Spyke
lemmy.today

There are at least 3 white people here. This fuckhead just doesn't see it because they're dressed differently then they think white people dress.

199
slrpnk.net

I was gonna say some of these people look pretty white to me. But then we're getting into the arbitrary question of who counts as white which is probably way beyond her understanding.

144
scarabicreply
lemmy.world

Part of being “white” is getting to decide who is “white.” This is only possible because “white” is a completely made up category. We shouldn’t even engage with the term.

95
slrpnk.net

Fair point but it's so deeply rooted. Don't we have to engage with it to some extent in order to eliminate it?

20
scarabicreply
lemmy.world

I’ll just let my comment above stand as an example of how I think it should be engaged with. You can recognize that it’s a fantasy people have without participating in the fantasy.

17
Dalereply
lemmy.world

It’s true that white is a made up term made to justify owning slaves and on that front it’s a meaningless way to group many different ethnicities. On the other hand as a white person I have to acknowledge that I am lumped in that group. I have privileges, and responsibilities because of it and there are social groups and spaces that are not for me. I can’t absolve myself of being white by saying white isn’t real.

1

I agree. It’s not about absolution. It’s about breaking down a culturally constructed instrument of oppression by refusing to participate in it. I can’t tell the world to stop treating me better because they think I’m white, which I believe is part of your point. But we do what we can, when we can, with knowledge of what we can and can’t.

1

Old English saying "The wogs begin at Calais."

Meaning if you aren't English you really aren't White.

8

Irish immigrants, of all people, weren't considered white until like the mid 1900s.

4

It's entirely in the eye of the beholder, as white is an ephemeral western social in-group and not an ethnicity. If you think you see white people in this photo, then you do.

26

To that person, "there are at least 3 people who are clearly at leat white passing"

8

Also, there were black people, but I'm sure this ethnocentric asshole didn't see them either.

17

There is an excellent book titled "How the Irish Became White" by Noel Ignatiev. It's based on his doctoral dissertation and it provides a detailed historical look at just how arbitrary the concept of race really is.

6
assemblyreply
lemmy.world

Yes, but I imagine the original poster was thinking Aryan white.

59
Karlreply
literature.cafe

Lol racists are so stupid, where do they draw the line

7

Race is a weird take all on its own because all humans are part of the same race.

5

Built a country on race based slavery and segregation, bound to have some mentally short circuiting folks even in the 21st century.

3
lemmy.world

Oh but they meant pale white northern european locked inside without sun the whole day not slightly tan white people

16
Windex007reply
lemmy.world

Americans apparently have a very learned eye to distinguish who's white or not.

Had a bizarre interaction in Texas once where I couldn't tell an entire staff was Mexican? My bad. Hijinx ensued. Owner was on the hook for my meal/drinks.

11
Windex007reply
lemmy.world

I'm Canadian.

I was visiting a friend in Texas in 2015. They were out for the day so I was just kinda wandering around in the afternoon.

Found myself belly up to a bar, chit chatting with the bartenders. Shooting the shit, having a great time. Trump came on the TV and I commented what a knob he was.

The bartender said something somber, like "Yeah if he wins, we all are gonna have to go home"

I sincerely didn't understand why. I was like "What... he's going to close the bars??" The guy was like "No... we will have to go home"

Again, I was like "what the fuck are you talking about"

Buddy looks at me like I'm from outer space. I look at him the same way.

He just slowly says "We're... all... Mexican". The whole body of staff is gravitating towards the unfolding scene.

"How the hell was I supposed to know that?" I asked. He was like "Isn't it obvious?". No? Like they had dark hair. Is everyone with dark hair Mexican?

He was like "did you walk by any construction sites today?". Yes, I had. "Think back, did the foreman look different than everyone else?". Now that is really thought back... yeah. He was like, ginger.

At this point, like 10 of the staff are watching me come to the realization, in real time, that I've been surrounded by Mexicans like the whole day and no part of my brain registered it.

I don't even really remember exactly what I said next... but it would have been along the lines of "I'm from Canada. My brain isn't even wired to distinguish a Mexican from anyone else." I'm really confused. I'm basically apologizing.

At that point they just burst out laughing. Basically surrounded at this point. They poured me a shot. Then another. They told me my bill was covered. We kept shooting the shit for a few more hours. They kept teasing me for not being able to recognize a Mexican. A relatively famous band was playing there later that night, and they snuck me back to listen to them warming up.

To this day, I still don't really understand how Americans can distinguish Mexicans. It must be a learned "skill". It was pretty eye opening talking to them... the fatigue of being treated as "lesser"... even "distinct". We had a good time.

