We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.

Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]

Samizdata quote of the day

If gender is merely a matter of self-identification, should not race be also? I have always thought that, given the affirmative action-laden higher education admissions process, applicants should self-identify as “black” or “Native American” whenever they so desire. I mean, why not? If they feel black or Native American, should not they be able to claim such an identity, as Rachel Dolezal has done? Doing so would quickly cause affirmative action to collapse of its own ridiculous weight.

Indeed, all of this race balkanization–with such extreme emphasis as belonging to this or that race–only further divides us, as race baiters like Al Sharpton well know. So why not accept the progressives’ terms of the debate–that our gender and race is all simply a matter of self-identity–and identify as a member of races that are favored/more protected by law? After all, no one can ever really know what lies in another’s heart. Does Bruce Jenner sincerely believe he is a female, or does he simply like to dress up in women’s clothes? Does Rachel Dolezal sincerely believe she is black? No one can possibly know the answer, perhaps not even Mr./Ms. Jenner and Ms. Dolezal.

What would a university do if an applicant self-identified as “black” on an application but showed up looking “white”? And if the university made such a judgment, what on earth would that mean? How would the university defend its belief that a student didn’t “look” black? What sort of bizarre racial stereotypes would it rely upon in making such an appearance-based judgment? And if the university actually decided to take action against the student for racial misrepresentation, what on earth would that mean? How would the university judge whether the student was really “black”? What percentage of blood would suffice for such a progressive institution? Fifty percent? Ten percent? One percent?

Elizabeth Price Foley

81 comments to Samizdata quote of the day

  • Both “race” and “gender” are “social” (i.e. political) constructs. There is no such thing as race, and there is no such thing as gender (there is such thing as sex, but it is not always clearly defined by nature, and so can be quite tricky). Both these notions were created for purposes that were and are clearly political, and no one outside of political establishment should feel compelled to play this silly game.

  • BTW, before we get into argument over semantics: many English speakers use the terms ‘sex’ and ‘gender’ interchangeably, and my comment is not addressed to them, but rather to those who maintain the notion of clear distinction between the two terms.

  • How would the university judge whether the student was really “black”? What percentage of blood would suffice for such a progressive institution? Fifty percent? Ten percent? One percent?

    Maybe we just reverse the racial stereotyping of the US South under segregation, so “Not one drop” becomes “Just one drop”.

    So even if a person’s great-great-grandmother was a quarter black they would be entitled to call themselves black.

    Equally given the nature of human sexual and evolutionary heritage, I suspect it would be difficult to prove a negative under such a rule?

    Equally, if the out of Africa theory is true, aren’t we all black? to some infinitesimal degree?

  • Personally, I do self-identify as Native American (I was, after all, born in America), but the people who make up government forms in the US always use “American Indian”.

  • Both “race” and “gender” are “social” (i.e. political) constructs.

    Nope – you’ve been drinking the Kool Aid again Alisa.

    Gender relates to the characteristics of masculinity and femininity. The vast majority of people are born with either masculine features (XY chromosomes and a penis) or feminine features (XX chromosomes and a vagina)

    There are vanishingly small numbers ~ 1-2% where it is unclear or babies are born with both masculine and feminine characteristics.

    Genetic abnormalities such as XXY chromosomes will soften male features and may cause developmental issues during puberty (a friend of mine had this and was often mistaken for a girl, despite having a normal male sex drive), but the areas of medical confusion is vanishingly small.

    Equally if someone with masculine features (XY chromosomes and a penis) feels the desire to have sex with women, men, dogs (Eric Gill contingent) or the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal, it does not alter HIS masculinity and thereby HIS gender.

    This idea that “x is a social construct” is more divisive bullshit from those who would use divide-and-conquer to rule us.

  • …and no, before anyone asks, Bruce Jenner having his penis cut-n-shut to make a facsimile of a vagina does not make him a woman any more than a soldier losing the bottom half of his legs to an Iraqi IED becomes a Hobbit.

    It might say Caitlyn Jenner on his Drivers Permit, but his makers mark still says “Bruce Jenner” and that’s what it’ll be recognized as come the Resurrection.

  • rxc

    Well, I think a lot of people in the US have been saying, for a long time, that the first black president was really Bill Clinton. Maybe we won’t be able to say that Hillary will be the first woman president. After all, I think that a lot of people in the UK don’t believe that Margaret Thatcher was really a woman.

  • Ellen

    If Hillary gets elected, she will be the first woman president. Whatever the status of Republicans, Democrats are allowed to self-identify. It’s just the way things are over here.

  • Well, I think a lot of people in the US have been saying, for a long time, that the first black president was really Bill Clinton.

    Obama claimed to be the nearest thing the US has had to a Jewish president?

    What is he smoking?

  • Dammit JG, I swear I was told it was lemonade… 🙁

    To your point, how is what you described as “gender” different from sex?

    BTW, as I understand it, Jenner did not have his penis cut – but whatever.

