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Geography Failure part 1485993830928

#106 User is offline   barend Icon

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Posted 26 October 2007 - 09:20 AM

QUOTE (Jordan @ Oct 26 2007, 02:28 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
Barend thinks Asian is not a race describing term even though FOB chinese, korean, and Japanese people in Vancouver all believe they are truely Asian, and sometime talk about their common ancestory.


They are Asian. But not the only ones. Chinese, Koren, and Japanese are sub-categories of the category 'Asian'.

QUOTE (Jordan @ Oct 26 2007, 02:28 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
FOB=fresh off the boat, first generation, no white washing, no westernizing.


Cool. So Cubans too?

QUOTE (Jordan @ Oct 26 2007, 02:28 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
Then Civillian called you out on your use of caucasian, which you think is ok, but Asian isn't. You basically broke your own guide lines.


Yep. I was wrong about 'Caucasian'. I'd only ever heard it used to describe white people, but upon looking it up it turns out the word essentially means 'not black'. Which really just makes it another example of my point.

QUOTE (Jordan @ Oct 26 2007, 02:28 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
and your orginal comment which is what civllian began commenting on was
You ignore the fact that the above does not hold true to billions and simply say the world is stupid and just because it's popular doesn't make it right.


Popular misuse is still misuse, yes.

QUOTE (Jordan @ Oct 26 2007, 02:28 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
With word usage, majority actually DOES rule.


Well, it's the US who are doing it, and as they make up less than 2% of the worlds population, they don't have the majority. Unless like with so many things they are assuming authority of something that is not theirs to claim. Especially on a language belong to the country they fought a war to disown.

QUOTE (Jordan @ Oct 26 2007, 02:28 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
Go try convince gays they're not actually gays, but homosexuals. Because the term gay meant something else at one point. God forbid it have more than one meaning, like Asian and Asia.


Glad you brought this up. Gay is a colloquialism. It is not quite the same thing. What would make it the same thing is if Homosexuals instead adopted the word Homosapiens.

Further more, I love the 'gay AND lesbian' alliance. Gay is a colloquialism for homosexual. homosexual covers females therefore so does 'gay'. So that's a fun little redundancy that annoys me too.


QUOTE (civilian_number_two @ Oct 26 2007, 02:41 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
Barend, you used evolution as an example of the word theory meaning hypothesis. All tittyfucking aside, that's what you said. And if I want to say you're using the exact same argument that the "Creation Scientists" use, a simple dictionary definition one with no science behind it at all, to doubt the science of evolution, well ... you are.


So the dictionary says:
Theory:
1. a coherent group of general propositions used as principles of explanation for a class of phenomena: Einstein's theory of relativity.
2. a proposed explanation whose status is still conjectural, in contrast to well-established propositions that are regarded as reporting matters of actual fact.
3. Mathematics. a body of principles, theorems, or the like, belonging to one subject: number theory.
4. the branch of a science or art that deals with its principles or methods, as distinguished from its practice: music theory.
5. a particular conception or view of something to be done or of the method of doing it; a system of rules or principles.
6. contemplation or speculation.
7. guess or conjecture.


I used the dictionary definition of the word 'Theory' to illustrate that some theories are accepted as fact despite the incomplete nature of the total body of work to date. Evolution seemed to be a good example as the number of millions of years between events are technically unconfirmed projection and may vary from actual evolutionary stages.

However you saw this as attack on evolution. Because you have this "you're either for us or against us" attitude about Evolution and think the Theory of Evolution is closed for discussion. So everyone either believes in evolution exactly the way you do or they don't believe in it at all. Therefore if I say, hmmm maybe this period in our proposed history took a million years less, and maybe we skipped this step or maybe there are other phases we are overlooking I must immediately be against the whole thing in general.

That's the most closed minded line of thinking I've ever seen. It's people like you that turn Evolution into a religion in itself by closing off all intelligent avenues of curiosity. Better tell all the scientist to pack it in and stop researching because apparently we know it all now, huh? Book closes.

