Taboo Topics (Heavily moderated)

[Lambeth]

Is someone's race the same as their nationality?

Race is just a dumb social construct humanity can't seem to get past. It's a mixture of culture and class really.

[Brekkjern]

Is someone's race the same as their nationality?

Race is just a dumb social construct humanity can't seem to get past. It's a mixture of culture and class really.

Race is not a dumb social construct. It is about genetics. Problem is that we mix our genes so the categories become very fluid. There are different races of dogs with different traits. The most obvious difference in humans is the colour but there are other smaller differences as well. Ultimately, we are all humans and that is what should be the most important factor.

[Lambeth]

99% of every human's genes are exactly the same. Biologically we are exactly the same, culture is the only thing that makes us different.

[Reyo]

While I understand what you're going for, you can't honestly say that if you saw a white person, and a black person standing next to each other, you'd be at a loss for words for what makes the two of them different at a first glance.

[Lambeth]

The white dude can't jump.

seriously though, besides superficial appearances, humans are all the same. Superficial stuff does count for a lot though, since humans are naturally very sight oriented.

[Brekkjern]

We share +95% of the same genes as most mammals, meaning the number isn't all that important.

That there aren't differences between races is an absolutely ridiculous claim. This blog entry (couldn't find all that many scientific papers discussing this.) explains it fairly well. http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com ... man-races/

I agree. There are not all that many functional differences, but there are medical and some diseases affect different types of populations differently. This means there are some difference somewhere.

[Kamak]

Besides which, there are millions of genes. Even if humans have a 1% deviance in genetic material (which seems pretty high for a species), you're looking at tens of thousands of genes with the ability for variable expression.

That's a lot of basis for differences in a species. Hell, chimpanzees and bonobos are only 1% different than the average human genome and they're drastically different from humans.

It's true that we're not reproductively isolated, but neither are dogs, yet we classify them by breeds.

The simple fact of the matter is that race is more often than not equivalent to the genetic origin that gives rise to human "breeds". There are people in central europe that were of a race/breed/genetic origin that were resistant or immune to the plague. They largely kept to themselves, so their genes diverged in a way that made them not susceptible to the same disease.

Now, socially you run into some issues with the terms.

I find that a lot of Americans tend to use race and nationality interchangably, which seems to irritate people who use them for "place of origin" and "current location". For example, asking an American what nationality they are over here will result in them usually giving their race ("I'm German"). But asking about nationality in a place with less immigration usually seems like a weird thing to do (go to Finland and ask what nationality they are, it'll seem odd, since it's assumed that most people originate from Finland).

Additionally, while I have the issue brought up, how do people feel about places with high immigration (especially America), discussing their nationality without mentioning the country they live in (saying German instead of German-American). This can be confusing when discussing matters on the Internet, and cultural differences in how language is used can rear up issues too.

To me, I think the issue comes up because in places like America, everyone is an immigrant, so saying you're American is really irrelevant on the local level (you're not going to say to a neighbor "hello, I am, X! my family is German-American."), it's a level of redundancy, so it's just not done compared to places where nationality is more likely to be ambiguous with immigration and tourism and such.

I've had this discussion on another board, but unfortunately it got heated before anyone could really give a good perspective on the matter.

[Syobon]

I don't know how that is an issue Kamak? I can see what you're talking about and how that could be confusing, but I don't see how it's really problematic. You'd have to be pretty stuck-up to take offence to something like that. It's not exactly like you describe in Europe I think though. If you ask an integrated immigrant here(especially second-generation and beyond) what nationality they are they'll probably answer Belgian (of Turkish origin) for example. That's mostly because nationality is used as a synonym to citizenship here of course.

What's weirder to me is that Americans seem to call all black people African-Americans when they're sometimes neither African of American.

[Kamak]

I didn't really see it as an issue either, besides the obvious confusion (but that also happens for things like Birmingham Alabama or England), but in this sense, people would take offense because Germans and German-Americans would be conflated as "Germans", and it would cause confusion and possibly make Germans look bad for what German-Americans were doing and other things like that.

Also something about "you're an American, so you're no longer German by anything but ancestry" and some manner of bandwagoning and cultural appropriation/equality, which is valid maybe in the sense of some cultural stuff, but seems pretty stupid.

I'm kinda hesitant to talk about it in other threads though, considering the time it came up on the other forum, 5 people were banned for a week for how heated it got, so I guess for some people it's a pretty big deal? It came across as a patriotic issue, I think, which probably varies from place to place.

[Lambeth]

Comparing humans to breeds of dogs skeeves me out. Not because I think humans are different from/better than dogs, but because a lot of breeds of dogs are fucked up. I've read about a lot of dogs that are completely boned due to incompetent or completely careless breeders. Cats too, notably Lil Bub.

What's weirder to me is that Americans seem to call all black people African-Americans when they're sometimes neither African of American.

I used to do this. It's something that's very much drilled into during grade school years.

[Cori]

Yeah, that bothers me too. Nowdays I usually use the term 'people of color' when talking about racism since it seems more politically correct but I've encountered people who don't like being called that either so I really don't think there's a way to please everyone, unfortunately.

[Barabba]

Yeah, especially when deciding which sign to put over the "colored" fountain.
HAHAAHAH, IRONY

[Riku]

Not for this thread, man.

(Now that Loli responded, this post is kind of unnecessary. Any mod: feel free to delete this post)

[corsica]

Yeah, especially when deciding which sign to put over the "colored" fountain.
HAHAAHAH, IRONY

Don't.

[Vax]

From experience, your safest bet really is just to use "black."

I know personally it's my preference, and for many other pocs it's the same story. The whole African-American thing has been drilled into my head for so long, but only recently have I come to be of the opinion that it's stupid. I mean when I was going through school I was always incredibly confused because there would be a box to check for certain things for African-American and also Other. Now I always wanted to use Other because I'm mixed race (more Irish than anything really) but the Other option came with taglines referring to other, more obscure nationalities. It can be a touchy subject for many black people, I think, but yeah I think Black or POC is the most accepted.