  • Snorri Godhi

    WRT sex vs gender, i’ve never had gender with a woman, but…
    WRT race: there are of course no discrete human races (unless we stretch the definition of “discrete”) but as i understand most humans fit into 1 of 5 clusters, corresponding to 5 geographical areas: Africa south of the Sahara, East Asia, the rest of Eurasia, Australia & New Guinea, and the Americas. The Sahara, the Himalayas, the Torres Strait, and the Bering Strait provide the isolation needed for the genetic drift.
    There is nothing wrong with not fitting in, but the reality is that most people do fit into one of the 5 clusters.
    Even more people fit into one of the 2 genders, of course; at least genetically.

  • To your point, how is what you described as “gender” different from sex?

    In short Sociology creates the distinction for it’s own purposes, but to me Sociology has as much standing as Phrenology or Fortune Telling. It is a Pseudo science that is only recognised because of the support it gives to Marxism and all it’s bastard offspring.

    In my universe, a universe of rational reality sex (male or female) results in gender (masculine traits /roles/behaviours and feminine traits /roles/behaviours)

    It is the difference between the fantasy of “Feminist Equality” and the reality of “Egalitarian Equivalence” (i.e “Equal, but different”)

  • pete

    We will have to defer to whatever the politically correct classes decide on this matter.

    I can’t see them letting the rest of us have a free for all where everyone can decide what race they are. After all, they are the experts on all things related to race and racism.

  • neal

    Human mental constructs divorced from what is called reality used to known as delusion.
    I mean, one works with they have got, no?

  • Snorri Godhi

    BTW i read somewhere that the practice is widespread in India to claim lower caste status in order to benefit from affirmative action: maybe somebody knows more than i do about this?

    Of course, as Ms Foley implies, the case of Ms Dolezal raises some interesting ethical questions: does she really identify as a black person? and does it matter if she doesn’t? are we being Jesuitical if her intent makes a difference to us?

  • @Snorri Godhi:

    While I accept what you say from an Anthropological perspective in terms of origin and migration theories we are still all the same species, as in a male from anywhere can shag a female from anywhere and provided there are no barriers to conception or gestation a fertile offspring will be born.

    Studies suggest that humans have a lack of genetic diversity in comparison to our nearest genetic ‘cousins ‘, the primates.

    Ignoring the geographic distinctions you describe, humans are far more similar than they are different, for example dog breeds show a range of genetic diversity and cats not so much, but all of humanity far, far, less.

    The scientific theory to account for this lack of diversity is that 1.2 million years ago, for unknown reasons our ancestors were reduce to a population of between 10,000 and 20,000 individuals.

    Human Ancestors Were an Endangered Species

  • Well JG, for the most part and semantics aside, you and I are in violent agreement then, even though you probably have not really read my comments before reacting. No big deal.

    Snorri, may you should try it and tell us all about it 😀

  • As to “racial” differences, of course there are clusters, just as with other numerous differences between humans – does not make them any more meaningful outside of political context.

  • the case of Ms Dolezal raises some interesting ethical questions: does she really identify as a black person? and does it matter if she doesn’t? are we being Jesuitical if her intent makes a difference to us?

    It doesn’t make any difference to me because I’m just watching the show and eating my popcorn, but it does matter to those for whom gender identity is important, which is to say the usual bunch of collectivists who are trying to use race and gender identity to label and control us through a modern form of colonial Divide-and-Rule.

    To the “Professional Offence Seekers” like Ms. Dolezal it is absolutely critical as by pretending to be something she is not (i.e. “black” in any meaningful sense of the word), she is claiming a victim-status, an inheritance of oppression to which she is not entitled.

    If this was allowed to continue the historical oppressors of Black and Ethnic Minorities (White Cishet males) could claim membership of an oppressed group and then where would we be?

    🙂

    Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.

    Napoleon Bonaparte

  • Well JG, for the most part and semantics aside, you and I are in violent agreement then, even though you probably have not really read my comments before reacting. No big deal.

    I can assure you Alisa that I have read your comments fully, but perhaps interpret it differently from how you meant it because I have a more literal, anti-Sociological perspective and I’m aware of some of the sleight-of-hand techniques that those who claim to be our educators (but are really just propagandists), try to get away with.

    The “Gender is a Social Construct” bullshit is an argument I’ve fought against before, many times, but it’s hard to win the war because the propaganda disguising itself as “Sociology” is widespread in the West.

  • BTW, as I understand it, Jenner did not have his penis cut – but whatever.

    The Kardassians and there coterie have no fascination for me, hence my lack of knowledge as to the state of Mr. Bruce Jenner’s sex reassignment surgery.

    My only point was that even if he took the sex reassignment surgery to its fullest extent (hormone therapy, breast implants and a penis-to-vagina facsimile), he would still be:

    1. Of the male sex.
    2. Of masculine gender.

    Any argument that he is otherwise I refute on the basis that it is an argument against rational and observable reality.

  • Mr Ed

    I have on occasion suggested to a person well-known on this parish that he self-identify ethnic origin on ‘monitoring forms’ that the UK state provides under a self-declared category under the ‘other’ section as ‘Slav/Mongol horde’ although I expect that this archaic designation* might not be in an Equality and Human Rights Commission category. It might at least cause some bureaucrats to devote resources to a less harmful task than otherwise might have been the case.