29

That's kind of where I'm at, I really have no idea if I've every seen a mexican person in real life or if they might be a native, also hello from bc

1

You're not an idiot and that story is hilarious. Thanks for sharing it!

If it makes you feel any better, not all Latinos are Mexican, and even Mexicans can't accurately recognize other Mexicans. I'm descended from Sicilians, so I'm seasonally dark and my dad was dark AF*. When we lived in California, we were regularly spoken to in Spanish by Mexicans and other Latinos who were surprised that we didn't speak Spanish and in fact were the whitest dark people they had ever met.

*Fun Fact: my paternal grandfather was an asshole and as racist as he was dark (very). Jokes on him - I got my whole genome sequenced and we have a ton of gene variations strongly correlated with African populations. I'm around 25% African by gene frequency distribution, about 10% North and about 15% sub-Saharan African. I'm at least 15% "black". Hah! Fuck you, Grandpa!

9

It's context dependent. When performing at the Superbowl it's brown. When shooting a black man it's white.

6

It's so arbitrary. I'm "white" and I'm darker than most of the people there by early June. It'd be year round if not for living so far north.

4
lemmy.world

Anglo-Saxons quite literally erased the locals when they came to America, this is just a musical performance with some of their descendants. 🙄

I'm telling you, if they had anything more than their physical features as common ground, anything with depth as a shared ideology, and even the most rudimentary of moral frameworks, they wouldn't be this way.

62
ickplantreply
lemmy.world

If you listen to her, you’d think Bad Bunny was giving out smallpox blankets to all the white people at the Super Bowl.

38
samus12345reply
sh.itjust.works

Ooh, that would work really well nowadays with all the antivaxxers! New idea, pass out blankets at Trump rallies!

21
sh.itjust.works

Not smallpox please, a lot of innocent people aren't vaccinated against it since it was eradicated. I am because I'm an old fart, but I don't want MAGA people my age and above being the ones NOT affected. Besides you'd have to break into the CDC, or just convince Kennedy it'd be good for folks'immune systems or something.

Measles is already working on the problem all by itself.

18
Glidereply
lemmy.ca

Unfortunately, gotta hard disagree here. The big problem is that this particular in-group does have a shared ideology and moral framework. The problem is that it's Nazi ideology.

4

I don't think there's anything of substance there besides fear, confusion and anger, and none of these things require words or thoughts. I mean, let's be real, none of these folks have read Mein Kampf... these people don't read, lol. The one thing I'd say they have in common is that they have defaulted into the bestial "might makes right"/law of the jungle stance, which is not an ideology but the absence of one that contains/redirects your urges.

3
lemmy.world

"That" means we should enact an Anglo-Saxon genocide? No, not at all, lol (the fuck?).

3

As a Latino I grew up watching movies with nothing but white people on screen. But I’m not a crying like bitch like MAGA

53

I watched "The Nightmare Before Christmas" once and I swear there wasn't a real person in there. They want every single one of us to be dead and animated!

21
lemmy.today

same, but im asian. only white people/magas complain about wokeness. Also they have pet peeve with anything that strays from evangelical christianity subtleties in shows and movies.

11

There was some Richard Pryor joke about some 70s sci-fi movie with only whites in it. Think about what that means...

4

"Whenever Poochie's not on screen, all the other characters should be asking 'Where's Poochie?'"

2
ickplantreply
lemmy.world

He's not leaving much room for Jesus... and with an adult woman. A conservative's worst nightmare.

41
FuglyDuckreply
lemmy.world

Jesus does it from behind.

Brings a whole new meaning to “Christ on a cracker “

11
FuglyDuckreply
lemmy.world

Maybe he’s more of a switch.

If you let him, he’ll come inside you.

2

She is Italian, right? Does that qualify as white? Depends who/when you ask.

Personally I'm all for erasing the white identity. Its a fucking lie. My grandparents and great grandparents etc were Norwegian, Italian, Scottish. They did not consider themselves white.

If one wants to make an argument about an American melting pot identity, blending these cultures together to something new, you are lying to yourself if you try to exclude the massive influence non-'white' cultures had and continue to have on that shared cultural identity.

22

yeah, they cut to Lady Gaga who did a song ... The existence of other people is not erasure of you.

18
lemmy.ca

Is bad bunny not white? I thought Puerto Rico was colonized by the spanish wiping out the majority of the native population and he looks pretty spanish. I guess this is one of those "the Irish aren't white" situations.

