Roots of Racism
Imagine a primitive man living as a hunter-gatherer in the wild lands of ancient forests and plains. He is burdened by three primary concerns viz. to eat, not be eaten himself and protect his family.
Given these pressing needs how might it affect his mental development? He needs to recognize predators, prey and family as distinct entities. Focusing only on the very basic requirements of being able to accurately identify these three major elements in his life, what mental faculty would serve him best? Supposing that this primitive man is bipedal and given that almost all animals have the same body plan, he can't rely on recognizing similarities between animals to differentiate prey from predator: deer have 4 legs, 2 eyes and 2 ears and even tigers and lions have those. Ergo, the primitive man must have the ability to see differences: tigers and lions have claws and fangs. This faculty of seeing differences that help identify predator from prey must've been selected for over countless generations until differences are perceived of almost immediately.
Recognizing similarities is also important for the primitive men: there's a pattern to prey, predator and family forms. Animals that have horns are generally prey, those that have fangs are potential predators and those who look like themselves are family.
It seems that recognizing differences is equal in importance to recognizing similarities. However, there is a sense in which knowing differences is more critical to survival than knowing similarities. We all know of natural camouflage - fur of lions have the same coloration as the savannah grass, tigers have stripes, deer can disappear among tall grass - which makes both preying and avoiding predation difficult. This would've forced evolution to sharpen our abilities to make fine distinctions in shape, color, sound, etc to help identify animals even when well hidden.
As for the ability to identify similarities, there was no selection pressure as such and just basic similarities sufficed to identify family from not-family. In fact, since both threat (predator) and opportunity (prey) evolved camouflage, it created a negative selection pressure against those who were good at identifying similarities and bad at detecting differences
Thus, the net effect was our brains evolved to see differences rather than similarities and this is the root of racism - we see differences in eye, color, face, etc. and since differences meant either prey or predator some races discriminate against other races as threats or inferiors.
Given these pressing needs how might it affect his mental development? He needs to recognize predators, prey and family as distinct entities. Focusing only on the very basic requirements of being able to accurately identify these three major elements in his life, what mental faculty would serve him best? Supposing that this primitive man is bipedal and given that almost all animals have the same body plan, he can't rely on recognizing similarities between animals to differentiate prey from predator: deer have 4 legs, 2 eyes and 2 ears and even tigers and lions have those. Ergo, the primitive man must have the ability to see differences: tigers and lions have claws and fangs. This faculty of seeing differences that help identify predator from prey must've been selected for over countless generations until differences are perceived of almost immediately.
Recognizing similarities is also important for the primitive men: there's a pattern to prey, predator and family forms. Animals that have horns are generally prey, those that have fangs are potential predators and those who look like themselves are family.
It seems that recognizing differences is equal in importance to recognizing similarities. However, there is a sense in which knowing differences is more critical to survival than knowing similarities. We all know of natural camouflage - fur of lions have the same coloration as the savannah grass, tigers have stripes, deer can disappear among tall grass - which makes both preying and avoiding predation difficult. This would've forced evolution to sharpen our abilities to make fine distinctions in shape, color, sound, etc to help identify animals even when well hidden.
As for the ability to identify similarities, there was no selection pressure as such and just basic similarities sufficed to identify family from not-family. In fact, since both threat (predator) and opportunity (prey) evolved camouflage, it created a negative selection pressure against those who were good at identifying similarities and bad at detecting differences
Thus, the net effect was our brains evolved to see differences rather than similarities and this is the root of racism - we see differences in eye, color, face, etc. and since differences meant either prey or predator some races discriminate against other races as threats or inferiors.
Comments (82)
This doesn't follow at all, and it also happens to have the effect of attempting to naturalize racism, rather than recognizing it for the political phenomenon that it is. What matters is not difference simipliciter - there are as many differences between me and my daughter as there are between me and my other-raced friend - but differences deemeed significant or relevant in one way and not another. It's somewhat embarrasing that this needs to be said.