    *a translation into English of a term reportedly used by discredited socialists who were very keen on categorising humans by origin. In his case, it would have been politically accurate but not ethnologically accurate.

    I did once have a case where a dismissed employee said it was because he was black, his former employer said that he was white (or perhaps ‘WTF?!?’). He reportedly had one black grandparent, I had visions, had he brought a claim, of a court deciding his ethnicity but in a manner desperately striving to be unlike South Africa’s Racial Classification Board under Apartheid, which reported had a battery of tests, including seeing if a pencil stuck in a person’s hair, in order to make the call.

  • JG, I wrote as follows: “social” (i.e. political). You know about those thingies called ‘quotes’, right?

    and I’m aware of some of the sleight-of-hand techniques that those who claim to be our educators (but are really just propagandists), try to get away with.

    Huh? What on earth does it have to do with me?

    Anyway, it’s late here and I’m tired – good night everyone, genders and races and all.

  • I have on occasion suggested to a person well-known on this parish that he self-identify ethnic origin on ‘monitoring forms’ that the UK state provides under a self-declared category under the ‘other’ section as ‘Slav/Mongol horde’

    Last time I filled one of those in (some years ago), I ticked “Other” and filled in “Andaman Islander” on the basis of if they want ethnic, their going get it good and hard.

    🙂

    I mean, what are they going to do? challenge me?

    So on some Hertfordshire County Council database circa 2005 or so they could report at least one Andaman Islander”. The most score some diversity points 🙂

    At least I’ve flown over them enough times to be able to point them out on a globe.

    “Yeah, sure my great, great, great, great, grandparents were from Barren Island. They left when the volcano erupted in 1787”

    🙂

    Why? because fuck them, that’s why.

  • Kevin B

    Bravo JG.Bravo!

  • mojo

    “Are you human, sir?”
    “Negative, I am a meat Popsicle.”
    — The 5th Element

  • Kevin B

    But the point being, tick any box you like. And start doimg it now. And if you can afford some counter cultural affirmation, then dress yourself as an opposite sex stereotype and demand to be treated as an exemplar of your true gender, (or sexual identity or whatever).

    In other words, dress as a tart and demand to be treated as a vicar. Or vice versa.

  • But the point being, tick any box you like. And start doing it now.

    Presumably you tick any box you like EXCEPT the one you’re in for maximum confusion.

    🙂

  • staghounds

    I have a friend who is a Valkyrie-looking American whose parents were Scandinavian. When she’s having difficulty with service people- bank loan officers, store clerks, what have you- she often draws her six foot blonde self up and says,

    “This is because I’m a Black man, isn’t it?”

    People FREAK.

  • Julie near Chicago

    :>))))!!!!

  • JG,

    I use the term ‘Gender is a Social Construct’ tongue in cheek when I am extracting the yellow stuff from people and their arguments. My reading of Alisa’s original posting left me thinking she was being ironic in the same manner, and was not being serious.

    I am thinking you are objecting to a meaning which was not there.

  • Resident Alien

    When applying to a US university I “declined to answer” about my ethnicity. It later emerged that my ethnicity was recorded as “caucasian” so I asked for an explanation, the registrar simply did not reply. Thereafter on every form they gave me I identified as “Asian, Female”. A few years later when starting a new job I again “declined to answer” HR duly send somebody to look at me and identified me as “caucasian”. I concluded that to confound the system we must insistently identify as something we are clearly not. So when purchasing my next gun I completed my background check form identifying myself as “Asian Female” the store owner understood the game I was playing and called the FBI background check line and gave my details … I passed and got the gun. Everybody needs to do their bit to mess up the ridiculous system.

  • Being Australian, a country in an area often categorised as Australasia, when in the UK I usually identified as Asian. A reasonable alternative was Pacific Islander.

    The beauty of this was I didn’t even have to lie…

  • David Crawford

    On the last US census form (2010) I checked “Multi-Racial”. I should’ve checked all six or so races/ethnicities instead of just the two I did. Actually, next census I’ll check every single box, plus add silly data (I make more than $1 million a year but my house is worth less than $40K and has an out-house and my main transportation is a mule).

  • Shlomo Maistre

    Both “race” and “gender” are “social” (i.e. political) constructs.

    LOL

  • Paul Marks

    If universities, and so on, wish to carry on these silly “identity politics” (Political Correctness or Critical Theory) games that is up to them – as long as they do not receive any taxpayer support.

    No more government backed “student loans” and so on.

    Then we would see how real this movement is.

  • Shlomo Maistre

    Paul Marks,

    If universities, and so on, wish to carry on these silly “identity politics” (Political Correctness or Critical Theory) games that is up to them – as long as they do not receive any taxpayer support.

    The endeavor to remove any taxpayer support from universities for “identity politics” education will enjoy about as much success as the Tea Party had in limiting federal spending: basically none at all! And what little success is ever achieved will most certainly be as fleeting as it will be minimal. Why?