38
lemmy.world

The reason for this is that race is a made-up concept.

Race is a pure "us-vs-them" term. That's why the term "race" was roughly equivalent to "nationality" in most European languages before the term fell out of use after WW2.

If you read texts from 1920s Europe, they frequently talk about the "French race", the "German race" or the "English race". When the Nazis talked about the "uber race", they didn't mean white people, but instead meant German people. They saw the French, the English and so on as inferior races. (Which makes the concept of neonazis from other countries than Germany quite absurd.)

In the USA, there weren't enough people of one nationality to dominate the area, so they had to band together and create a "shared white identity", so their us-vs-them became roughly equivalent to the continent of origin.


Since "race" doesn't have any actual definition apart from us-vs-them, it can be adapted to whatever makes sense right now.

A "white person" can be someone who looks vaguely white. It could be someone where the majority of their ancestors come from a certain part of the world (e.g., excluding Ireland, Eastern Europe, North Africa, ... even though they might look indistinguishable from people from e.g. Western Europe). It could be someone where every single one of their ancestors come from a certain part of the world. It could even be just people of a certain socio-economic group. You could even define that "true whiteness" requires a certain political affiliation.


Side note: while the term "race" fell out of use in most of Europe after WW2 and is now being reimported from the US with US meaning, the same is not true for the word "racism" that stayed in use in most European languages and is stilm used with the old European definition.

So to someone from the US, a French man hating all Brits is not a racist, but to someone from Europe, he is a racist.

41

If you read texts from 1920s Europe, they frequently talk about the “French race”, the “German race” or the “English race”. When the Nazis talked about the “uber race”, they didn’t mean white people, but instead meant German people. They saw the French, the English and so on as inferior races. (Which makes the concept of neonazis from other countries than Germany quite absurd.)

Downton Abbey has at least one instance of this, referring to the "German race" just slightly post WW1. It caught me off guard but now makes sense in light of your comment.

5
slrpnk.net

most Puerto Ricans are tri-racial with their genetic makeup skewing towards towards African. the three groups that led us to now are the indigenous Taino who were enslaved by Christopher Columbus, enslaved Africans, and as you mentioned the Spanish. i don't know a single boricua who identifies as white. i'm sure they're out there, but they're just not who i'm knowing. but either way, white supremacy guages whiteness by proximity to power within a color coded society. so like… even if Bad Bunny were 100 of spanish descent it'd be as you say, similar to how the Irish, Italians, Romani, Jews, and Ukrainians aren't white under the framework of american white supremacy.

it's also important to know that white supremacy isn't a uniquely western European or so called united states thing. the all time promoting white supremacy champs are:

  • the so called united states
  • great Britain
  • Germany
  • Italy
  • Russia
  • Israel
  • China
  • Japan
9

China promotes White Supremacy?

As someone who has lived in Puerto Rico, and whose mom was born and raised there of immigrants from Mandatory Iraq during WW2, I'd say about 20-30% of people in Puerto Rico consider themselves white.

2
lemmy.world

The CCP promotes Han supremacy; it's literally encoded in the Chinese constitution that the leader has to be a Han and the deputy has to be of other ethnicities. I learned about that while debating with a supremacist to justify their ideology and the slogan "[insert race/ethnicity/nationality] for [insert any given place]". That is why lot of white supremacists look to Japan and China, to a certain extent, about keeping "homogeneous" and "native". But white supremacists conveniently ignore that China is ethnically and linguistically diverse even with 90% Han population making up the Chinese demographic, and the Japanese came to Japan later, with Ainus being there first.

What supremacists really mean to say is that "might makes right. We may have actually come later to the land, but we displaced the original settlers by force. We ain't gonna let others do the same to us." I'm kinda glad I am born South East Asian, there is relative harmony among different groups.

5

It's been a long time and I can't find the source now, although I distinctly remember reading the part of the constitution while debating with the said supremacist. I admit, either it may have been the party's constitution or China's constitution itself.

1
lemmy.ca

White supremacy probably not but racial supremacy is 100% true.

4

This is literally US government propaganda. The US government and its agents are not reputable or trustworthy and have material interest in lying about China to further their economic position and military industrial sales. I am not American and I have no reason to trust that Americans are neutral or doing good academics research.

0
KuroiKazereply
lemmy.world

China is 70% or more Han, you can imagine they have a similar issue with their ethnic minorities but far more direct and unhidden.

2
prolereply
lemmy.blahaj.zone

"White" doesn't actually mean anything real. Italians and Irish weren't considered "white" until relatively recently.