That we evolved to recognize differences is no less the 'root of racism' than the fact that we all have lungs. A necessary but not at all sufficient account of racism. Maybe think a little about what you're saying before spewing this dreck into the ether, hey?
Racism is learned cultural behavior. At most what you'll find encoded in the genes is some preference for the familiar. Babies don't like to be surprised, for example. With real effort you could try to twist that into a "babies are racist" thing. But they're not, they just don't like to be surprised. Familiar=safe. Even something as basic as levels of aggression isn't encoded to a degree that can meaningfully override culture. Change the culture and you can go from marauding Mongol hoards to Jainist monks, all with the same genes. The Maori v Moriori story in Jared Diamond's [I]Guns, Germs, and Steel[/i] illustrates that well. If you want to understand culture, look to social and political organization not the genes, which can potentially support whatever fuzzy narrative you want to read into them.
Preference for one's (extended) family may actually be a biological behaviour. However, racism confuses one's family with one's race. Therefore, it is a spectacular bug.
Imagine that prince William's children reject prince Harry's partially-black children based on race. That would be un-biological because they are close relatives, and therefore, that behaviour would simply be a depravity.
Racism tends to occur in situations where people have no legitimate concept of extended family, and therefore, misunderstand race as family, which it is obviously not. Therefore, it mainly occurs in societies where extended families no longer exist.
In the West, it was caused by Church policies aimed at dismantling the existing clans (by banning cousin marriage). By reducing extended-family solidarity this policy allowed for increased State -and Church power. The long-term result, which was specifically desired by the Church, is that people misidentify family with country and race.
This disintegration process cannot be stopped. By stripping layer after layer of the extended family, sooner or later, even the nuclear families will start falling apart. In that sense, racism, (dumb) nationalism, punitive taxation, and a runaway divorce rate are all part of the same long-term degeneration process.
State power has indeed successfully been increased, but this result is fundamentally unsustainable, because sooner or later, the State will no longer have a population to rule over.
You speak as if I'm completely wrong about this but have a look at the first few lines on racism on Wikipedia:
[quote=Wikipedia]Racism is the belief in the superiority of one race over another. It may also mean prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against other people because they are of a different race or ethnicity.[1][2] Modern variants of racism are often based in social perceptions of biological differences between peoples[/quote]
It's quite clear from the passage above that racism grows out of an emphasis, or overemphasis if you like, on differences and overlooking similarities. I think my post provides a reasonable explanation as to why humans are attuned to differences rather than similarities as it aids in "discriminating" prey from predator from the community to which each individual belongs to.
Evolution is, as you already know, a veritable arms race and it so happens that blending into the background is an effective strategy for both prey and predator. Since identifying food and threat is an absolute requirement, animal camouflage exerts a selection pressure on our brains and senses in terms of enhancing "discriminatory" abilities and associating biological differences with either danger (predator) or opportunity (prey) and this probably fosters fear, dislike or a sense of right and dominion over animals that aren't like us and this is the "perfect" recipe for racism.
I've seen gnu/wildebeest herds on the African savnnah and it's impossible to ditinguish one individual from another. The same applies to other animals , whether hunter or prey. Such extremes of sameness across inividuals in animals is evidence for an evolutionry force that selects for reducing differences between inividuals of one species, at least as concerns physical appearance. As the likeness between members of a species increases the ability to see similarities is less of a priority; all individuals are almost identical to each other thus identifying your own species becomes an easy task and the ability to see similarities need not be highly developed.
Ergo, racism arises from the evolved ability to "discriminate" friend from foe or food. It is, in my opinion, a primitive instinct which gave our ancestors an advantage in the evolutionary arms race we're all part of. As is obvious it leads to all problems that has to do with discrimination - racism, communalism, jihad, etc.
Quoting Baden
Quoting Baden
You're right and I agree that culture plays a role insofar as it encourages "discriminatory" mindsets and behavior.