    The intelligentsia comprises a substantial portion of the aristocracy in the modern West and the aristocracy is traditionally in most (and, in particular, stable) societies subsidized financially by the rest of society. Insofar as such inherently absurd theories as racial justice are funded by the government’s purse, the more stable our society likely is.

    Of course, inasmuch as society at large compensates the ruling class with recognized right of rule, the less financial compensation need be allocated to the aristocracy to demonstrate the parameters of the immutable relationship (who rules whom). In other words, insofar as democratic societies deny the inherent right of the ruling class to rule, they proportionally suffer under inefficient rule (weighed down by increasingly burdensome absurdities as federal reserve notes, “social security” “racial justice” etc).

    As efficient wealth creation stems from clearly defined and widely recognized property rights, efficient rule of a nation stems from clearly defined and widely recognized sovereignty rights.

  • JG,
    I think you are wrong on this in many ways. 1-2% is not vanishingly small for the number of transexuals. There are probably more – read AE Brain’s blog. There are a staggering number of transsexual conditions that are now physiologically definable. Chromosomal or hormonal in utero and God knows what else. Attempts to conflate this woman’s truly odd behaviour with transexualism (not the same as transgender as such) are obfusticating the point.

    Anyway, did you get the cats and dogs thing from me? I made an earlier comment on the matter. If so credit me.

    Anyway, the Kardashians are fascinating. Especially to Jean-Luc et al. 😉

  • Mr Ed

    There ought to be a distinction between the genetic conditions where a person is demonstrably the manifestor of a condition whereby chromosomes are other than XX or XY, e.g. XXY, XO etc. or androgen insensitivity (I simplify) and situations where a person who is XX or XY but thinks of them-self as the other.

    The basic mammalian set up is that an embryo develops as female, which is the blueprint and in males there are modifications made in response to hormones, hence nipples on men etc. If there is androgen insensitivity, the foetus develops as a female even if genetically male (there are degrees here).

    And then there are those who regard themselves as being the ‘wrong’ sex and seek interventions. Whether this is biological or political or a combination thereof has not, AFAIK, been considered by science and frankly is probably taboo. It also ought to entirely be a matter of self-ownership, and not the subject of legal intervention.

  • Rich Rostrom

    Mr Ed: there is clear scientific evidence that gender identity is neurological, and can exist independently of genital anatomy. See the case of Bruce/David Reimer, for instance. In a very small number of people, it develops wrongly.

  • Mr Ed

    Rich, from the link.

    Psychologist John Money oversaw the case and reported the reassignment as successful and as evidence that gender identity is primarily learned. Academic sexologist Milton Diamond later reported that Reimer failed to identify as female since the age of 9 to 11

    I thought you said ‘scientific‘?

  • Snorri Godhi

    there is clear scientific evidence that gender identity is neurological, and can exist independently of genital anatomy. See the case of Bruce/David Reimer, for instance.

    David Reimer’s gender identity* did conform to his genetic makeup, as well as the hormonal environment in which he developed as a fetus.

    *perhaps i am using the word loosely here: i mean the gender in whose stereotypical roles he felt more comfortable with.

    BTW Alisa’s reply reminds me that i did not make it clear that the 5 human clusters are based on genetic markers, not on geography.
    As for dogs, due to artificial selection it is probably impossible to find a vertebrate species with more phenotypic variation than dogs (or, strictly speaking, wolves) and that developed in just a few tens of thousands of years!

  • James Hargrave

    Ah, forms. I am not married to a real Caucasian who, on encountering the terminology, found it offensive (and inaccurate). Meanwhile, many years ago in a completely dud English local authority with a population of all sorts of migrant folk, a head count run by the library seemed to be, essentially, white, yellow, brown, black. And forms always seem(ed) to offer some bizarre mixture of ethnicity, nationality, passport nationality, geography, colour, etc. Pity I didn’t keep up with the one Norwegian passport-holder I knew – not a Nordic blonde but a short, mixed race (but predominantly Indian) Fijian. I bet he had fun.

  • Anyway, did you get the cats and dogs thing from me? I made an earlier comment on the matter. If so credit me.

    Sorry Nick, must have missed that one.

    The stuff on genetic diversity in dogs was either from watching “The Wolf in your Living Room” or reading Bill Bryson’s “A Short History of Nearly Everything”.

    I suspect both our sources were the same ultimate research.

  • Snorri Godhi

    On 2nd thought perhaps we might agree on this formulation: races are social constructs, genetic clusters are a biological reality.

    WRT the “interesting ethical questions” that i raised yesterday, perhaps some people here are not aware of the background. The question that i meant to ask is: is it ok to get a scholarship meant for a Black student, if you have White parents but honestly identify as Black?
    If race is a social construct, why not?

  • races are social constructs, genetic clusters are a biological reality.

    I’m not sure this is true either or at least not at the lowest level.

    At best races are collections of people who share similar genetic characteristics.

    Social interaction does come into it, but it is more to do with the basic human need for conformity whereby we marry and hence breed with people who are like us.

    An example of this is the study that found during peak fertility, women found the sweat of men who smelt like their fathers more appealing.

