Journal of Physical Anthropology employed these or nearly synonymous terms reflecting a bio-race paradigm, only 36 percent did so in 1965, and just 28 percent did in 1996.[86] The American Anthropological Association, drawing on biological research, currently holds that "The concept of race is a social and cultural construction. . . . Race simply cannot be tested or proven scientifically," and that, "It is clear that human populations are not unambiguous, clearly demarcated, biologically distinct groups. The concept of 'race' has no validity . . . in the human species".[7]

The way we divide people according to "race" is not biologically sound.

Here's a pretty good article (again, Wikipedia; I know, I should shoot myself) that discusses it pretty well: http://en.wikipedia....tations_of_race

And Cobnat, Americans are lots of stuff. We have lots of "races" in America, and I've never heard anyone try to group all of America as one race. That'd be pretty dumb.

[civilian_number_two]

I've read a bunch of stuff like that as well, Spoon. I hate to think it's all just PC Liberalism, but that's how i roll, I guess. I don't see how "The concept of 'race' has no validity ... in the human species." So far, with 100% accuracy, all of my illegitimate children have been white. We may not have the right word for it, which is what the cited article says, we can't leap from there to saying that it doesn't exist.

We didn't INVENT racial differences.

[Spoon Poetic]

The thing is, there's still so many differences within each "race" that I fail to see how it is an accurate categorization. Within "white" you have your British vs. your Slavs or Russians; within "black" you have your Bahamians vs. your Ethiopians... I can't see how race is more than anything other than a sociological construct that groups people together by whatever people want to at that particular time (such as someone as pale as me being called "black" a hundred years ago in the U.S. just because I had a great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandparent that was black). I know it exists; it exists because people made it exist. I just think there's not really any concrete structure, biological, cultural, or otherwise, that defines "race."

A particularly ridiculous example of how race conforms to whatever we the people want it to (and therefore, to me, shouldn't be taken seriously or as a validity) is how for some reason, PC-ness has brought everyone to call all black people "African American." For people that aren't even American! Or for people whose ancestors were not from Africa, but from the Middle East, the Moors in Spain, the Caribbean, etc. A black person in Australia is not an "African American." An American with ancestry from the D.R. or Jamaica is not an "African American." Maybe this phenomenon is only prevalent in the U.S. but for some reason, here it's PC to call those people "African American" because "that's their race," but it's not PC to call them "black" because that's racist.

[civilian_number_two]

Again your issue is the words used, not the subject itself. Racial differences exist. If you are 1/8 black likely you have the sickle cell. Good for you when Malaria strikes.

I don't know about the "African American" thing; here in Canada we saw "Black" or, if we know someone, "Kenyan" or "Jamaican" or whatever.

And yes, German is different from Swedish. This is due to geographical separation and separate development. Just like the above examples with black people, there is more than one variety of "white" person. You can predict the traits a person might have before he or she is born, based on knowing the anscestry of the parents. So yeah, race is not just something sociologists invented so they could apply qualifiers to it and be all racist and shit (eg white people are better at such-and-such).

By the way, loads of folks in the Caribbean have African acncestry, as did the Moors in Spain. So while I agree that should have different or at least more specific words to describe them, "African" might be a broader category that includes them and is at that level accurate. Just like "Caucasian" is applied to folks whose traits developed in isolation far from the Caucasus (eg those Swedes again).

[Spoon Poetic]

By that token (your last paragraph), according to science, we're all African Americans/Australians/whatever, since humanity originated there... I mean, I realize yes, they originated in Africa, but it goes back so far without Africa being in the picture that these people do not associate themselves with Africa in any way. They don't trace themselves to Africa, they don't identify with Africa or Africans. So to call them "African American" can be insulting. In fact, lots of blacks that did originate from Africa but have been in America for generations find it insulting to be called "African Americans," like they're not full Americans or something. Not that that's what anyone means by it, but I've heard many black people express the wish that people would just call them Americans, without adding that extra qualifier.

My issue isn't entirely with the words. It's that the categorization by race is completely unnecessary, as well as being very fickle. People can decide race is what they want it to be (like my previous example of the "one drop" idea). People are so much more than just their "race," and I think that the adjectives we use to describe them should reflect that, rather than being grouped into these "races" that compile so many differences. If you tell someone about an Asian man, they don't know if that guy's Japanese, Chinese, Mongolian, Taiwanese, Korean, Vietnamese, etc. Why can't they be described by one of those words? If one didn't know the man's ethnicity, then I would find "Asian" to be acceptable when talking about what continent he was from, but to lump all these people together?

Genetically speaking, nothing differentiates one race from another. All humans share the same set of genes. There is no African gene, no Caucasian gene, no Asian gene.... Scientists calculate that there is an average genetic variation of 5 percent between racial groups. But that leaves a whopping 95 percent of variation that occurs within racial groups....Even the most obvious distinguishing factor -- skin color -- can vary enormously within a race,...And the dark skin of a sub-Saharan African is not unlike the dark skin of a Caucasoid in India...That's why most scientists say race is a social construct, not a biological one. In other words, social rules determine what races are and what they mean.

From a good article on "race" and how "racial genes" could affect disease susceptibility: http://www.post-gaze...hgene0507p3.asp

This post has been edited by Spoon Poetic: 19 October 2007 - 06:23 PM

[civilian_number_two]

Gee, Spoon, people are "so much more" than a lot of things. Should I worry about saying "My friend John is a Teamster?" I mean, he does a lot more than drive a truck!

I don't see anything wrong with using the word "Caucasian" to describe white people, and I have no relatives from Russia. The notion of Race isn't arbitrary, and people can't be whatever they want. As for your digression about how we're all African, well, you must not have read my whole paragraph about how I agree we could use more words to describe racial backgrounds, but how the failing of words for the categories doesn't eliminate the categories themselves.

It sounds like you're trying to get either to "one world, one race" or to "there are so many permutations that everyone is unique." I disagree with both notions, and don't think it's wrong to refer to a person in terms of race, nationality, height, weight, gender, job description, or status with respect to being alive or dead. To be most descriptive I wuold use all such terms, eg "That short fat Asian-American Teamster dude is dead."

And maybe Classical Egyptians were Middle Eastern, and not African.