Read what I said again. None of what you said responds to it. Anyone who naturalizes racism can fuck right off, including you. Your two-bit line of reasoning - which unjustifiably and erroneously jumps from the mere necessity of recognizing difference to making racism a 'primitive instinct' - is employed by racists everywhere to justify their utter bullshit. This thread is fucking trash. Use your goddman head.
Intolerance.
The OP is the roots of racism.
Maybe the dung that fertilizes Racism's growth but not "the root". Biologizing the 'theory & practice' of biologizing - reduction of acculturation to bare biology - is vapidly circular, Fool.
Perhaps, an anthropological inquiry at the level of political-economy (or approximately thereabouts) is the proper spade for digging up roots that are not nearly as deep as they entangle - strangle (i.e. incriminate) - us as we dig. Consider: Classism ... Filthy lucre ... Cui bono? :chin:
I'm not trying to justify or naturalize racism; all I'm offering here is a biological explanation for it. The keystone premise is that all conflict originates in a perceived difference; surely you know that. You're not a racist as is obvious but to oppose racism one must demand equality of the races and what is equality but a cry for recognition of sameness of peoples and that the differences that divide us should be ignored. All I did was pick up the thread from there and explore the territory.
Quoting 180 Proof
It maybe vapid but it isn't circular. Racism is, at its core, difference-based and discerning dissimilarities is clearly an essential ability for survival. Putting two and two together I trace racism's origins to the ability of our ancestors to notice that something's not quite right with the grass - it resembles ordinary grass but it isn't; actually it's crouching tiger or it's a plump deer.
Politics and economics, although relevant to how racism took shape in history - slavery, rights, etc. - don't explain its origins which is quite clearly based on biology which then spread out into politics and economics.
You're not offering shit. Racism is premised on differences deemed signifiant and not difference simpliciter. The 'deeming' is not biological but social and political.
Some people are born less fortunate than others, by your logic, we ignore this and call the fortunate and the unfortunate, equal. Valid differences can be, and are registered.
Are you sure people who claim to be victims of racism, aren't just victims of racist bullying?
Call me White, I don't care; call me a Bad White, I'll take it on the head. I think racism can be out of control, as with racist slavery, but, generally, it's not as severe enough, to shout or cry if the topic is brought up.
You're not identifying the roots of racism or offering any explanation for it. You're only identifying some basic biological faculties that serve as necessary but insufficient conditions for it. It's like trying to explain the popularity of jogging by pointing out that people have legs.
Quoting StreetlightX
You're the one that doesn't know what they are talking about. Your daughter shares 50% of your genes compared others of a different race in which you share less. If this wasn't the case, then those genealogy commercials are a load of shit. How can they determine where your ancestors are from if we all share the same amount of similarities and differences?
Kin selection is the evolutionary strategy that favours the reproductive success of an organism's relatives, even at a cost to the organism's own survival and reproduction. Kin altruism can look like altruistic behaviour whose evolution is driven by kin selection.
Sure, culture plays a roll, but like I've said in the gender discussions, cultures can't make make rules for the differences if the differences didn't exist in reality. The problem is that cultures are placing people in boxes for which their skin color or sex parts don't apply. They are category errors. The problem is making these differences cultural rather than biological. In other words the differences should only matter in biological/medical contexts, not cultural/political contexts.
Quoting Baden
If only this were true, we'd have no one in prison for violent crimes like rape or murder.
Gonna leave this here.
Edit: lots of the meat is in part 2.
We're macro-scale here. Overall aggression levels in cultures vary for cultural not genetic reasons.
I didn't say genetic differences, so thank you for your otherwise entirely useless reply.
In turn, culture acts as a filter on our potential, amplifying this, suppressing that.
This dance of being selected and then exerting a powerful influence over environmemtal conditions is played out repeatedly in the deep history of life. Life takes the environment in its hands and shapes it, in effect shaping itself. Culture is an example of that.