    The science of sexiness: why some people are just more attractive

    Sure, you can observe the Social macro-environment, but it is arguable that at least some (if not all) of these drivers have a genetic basis.

  • Rosenquist

    It seems to me that the whole ‘gender is a social construct’ notion is obviously true to a large degree – gender functions in the same way as nationality, religion or political persuasion, which while often central to our sense of self are not biological but cultural categories into which we are socialized.

    Now of course sexual difference is a biological fact, but I would maintain that the social roles and traits associated with a particular gender are more a result of socialization than biological determinism.

  • Oh my. Let’s see:

    Both “race” and “gender” are “social” (i.e. political) constructs.

    The words race, gender and social are all in quotes. It is further explained in parentheses that what the various chatterati refer to as social, is nothing but political – two terms they tend to rather ignorantly/purposely confuse.

    Snorri, I did get the genetic point, and I am not at all ignoring the genetic differences, some of which form those well-apparent clusters you mentioned. The differences are real, and so are the clusters. Races, however, are not – not in the semantic sense the word is used in this day and age.

    The same goes for gender (again, in a certain semantic sense – as many people still use it synonymously with sex).

    My only point is that characteristics such as the color of one’s skin, or the shape of one’s nose, or one’s preference for wearing skirts while having a penis (or removing the penis altogether) – are, in and of themselves, all interesting factoids, but have little real-life importance outside of political context.

  • What if I am white but I consider my penis to be black?

  • Mr Ecks

    Wash It.

  • Snorri Godhi

    My only point is that characteristics such as the color of one’s skin, or the shape of one’s nose, or one’s preference for wearing skirts while having a penis (or removing the penis altogether) – are, in and of themselves, all interesting factoids, but have little real-life importance outside of political context.

    This is what i do not understand: on the face of it, what you are saying is that a man who prefers blondes, or a woman who prefers men who wear trousers or kilts rather than skirts, are politically motivated in their preferences.

  • I agree that Eddie Izzard or Grayson Perry wearing a skirt may be a political act.

    When I do it in the solitary confines of my bedroom, not so much.

  • No Snorri, what I am saying that outside of political context, their preferences (and motivations) are their own, and should be of no interest to anyone, other than themselves and the affected parties (such as the blond man who had the misfortune of wearing a skirt on a date, and as the result of said misfortune having been dissed by the black woman with a white penis. Or something.) None of these characteristics justify their bearers to a special status, such as, say, affirmative action in education or housing or whatever other purely political classifications. Like I said, interesting, but not really important.

  • Tim: don’t listen to Mr. Ecks – bleach it.

  • Midwesterner

    “Gender” comes from Middle French “gendre” and “genre” which in turn come from the Latin “genus” which, curiously enough, is used to refer to “species” in the plant and animal kingdom and “race” in humans. Since, IIRC, species were first categorized by taxonomic rather than genetic features (genetics being as yet unknown), this pre-DNA typing usage correlates well with the current convention that “gender” refers to phenotype which approximately is how genes are expressed in vivo rather than the actual content of the genes.

    “Sex” also comes from Latin and is believed to derive from “seco” which means to cut or divide. In this case the division is the separation of things into categories. For example in animal husbandry “sexing” means dividing and separating animals (for example hatchlings) according to their biological sex. Even in the plant world “sexing” is practiced. Asparagus for example is sorted by sex since the male plants put less energy into reproduction and therefor produce much more edible crop for a given amount of inputs.

    In short, the usefully developing meanings of “sex” and “gender”, while sharing a part of their etymology, are that “sex” refers to genotype and “gender” refers to phenotype. A facet of this that I as an Individualist find noteworthy is that “gender” is expressed by the subject and “sex” is assigned to the subject (in this case by the nomenclature of biologists).

    There are people who argue that “sex” and “gender” are two different spellings of the same word.

    People arguing for the accretion of more possible meanings on to individual words, in other words arguing for increased ambiguity of words rather than increased clarity by distinguishing between meanings and narrowing the usage of specific words, … these people are in fact working towards shrinking rather than expanding language and are up to no good (whatever their motivations).

    Either that or perhaps their tabloid vocabularies are already strained to the max and any further growth of the language overwhelms their processing power. 🙂

    The controversial phrase in this thread is

    “Both “race” and “gender” are “social” (i.e. political) constructs.”

    In correct and narrow usage, both “race” and “gender” are how the DNA expresses in a given situation rather than the actual content of the DNA. There is probably a strong epigenetic component at work but we are far from understanding it. For me I assume them both to be social constructs (without the quotes).

    A new word has just recently appeared. “Cisgendered” apparently refers to a person whose sex and gender are in conventional (and reproductively optimal) alignment. The steady arrival or creation of new words that do not duplicate existing ones are one more example of a living language adapting and growing. Ain’t English great!

  • Beau Sotten

    Both “race” and “gender” are “social” (i.e. political) constructs.

    This comment appears to imply that ‘race’ identification is a construct that is elective, optional, fluid. In America, maybe for a white person. At a conference on race years ago, a young African-American man asked me what it was like being a white person. I said I never thought about it. He said if he forgot he was black he would be dead.

