"having racist effects" counts as a perfectly valid usage of the word.
This is a cheap sophistry:
1. It's only racist if it was intended to be.
2. You can't read minds.
3. Therefore, you can't say "this is racist."
This isn't a useful usage of the term, except for attempting to deflect people from calling out racist effects.
I'd say something like "race-biased" or "race-sensitive" would be a more proper term.
You can't read minds, but you can read laws. Laws state the intent expressly, and also state the policy expressly. This is why "racist" can be very exactly applied to some laws (like those mandating segregation, different rights, etc, depending on the race). So, to my mind, using the word "racist" to denote intentional action makes enough sense.
"Racist" is a perfectly applicable word for its effects when applied by the humans applying it.
Some unrelated hypothetical about things not involving human agency is irrelevant to the question, and is functionally just another attempted deflection.
It's high-tech ventriloquism.
Additionally, you're privileging possible advantages over concrete and known issues. That's the opposite of risk mitigation.
You can read their preprint (https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/2107/2107.10356.pdf) for full details.
Race is explicitly about using visible differences to mark a group of people as a “lower” class. Race has nothing to do with genetics; it’s a sociological invention. There are some correlations between ancestral heritage and disease prevalence at the population level, but because genetic disease susceptibility is generally are not visible to the naked eye, conditions cannot be “racist”.
Skin color was chosen because it made it easier to identify escaped slaves, as all previous attempts to enslave people were difficult when the escaped slaves could blend in to the population. But other things like “Jewishness” or red hair have also been racialized at various points through history.
There’s also the interesting phenomenon how the definition of “white” keeps changing. At first it meant only English immigrants, but was later extended to all Protestant immigrants, and much later to Catholics (Irish and Italian minorities). Its absolutely a made-up distinction, and we just group people with dark skin together because it’s a lazy shortcut.
A. That is not the usage by definition. That may be your interpretation, but that's not the common usage.
B. That is not the common way to determine race (visible differences). Genetic markers are generally the indicator (eg Ancestry.com).
C. That is not the sole reason (mark people as lower class). There are medical reasons to know the genetic ancestry of your forefathers. The is easily described as "race" and is only useful in a very general practical sense insofar as it narrows the possibilities for investigation into genetic consequences.
If anyone can point out a good reason in using it for more, that isn't looking to justify other or past behavior, I'd be interested in hearing about it. I might have missed something because I really don't think about race too much.
So, questions for you, assuming you're in the US: how do you know whether people are Black? I am sure you at least know of some individuals who are Black, so how do you know that they are Black?
That's actually a very nice example of how genetics does matter for race because it shows the bottleneck of the small population that made it out of Africa.
You can group people based on genetic similarity, but the racial classification of these genetic clumps is socially defined.
Sure, for an arbitrarily restricted definition of "subgroup", you can do that. Worst case of cherrypicking, you pick some two specific individuals who would satisfy your scenario (since a one-person group is also a group). Likewise you could claim that West Berlin was more similar to East Berlin because Frankfurt was much further away from both than they were to each other. Not quite sure how cherrypicking matters, though.
Similarly, racial boundaries are not natural genetic boundaries. Racial boundaries are defined by people. They weren't defined in terms of genetics originally, they were social and legal definitions. You could try to define race in terms of genetics, but it wouldn't exactly match historical categorizations and it won't conform to any natural genetic differences.
Perhaps, but one is a function of the other.
> They weren't defined in terms of genetics originally, they were social and legal definitions
As far as I'm aware, they were originally actually craniometric definitions (courtesy of Blumenbach) -- unsurprisingly, because contemporary physical anthropology didn't have a lot to work with.
> but it wouldn't exactly match historical categorizations
Even some of your "social and legal definitions" don't match the historical craniometric categorizations. For example the peculiar historical US notion according to which the "white people" group doesn't include the Irish doesn't match Blumenbach's craniometric categorization. So I'm not sure how the arbitrarily defined US-style castes (which is what they really seem to be, cf. the "one drop rule" and such) are useful here when even older categorizations match the prehistoric reality better.
Blumenbach essentially tried to split people into: Europeans, Asians, Africans, Polynesians, and Americans. You can then choose features and make measurements to split people into groups which match these 5 basic geographical areas. The questions are: What do these classifications tell you? How are they useful? Are they the best ways to classify people? How are you choosing the different races?
The idea that "race isn't real" stems from the idea that there isn't a single genetic metric you can use to categorize people. You can find multiple valid ways to classify people, but they won't all agree on the categorizations.
> arbitrarily defined US-style castes
What word should we use to describe the US social and legal definitions of Black and White?
The very same questions apply to human paleontology -- and the same answers. You have to solve basically the same problems if you want to unravel the dawn of humanity.
> The idea that "race isn't real" stems from the idea that there isn't a single genetic metric you can use to categorize people.
That sounds like a very flawed approach to me. Even imperfect concepts and approaches have their utility. Just because the universe isn't black-and-white on concepts doesn't mean that no patterns emerge.
> What word should we use to describe the US social and legal definitions of Black and White?
I thought you already had "Anglo-Saxons" and "African Americans" for these.