Right?
Like I said, you can't make rules for the differences if the differences didn't exist prior to the rules.
You need to recognize differences before making rules for them. The rules would not exist if we couldn't recognize the differences first.
:clap:
Quoting Baden
:lol: :up:
Quoting TheMadFool
Splitting the difference, huh? That's "mighty white" of you, Fool; it's patently circular, however, by your own admission of "offering a biological explanation for it" (re: "racism" - which consists in reducing members of a 'designated Out-Group' to their biology (e.g. skin, hair or eye color 'different' from that of members of the In-Group)). Res ipsa loquitur, kemosabe ... :meh:
Quoting 180 Proof
StreetlightX and 180 Proof have a dekko at what Baden wrote below. 180 Proof, you understood the meaning because you replied with :lol: :up:
Thanks Baden & StreetlightX.
Quoting Baden
To say the very least, I've identified a necessary condition for racism - the ability to see differences.
If I remember my logic correctly, causes are classified as sufficient, necessary, sufficient & necessary, proximate, remote and contributory. Logic dictates that if one wants to produce an effect, one is advised to look for sufficient causes and if one wants to prevent/stop an effect, it's better to remove necessary causes. Ergo if we want to stop/prevent racism we should look for a necessary condition and remove it from society and we've come to an agreement, thanks to Baden, that the ability to see differences is most definitely a necessary cause for racism. Therefore, we've established, as a necessary condition and ergo a good place to begin racism prevention, the ability to see differences as the root of racism.
There is an issue with this "strategy" to prevent racism because the ability to see differences is necessary, along with the ability to see similarities which itself is necessary to make sense of the world - categorization/classification of objects, an essential for understanding our world, rely on similarities and differences. So, eliminating the ability to see differences is undesirable.
Here I'd like to refer you back to what I said about how the ability to see differences is linked to prey or predator which evokes a sense of right/dominion over or feelings of dread respectively. It's this automatic, subconscious connection we make between differences and a right to dominate over or perceive as a threat that is both a necessary & sufficient condition for racism. Tackling this problem is much more reasonable than trying to completely eliminate the ability to see differences which I've shown is necessary for other critical aspects of living, not to mention escaping predators and capturing prey.
One more thing...I don't understand how racism is political and/social. Europe before the slave trade had social and political divisions but these surely can't be termed as racism. Racism is about race and race is based, not on politics or social structure, but on biological differences.
Ergo: What @StreetlightX said ...
Quoting 180 Proof
I watched video. @fdrake posted, Many thanks to him. The author basically claims that the concept of race is arbitrary and so lacks a sound rational basis. The author makes a good argument by showing that human genotype can be understood as a genotype continuum, and possesses as many points where a division can be made as one fancies; this makes race an arbitrary concept. Ergo, if we must analyze race [s]biologically[/s] genetically, then there's no clear point on the genotype continuum where a logically valid line for race can be drawn. Good argument.
However, what I've tried to do is explain the cause of racism, which I still think is grounded in our well-honed ability to see differences. I'm not claiming in any way that racism is validated by biology which the video is opposed to and I fully agree on that. The very notion of trying to explain that race is a biologically empty categorization depends on revealing sameness between peoples, as the author of the video has attempted using genetics, which vindicates my position that racism is based on seeing differences and the ability to see differences is a necessary survival skill, subject to selection pressure and thus likely to be highly developed and dominantly expressed in us, resulting in our propensity to discriminate against what doesn't look like us.
If racism prevention is the goal, people could be encouraged to be aware of how they feel about differences. Give space to feeling uncomfortable.
Not realizing that the discomfort is coming from an aesthetic clash can feed scapegoating and other causes of racism.
Its that fucking stupid.