Give me a break. I've known people who researched evolution related science for a living who welcomed my discussion on the matter. But there are so many people out there who just immediately call you an evangelist if you question one minor detail.

QUOTE (civilian_number_two @ Oct 26 2007, 02:41 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
Many words have more than one meaning. Theory is one of them, and "Asian" is another. Etc. Haven't we been through this? Didn't you say those things? Really? Are we just going to forget it all? Or is this another of those "I said this but meant that" things?


No, 'Asian' only has one meaning.

Asian:
1. of, belonging to, or characteristic of Asia or its inhabitants.
2. a native of Asia.


QUOTE (civilian_number_two @ Oct 26 2007, 02:41 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
I'm fine with that.

So ... ALL people from Africa are "African." "Black" people shall, going forward, be called "Afrocaribalesinese." That will exclude Egyptians, I hope. And the original argument, that some of the Afrocaribalesinese will claim that Classical Egyptians were in fact Afrocaribalesinese and not say Middle Eastern (insert other silly name here) or anything like that, will persist.

For some others, there will be no Afrocaribalesinese, because race is a social invention and not describable by biology (except for the Chinese and the Japanese). So in that case, the Classical Egyptians were just people like Germans or Russians, though possibly with some different physical traits, and Afrocaribalesinese never existed and never will.


ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooookay...............


Race is a social invention?

More than anything it's a long term result of segregated breeding and inbreeding. So the whole thing's a bit iffy to begin with. But 'Asian' and 'African' are geographical references. They're collections of countries. You can't use 'Asian' to describe a more specific group within the confines of 'Asian' any more than you should desire to use 'human' as a specific grouping for a subculture.

I mean you might go to a school where 40% of the kids there are punks. But you wouldn't use the school's name as a another word for punk, especially not to replace the word.

You want a word to describe East Asians then construct one. But don't use 'Asian' it's the name of an extended group into which they fit. Hey try using 'East Asian'. If you were brain washed into saying "African American" surely you can handle that.
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#107 User is offline   Slade Icon

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Posted 26 October 2007 - 11:00 AM

I think Civ is trying to stop people using the reasoning that people need to alter descriptions of people to phrases such as "African American" to prevent offense. That so-called "PC liberalism." And he was saying that Spoon was saying that sociologists invented race, when I read her posts to mean she said that race was/is a concept based upon broad defining physical characteristics invented by people in general, and sociologists are agreeing on this or whatever.

Civ: I wasn't entirely sure what was going on about the ethnicity/nationality thing. My bad. And I don't think Barend was trying to use "it's only a theory" to mean "it's only a hypothesis (with not enough actual evidence to back it up so I can dismiss it outright and stop thinking about it)" like some Christians do, but that we don't have all of the facts about the process, so while evolution is most likely correct as a concept, the specifics aren't all that clear yet. He's never seemed like the type of person to just say "God did it." Why this was originally brought up, I can't remember anymore.

Jordan: I don't recall freaking out. It's been a long, long while since I've freaked out. If anything, I might get angry on these boards and yell at somebody, but I wouldn't call that freaking out, either.
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#108 User is offline   Spoon Poetic Icon

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Posted 26 October 2007 - 12:06 PM

I never said that race doesn't exist, nor did I ever say "sociologists created race." That right there proves you haven't really read my posts. I said SOCIETY has. "Sociological construct" does not mean "Sociologists made it up," it means society created it. Society. If you don't know what that means, look it up, but it certainly doesn't mean people who study society, which is what a sociologist is. The only thing sociologists did was recognize that it was society that created the idea of "race." Also, I said that friggin' anthropologists agree with those sociologists (and me), and those guys, yeah, they study the history and biology of human beings themselves. Maybe that term needs a good dictionary lookup, too. Most biologists agree, and geneticists - people that know what they're talking about when they're looking at human genetics. "Only 5% of genetic differences occur between races, with 95% occurring within the same race," remember that? Of course not. You never addressed it at all, though I posted it like 3 times hoping you would. You probably read that as "Race doesn't exist because Big Bird says so" or some other shit that has nothing to do with anything I've intelligently stated.