    Dismiss it as a social construct, but four plus centuries of enslavement, brutality, and dehumanization based on skin color is not erased by a few decades of grudging progress. You don’t get something for nothing, it is not going away, and there is no easy redemption. Centuries from now the stain will still be there.

  • Midwesterner

    Beau Sotten, The “Plessy” of Plessy v Ferguson was of 7/8s European and 1/8 African descent. He was a Roman Catholic Republican.

    “Race” is a social construct based on appearance, speech and behavior. American Blacks and South Asians are known to identify as the other if it suits their purposes. If you do not believe race is a fluid construct, tell me the binary indicator that warrants the labeling of someone as one or the other. Is it a percentage of African ancestry? Is it the texture of hair? Is there a threshold for the reflective index of one’s skin? Is it the shape of one’s nose?

    Tell me of some way in which race is not a fluid construct. Rachel Dolezal, the inspiration for this discussion, is German, Czech, Swedish. And yet she was convincing enough to become president of the NAACP.

    Race is based on superficialities, not anything substantive. It is an arbitrary label based on imaginary boundaries on the scale of diversities between individuals. It is an invention bent and stretched to serve the purposes of the collectivists wielding it.

    You are claiming race is real, not an arbitrary assignment by collectivists wishing to use it for personal gain. I say it is just that, an arbitrary assignment by collectivists wishing to use it for personal gain (and who populate both sides of the alleged binary construct). Which of our beliefs and approaches is the most likely to defeat racism and racists, validating or refuting it for the opportunistic invention it is?

  • Nicholas (Self-Sovereignty) Gray

    Let’s not forget that all languages are social constructs- I wasn’t born knowing English. Therefore, all words must also fall under the label of social construct. Well won, Alisa!
    Countingcats- I object to your attempt to dictate the meaning of words! If I say a phrase has a certain meaning, then it does have that meaning, even if it also has the meaning that was in your head!
    As for gender Presidents, if Clinton was the first ‘black’ prez, couldn’t talkable, agreeable Carter have been the first ‘feminine’ president?

  • Midwesterner

    In my 1AM comment, third paragraph, should be “become a president of the NAACP Chapter in Spokane Washington.” She isn’t the National President.

  • mojo

    “The goal of this investigation is to find out who authorized the decision to allow Congress — which employs nearly 16,000 people — to join Obamacare as a ‘small business’ and receive a special taxpayer-funded subsidy that is not available to the rest of America. We are seeking accountability within the body that creates this nation’s laws and moving forward with the subpoena process in a transparent manner.” — David Vitter (R – LA)

  • Beau Sotten

    Wow. Twelve million Africans transported to the West as slaves were actually just collectivists taking advantage of an arbitrary racial assignment for personal gain. Treated like animals for almost 5 centuries, it was a bad choice, but ultimately their own. Problem solved. Now we can get on to gender and wrap that up in a tidy package.

  • Midwesterner

    Twelve million Africans transported to the West as slaves were actually just collectivists taking advantage of an arbitrary racial assignment for personal gain.

    No. “Twelve million Africans transported to the West as slaves were actually just by collectivists taking advantage of an arbitrary racial assignment for personal gain.”

    Hereditary guilt? Perhaps we should start jailing people and sentencing them according to how many of their ancestors owned how many slaves and for how long?

    Any racial collectivists alive today that can be prosecuted by all means should be. But when you advocate for collective retribution you are advocating for race war.

    I notice that you seem unwilling to actually present your standard for segregating races. I say you can’t because race is an arbitrary invention and not a definable standard at all. You say that race is real and that it must be recognized. So present your standard by which people can be assigned to races without resorting to their own claims and desires.

    While the targets of race hate suffer real harm, that doesn’t make race non-arbitrary. The bigots who are invoking race to select the targets for their hate of other-group are still collectivists using an arbitrary invention to mark the membership of their tribe and select their targets.

    It is not possible to create a reliable system for assigning every individual to their “correct” race. Race is a social construct. An arbitrary assignment. Treating it as anything else is a road map to evil.

  • Mr Ed

    Midwestener,

    You say that race is real and that it must be recognized. So present your standard by which people can be assigned to races without resorting to their own claims and desires.

    Perhaps Beau Sotten (great initials btw) could use the work done on this earlier in the 20th Century in a society where race was recognised and had consequences for people in their daily lives, and add in the benefits of modern genetics. Of course BS would not use previous work to quite the same end, but I wonder if he is looking for a solution to a perceived problem, even if not a final one. He has not said anything about introducing classification or about hereditary guilt, it would be an inference too far that he seeks to do so. It’s hard to see how he got a reference to choice in there.
    http://dev.laptop.org/pub/content/wp/en/Apartheid.html#Colour_classification

    As for this comment by Beau Sotten:

    At a conference on race years ago, a young African-American man asked me what it was like being a white person. I said I never thought about it. He said if he forgot he was black he would be dead.