I get what you mean. It's not just a question of whether differences exist or not. It's also about whether people deem the difference to be, as you said, significant. I fully agree with this and fdrake's video post clearly demonstrates that race is an arbitrary concept with the caveat that it only looks like that based on genotype and not phenotype. The video clearly reveals the basis of racism as based on phenotype (external, physical appearance) and then demonstrates that these physical differences don't have a counterpart in genotype based on which all races are more similar than different. Clearly, racism is not a socio-political phenomenon as you claim: I've never heard a racist ask for social status or political affiliation before they start being racist.
Differences in phenotype - physical appearance - seems to be key to racism. I maybe wrong but don't racists compare some races to monkeys and apes in order to show their superiority and the inferiority of the other races? I reckon that in the remote past, when we were still hunter-gatherers, monkeys and apes were tough competition; after all they are either more agile or physically stronger. :joke:
You're actually so fucking stupid. Fuck. You think the Germans murdered the Jews because they didn't look like them? Based on 'phenotype'? Fuck you're an idiot. Just fuck off.
Strawman!
:lol: It's not that stupid. You ignore the fact that the domain of the necessary condition of the ability to see differences is limited to humans and what constitutes being human. I make no claims about anything beyond humanity.
Phenotype includes a lot of things other than what is obvious such as color of the skin, etc.; phenotype includes the color of your hair, the shape of your nose, your height, etc. and somehow the Jews couldn't fulfill the Nazi criteria for being classified as Aryan.
I'm afraid it is. There are differences in eye colour, we can see them, people talk about them, they are genetic. I have blue eyes, my wife has brown eyes. Nobody cares. It's the caring about skin colour, the assigning of meaning to it that stands in need of explanation.
The original racism is royalty - that bloodline of superiority that is attempted to be justified by special marks of the body and refinements of mind and spirit. It's bollocks of course. The caricature of the Jewish nose is used to justify the hatred, it is not at all the origin.
Usually. But Irish people look exactly like English ones. German Jews look pretty much like Germans. The meaning attached to race can contain non-phenotypic characteristics. Look to context.
@TheMadFool Necessary conditions aren't always explanatory. Legs don't explain why people like jogging and the ability to notice differences doesn't explain why racism exists. You're looking for an explanation at the wrong level. But if you want to continue to do so, I suggest the rest of us bow out now and just let you.
You seem to be very knowledgable on the issue but I think you overlooked an important American hero, the great Athlete Jessie Owens (1930 -1980). The following is a passage from the wiki entry on Jesse Owens, and his story is testament to the fact that racism is, to a large degree if not completely, based on phenotype.
[quote=Wikipedia]He was the most successful athlete at the Games and, as a black man, was credited with "single-handedly crushing Hitler's myth of Aryan supremacy", although he "wasn't invited to the White House to shake hands with the President, either"[/quote]
Do you suppose Hitler, and therefore Nazis, thought Aryans were superior based on anything other than phenotype? You yourself recommended fdrake's video to me; the message in the video is if we use the criterion of genotype there is no way we can justify a any subdivision in the genotype continuum on rational grounds. In other words, in a biological, scientific sense, since genotype is useless for the race concept, it follows that race, to exist as a meaningful concept, must be phenotype-based.
Quoting frank
Read my reply to StreetlightX.
Quoting Baden
I'm looking for a cause for racism and it seems quite obvious doesn't it to look in the direction what an essentially discriminatory mindset, racism, points towards - differences and our capacity to perceive them.
And an essentially fitness-oriented mindset in one sense highlights our ability to move our body. But to look to biology to explain fitness fads would be to look in the wrong direction, right? Ok, that's my last effort on this anyway.
Of course. Although difference can also be attractive, as in viva la difference.
Racism therefore has to have causes other than difference and our ability to perceive difference.
This whole thread is forgetting the concept of kin selection.
Kin selection is the evolutionary strategy that favours the reproductive success of an organism's relatives, even at a cost to the organism's own survival and reproduction.
In other words, favoring those that share your genes is an evolutionary strategy. It is a strategy by natural selection to encourage the appearance of difference groups (mutation and genetic drift) for competition between different groups. Without differences, natural selection has nothing to select against or for.