And I never said biology has nothing to do with it. If that had been my argument, I would have never started talking about some biological characteristics. I said race is not a biologically sound categorization. As in, sticking people in these groups based on "race" is not biologically accurate. Grouping birds into species in the way that that has been done; that's biologically accurate. Deciding that people belong to the race groups that most of Western society has put them into is inaccurate, especially since a lot of times these races group people from entirely different backgrounds together.

Slade got it right when he read my posts to mean that "race was/is a concept based upon broad defining physical characteristics invented by people in general." If you had read my post where I suggested looking at how Brazil defines race, that would have been a good example. Completely different than most of Western society. And Barend's examples of how North America is the minority on what terms to call which racial groups is another example of how it's society that shapes the idea of race, instead of biology.

Therefore, I'm back to Barend's argument on how the word "Asian" should not be limited to describe only those from Eastern Asia, and "African" to describe only those who may have originated in Africa a long time ago and have really dark skin. These terms being limited to names of racial groups (when the race categorization isn't biologically sound in the first place) is stupid. It's a different argument but it's related.

But I doubt it matters what I say, because undoubtedly, this post, just like all of my others, is going to be completely twisted so that you can say I said something completely different than what I did say, so you can go about thinking how stupid I am and how smart you are.
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#109 User is offline   azerty Icon

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Posted 26 October 2007 - 12:19 PM

I'll have a go at refuting Spoon Poetic's arguments. Fist a few direct quotes;

"Black" is not a race. "American" isn't even really a race.

White people that were born in, lived in, raised in, have background in, whatever in Africa are Africans.

I didn't say that what continent you are on determines your race. Never did I equate the words "race" and "continent."

The Japanese culture is very different from the Vietnamese, so why should I lump them together as "Asian" when talking about culture/heritage?

I never, ever said that "there are exactly five races, and that they are rigidly defined by ancient Continental boundaries.

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.

How is race biological? How can race be biological, when the "Hispanic" race is really a mix of the "Native American" race and the "White" European race?

I admit there are a handful of differences between races. Skin colour, eye shape, hair texture, and scant few disease susceptibilities.

Biology can predict the physical characteristics of a child between two parents, yes, but it doesn't depend on race. A child's skin colour will generally be a blend of both parents' skin colours, kinda like paint. I don't see black + black = black so much as I see colour + colour = blend of colours. The formula works whether the parents are of the same race or different ones. Same with height. Tall + tall generally equals tall Short + tall generally equals medium height.

So my belief is that having two black parents only assures that the child will be "black" because we as a society have labeled people with darker skin than Europeans that aren't originally from somewhere in the Asian continent (this includes Native Americans), as being in the "black" race.

Race is primarily made up of physical characteristics.

How many times have I said I know that race exists? I said race exists. I just also said that it exists because society has created it. Not because biology has created it.

* * * *

So, Black is not a race, American is not a race, what continent you are from doesn't determine it, nor does culture determine it, nor does biology.

However, there are precisely 5 races (which you just learned in sociology), and though biology can predict the physical characteristics of a child between two parents, biology also has nothing to do with it, even though "Race is primarily made up of physical characteristics. It exists because society has created it.

What????




Barend's argument of
Files: Indian, Chinese, Japanese, etc.
Subdirectory: Asian
Directory: Human

makes good sense, except for Civilian Number Two's point that the continental divisions are simultaneously arbitrary and vague. Sure you can define Australia fairly easily (I guess we include Tasmania) but where does New Zealand fit in. Are Maoris the same as Aborigines? Africa is even more difficult. For example do you include Madagascar in Africa? How about Sicily, which is closer to the main African continent than Madagascar. Where do the Seychelles fit in? What about the Canaries? I'll also bet that you've never heard of Ceuta - would that be Europe or Africa? And where exactly is the Northeast border of Africa? Somewhere between the Nile and the Sinai I guess.