3

The Irish are some of the most fair complexioned duckers I've ever seen excluding a Finn and an albino.

Are you sure racists aren't just suffering from crippling cognitive disability?

1
lemmy.world

Uh, not really. Puerto Ricans are mostly pretty squarely in the Latino category. There's an entire play and movie about this called West Side Story.

1
discuss.tchncs.de

"For 13 minutes, my TV didn't have white people in the screen. I am getting oppressed!!!" That idiot

30

Tbh I haven't watched a single super bowl ever. So i didn't care to watch the halftime show either. I just looked up how long the show was.

Lady gaga being part of it makes even funnier.

4

Such nonsense. I'm sure Bad Bunny searched long and hard to find as many white people capable of dancing as he could. It's not his fault we suck at it.

27
lemmy.world

As a cat owner, I look at that and start estimating how close the nearest paper towels are even though I already know it's too late.

7

When I was growing up, a gay kid in a rural setting living in near-poverty and surrounded by constant and extreme homophobic rhetoric, there basically was no open or obvious (to me) gay representation in my little slice of the world. I literally spent ages 10 - 17 thinking I was some alien creature, the one and only. While I knew other gay men existed somewhere out there, it was clear to me that they all lived in giant cities, went around wearing dresses, tried to kidnap little kids to turn them gay, nagged straight men and children for sex, and spread HIV/AIDS.

Truly sorry for the underrepresented heterosexual, Caucasian, Christian, English-only speaking children out there in the USA and their parents and really everybody else going through this affront to their existence. I totally and completely understand how you feel.

27

60 halftime shows, all in English, and it only took a single mostly Spanish halftime show for a quarter of the country to have a meltdown. Never mind that 1/10 of the country speaks Spanish. Textbook example of "When you're used to privilege, equality feels like oppression."

23

Yet they accept RFK Jr, a man who looks like he's been creosoted, as one of their own.

6
kcufreply
lemmy.world

There are multiple white folks in the photo... Even right in the center of the photo

6
lemmy.world

Latino isn't a skin color, and some of them are white. In Europe, almost no one questions the whiteness of the Spanish and Portugese.

4

I think most people nowadays mean Latin Americans with Lationos. Otherwise you'd also have to throw in the Italians, the French, the Romanians, half of the Belgians and bunch of Africans.

3

My aunt was from Spain and she used to go ballistic whenever anybody would call her hispanic or Latina. "I'm European!"

3
lemmy.world

Many Puerto Ricans are white. I've known many people over the years who are blonde hair, blue eyes, or green eyed gingers with freckles, but are as Puerto Rican as they come. Ask your local MAGA turd if they can explain why that might be.

18

My half Cuban half Colombian best friend is white as snow with blonde hair and blue eyes. When she starts speaking fluent Spanish, people look twice.

She actually had to threaten a lawsuit because she was discriminated at work because of being Latina. No one knew until she spoke Spanish and then her manager started treating her differently.

13
lemmy.world

Any time you see this culture war nonsense, just remember, this is what Donald wants you talking about instead of the Epstein Files.

18
1984reply
lemmy.today

Doesnt matter what we talk about. The circus goes on anyway.

You can talk about epstein files all you want, but you are actually wasting your time. The only way to win is not to play, if you have heard that term. It applies to the circus.

But people want to discuss the latest political news, I know. Tomorrow its something else the orange man said. New circus every day.

Because its an attention economy and they profit from you reading the articles. :)

2
slrpnk.net

they profit of catastophe. the climate crisis, mass "deportations", a global system of child rape. all of it is at the same time a distraction and something you should be working in your community to address through means other than the ones the oppressors offer you

3

The circus has always been there and will always be there.

1

Any time you see this Epstein file nonsense, just remember, this is what Donald wants you talking about instead of their complete dismantling of democracy and its replacement with billionaire oligarchy. Also, just for laughs, their stated goal of reducing the US population by two-thirds.

2

Poor Puerto Ricans. Considered both American and not American at the same time.

Also, does Morgan not consider Ricky Martin as white? He appeared on the show!

18
lemmy.world

Let's not forget that they are subject to taxes yet lack any representation.

I'm pretty sure I remember a country that was pretty pissed off about that in the past...

8

They are not subject to Federal taxes (except FICA if you count that but they receive those benefits), which is just one of the reasons statehood polls in Puerto Rico tend to be relatively divided.

