Is Racism about appearance?

They lasted only as long as they were, in fact, distinguishable by appearance.

Alleged lack of racism by appearance - and you might want to talk to some more East Asians about how "quintessentially American" they were treated in the recent past - does not argue against its prevalence other times and places. The Hmong in Saint Paul, MN, can fill you in with some details.

The first, essential, central necessity of racism is the identification of the person's "race". That is done almost entirely by appearance - visible features of some kind, occasionally audible features in play.

 

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I did not post the material you quoted

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Go back and read through the thread again.

 

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If you were a professional dog breeder, one who wanted to put a particular dog into a breeding competition, like the ones that the American Kennel Club organizes, you would pay very close attention to the ancestors of every dog that you entered. You would know that competitions like this require a very high degree of similarity for every competitive category, what we call BREEDS. This concept is similar to your notion of biogeographic ancestry.

Unfortunately for you, dog breeds have one other similarity with the mythical concept of race. Purebred dogs often have weaknesses that make them ill-suited for any social activity with us human beings. Purebred Dalmations, for instance, have very high amounts of stress that prevent responsible parents from letting them loose among small children. However, if a parent wants a calm, loving Dalmation as a pet for his children, the solution is easy. Have one mated with a dog from certain other breeds. The offspring won't qualify for any AKC competitions, but they'll still look like a Dalmation, and they'll make excellent pets.

If a purebred "race" is part of your vocabulary, then by all means, segregate the world and put chain-link fences around the continents. You'll never find any sign of a healthy society, but you WILL find me using a pair of bolt-cutters on the fence as fast as I can.

The bottom line is simple. Race is a mythical concept. You've confused biological science with racism, which is the mistaken belief that people who look alike, such as Bill Cosby, Ed.D. and Malcolm X, will behave similarly.

 

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Please don't misquote me. Biology IS a science, with limits similar to those of other physical sciences. Race, however, is a myth because it assumes a group identity, including a group psychology, where none exists.

I choose to be COLOR-blind because it's consistent with the principles that I live my life by, including:

1. the radical idea that a healthy society requires an unbiased look at strangers and
2. identities that are based on individual personalities instead of a membership in any one of a half-dozen colored pigeonholes.

Such principles are also in no danger of being contradicted by any Romeo-meets-Juliet scenario.



19th Century racial theory gets into trouble whenever it runs into these scenarios that sometimes produce "mixed-race" children. This theory states the existence of separate races, which is only a small improvement from the 18th century theory, which states that certain people aren't much different than animals.

If you're looking for a rational racial view, you can safely bypass the 20th Century as well. Its' racial theory is that one race hurt another race and needs to apologize for their social sins. Whether the individual victims were from Africa, Korea, or the Ukraine, the actions of a few were blamed on a whole group, which is inherently unfair to the vast majority of the individual people who were accused of racial "insensitivity" or actual malicious words and deeds when these individuals were not guilty, except by association with other people who looked like them.

The best possible solution is the one that Ray Charles was taught as a boy by his mother. She taught him that whenever he met somebody for the first time, he should (figuratively speaking) hand them a blank slate and let the other guy write on it with his own individual (not group) personality. This practice prevented Ray from having any prejudice for or against the other guy, which is an admirable goal, don't you think?

If you have any doubts about the necessity of non-prejudice, try being a juror in a criminal court sometime. You'll be asked to swear that you have no feelings for or against the defendant before the trial begins. This healthy attitude towards strangers should be spread as far as possible and as fast as possible.

 

Please forgive me, but I honestly can't stop laughing. You chose the wrong person to try to pull this one on.

There's no biological reason why a baby could possibly look very different than his parents. This is a violation of biological laws. Mutations occur, but they cannot produce the situation that you've described.

 

And I can no longer edit the post.

Mods?

Recessive genes.

 

Recessive genes shows up in a red-haired child born to two blond-haired parents, either one of which is themselves a child of a red-haired parent.

Skin color cannot work this way, and neither can the shape or size of facial features, the most common criteria for putting people into colored pigeonholes.

 

Mod Hat - Post correction

Mod Hat — Post correction

Done. I flipped a coin and went with the simplest possible revision, which was to cut out the quoted material that wasn't Cellar Door's.

 

When they first got off the boat in New York, and until they learned to dress and talk (and improved their diet, etc) so as to downplay their physical characteristics and blend into the street (a two way transformation, of course).

Swedes and Norwegians and Finns can tell each other apart by appearance. Certainly the Dutch, Germans, English, and Scotch-Irish with a couple of generations of American diet and custom under their belts could spot an Irishman fresh off the pier a block away.

Meanwhile, the most serious violence was between the Italians and Irish - the two groups most easily distinguished by appearance, from each other and the rest.

