I did identify them. It's you who can't identify them - you don't like my fact and history based identification, but you have none of your own. You can't even identify the continent, the century, or the motivation, of your imaginary individuals.Crcata said:Individuals created the labels, just because you cant directly identify which ones does not in any way shape or form mean it wasn't individuals
The people who were and are labeled against their will and contrary to their interests are making it an issue, and have been for some time. They aren't going to stop doing that because you don't like it.Crcata said:Racial division is an issue in america that we need to deal with, but these labels are not part of the issue.
I did identify them. It's you who can't identify them - you don't like my fact and history based identification, but you have none of your own. You can't even identify the continent, the century, or the motivation, of your imaginary individuals.
The people who were and are labeled against their will and contrary to their interests are making it an issue, and have been for some time. They aren't going to stop doing that because you don't like it.
The people who described themselves as "white men", between 1650 and 1850, in the US, classified the population of the US by "race" and assigned the labels - by law, by custom, by mutual agreement, all of them together, none of them particularly important. Nobody else had any say.Crcata said:No you did not identify them, you geberalized, there is a huge difference
These particular labels have been a bad thing, in fact. They were assigned for bad reasons to fictional classifications to abet slavery, and have had miserably bad consequences. We would have been much better off without them, or the racial classification system they formalized.Crcata said:And labels are inherently not a bad thing. Ive shown why already
The people who described themselves as "white men", between 1650 and 1850, in the US, classified the population of the US by "race" and assigned the labels. Nobody else had any say.
These particular labels have been a bad thing, in fact. And I have specified why.
Correct me, then. Identify these non-white, non-male individuals. Or the subset of white men you think was involved, significantly different from my description - showing, of course, how your identification aligns with recorded history (as I did, with my links).Crcata said:It was individuals who made the labels, not white men, you are still objectively wrong.
You have never addressed the matter of why I claim these labels have been bad. In fact you have ignored completely the reasons they were invented, and the consequences of their employment over the centuries since their invention. You even denied that the classification system that employed them was invented at all, when and where and by whom it was.Crcata said:And you did say why they are bad, you were simply just wrong, and I pointed out why.
Correct me, then. Identify these non-white, non-male individuals. Or the subset of white men you think was involved, significantly different from my description - showing, of course, how your identification aligns with recorded history (as I did, with my links).
You have never addressed the matter of why I claim these labels have been bad. In fact you have ignored completely the reasons they were invented, and the consequences of their employment over the centuries since their invention. You even denied that the classification system that employed them was invented at all, when and where and by whom it was.
Why is that?
No, you haven't. You have simply repeated your original false claim that I am wrong, over and over, without evidence or argument or even much attention to exactly how I am "wrong".Crcata said:Ive alteady addressed why these individuals cannot be identified, and why they cannot reasonably be lumped into a broad category and portrayed as white men.
Except insofar as it supports my point that the racial classification scheme the US ended up with was broadly sourced and culturally infused from the beginning, rather than a couple of guys getting a wild idea and selling the entire country on their new scheme, that background information is worth minding but not directly meaningful here. We weren't talking about slavery in particular.Sculptor said:reality check:
Slavery was legal and practiced in each of the Thirteen Colonies at various times.
Which is among the reasons classifying people as members of a "black" or "white" race does immediate damage of various kinds, as well as setting the stage for the mess we have inherited now.sculptor said:It ain't never as simple as black and white.
You have just repeated your false claims, and refuse to accept the objective fact that individuals made the labels, and that they serve a good purpose.No, you haven't. You have simply repeated your original false claim that I am wrong, over and over, without evidence or argument or even much attention to exactly how I am "wrong".
Except insofar as it supports my point that the racial classification scheme the US ended up with was broadly sourced and culturally infused from the beginning, rather than a couple of guys getting a wild idea and selling the entire country on their new scheme, that background information is worth minding but not directly meaningful here. We weren't talking about slavery in particular.
Which is among the reasons classifying people as members of a "black" or "white" race does immediate damage of various kinds, as well as setting the stage for the mess we have inherited now.
That classification system was established by a particular, self-described and self-identified, demographically and sociologically dominant group of human beings in the US during the critical time, 1650 to 1850 (although, as linked, they were still filling in the details as of 1908 and even later). They called themselves "white men", and they acted in mutual agreement and cooperation in that matter. Nobody else had any say.
With links and arguments and evidence from me, don't forget. None from you, as yet.Crcata said:You have just repeated your false claims,
They served one of the least good purposes imaginable, and have no good role at present except aid in rehabilitation from the manifold consequences of that original evil if possible;Crcata said:and refuse to accept the objective fact that individuals made the labels, and that they serve a good purpose.