The border between Europe and Asia is impossible to define. Only the British seem to have managed that one - The wogs start in Calais.

So we can Use Barend's method and say

Humans-Africans-Sub Saharan Africans- Rwandans- Hutus- Impuzamugambi which is semi accurate but pointless since the Hutus live in Burundi as well and might prefer to be associated with the Interahamwe rather than the Impuzamugambi. How far down the chain could the average haole tell the differnce? Not too far I bet.

Are Jewish people a race?

Is Seppo a classification?

Possibly only Barend is interested in Motor Racing, but what race is Hamilton? If you are Spanish, there is only one answer. For pure racism check out this video which they keep broadcasting in Spain on regular TV. Of course you have to be able to speak Spanner to understand it, But El Negro No Puede means The Black Can't Do It. and they think it's funnier than hell over here. They don't care that Alonso lost, as long as Hamilton didn't win.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=DzpgubL50n8

As for the point of this thread (Black king Tut), for sure the skin color is too white to be believable. Molefi Asante is right when he says that the new bust "looks more like Boy George than the boy king." King Tut reigned from 1361 - 1352 BC. The Romans and Greeks did not get to Egypt until 332 BC. The Semitic People came on the scene 1750 - 1675 BC. When the people who made the bust had to choose a color, they went for the white look. There can be only one reason why.
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#110 User is offline   Spoon Poetic Icon

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Posted 26 October 2007 - 01:06 PM

When you pull a shit ton of out of context quotes, you can make anyone say anything. I can make W. Bush sound smart if I pull a bunch of quotes out of context and list them together.

When I said someone from Africa was African, I was talking about they should be able to use the word to describe themselves since they were from the continent - nothing to do with race.

The quote where I said I never equated the words "race" with "continent" was even part of a different argument. In fact, half of the quotes you took were. We were discussing the usage of certain continental words (African and Asian, for example) for some reason not being used to describe half of the people that live in or originated from that country (like "Asian" can only mean East Asian). Civ or somebody said that that must mean I think that there are 5 races (because of the main 5 continents, I guess) and they are rigidly determined by geographical continental lines, meaning that anyone living in America are the American race, etc. Which is completely not what I meant. You took my quotes out of context and made it sound like I meant something I did not.

We also had a different discussion talking about how I don't agree with the idea of lumping people together in the way that a lot of people do (calling both Chinese and Japanese the same thing when they're very different, for instance). That doesn't mean I think it doesn't happen, doesn't exist, etc. Just that I think it's not very effective and can be misleading when one is trying to refer to a specific people using a much more generic term. Hence my quote about lumping the Japanese and Chinese together as Asian when referring to culture and heritage.

I also said that the idea of "only 5 races having nothing to do with biology" was stupid. I later said I do agree with the idea of race being a sociological construction, but just because my stupid sociology teacher (who I mentioned was stupid and said such fallacies as Hindus worship cows, etc.) said that other stuff does not mean I agree with it. Mostly I was just remarking on how my sociology class defined race, because I found it amusing and it pertained to this discussion. I was not using it as my argument. Again with the quote out of context.

I said that race is a sociological construct, and it is generally based on geography and physical characteristics, which are biological, yes - but trying to say that "race" is completely biological is false. It is not a biologically sound categorization, and many branches of science agree. How many times do I have to say that? However, I do agree that it has a slight biological basis, such as dark skin, etc., just because people grouped people together that way. The fact that the concept of race varies from society to society backs up my argument, and a bunch of other things I already posted that no one wants to address because I guess they just can't come up with refuting evidence or something.