Thousands of years ago, the world wasn't as homogenous as it is today. While humans evolved from a certain stock stemming out of Africa, they spread across the globe - encompassing different environments. Like every other species that spreads out and becomes separated from the original strain, they change differently over time. These differences allow natural selection to encourage competition between the strains, and even other species. If there were no differences, then natural selection would have nothing to select for or against. It's just that not enough time has passed to make the different strains of humans incompatible to procreate. Once human populations became homogenous we began mixing up our genes into the same pool again, whereas prior, we have separate pools. These pools are what your genealogy tests show that your ancestors are from.
So just like many evolutionary strategies, like the male strategy to be promiscuous, cultures try to either inhibit or promote (as in the case of kin selection) these evolutionary strategies we've been designed with.
Racism is a category error in that some culture have instilled the idea that other races are even more different than what their genetic differences represent - like blacks are criminals and whites are racist. This doesn't mean that we aren't different. It's just that our difference weren't enough to make us separate in the eyes of natural selection.
But then humans are part of the selective process of natural selection. Just as predators are selective pressures on their prey, humans can select other humans, while weeding out others.
Like I said, our gene pools weren't separated long enough in evolutionary time to become distinct species. Several thousand years is just a blink of an eye to natural selection. That is why when the world became homogenous, we didn't have a problem mixing our genes back together.
It looks like you're explaining things at the wrong level. Sure humans have legs, but they also have brains. Both of which were designed by natural selection. Some brains like to make their legs run, some don't. I'm guessing there are evolutionary advantages for those that like to run over those that don't. Joggers stay fit, non-joggers don't. Those that stay fit have a higher chance to pass their genes down to the next generation. Brains and their minds and how those brains establish preferences for other particular humans (kin selection), or for running over not running, are products of natural selection (evolutionary psychology).
We're evolved to prefer jogging? :ok:
Today, most of the societies are not hunter-gatherer, so non-joggers can get by just fine by doing other things that enable them to pass on their genes - like writing computer programs.
You don't see fat cats in nature. You see fat cats in the homes of humans who overfeed their cats without making them exercise. Those fat cats can still pass on their genes. In the wild, there are no fat cats. Hmmmm.
Hunter gatherers didn't go jogging, dude.
And this thread gets funnier by the minute.
It's just like the responses you see of the fundamentally religious and the transgenders - these verbal attacks and insults you get when you question their view of the world. It's sad to see intelligent people act this way.
If you don't want to take on what I said about evolutionary psychology and kin selection, then fine. Any other response is missing the point of that.
Phenotype - observable characteristics of organism.
Humans - organisms.
Racism - uses observable characteristics of humans.
Racism - requires specific differences in observable characteristics of humans in compared aggregates? No.
Racism - renders those aggregates relevant or stipulates them to exist through other means, which usually have no basis in the facts of human biology.
Let's take a case where the prejudice would be related to a biological fact. Let's say that we're eugenicists and we decide to kill all the people with the mutation that causes sickle cell anemia. Why? Because they have sickle cell anemia. Is that enough of a reason? No, we have to flesh out why that's a relevant selection criteria for killing people, and why we should kill people for the mutation at all. The mutation didn't cause us to want to kill them, the criteria we adopted did. Not the biology, the social stuff.
What else could a thread called "The Roots of Racism" become today?
Hopefully the silliness would be confined just to race & gender issues and the typical 'culture war' talking points, but I'm afraid it will radiate to other topics too.
:up:
Quoting Baden
Do you or do you not believe the Darwinian Theory of Evolution? If you don't then I have nothing to say but if you do then it follows that every trait that we possess must've been those selected for by environmental pressure and I can think of no greater force on our evolutionary development other than the need to avoid predators and the need for food.