1

If Bad Bunny, a boricua, isn't white to Morgan, then Ricky Martin, a boricua, wouldn't be white either

6
lemmy.dbzer0.com

What the hell is to be white? Is it a culture? A skin color? If that is the case I would be white because I have green eyes, I am more than 6ft and I have light skin, but this isn't to be white actually I am latin American I don't get it...

16

at least original nazis had specific criteria for who is "aryan", i think.

6

Their greatest achievement in life was being born white. That's all they have, so they cling to it.

4
MadBitsreply
europe.pub

Until I was about 16 I never actually realized what "white" means. I considered turks, arabs, chinese / most asia, europe and America (south, central and northern) to be white. Africans and other darker skin colors were just black. I never really paid attention to it and never really understood the color hatred because our "racism" was just hating other cultures of which morale you do not agree with. I guess Eastern EU is just a different kind of game.

4
pelespiritreply
sh.itjust.works

“racism” was just hating other cultures of which morale you do not agree with.

racism was just being jealous of other cultures for whatever reason.

2

My kids sometimes get pissed when you show someone else attention and they desire it.

This has nothing to do with anything, just thought I'd mention it.

16
vzqqreply
lemmy.blahaj.zone

It won’t. Most people in that picture would be considered white in most places in the world, but whiteness is a concept that expands and contracts to enable racism to persist.

17

Richard Pryor went to Africa once and he would ask people there what tribe it looked like he was from. Most people told him "you look Italian."

2

I don't think that'll ever happen, really. We're just gonna have to stop hating/fearing each other based on physical attributes.

4

I've met leather skinned Floridian Caucasians who were darker than most of these people.

15

I have no idea of their nationalities or whatever, but some of them look pretty white to me? Just tanned.

13

Bunch of snowflake pussies.

Why are they complaining about bad bunny, didn’t they have their own safe space show?

12
lemmy.world

Is it bad that whenever I see these types of alarmist posts, I respond with "Happy Great Replacement!"?

11
ickplantreply
lemmy.world

Maybe they were erased and replaced while you were typing. The horror!

6
boonhetreply
sopuli.xyz

Hey don't erase or replace ickplant, she posts like 20% of the content on Lemmy lol

3

So true. Where will people get bat and opossum pics if I’m gone? Lemmy would be bat-less. And that’s sad.

6

These are just the type of kids that never shared their toys growing up.

The super bowl is the most American thing out there. Hispanics are a big part of America. Let's have a Hispanic focused half time show! Thats never happened before it'll be cool!

"NO ITS MY WHITE HALF TIME SHOW AND IT NEEDS TO BE WHITE FOR ME"

Actual toddler tantrum behavior.

10

I mean should there be any white laborers in a tableau of a colonial era sugar cane plantation? These MF gonna complain next that all the protagonists in Roots are black and this does a genocide on them.

9
lemmy.world

Meanwhile lady gaga was there. And she was singing in english.

8
lemmy.blahaj.zone

Yea but she's Italian so she's not white, but hey atleast she's not Irish.

/s

It's so stupid and subjective what's white anyways. Like buddy comes from Spain and people consider them white but oh noes they come from somewhere south of the US or in the case or PR in the US and suddenly not white. Jokes on them were all descendants of rapist colonizers 😂

7
pelespiritreply
sh.itjust.works

Like buddy comes from Spain and people consider them white

Noooo, Spain isn't considered white to some racists. I'm not sure why that consistently comes up. You're "white" or "one of the good ones" until you're not to racists. They're bullies against others and it's kind of random. If an ICE guy pulls a person from Spain over and they're speaking Spanish, they're going in. Racism is stupid af and can't be predicted. No one is safe.

2

Have you ever seen a wall painted white, and told everyone it's black? Yeah you probably have.

0

It's all good Morgan, you still have your white cultural icons. Epstein even spoke English!

8

I was going to be cute and say “my meat is purple” because that’s my favorite color… but it sounds really wrong.

4
lemmy.today

Wait hold up!

Was bad bunny trolling with his very much white suit?

How do you guys interpret the white clothes he was wearing?

For example, do they represent indigenous people's clothes since most common clothes back then were white or at least colorless? I have a photo of two of my great great grand parents and they were wearing white long pants or shorts.

Or is he saying that there's a brown person inside white people too?

Or that some of us try to be whiter by our clothing?

4
lemmy.world

with global warming, everyone gets a tan, white only exists in Sweden and norway

4

Yes, that's why white people are called Caucasian, because they are named after the Norway-Sweden mountains... wait a minute...

4
piefed.social

Is anyone checking that these are real tweets? I mean, I wouldn't surprise be in the slightest but it feels so fucking over the top that it warrants sourcing. I'm not on Shitter so I can't, can someone verify this is real?