Those are not the same things. For one, "Anglo-Saxon" is English ancestry. It doesn't include all White people. Second, I'm asking about what you should call the specific classification system the US use(d/s) to label people as Black and White. The US classified people on "race", which isn't exactly the same as Blumenbach's categories but did evolve out of them.
> Even imperfect concepts and approaches have their utility.
What is the utility of the idea of an "Ethopian" race? Are racial categories a useful tool in Anthropology and Biology (beyond the historical consequences of the idea of race)? For each any such examples, are there better tools?
From what I can tell, the US notion of "white people" at one point did basically coincide with "Anglo-Saxon"/"Nordic" ancestry - in the broader sense, since OF COURSE there's even several meanings of the former term; for example in the abbreviation "WASP", the "AS" most certainly does not refer solely to English ancestry. So in this case think of "Anglo-Saxon" as of the "AS" in "WASP".
> Second, I'm asking about what you should call the specific classification system the US use(d/s) to label people as Black and White.
It sounds a lot to me like a caste system, as I already said.
> Are racial categories a useful tool in Anthropology and Biology
Absolutely, how else would you for example conceptualize large-scale population movements once you start to analyze population genetics in both current populations and archeological remains? Those groups are racial categories.
The tool that you're using to map population migrations isn't race, it's genetic similarity of geographically close populations. What specifically is the definition of race, and how does that definition help with mapping population movement?
Furthermore, those are not "categories" because they exist on a spectrum. You measure similarity as a continuous value. There doesn't happen to be natural demarcation lines between different "racial categories". Populations are composed of lots of different people who tend to be similar, but who don't fall into categories. Genetic similarities cross populations, and human populations don't tend to have neat boundaries.
For example, check out this plot of genetic differences in Europe. The differences smoothly smear out over the geography. The other anchors of Beijing, Tokyo, and Yoruba are indeed separate, but that is because they are far away. You'd continue to have a spectrum connecting those geographies if the chart also measured the genetics of the connecting geography.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_history_of_Europe#/med...
Quoting from OED, 2nd Ed., a race is "a group of persons, animals, or plants, connected by common descent or origin".
> they exist on a spectrum.
Possibly, but that doesn't tell you anything useful about whether there are useful categories or not. It depends significantly on the shape of the distribution whether useful categories arise in the first place, how many and so on. Fixating on the connectivity of the kernel would be ditching an awful lot of information. That this connectivity exists is a trivial consequence of the fact that we're not talking about different species.
> For example, check out this plot of genetic differences in Europe. The differences smoothly smear out over the geography.
Yes, and that tells you a lot about the population of Europe. So clearly this is useful.
> A group of people sharing the same culture, history, language, etc.; an ethnic group.
> A group or set of people or things with a common feature or features.
> literary A group of people descended from a common ancestor.
> archaic mass noun Ancestry.
https://www.lexico.com/definition/race (Lexico uses the OED). Language and culture can be correlated with ancestry, but they are not the same thing. You can pick ancestry as the definition of race, but why not use the already existing term "ancestry"? The definition of words can change over time as we gain knowledge, but I just don't think it's useful to pretend that the most common and best definition of race is genetic rather than social.
This is what I said originally: "Race is correlated with and impacted by ancestry/genetics, but it is not how race is defined." I believe this is an accurate description of how the ancestral posts used "race".
> These texts contain statistical associations between politically sensitive terms, negative terms, (and so on). However they are not racist, are not born of any racist project, and most humans reading them would be moved to more positively regard racial terms.
This is discussing the social racial classifications. This would be referring to Black as the US racial category, what you would call the US Black caste. It's not discussing genetics at all.
> alcohol or milk ... Europeans, North Siberian and Alaskan peoples, and East-Asian peoples
These are ethnic groupings of people. You can find statistical genetic differences between these groups which we have socially defined, but they are not defined in terms of genetics. Are you not European if you are lactose intolerant? Are you not Alaskan Native if you can drink milk? Measuring a difference between categories does not mean that's how the categories were defined.
(Side note: please don't assume native people metabolize alcohol differently. There are strong sociological factors which make it difficult to pin on biology, there are mixed results with genetics, and heritability encompasses genetics, culture, and sociological status https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol_and_Native_Americans#C... )
> That is not the common way to determine race (visible differences). Genetic markers are generally the indicator (eg Ancestry.com).
This is the same assertion you're making, but it's not the same definition which was used in the ancestral comments.
> originally actually craniometric definitions ... Even imperfect concepts and approaches have their utility
> population genetics in both current populations and archeological remains? Those groups are racial categories.
The trouble with your definition is that you're defining race as any useful distinction based on genetics. Were the craniometric definitions of race useful? Did they help with discovering/communicating new scientific findings, or did those categorizations hinder progress with arbitrary categories? You can't say that categorizing data is useful, race is a categorization, therefore race is useful. You have to specify which metric you're using to form the racial categorization because there are an infinite number of ways to categorize data.
>> For example, check out this plot of genetic differences in Europe. The differences smoothly smear out over the geography.
> Yes, and that tells you a lot about the population of Europe. So clearly this is useful.
