Racism Part two

[VILLAMARV]

1 minute ago, Chindie said:

You'd have to ask Ibram. I'm no eggspert.

FTFY

[bickster]

27 minutes ago, sne said:

Is it a white egg or a brown one? 

blue, I prefer boiling Tories

[KentVillan]

On 27/06/2023 at 14:09, MakemineVanilla said:

I think it is possible to make the case that Dawkins' "selfish gene" theory would predict a preference for one's own race, as we are driven to perpetuate our own genes.

Even oxytocin, the so-called "cuddle chemical" which stimulates mother-baby bonding, only increases a liking for those we already like.

Xenophobia originates in the amygdala but it is the frontal cortex which modifies our response.

If prejudice has its origins in physiology, then it seems likely to persist.

That kind of holds together until you try to actually define race. Is it your extended family, people who speak the same language as you, people who share your cultural values, or people with similar skin colour?

How does it work in a very genetically mixed family as is common in British cities or in a country like Brazil?

[KentVillan]

Most people think race is like the difference between two sports, when it’s more like the difference between a deep lying playmaker and a defensive midfielder… ie something subjective that VillaTalk posters are never going to agree on.

[MakemineVanilla]

2 hours ago, KentVillan said:

That kind of holds together until you try to actually define race. Is it your extended family, people who speak the same language as you, people who share your cultural values, or people with similar skin colour?

How does it work in a very genetically mixed family as is common in British cities or in a country like Brazil?

I never mentioned race.

[KentVillan]

38 minutes ago, MakemineVanilla said:

I never mentioned race.

Quote

"I think it is possible to make the case that Dawkins' "selfish gene" theory would predict a preference for one's own race"

?

[MakemineVanilla]

20 minutes ago, KentVillan said:

?

Well, well, so I did.

It looks like I am totally f***ed.

Your point that as race cannot be defined and therefore can't exist, is an interesting point though.

Cheers!

 

[KentVillan]

2 minutes ago, MakemineVanilla said:

Well, well, so I did.

It looks like I am totally f***ed.

Your point that as race cannot be defined and therefore can't exist, is an interesting point though.

Cheers!

 

I think it exists, because it has some kind of social meaning, but it's very, very vague and subjective. Like we all know that Jay Z is a black American and George W Bush is not a black American.

But if we try to get scientific about it, via genetics and natural selection, and so on, it all starts to fall apart.

[fruitvilla]

I must admit I find this discussion thread weird. 

If races don't exist, then do different breeds of dogs exist? The different breeds definitely have different traits, as no doubt do individual dogs. Obviously, for human beings, the origins of these traits should they exist will be difficult to tease apart. Then there is the very valid question, does it matter? 

Is it a crime to prefer one breed of dog over another or even to express an opinion?

[chrisp65]

3 minutes ago, KentVillan said:

I think it exists, because it has some kind of social meaning, but it's very, very vague and subjective. Like we all know that Jay Z is a black American and George W Bush is not a black American.

But if we try to get scientific about it, via genetics and natural selection, and so on, it all starts to fall apart.

There was a programme on the radio about a week or so ago looking at where Nazi Germany got lots of its ideas from and how ‘accepted’ much of the doctrine was back then pretty much across the western world.

They mentioned the ‘one drop’ rule from the U.S. where their idea on race basically said that one drop of non-white blood, ever, made that family tree non-white. Turned out the nazis thought this was a bit extreme and decided it was better to try and pin down dilution over a number of generations.

One Drop

Quote

Tennessee adopted such a "one-drop" statute in 1910, and Louisiana soon followed. Then Texas and Arkansas in 1911, Mississippi in 1917, North Carolina in 1923, Alabama and Georgia in 1927, and Virginia in 1930.

 

[Follyfoot]

15 minutes ago, KentVillan said:

I think it exists, because it has some kind of social meaning, but it's very, very vague and subjective. Like we all know that Jay Z is a black American and George W Bush is not a black American.

But if we try to get scientific about it, via genetics and natural selection, and so on, it all starts to fall apart.