Quoting frank
I think it's a widely held belief that diversity in a gene pool is healthy; if we're all identical, a single disease could wipe us all out. Imagine an animal that feeds exclusively on bamboo; the extinction of bamboos would then mean the animal too would disappear. This outlook is well-supported by the ecological principle of maintaining diversity in ecosystems - it's a much more robust arrangement for living systems that are under constant pressure from the environment.
The same benefit of enhanced survivability may apply to the diverse races of homo sapiens; unfortunately, all races seem to share the same disease susceptibility barring some like skin cancer which occurs more frequently in white people.
In my humble opinion, kin selection would be meaningless without some degree of homogeneity in the community an individual belongs to and some heterogeneity to contrast that against.
Social differences were race-based weren't they and race, as you agree, is all about, as you put it, observable differences. When racism took root it wasn't on social differences as is evidenced by the fact that despite variety in the socio-cultural milieu in the African continent, all Africans were lumped together as an inferior race.
Quoting TheMadFool
Nah. Did you watch part 2 of that video I linked?
Races are "buckets" of people. Let's take "the Aryan race" and "the Jews".
The character of a bucket is how it is determined who goes into each bucket. Races are buckets.
If you take "the Jews" and "the Aryans" - these have been an interbreeding population with shared traits. It's continuous variation and gene exchange and everything available for one group is available for another[hide=*]Though there are genetic markers, which allow us to trace our ancestry[/hide]. If you wanted to "bucket" humans into Aryan and not Aryan, the cut off point would be more like going to a wallpaper shop and selecting a skin colour, a nose size, a hair type, a history... Then using those to define "Jewish race" rather than finding "Jewish race" as a category rooted in biological difference from "Aryan race"; such a distinction does not identify human population with a distinct character driven by biological differences. What decides who goes into the "Aryan race" bucket is social stuff, not finding a genetically distinct sub population whose genetic differences are driven by biological difference makers. Social stuff "looking at" bodies and bucketing them based on social principles - stereotyping, mythmaking, storytelling, politics...
No.
Quoting fdrake
Kindly explain what you mean by social artefact?
Here you go. Will make it clearer.
Yes. Looking at bodies. Phenotype.
To make matters explicit and hopefully not offend anyone in the process, let's look at common racial slurs:
Nigger: late 16th century: from earlier neger, after Latin niger ‘black’
Olympics 2008: Spain's eye-catching faux pas
Are the above in any way not about phenotype ?
An Aryan and a Jew have a baby, is it an Aryan or a Jew? How do you decide?
I don't think Madfool suggested otherwise. He just said racism is related to our ability to place meaning on distinctions. Ashkenazi Jews lived in their own communities. They dressed differently. They spoke Yiddish. Differences were obvious. What difference does it make to Madfool's point if the differences were biological or not?
And what the fuck is it that doesn't arise from our biology? Racism doesn't come from outer space. It comes from us. It's part of our potential. Biology is the bedrock for everything we are. Why is this confusing to anyone?
Will ask you a similar question: what makes an Aryan an Aryan and a Jew a Jew?
Circumstances of birth. So?
What're the circumstances of birth that make them distinguished?
Jews are born to Jews. Aryans to Aryans. Again: if your point is that race isn't biological, though true, that's irrelevant to Madfool's point.
And the child of an Aryan and a Jew?
Quoting frank
It rather is, it's about what we're attributing causal power; stuff that drives distinctions; to.
I don't know if the Nazis got around to making a law about that. They would probably say the offspring is Jewish.
Quoting fdrake
His OP isn't about what drives distinctions. So no, genetics is entirely irrelevant.