Who were - and are, in the places they are still exotic - racially separated and discriminated against in the US.

On the basis of appearance - as those infancy adopted in the 60s and 70s can most directly verify, not on the basis of ethnic culture.

Thanks.

 

They do and have. Read this, explains how it is possibly genetically while providing some famous examples:

http://www.biotech.bioetica.org/ap4.htm

The reason I said what I said is because all those examples were in my family.
My exhusband's mother is a perfect example of the throwback gene. Two black parents, she came out with hazel eyes and blonde hair. White skin. Why no family uproar and accusations? The "albino" looking gentleman I spoke of is one of her great uncles, still alive.

My youngest son doesn't look like anyone in the family. His sister picks on him and says he's adopted. Other's joke around that he's the milkman's son. So, we did a little research ourselves. His father has a touch indian in him, as I do (alot more than his father). A few years ago we found a photo type of thing (can't remember the exact name of what it was) of one of my native american ancestors, from around the 1800's. My son is a spitting image, down to the lips,shape of the eyes, brow, bone structure of the face, etc. Just the hue of his skin is different and color of eyes and hair. My son looks white with hazel eyes, dirty blonde hair. Same genetic allele process applied here.

I have to thank you for laughing. Made me go on a little research. I learned something here today. Although the family always says "recessive" when we talk about the family genetics, I have the proper terminology now and the exact reason or how to explain it. Will be making some phone calls in the morning.

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Not directly in reply to this quote, Fraggle, but certain groups do have a "look" about them. Living in Malaysia for a while, I even began to learn to distiguish between different groupings of ethnic Malays.

Not saying that having certain characteristics ensures you belng to a grouping, but generalisations are more often accurate than not.
You can with reasonable accuracy pick an eastern European from a western one (say, a Pole from a Frenchman). Take a look at a photo of the late Polish president - would you say he doesn't look eastern European?

An Irishman a couple of hundred years ago might very well have been easily distinguishable.
You live in (I gather) the great "melting pot" that is the USA. I don't know whether or not you've travelled, but the difference between caucasian "types" isn't as noticeable there as it is in other regions around the globe.

 

Oh, and Yellowjacket - that type of "throwback" isn't uncommon. I wouldn't bother with Benny too much.

 

What else would it be about, cracker.

 

They still are, to the extent that they comprise a separate category in the American populace. People like, say, Conan O'Brien or Alec Baldwin or any given Kennedy are still openly pegged as Irish on the basis of their appearance. And, indeed, the exact same vile stereotypes are still applied to the Irish generally, if less stingingly (alcoholism, low station, any number of anti-Catholic sentiments).

The racial oppession didn't cease because they became indistinguishable from everyone else, so much as because they took over the police forces (and, eventually, labor unions and political offices, etc.) where they lived. You can't really oppress people if you don't control the social power structures that affect them - so you just declare them "white" and take your ball elsewhere. But the whole interbreeding with everyone from Nunavut to Panama didn't hurt, either.

 

No races = no evolution.

'Racism' (not race) is a myth, just like God, and used in the same way: as a form of social control. Just like sexism and homophobia its origins are economic.

To believe in a world without racism is to believe in a dead world, a communist world, and it is to ask to be treated like a child, to not have to grow up and face reality.

In science there should be no place for such sheep-like minds.

 

I think Racism has allot to do with fear as well as appearance

 

Is that because you have no hope of turning me into a ranting racist?

 

God is real. He's hard to see, because you're supposed to see him in the best examples of fallible humanity. The Bible says that he is love, so wherever two or more are gathered in his name, he's there. You'll feel him in your heart, warming it up better than any chicken soup ever could.

The world is full of people who believe in the myth of group identities, some of whom act on those invisible differences to treat others either with jealousy or with contempt. Race is the mistaken belief that a group of people who look alike will all act alike, which is nonsense, but it affects the psychology of some who want to believe it for their own personal reasons.

Bill Cosby is not Malcolm X, George W. Bush is not George Wallace, and Vladimir Putin is not Rasputin.

 

Some people in this country cry every night when they think of the millions of children of 1st generation immigrants who are all-too-quickly becoming unhyphenated Americans. Whatever cultural differences their parents brought to this country are disappearing. You wouldn't believe the difficulty that the Irish and the Germans had in assimilating in the early part of the 19th century, but they did it so well that some people now call them as "white" as the English who came before them.

Every group that comes here, under any circumstances, and at any time in the future, WILL, become unhyphenated Americans, just as millions of their predecessors have already done, and that's just fine with me.

When Bill Clinton was President, he said publicly that he wanted America to have a conversation about race. I bet he would be disappointed if he saw this one.