Many years ago, I read a book that was given to me by a friend who,  was to coin a phrase, a white supremacist. It was called my awakening by David Duke. It was full of factual quotes (allegedly)and made reference to them continuously as reference points at the back of the book

One of the main drivers of the book is that when he was a child, he went into the Louisiana swamps, and saw the was ‘an order of things’ between certain creatures in the swamps and then applied this to race. You can probably work out the rest. After this, the second half of the book became a tirade against Jews.

obviously it was barking mad and complete lunacy, but if you read it, it made a convincing argument, this is the problem we are up against in the world, people are too bloody gullible

 

 

 

Edited June 28, 2023 by Follyfoot

[chrisp65]

3 minutes ago, fruitvilla said:

Is it a crime to prefer one breed of dog over another?

There are dogs on the banned breeds list. I’m not sure where you’re going to be able to take this?

 

[fruitvilla]

1 minute ago, chrisp65 said:

There are dogs on the banned breeds list. I’m not sure where you’re going to be able to take this?

 

My point is ... race in some sense exists. I am questioning whether different races will have different traits. An uncomfortable question.

[veloman]

10 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

 

They mentioned the ‘one drop’ rule from the U.S. where their idea on race basically said that one drop of non-white blood, ever, made that family tree non-white. Turned out the nazis thought this was a bit extreme and decided it was better to try and pin down dilution over a number of generations.

One Drop

 

I' m afraid you are talking rubbish THIS is the one drop 

 

[KentVillan]

12 minutes ago, fruitvilla said:

My point is ... race in some sense exists. I am questioning whether different races will have different traits. An uncomfortable question.

Dog breeds are like selectively breeding a single family or pair of families over and over again for 300 years. They're far more closely genetically related than what we think of as human "races".

[fruitvilla]

5 minutes ago, KentVillan said:

Dog breeds are like selectively breeding a single family or pair of families over and over again for 300 years. They're far more closely genetically related than what we think of as human "races".

I think you mean "less closely". Within a breed yes ... Chihuahuas and Great Danes? But if indeed you are right and human races are not as close, this of course does not help certain arguments.

But I broadly agree with where you are going with this. Artificial selection has accelerated the divergence of, at least, the phenotype in dogs, whereas the recent mobility of peoples is undoing the geographic selection.

[KentVillan]

8 minutes ago, fruitvilla said:

I think you mean "less closely". Within a breed yes ... Chihuahuas and Great Danes? But if indeed you are right and human races are not as close, this of course does not help certain arguments.

But I broadly agree with where you are going with this. Artificial selection has accelerated the divergence of, at least, the phenotype in dogs, whereas the recent mobility of peoples is undoing the geographic selection.

Yes I obviously meant within a breed. We could breed humans in the same way, but in practice it hasn't happened at any scale to be comparable with dog breeds.

[Follyfoot]

Just now, KentVillan said:

Yes I obviously meant within a breed. We could breed humans in the same way, but in practice it hasn't happened at any scale to be comparable with dog breeds.

I may have inadvertently bred some dogs in my youth

[fruitvilla]

7 minutes ago, KentVillan said:

Yes I obviously meant within a breed. We could breed humans in the same way, but in practice it hasn't happened at any scale to be comparable with dog breeds.

Quite ... and hence all the jokes about the supporters of Small Heath.  But of course, we have inadvertent experiments going on at the moment. Isolated populations and cultural separation. My point remains ... in the past, populations have been isolated such that phenotypical differences have occurred. Are these important? Is anything important? But that is for another thread.

[KentVillan]

21 minutes ago, fruitvilla said:

Quite ... and hence all the jokes about the supporters of Small Heath.  But of course, we have inadvertent experiments going on at the moment. Isolated populations and cultural separation. My point remains ... in the past, populations have been isolated such that phenotypical differences have occurred. Are these important? Is anything important? But that is for another thread.

They probably are important. We know certain diseases are more prevalent in certain populations.

But actually in the situations where racism tends to rear its head, ie when different populations come into contact with each other, by the nature of human mixing, these differences become less and less obvious, and the ways in which we determine race (skin colour, clothes, language, religion, etc) aren’t as strong a signal of the underlying characteristics as racial purists think.

And even within dog breeds, which are much more homogeneous, you get (eg) labradors who don’t have the expected qualities of their breed.