3
ickplantreply
lemmy.world

It's real - we haven't had to make shit up for a while now.... they are just out there being openly racist.

9
lobutreply
lemmy.ca

"Christian" "Lioness for Jesus Christ"

These are the same people that will tell you that Jesus is about love and they're all full of love.

10
lemmy.world

Yeah after seeing pam bondi yesterday i think white people need to be erased way more now. time to just admit white people have royally fucked up. Time for a change.

2
lemmy.world

In the future everyone will be brown. And that's a good thing since the radiation from the ozone being damaged is going to be pretty bad for the pales.

I legit get a sunburn on my face from walking outside in regular sun for a half hour.

It's serious.

We aren't designed for current and certainly not the future radiation exposure.

-1
CXORAreply
aussie.zone

The damage to the ozone layer is reducing and has been for decades.

4

New concerns about burning up aluminum satellites in the upper atmosphere by the thousands a year having an impact on that. Everything old is new again.

3
daanniireply
lemmy.world

Well still. Darker skin is more adaptive for sun exposure. Even if the ozone is restored.

Also impacted wisdom teeth are more common in Caucasians.

That's a huge design flaw. Need to get that out of the gene pool.

Generic diversity is what humanity needs to be healthier. And that will result in most future humans being darker skinned.

Not to worry. After we are all basically the same color, someone will figure out a new reason to divide us.

0
daanniireply
lemmy.world

I literally said genetic diversity is best. Do you not know what that means ?

Since a large portion of humans have darker skin , mixing and mingling (genetic diversity) will ultimately result in there being more brown people.

What did I say that reeks of eugenics. ? Seriously.

0

Okay let me explain how genetic diversity works so you aren't confused.

Genetic codes have all sorts of errors.

Lots of bad corrupt blue prints.

When two make a baby, often times , between them both, they fix those errors.

It's why it's rare for women to have color blindness. Because that "fix" is carried on the X chromosome.

There are a lot of genetic diseases. And most of them are recessive.

Like the color blindness. Hemophilia is another.

When people have babies with closed communities, these errors become more common. And the fixes stop being present as much.

Because genes are passed on regardless if they were dominant in the person passing them on.

For instance. I could carry the bad genetics for color blindness and not actually be color blind. But my children would have a risk because of my genes.

When there is generic diversity, these things are fixed.

Because they proliferate in smaller groups.

But when there is more genetic diversity, there is a higher chance of the other parent carrying a "fix" gene.

A better version of the bad one. Essentially.

Secondly. Acknowledging genetic diseases and disorders is not eugenics.

Trying to prevent genetic diseases or disorders is not eugenics. It's modern medicine.

Acknowledging some genes are better than others , in that the person is healthier and won't have a high risk of disease or disorders , is not eugenics. It's science.

Here is what eugenics is.

A belief that genes related to things like skin color and eye color (which are independent of health, btw), are somehow superior. For no reason other than a flawed belief that originated in colonialism and nationality. It has no scientific basis.

There is no skin or hair color. Nose shape. Foot size. Nothing like that, that is indicative of physical health nor mental ability. Having dark skin is protective from sunburn. But otherwise, there isn't really any difference between skin colors in regards to health.

Eugenics also believes that things like personality and intelligence are 100% genetic and that by breeding successful sociopaths will create smarter sociopaths.

But it's well established that genetics only contribute a small amount to these things. Environment makes the biggest difference.

So if you legitimately wanted to make people smart and healthy, based on scientific evidence,

You need to

  1. Promote genetic diversity (opposite of promoting segregations based on ethnicity).
  2. Provide the best enriching and healthy environments for mothers and children.

That's the way you do it.

And fyi. If you haven't ever had impacted wisdom teeth and don't understand how many people are stuck with teeth growing in side ways in their jaw and no way to pay to have them removed, then you just be quiet about me saying it's a big fuckinh deal and we need genetic diversity to cure it.

It's 100% something that needs cured.
It's a medical problem. A painful problem that many people deal with for years. Just Google on reddit "I have impacted wisdom teeth and can't afford to get them removed. ". -so many horror stories.

Genetic diversity will ultimately cure genetic based diseases and make us all healthier.

Again acknowledging a medical health problem tied to genetics is not eugenics. That's literally science.

That's science. That's not eugenics. I'm not calling to force breeding .

I'm saying we all gotta mix and mingle. And we should promote that in our society because it makes healthier babies.

Instead of shaming interracial couples. Which is more common.