"Race" is an idea, a concept, a categorization, that is much different than things such as nationality, ethnicity, culture, and genetic makeup.

Try not to take quotes out of context and stick them all together to make an argument. That's an underhanded tactic and I think we can all rise above that.

(And obviously the Jewish people are not a race. That's a religion, which can span every race/people/whatever.)
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#111 User is offline   civilian_number_two Icon

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Posted 26 October 2007 - 03:23 PM

Ok Spoon, society created race, not sociologists. And it's wrong to say "Japanese" and "Chinese" asre both "Asian," but it's ok to talk about physical similarities in common to all Chinese people and common to all Japanese people when you say something like
QUOTE
"Chinese people look different from Japanese people." Also, you can say that "Biology" has nothing to do with race, because "Hispanics" are a "mix" of the "Native American" race and the "White" European race."

The natural question is, how did this "mixing" occur, if not biologically? I still fail to see how human societies created the massive genetic differences that appear around the world. You know, discovering and naming someting is different from inventing it. Even if we're completely wrong about the naming conventions and the classification criteria, that's not to say that something doesn't exist that could be named and classified.

Barend:
QUOTE
So the dictionary says:
Theory:
1. a coherent group of general propositions used as principles of explanation for a class of phenomena: Einstein's theory of relativity.

Exactly. For a slightly more biased, but entirely typical scientific definition of the word, try wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory

Slade: I was reacting to this of Barend's:
QUOTE
Theory = formulated belief based on artifacts and random elements of circumstancial evidence. 'Theory' is imagination applied to facts to fill gaps.

...in a nutshell, it's an educated guess but still subject to being completely and utterly wrong in every respect.

See, it's the "imagination applied to facts" (read: theory is the part of the discipline that is apart from the facts. hence facts plus theory equals science, not facts plus supposition are part of theory) and "still subject to being wrong completely and utterly wrong in every respect" that irks me and wins the approval of the religious right. It's taking a single word, as used by the scientists themselves, and without any independent science, using that word to belittle the entire discipline. And as any scientist will tell you, it's a misapplication of the word as it is used by science. Now why did I go further in connecting him to the religious naysayers? Why, because he brought up carbon dating, which isn't a part of evolutionary theory. You see, since it's only good to about 60000 years, it's useless in determining the ages of primate fossils, which are the ones that bother the creationists so much. However it's apparently quite useful in convincing religious folks not to worry about evolution. After all, carbon dating is inaccurate and evolution is only a theory. So, it's possible that it is "completely and utterly wrong in every respect." So when guys go tossing that stuff around, the "theory" attack as well as the carbon dating thing, it doesn't sound, as you suggest, like they're saying "evolution is fact, but the details need sorting." It sounds like they're saying "science has no foothold here and may be completely and utterly wrong." He can backpedal all he likes, but he went that way in that post. Maybe that's not what he really believes, but he used it, and I retorted. Capish?
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Posted 26 October 2007 - 03:43 PM

QUOTE (Spoon Poetic @ Oct 26 2007, 01:06 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
(And obviously the Jewish people are not a race. That's a religion, which can span every race/people/whatever.)

You aren't aware I take it that for centuries the Jewish people intermarried and produced an identifiable set of physical characteristics. So identifiable in fact that they were used by the Nazi party to create racists propaganda as well as to identify Jews who pretended to be Christian. You've probably never seen a propaganda picture caricaturing Jewish facal features, especially a prominent nose. Maybe too you've never heard the term "antisemitism," which is used to descibe racial hostility and derived from the idea that the Jews are a Semitic race and not an Aryan one. I would caution you against reading about it; it's harrowing stuff.