    1. Did he say why he thought that? What did Jesse Jackson say about turning around in the street at night? http://www.coastalpost.com/97/3/19.htm
    2. Did you challenge him on why he said that?
    3. If you never though about it (being white), how come you were at a conference on race? (not all of us go to such conferences, I suspect).
    4. Did the conference have a definition of ‘race’? (Was there some form of standard widely accepted by the participants?).

  • Thank god for Mid (and Mr. Ed).

  • Beau Sotten

    An analogy for some of the pseudo-intellectual pretense used to hide from the historical problem of race in America:

    A mugger lays open your head with a baseball bat. Before the judge, he pleads not guilty. His argument: It is better to pretend that it never actually happened.

    The subatomic particles that make up the bat and the head, quantum mechanically, can be shown to both exist and not exist in a statistical process that only has the illusion of substance. At the closest level, no precise substantive boundary can be defined between the bat and the head. In fact, their separate existence is a cognitive illusion. And even if they did exist, no matter how close they get, you can always find a point, however infinitesimal, between the bat and the head, so technically, they never made contact. And if they did make contact, it is no more phenomenologically valid to say the bat hit the head than to say the head struck the bat. And even if the bat did strike the head, it would need to have happened in the past, a social construct subject to manifold interpretations and unreliable memory. And even if it did happen in the past, the cells in the body are replaced over a period of months, making the continuity of identity a legal fiction. How long can this collection of cells be held accountable for the corporate behavior of the past collection of cells that bore the same name? Hereditary guilt is impossible to adjudicate without making matters worse, so let’s just forget the thing happened and try to get along.

    The issue of race in America may be the greatest contradiction to our principles of democracy and liberty. It is rooted in a crime of such a scale that no amount of trimming around the edges, arguing about definitions and percentages of this and that will ever satisfy the mind or heart. We have made historically unprecedented progress and still cannot put it behind us. It will remain uncomfortable and incomprehensible. I do not begrudge the Al Sharptons, even when they get it wrong, and getting it wrong does not help. Confused poseurs like Dolezal mean little in the big picture.

    I think Karl Popper would agree that justice in regard to the historical problem of race is a good candidate for piecemeal social engineering. Try something. If it doesn’t work or stops working, try something else. We muddle forward by trial and error. I also think he would be disappointed how far this forum has deviated from critical rationality. How does making fun of my name contribute to the search for truth?

  • Beau, the ad hominem with regard to your name may have been a cheap shot, but you are still wrong. I suggest you re-read Mid’s comments. There is really not much I can add to that, and all of us can always agree to disagree.

  • Bod

    Yes, let’s talk about Hereditary Guilt.

    I emigrated from Britain to the US 20 years ago. As far as I can tell, none of my antecedents benefitted in any way from five centuries of slavery.

    How much hereditary guilt do I carry? Seems to me like just about zero, what do you think?

    And, if you disagree with that, what *is* an appropriate penance I have to perform in order to expiate that guilt?

    And, should I pay that price, will I forevermore be exempt from the endless race-baiting and shaming?

  • Mr Ed

    I see in Beau’s post above what I take to be a rejection of individuality and an attribution of blame on the basis of hereditary, if I read his post as suggesting that those who are white in America are the mugger. There is no basis in reason or science for such a proposition as I impute to his rather opaque discourse.

    I hope that Beau is not a defence attorney, but it might also be that his point is that blame is not a valid concept, although, if that be his case, he appears to make exception on arbitrary (as to race and exception) racial grounds. I have difficulty considerable reconciling his position with any legal concepts, and if your defence to the infliction of harm is quantum mechanics, you may find a very Newtowian law operating against you. If Beau is saying that people don’t really commit crime, the trite riposte is that the law doesn’t really punish them with jail or fines, after all the criminal jailed will vanish over time and be renewed by an older impostor,

  • bloke in spain

    ” It is rooted in a crime of such a scale that no amount of trimming around the edges, arguing about definitions and percentages of this and that will ever satisfy the mind or heart. ”
    But it wasn’t a crime, was it? It was all perfectly legal. At the time.

  • Midwesterner

    The issue of race in America may be the greatest contradiction to our principles of democracy and liberty. It is rooted in a crime of such a scale that no amount of trimming around the edges, arguing about definitions and percentages of this and that will ever satisfy the mind or heart. We have made historically unprecedented progress and still cannot put it behind us. It will remain uncomfortable and incomprehensible.

    The first step is to utterly discredit the concept of “race”. Expose its advocates and benefactors for the unprincipled collectivist predators they were and are. I don’t care how dark or how light someone is. Skin color is just one of an uncountable number of variables that distinguish individuals. There can only ever be one perfectly representative case for genotyping or for that matter phenotyping humans and that is whichever person is arbitrarily picked as “the standard”. The whole concept of race is a preposterous collectivisation of individuals who share varying features to varying degrees.

    You say “It is rooted in a crime of such a scale that no amount of trimming around the edges, arguing about definitions and percentages of this and that will ever satisfy the mind or heart.”