0
leminal.space

I find it strange that people say that race is a made up concept, I understand the fundamental and I've absolutely zero problem with anyone from anywhere of any genetic makeup being with anyone or existing anywhere.

However there are absolutely genetic markers that differentiate us race wise and whilst some people may call that 'positive racism' theres a reason why Kenyan runners are the best. Its the same reason why dog breeds exist and have different features.

Personally I like to celebrate our differences, however I understand that people think to stop people weaponising them we should pretend we are all some animorphous blob.

I mean, Eventually we probably will be with the advancements in technology and our ability to more easily migrate. And I also dont care about that either, but I think its a little naieve to pretend that it doesnt exist.

-7
feddit.nu

Troll.

For anyone who cares to inform themselves, the Wikipedia article about race is a good place to learn why races don't map to biological reality:

Human genetic variation is predominantly within races, continuous, and complex in structure, which is inconsistent with the concept of genetic human races.

Also, dog breeds exist because humans have actively bred dogs to have certain traits - and I assume you meant "anamorphous"?

8

I think the thing that really exposes the whole constructed nature of race is asking this question; "Is Obama white?"

Barack Obama's mother is white. His father is black. If I were to ask you "Is Obama black?" most people would say yes, of course. He's the first black president after all.. But the moment we flip the question, it suddenly becomes much harder to answer in the affirmative. If someone tried to claim that America has never had a black president, most people would think they were ignorant, an idiot, or insane. Whiteness has always been constructed in a way that relies on purity. Obama is not white, because he's partly black. But being partly white does not prevent him from being black. There's no rational explanation for that. It doesn't conform to any biological notion of taxonomy. It's not about genetics, it's about vibes. We assign whiteness and blackness based on wholly different, wholly arbitrary criteria.

Credit for this example goes to Innuendo Studios who I believe is also where I encountered the proposition that race is a fiction in the same way that money is; it's something we invented, but because we believe it's real, it has real power.

Race matters because it matters. It shouldn't, but it does. Understanding that race is a fiction is a really important step in deconstructing the harms that racism has done, but it doesn't allow us to dismiss the concerns of racialized people, nor should it ever be reason to prevent people from using race as a way to identify themselves. Black people are black because they live the experience of being in a society that treats them as "black" and not simply as "people." That experience is unique to their blackness, even though that blackness is merely a fiction.

3
Schadrachreply
lemmy.sdf.org

Also, dog breeds exist because humans have actively bred dogs to have certain traits

Selection pressure is selection pressure, whether being done by environment or by the active efforts of another species. There's a reason why whether or not you are lactose tolerant has a lot to do with where in the world your ancestors are from, as does your likelihood of several diseases and likelihood of certain resistances/immunities, there are even certain drugs that will work better or worse for people dependent largely on where their ancestors came from. Short of doing thorough genetic testing, "race"/ethnicity is often a good-enough broad brush proxy for where a majority of your ancestors came from for a variety of purposes.

-2
dustyDatareply
lemmy.world

It's really not, when you really go down into the actual numbers. Are the differences significant? yes, do they matter? most likely not. Because even if they are significant, it says nothing about their magnitude, just the likelihood that they are caused by the independent variable.

What this means is, sure, there are genetic differences that correlate significantly with common social categories of race (scientists use ethnicity, because of eugenics), due to continental size selection pressure, which is very broad and non-specific. However, this brush is actually so broad that it doesn't contraindicate common treatment at all. An individual person could or could not be hypersensitive to nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, for example. This has been found to have some pharmacogenetic correlation with some ethnicities. But if you were to alter treatment to one ethnicity assuming that they are more likely to have this genetic difference, you would lose far more patients than you would save. Because the correlation exists, it is significant, but it's magnitude is not very large. Instead, we have individual tests that are far more straight forward and will tell you with higher degree of certainty than ethnicity whether someone has or does not have NSAID sensitivity. There's also no basis to decide to whom to apply this test, based on ethnicity, either. Because all and any ethnicity can have NSAID hypersensitivity. So, we just do the test to everyone and every single patient gets the question “are you allergic to any drug?” regardless of ethnicity, doctors just don't think about ethnicity all that much if they are doing evidence based medicine and are not blatant eugenic racists. That's is how useless of an analysis category race is in science. Genetically speaking, large masses of people are actually not that different from each other that it grants much differential treatment. You rather treat the individual.