Anyway, "Jews" are a race, ethnicity, breed, whatever you want to call it, and "Judaism" is the religion that the majority of them share. You can convert to Judaism, but of course you can't just become a Jew. "Jewish" is an ambiguous adjective used to describe either the people of the race.
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#113 User is offline   Slade Icon

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Posted 26 October 2007 - 04:16 PM

Azerty: You failed most excellently there. That was a very impressive way to make an ass of yourself by taking every single one of Spoon's quotations completely out of context. It's unhelpful and wastes everyone's time, as well as insults everyone's intelligence, and is a pretty rotten insult to the person who you falsified quotations from. If you pull such a blatent stunt like that again using anybody's posts, I'm just going to have to nuke your post.

Civ: Ah. I can't defend Barend backpedaling (which I agree with you that he did, or at least failed to properly express himself the first few times). I forgot that he did the anti-evolution "It's only a theory!" bit near the beginning there. If it's a theory in the scientific aspect, there may be parts missing, but the gaps are filled in using evidence and logical estimations. And you've already said that.

However, Spoon never said that race doesn't exist, nor that the descriptors behind its creation weren't biological, just that it's not accurate because of the diversity even between various "races". For her, societies created the concept of race to encompass said biological features, but these concepts are often vague and inaccurate when applied to specific people. I don't think she or I can make that any clearer.
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Posted 26 October 2007 - 06:10 PM

I agree that you can't make your interpretation any clearer, but I don't agree that your point is correct (more on that below). I also don't think that's really what Spoon was getting at in the first place. She did after all ask how biology could have anything to do with race, before saying that Japs looked different from Chinese. I mean, really, she denies biology altogether and insists it's just society grouping people based on we claim are commonalities. So I don't think she's really defending the existence of real physical differences across populations. I think she's saying words to the effect of small differences within populations means you can't make genereal predictions (more on that below).

She also said Hispanic couldn't be a race because it was a mix of two other races. She's saying that the word ought to be avoided since it isn't descriptive of any real thing, and then she's uising to describe real things. She even used it in her decription of the Jewish people, when she said they weren't a race, but a religion. How can she use the word and say it has no value at the same time? I know exactly what she means when she says it, and so do you, so hells yeah it has value.

Anyway, I promised more: as for averages and all that: I don't think anyone would say that all Chinese people look alike. But the variance within a group meets standards of deviation. Chinese may be confused with Japanese, but seldom with Nordic. So while Chinese and Japanese can be said to be of different races, they belong to a common group that does not include Swedes. Some tall Japs don't invalidate the idea of race. Keep in mind that we're talking about breeds, not species. I am not suggestuing that Japs are as dissimilar from Swedes as Chimpanzees to Monkeys. The two can intermarry, which makes them the same species. But they are of different breeds. Heck, I don't know what the fuss is about. We can do it with dogs; it's the same principle applied to people.

Aside: Spoon asked whether an albino black man would be called "black." Albinism is a genetic disorder. You might as well ask whether retards are people. Yes, he's a black man (though some would say African) with a melanin deficiency. If long arms were a descriptor for Swedes, would you say a man was not Swedish if he'd been a victim of Thalidomide? Odds are given the chance the Swede woudl produce a long-armed baby, and the black albino would produce a black child, not a white one. I know it was a bit of a straw man argument to begin with, but I thought I should address it all the same.
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#115 User is offline   azerty Icon

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Posted 26 October 2007 - 06:48 PM

I have to disagree Slade old boy.

Not only are the quotes EXACTLY Spoon Poetic's, they are quoted in exactly the same order in which they were delivered in the arguments of this thread. Each quote is AT LEAST one complete sentence, and some contain multiple sentences. Naturally I assumed that each of these sentences comprised a logical thought that you were attempting to express.

As for being out of context, far from it: they form the key sentence in each of the paragraphs they were taken from. Of the 113 posts submitted to this thread, 24 are Spoon's. Read them in chronological order if you wish, as they were originally written.. it's easy enough to do.

I quoted the theme of 13 posts. Here are the 10 points I missed.