    Exactly. No amount of trimming around the edges will ever satisfy the mind or heart. The entire false premise race is based on must be rejected, attacked and destroyed. “Race” is and always has been a tool created by collectivists and wielded as a weapon. Taking it up and turning it back on its wielders only serves to strengthen its credibility and expand its foundation. It is not the past benefactors and victims of collectivist predation based on an invention called “race” that should or even can be addressed. It is the continuing acceptance of the concept of race itself. First that must be destroyed.

    The last vestige of credibility for race as a concept or a standard – for taking countless discreet individuals and assigning them to collectives under various titles of “race” – must itself be destroyed. All else is at best “trimming around the edges”.

  • Midwesterner

    Good grief do I need to learn to edit. “Benefactor” should of course be “beneficiary” (twice!) and hopefully obviously, “discreet” should be “discrete”. There are probably many more, my comments are a target rich environment.

  • I sneeze in threes

    Do you think Rachel Dolezal was a fan of The Jerk?

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANph32LoXR4

  • Mr Ed

    I think Karl Popper would agree that justice in regard to the historical problem of race is a good candidate for piecemeal social engineering. Try something. If it doesn’t work or stops working, try something else. We muddle forward by trial and error. I also think he would be disappointed how far this forum has deviated from critical rationality.

    1. “Karl Popper“: Appeal to authority, but not one’s own, but inconveniently a deceased authority. I fail to see how your opinion of what Karl Popper would have thought had he been alive now assists your argument.

    2. Nothing is a good candidate for social engineering. It means the use of force or menace to achieve its ends. Changing what would otherwise be the order of things. Lenin and Stalin were experts at trying it, regardless of the human cost.

    3. “Try something. If it doesn’t work or stops working, try something else‘ On whose authority and what is to be tried? Who pays for the errors?

    4. “critical rationality” is diluted by your posts.

  • Nicholas (Self-Sovereignty) Gray

    I can out-victim all you lot. I am really a lesbian trapped in a man’s body!

  • Ah. Yes. Race and Gender. So how about that grand old military tradition?

    A cluster f….

  • Mr Ed
    June 15, 2015 at 9:10 pm

    Was having that discussion elsewhere and even the lefties had run out of things that could reasonably be tried. Nothing works.

    The problem is essentially this: proficiency running down gazelles does not translate into proficiency in programming computers. You may be a world class sprinter – but there is not much market for that these days. At least past a certain age.

  • Midwesterner
    June 15, 2015 at 3:33 pm

    Well yes. Of course. Discredit race. Now try that with Ashkenazi. I have a paper:

    http://harpending.humanevo.utah.edu/Documents/ashkiq.webpub.pdf

  • How about we face reality. Race is a valid classification system (black bears, brown bears) and none the less we treat people as individuals.

  • And need I remind libertarians that there is a race war going on in America?

    “Look, we understood we couldn’t make it illegal to be young or poor or black in the United States, but we could criminalize their common pleasure. We understood that drugs were not the health problem we were making them out to be, but it was such a perfect issue…that we couldn’t resist it.” – John Ehrlichman, White House counsel to President Nixon on the rationale of the War on Drugs.

    “[Nixon] emphasized that you have to face the fact that the whole problem is really the blacks” Haldeman, his Chief of Staff wrote, “The key is to devise a system that recognizes this while not appearing to.”

    “Modern Prohibition/War on Drugs is the most destructive, dysfunctional and immoral policy since slavery & Jim Crow – Retired Police Detective Howard Wooldridge

    Citizens Opposing Prohibition

  • Nice paper on what Prohibition is doing to the Black family.

    http://issues.org/13-2/courtw/

  • Niall Kilmartin

    John Galt wrote: “The vast majority of people are born with either masculine features (XY chromosomes and a penis) or feminine features (XX chromosomes and a vagina) There are vanishingly small numbers ~ 1-2% where it is unclear or babies are born with both masculine and feminine characteristics.”

    I’m guessing that John’s “~ 1-2%” in the above was a misprint for the more accurate ~ 0.01% or 0.02%. One can defend 0.025% or 0.03%. (I note John wrote _vanishingly_ small, which suggests to me he did have the lower figures in mind.)

    I can just recall when the PC brigade were assuring us a new ice age was likely; more recently, their line has been a heat wave. Similarly, I can recall when being gay was “an equally valid lifestyle choice” (and you were a homophobe to discuss the philosophy of that), and the more recent line when they were “women trapped in men’s bodies, or vice versa” (and you’re a homophobe to discuss whether it could ever instead be any kind of choice). 🙂

    I remark this only because the figures and the ideological arguments have the potential to interact. Suppose the brain is another organ of the body, equi-probably with the rest to developmental irregularities (not known, nor likely to be without much, much more research, but a reasonable start point for a discussion). Given the actual “vanishingly small” probability, it is unlikely that more than 1 in 100 homosexuals, if that, are rationally classifiable as “women trapped in men’s bodies, or vice versa”, whereas had the misprint been right, a majority might have been.

    Of course, we’re supposed to internalise and echo the PC line, not philosophise about it – or, I suspect, even remember what it was before it changed: Oceania has always been at war with EastAsia. It’s us people who can;t stop thinking just for the fun of it who cause all the problems. 🙂