With links and arguments and evidence from me, don't forget. None from you, as yet. They served one of the least good purposes imaginable, and have no good role at present except aid in rehabilitation from the manifold consequences of that original evil if possible;
they were the creation of most or all of an entire self-defined demographic group ("white" men) acting collectively and by mutual agreement (in several different State legislatures, in markets and towns up and down the entire eastern and gulf seaboard, in courtrooms and international trade organizations and foreign countries and offshore islands, for seven or eight generations),
and all this is recorded history. You have a couple of books and several links to catch up on - as it is easy to see you have not researched this matter at all.
Try answering this question: when, why, and how, did the Irish, Italians, and Finns all become "white" rather than remain in their initial classification (Irish and Italians "black", Finns "Mongol" or yellow as we know it now). Do some research, present your findings.
It is a historical fact that self-described "white" men in the US created the US sociological races and the labels for them, acting collectively and by mutual agreement over a large region and many decades, in the early years of the formation of the country and the establishment of plantation slavery in the Americas. I linked you to several sources, hundreds of others are easily found on any standard browser using key words such as "history race origin America white black Irish Italian law" and the like.Crcata said:Yes links that you are parrotting, yet it is a self attesting truth that individuals created the labels, and not the white race.
Once again: Yes, as before and above, you are again correct in making that statement yet another timeCrcata said:And the labels serve a practical purpose.
It is a historical fact that self-described "white" men in the US created the US sociological races and the labels for them, acting collectively and by mutual agreement over a large region and many decades, in the early years of the formation of the country and the establishment of plantation slavery in the Americas. I linked you to several sources, hundreds of others are easily found on any standard browser using key words such as "history race origin America white black Irish Italian law" and the like.
These races did not exist prior to their creation - a variety of other racial classification schemes did exist in some places and at some times, but not these US races (never before had the Irish and Italians and Finns and Slavs and Saxons and Turks all belonged to the same "race", for example, much less the Japanese and Han, and of course the Congolese and Micronesian peoples had never before been associated in any sense).
The US "white" race did not definitely include Finnish immigrants until some time after 1908, for example, and in the early years of their immigration Finnish people frequently suffered from racial discrimination and bigotry due to their non-white status - I linked you to the final court case involved, above. Here again is a general and partial overview of the creation and establishment of the "white" race in the US, very incomplete but a decent start: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitions_of_whiteness_in_the_United_States
Once again: Yes, as before and above, you are again correct in making that statement yet another time
- we agree that these US races and labels were and are useful for various practical purposes, in US society past and present
(and in a couple of other places, such as certain Caribbean islands, although with some small differences. A similar but not identical system was also found useful in South Africa and nearby countries, yet another in a region on the east coast of South America, and another with its own small variations in the South Pacific).
You are simply unwilling to acknowledge whose purposes those were and are, and what purposes they were and are.
And that lack of awareness, that benighted ignorance and inability to acknowledge the basic facts of American society, is the biggest threat American democracy faces.
That depends on who the individuals were, and why they acted. If millions of individuals who describe themselves and each other as members of a race act collectively and by mutual agreement over hundreds of years in direct and self-aware alignment with their self-adopted racial identity, it would be inaccurate to deny that their actions are those of a race. They themselves would disagree with you.Crcata said:And it is a self attesting fact that portraying the actions of individuals as the actions of an entire race is inaccurate
That depends on who the individuals were, and why they acted. If millions of individuals who describe themselves and each other as members of a race act collectively and by mutual agreement over hundreds of years in direct and self-aware alignment with their self-adopted racial identity, it would be inaccurate to deny that their actions are those of a race. They themselves would disagree with you.
In this case, of course, the situation is a little different. What we have is millions of self-identified "white" men who were acting collectively and by mutual agreement, but I was not describing the actions as those of a race, but instead as the actions of white men. We agree that all these white men were individuals, and since I regard their self-identification as a race to be an evil delusion I assign no responsibility to that race, but instead affix it to the individuals involved - merely identifying them as they identified themselves, "white men". This is a sound principle of identification, after all - one identifies individuals as they identify themselves, all else being equal. It's simple courtesy, and when there are millions of them - as there are in this situation - it's also practical. It's one of the practical uses of this ugly business of US racial identification - you favored that, remember?
What's your estimate? It has to cover the two hundred plus years and a third of a continent over which it happened (the Catholic Irish were moved from the "black" to the "white" race between 1800 and 1860 in New York and nearby regions, the Finns were added to the "white" race from the "yellow" race in Minnesota in 1908), and recognize that the people assigning the labels and deciding who should receive which one and agreeing on their employment and estaqblishing their common use hroughout their entire society were all men who described themselves as "white", and all men who described themselves as white.Crcata said:It wasnt millions who created the label, this is factually wrong.
It simply doesn't matter how many, or exactly whom they were, it is still a simple fact that the actions of individuals who sat down and created the labels, does not represent an entire race.