I skipped the

"I do know about the skin lightening thing and I think it's very sad" and "So I don't get why it matters or ever mattered except that people are stupid and mean" section.

and the "I just think it's stupid that people think that people born in a continent don't get to call themselves as *thatcontinent*ans"

I also skipped "The thing is, there's still so many differences within each "race" that I fail to see how it is an accurate categorization."

You also mentioned that "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,"

You think we should " just go with their nationality and be done with it"

of course you later decided that "I probably should have said "ethnicity," not "nationality."

except "Now don't twist that and say I'd say a black man looked like he was from somewhere in Africa. I'd call him black, as that's a descriptor, unless I already knew he had problems with that word describing him.)"

your excuse was that you "explained I accidentally got mixed up and put in the wrong word, and also explicitly said how I would use skin colour, facial features, etc."

Yes, as you point out "there are a handful of differences between races. Skin colour, eye shape, hair texture, and scant few disease susceptibilities."

I thought I was doing Spoon Poetic a favour actually by ignoring these remarks.

So what exactly is the core position of Spoon's argument?

(I also ignored the post in which Spoon argues with Mireuax about religion)
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#116 User is offline   Spoon Poetic Icon

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Posted 26 October 2007 - 09:44 PM

People from other races can be Jewish, civ. There are numerous black and Arab Jews. Maybe you could claim Hebrew as a race. "Jewish" refers to the religion. Like there's no Muslim race.

I brought up the albino man because race names are often created by physical characteristics, one of the more obvious being "black." I've actually never heard anyone refer to an albino as "black" or "African American," actually. People tend to avoid calling albinos by any race, actually, I think due in part to confusion as to what race they belong to.

Also Slade is right on what I'm trying to get at, apparently he's just better at summing myself up. What I was really trying to ask is how race is so biological - I realize and have stated that the sociologically constructed racial boundaries are partially based on physical characteristics as well as geography, and I know that it exists and has a place and blah blah blah. My argument is that it is not a biologically sound method of categorization (such as species, etc), and that genetics do not prove race. And I'm really tiring of repeating myself, but I'm glad the discussion has become more mature. And I'm just going to mostly ignore Azerty because if I didn't I'd just have to repeat my entire last post to him and make my same arguments over a fiftieth time, because he's still taking things out of context and misconstruing what I said and meant, and acting like my whole argument is bad because I made one wording mistake in using the word "nationality" instead of "ethnicity" (even in a completely different argument about how I don't like using race descriptors). (civ's allowed to make wording mistakes and admit them and I'm not? WTF?)
I am writing about Jm in my signature because apparently it's an effective method of ignoring him.
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#117 User is offline   Slade Icon

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Posted 26 October 2007 - 10:02 PM

Azerty: I did read the posts, and you took much of what you said (bordering on all of it) out of context. Saying you didn't doesn't change the fact that you did. Complete sentences doesn't mean things aren't taken out of context. Observe:

QUOTE (Slade)
I sure do love to eat babies! No, not really.


QUOTE (Azerty)
Ah ha! Slade, you love to eat babies. Try to deny it!
QUOTE (Slade)
I sure do love to eat babies!

See? You like to eat babies!


It just doesn't work, Sport.

Civ: I don't mean to say I agree with what Spoon is saying, though I don't mean to say I disagree, either. Language is tricky business. I agree that some of what we use to describe people is inaccurate, and I see her point about race being inaccurate at times. I also think that it's definitely a concept humans created to represent generalized traits that people from various geographical origins tend to express. But that can be said for many, many words, and I don't mean to say that it can't be used effectively, or has no basis in anything, or what have you. I don't think she meant to imply that the word had no value, either. It's just vague. I'd agree that it's vague, but at the same time, I know, like surely Spoon does , that whether we like it or not, those racial descriptors mean something. She doesn't like them because they aren't accurate for her.