What were the pre-genetic racial categories which helped the analysis? Why should clusters in population genetics be called racial categories?
I can't know without a genetic test. I can only assume. I assumed based on what I see, often. If a person is dark skinned, it's a convenience to call them black or "looks black" because it's a defining characteristic (associated with the sense of sight, hence - looks) that is no different from saying someone looks white. This is highly efficient as part of our shared survival mechanism across the animal kingdom (eg Mullerian mimicry).
I don't find classifying people as being of a specific race, in absence of information, to be demeaning. How you use that information (known or assumed) to justify other actions, is what's demeaning.
My best friend looks Chinese. He's half black half Chinese. How do I know? We know the genetics of his parents (and him). Is he black?
I'm majority German mixed with English+Tennessee Chicksaw American Indian. Am I American Indian?
The distinctions are rather silly and will eventually fall out of concern as time marches on, imo.
How did people know someone was Black prior to genetic testing? It sounds like you'd answer that you'd trace their ancestry, but how would you know if their parents are Black? The answer is that people from Europe decided that people who looked like they were from sub-Saharan Africa were Black. Being Black in the US is not just your genetics or ancestry, there are also social and legal definitions. People would go to court to challenge their legal race because race wasn't defined based on a genetic test.
Also, Chinese and German are not races, they are ethnicities. If your family moves from Italy to Germany, your family is probably ethnically Italian but will likely become German over time.
> People would go to court to challenge their legal race because race wasn't defined based on a genetic test.
I'm not overly concerned with how people used to do things, especially when the methodology was flawed. I understand that some of these flawed methodologies are still used to my chagrin. Doesn't change what I think are the facts. I know there are dark skinned people from all over the earth. Black doesn't mean sub-Saharan African specifically, but it does include that area. Black is the common term used to identify the look of a very dark skinned person. You can look black and be Cuban or have ancestry from China.
> Also, Chinese and German are not races, they are ethnicities.
Now you're splitting hairs that I don't see. There are genetically identifiable pools. They are distinct races as far as I'm concerned. I don't care what the US Census puts on their list of "race you identify as" or whatever.
> If your family moves from Italy to Germany, your family is probably ethnically Italian but will likely become German over time.
Depends on the breeding pattern. You might still eat Italian "ethnic" food but, genetically your family will drift into more German.
This defines Black without using genetics. I think that you're saying that other people are defining Black as a race wrongly because they aren't defining Black in terms of ancestry/genetics. I would suggest that maybe that means you shouldn't try to define Black as a genetic group because you're reusing a racial categorization which does not map to genetic categorizations.
Correct.
> I would suggest that maybe that means you shouldn't try to define Black
I don't use it as a definition, which I've clarified multiple times. Black can be a colloquialism for recognition of a characteristic. It's useful, so I will continue to use it. This has nothing to do with whether or not I think they are <arbitrary race>
> Correct.
I don't think you're matching the "common usage" of "race" when you define it as synonymous with ancestry. You can use genetics to track your ancestry, but you're using ethnic categories when you trace your ancestry to "German mixed with English+Tennessee Chicksaw American Indian". "German" isn't a genetic category, it is an ethnic identity which you can trace your ancestry to.
Maybe the better question is, how are you defining different races? If you're using ethnic categories, then you aren't splitting people based on genetics (though you can use genetics to guess at your ancestry). If you're use genetic similarity, then you will clump people across ethnic categories. Try to divide the Germans from the other nations on the genetic similarity chart linked below.
What percentage of “black” DNA counts as “black”? Is it 25%? 10%? How can you actually measure that (the “ancestry maps” you get from sites like ancestry.com are pure fantasy with a loooooot of questionable assumptions baked in if you look into the actual science behind them).
You can have African ancestry without being considered black. You can have dark skin and have a majority of European ancestry as well (which is true of many dark-skinned people in the US given the propensity of slave owners to “make their own” new slaves). Which is more important — the African ancestry or the European ancestry? Are genes associated with dark skin more powerful or something?
That's not the definition of either Race or Racism but something you created as a definition. It's not something you should use to correct others.
I'm pretty sure that modern genetics disagrees. You can predict your "sociological invention" from multiple genetic markers in like 99.9% of cases or something like that. It's hard to argue that "A has nothing to do with B" if B extremely successfully predicts A.
Depends. It would be wrong to call the virus itself racist, but it would also likewise be wrong to focus on the mechanics of infection rather than the mechanics of transmission, because the latter is the determinig factor in whether or not an outbreak occurs. Epidemics and pandemics are manufactured crises - that is, they are the result of human action. To have one effect one ethnic group more than another can conceivably be because of racist behavior. In this sense, the aspect that is important to people (whether or not one is likely to be infected) can involve racism.
>Would you call alcohol or milk "racist" because Europeans, North Siberian and Alaskan peoples, and East-Asian peoples react differently to them?
Again, it's not wrong to relate racism to these things because the central issue - not necessarily whether certain people can digest certain nutrients, but why nutrients that are only advantageous to certain people are privileged in food policy - can be affected by racial bias.
Reminder that racism is not necessarily based on intent; disparate impact also constitutes a reasonable rationale.
Here is an example: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=democratize