[quote=Wikipedia]The modern concept of the master race is generally derived from a 19th-century racial theory, which posited a hierarchy of races that was based on darkness of skin color. This 19th-century concept was initially developed by Count Joseph Arthur De Gobineau. Gobineau's basic concept, as further refined and developed in Nazism, placed black Indigenous Australians and Equatorial Africans at the bottom of the hierarchy, while white Northern and Western Europeans (which consisted of Germans, Swedes, Icelanders, Norwegians, Danes, British, Irish, Dutch, Belgian and Northern French) were placed at its top; olive skinned white Southern Europeans (who consisted of Southern French, Portuguese, Spaniards, Italians, Romanians, and Greeks, i.e., those who were called the Mediterranean race, were regarded as another sub-race of the Caucasian race) and placed in its upper middle ranks; and the Semitic and Hamitic races (supposed sub-races of the Caucasian race) were placed in its lower-middle ranks (because the Jews, were Semites, the [u[Nazis believed their cleverness made them extremely dangerous[/u]—they had their own plan for Jewish world domination, a conspiracy which needed to be opposed by all thoughtful Aryans)[/quote]
As you can see Nazism had a racial discriminatory policy based on skin color - a phenotype. Racism against the jews was based on a different, but not necessarily true, belief that jews were more intelligent and posed a threat to the Aryans.
Maybe, but anti-Semitism was also associated with Germany's failure to become an integrated nation like the UK or France. They attempted forced assimilation through public education, but it didnt work. Jews remained distinct. This is a case where distinctness causes friction that eventually erupts into bloody scapegoating, but racism wasnt the primary driver, it was a symptom of social instability brought on by economic turmoil.
That was part of it (or maybe even most of it). Christians during the Dark Ages weren’t allowed to be bankers, leaving the profession LARGELY to the Jews who were barred from many other professions. This unfortunately led to mistrust of the Jews, something that they were not at all at fault for.
Again, what made it all possible was differences and the tendency to attach meaning to differences.
IOW, racism is rooted in something indispensable, as noted by the OP. Food for thought.
Indeed, you're right. It seems that the ability to see differences which I'm talking about doesn't quite explain anti-semitism, at least not in a biological sense. As you and others have rightly pointed out social and political factors too were in play. Nevertheless racism against Africans and Asians was/is bases on biology.
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1s62iy/europe_had_normal_diplomatic_relations_with/ (plus a bibliography at the end)
https://kenanmalik.com/2013/02/17/the-making-of-the-idea-of-race/ (Malik has also written a very good book on the topic called Strange Fruit)
FWIW, anti-semitism is actually paradigmatic in terms of how hatreds were formed, felt and observed. Historically speaking it follows the pattern of observed religious/cultural difference only becoming biological in the modern (in fact 19th century) period.
They're lacking more than just history. Thanks for the links. I don't know if history is necessary at all. I mean history gives context - a background - to an issue but if one is ignorant of history one may always fall back on what hasn't changed, the constants that ground all human activity - our biology and human nature.
That leads to the question of whether science is itself a social construct (or a type of game). There was once a strong bias against the "recent African origin" thesis which, per Stringer, was based on racist beliefs among white scientists. They wanted blacks, whites, and asians to have evolved separately in different parts of the world from different populations of homo erectus. How exactly that separation in time was supposed to support white supremacy, I'm not sure.
But you can see how a change in culture influenced science. Stringer says the opposition to RAO was strong and at times propelled by anger. In a Nazi world, there would have been no room in science for a voice pointing to the close relationship of all humans.
I guess my point is that biology doesn't stand apart from social construction the way we would like to think it does.
I agree. Science isn't immune to meddling or the vested interests of social groups or the prejudices of the scientists themselves. I've heard a lot of scientists talk of the greatness of science as a very unbiased field of study. However, there have been many scientists with an agenda to push, some of which may be racist for all we know.
The point is precisely that what you are calling 'human nature' has in fact changed over time and this is well-documented by historians.
How has it changed, might I ask?
Indeed it has. Birds of a feather flock together.
But if transplanted starlings show up you'll see a different behavior: a single startling will fight off the other birds for the right to sit in the feeder and graze.
Eventually a startling war will break out as they compete for the chance to eat.
Starlings didn't evolve in North America, so there's no balance.