At this point, I have no idea if any of us are understanding what any of the others are trying to say, and if we understand, perhaps we are all saying things we don't mean to say, or something. I dunno. I just know that Azerty took Spoon's quotations out of their context and then said he didn't, instead of trying to counter what she was saying. tongue.gif
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#118 User is offline   barend Icon

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Posted 26 October 2007 - 10:17 PM

don't have much time to post right now... just popping in to say I did no back pedalling.

being completely and utterly wrong in every respect is still the worse case scenario that science can face on any issue. I wasn't talking strictly about evolution, I was talking about anything we haven't watch happened ourselves from day one. It was a harsh extreem, but a healthy mind faces no possibility with complete conviction until all facts are conected 100%.

Take nothing for granted.

We're only human. And we don't know everything.


...just yet.


and the second you think you do, you're as good as wrong.

This post has been edited by barend: 26 October 2007 - 10:18 PM

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#119 User is offline   civilian_number_two Icon

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Posted 26 October 2007 - 10:41 PM

Sorry Spoon, I fucked up the last sentence of my post about Jews. It read
QUOTE
""Jewish" is an ambiguous adjective used to describe either the people of the race."
That's a nonsense sentence, and it should have read
QUOTE
""Jewish" is an ambiguous adjective used to describe either the people or the religion."
Which it is. You want "Hebrew" to describe the race, then fine, but in asking that you're acknowledging a race, right? The fact is, those Nazis used caricatures for comparison when trying to determine whether a person was "passing." Their stated purpose wasn't to round up adherents to the religion, but members of the race. Jews who tried to hide by converting to Christianity were rounded up as well. It was racism at play, not religious intolerance. But don't take my word for it. Go to Israel and tell the Jews there that because some black people and Arabs have converted to Judaism, they have no racial identity. And send me a postcard from jail. =)

Agreed that there is no Muslim "race." But you might have been thinking of "Arabs," who are a Middle Eastern race and who are about 80% Muslim. But yeah, Islam is more of a converting religion, like Christianity. They were never as racially xenophobic as the Jews/Hebrews/Israelites were. Also they're a lot younger than Judaism, so inbreeding wouldn't have been as effective even if they'd tried it. Unless of course they decided only to admit Arabs in the first place.

Sorry you've suffered brain-fart intolerance. Maybe folks haven't noticed your apology for using the wrong word. I sure haven't, but then I'm half-drunk at all times.

Anyway,
QUOTE
People from other races can be Jewish, civ. There are numerous black and Arab Jews.

So you agree that blacks and Arabs are races, and you're happy to use those words to describe sets of people, and you don't seem uncomfortable with the whole "society created it" issue. Could you just then simply, in one little sentence, explain what you mean when you say that we shouldn't use the word "race" to describes sets of statistical variations in genetic populations? I mean, you use it, we all use it, etc, and it really does seem to describe a real world phenomenon. Where's the foul (and please don't mention Tiger Woods again, because with all the race words you use to descibe him, he figures more as an example than the counterexample you want him to be)?
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#120 User is offline   Jordan Icon

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Posted 26 October 2007 - 10:58 PM

God I hate it when people try tell me 'Jew' is a religion. Christ was an ethnic Jew. He was made up of jewish blood and bones. Jew's are a people. The term Jewish can both mean a follower of judaism or a person from a racial group.

Where the hell do people come up with this nonsense. I guess if all the Jews in Israel renounced their religion people would stop calling them Jews.

And dont' tell me they'd be call israelis. Steven Spielberg and Seinfeld are both Jews, but not Israelis. And as far as I know, none of them are followers of a religion.

If a Jew becomes a Christian, they're refered to as Messianic Jews. Jews who recnogize Christ as the messiah. The "Jew" bit does not die out with the religious cross over.

Hebrew is rarely used to describe them as a people, not since old testament. Their language both spoken and written is called "hebrew" nowadays.

This post has been edited by Jordan: 26 October 2007 - 11:06 PM

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