2
Schadrachreply
lemmy.sdf.org

To provide a counter-example, hydralazine and isosorbide dinitrate are combined into a single dose as a treatment specifically for black folks with heart failure (initially sold under the brand name BiDil), because the combined drug treatment in general works measurably better on black folks than white folks, to the point that the combo drug was rejected by the FDA based on initial trials (that had a majority white patient base), but was later approved specifically for for black patients because that specific pair of drugs worked enough better in that population to be approved after further trials. It's fallen somewhat out of use as a treatment, not because it was ineffective or "racist" to approve a race-specific treatment, but because better options have been developed in the last 20 years - the drug combo remains approved specifically for heart failure in black folks, however. It's just no longer the first choice.

common social categories of race (scientists use ethnicity, because of eugenics),

Literally, they use ethnicity because of negative political associations with race as a term, and also because from a practical standpoint ethnicity is like race, but with more narrow groupings in modern parlance (as noted in the past "race" referred to much narrower groupings, closer to how ethnicity is used now).

Also, eugenics would totally work if we weren't terrible at deciding what "good genes" are and instead inevitably make it about something dumb like skin color and there weren't the massive ethical issues in actually doing it.

Here's a fun question: If you had to choose a hypothesis that would be functionally impossible to properly test because of ethical or political issues but that you strongly suspect is true, what would it be?

1
dustyDatareply
lemmy.world

It works if it weren't unethical doesn't make the argument you think it makes.

The notion that we suck at choosing the good genes is entirely misled, even if it is just sarcasm. The final question is also morally misled because science and the notion of truth is not amoral. Science, without humans, doesn't exist. And humans are moral beings (constrained by social and moral considerations).

Eugenics is one such field which notions cannot be true because its axioms are inherently unethical. "It works" is not an isolated amoral argument. If it needs the morals of a society to be radically altered to work, then it is not science. It is just racism in a lab coat. The case of dog breeds, for example, doesn't support eugenics. On the contrary it dispproves it.

We have genetically altered dogs (and many other animals) by selective breeding in ways that, according to eugenics, should've eliminated inbreeding and genetic defects. Guess what? it hasn't done that and actually might have made it worse. Historical analysis lead us to the idea that running wild with eugenics will always lead to genocide, regardless of which genetic traits are selected as the best, eugenics is genocide. So, it cannot be severed from its ethical considerations. Science cannot exist devoid of ethics.

1
Schadrachreply
lemmy.sdf.org

The notion that we suck at choosing the good genes is entirely misled, even if it is just sarcasm.

If we didn't, we'd be talking about eugenics as that nasty unethical thing we tried once upon a time that eliminated say Huntington's disease from a population, but we decided wasn't worth it because of the ethical issues in actually doing it, rather than as just "racism in a lab coat". The fact that eugenics in practice was about race at all is an example of us being bad at choosing "good genes."

The final question is also morally misled because science and the notion of truth is not amoral. Science, without humans, doesn’t exist. And humans are moral beings (constrained by social and moral considerations).

Reality exists, and continues to regardless of whatever moral framework you subscribe to. Moral frameworks are specific to time and culture, what is acceptable politically even moreso. There are and will always be things that are real and are true and perhaps even useful to know or launching points for further understanding that are outside the range of current acceptable social, moral or political considerations, but that doesn't make them less real.

Truth is not limited to the Overton window.

1

To remove morality you have to remove humans. No humans, no politics and no science.

You can't argue with that. You either have morals and science, or you have pure objective amoral reality but no humans.

Objective truth is an oxymoron, to have objectivity you have to remove the subject. Thus eliminating the dichotomy entirely and making the argument collapse. To have true-false value arguments and statements, you need subjectivity and a frame of reference. This is a logical constraint, without anyone to observe and judge the truth, there's no objective reality to be judged. Minerals and crystals, despite our best efforts, do not elaborate moral judgements, and they definitely don't conduct science.

1

The problem with "eugenics" has never been the science (the science science, not the race science); selective breeding works with every other species in the world, it'd work with humans too. The problem is that out of every other species in the world, humans are the only ones to have developed "being systematically horrible to each other based off totally meaningless bullshit" and we've kinda embraced that as our whole thing.

In a perfect world where we don't have to worry about any of the practicalities, eugenics could be a wonderful tool for improving humanity as a whole. But humanity is too intrinsically broken to be able to handle it, and the practicalities we're glossing over in this case pretty much instantly become "forcibly sterilizing people we don't like" every time someone brings the idea up.

8
lemmy.zip

I would like to challenge you to research exactly which genetic markers differentiate between races and the attempts up to this point to use them to categorize actual people.

5

The closest thing you might be able to point to as a difference is people who's ancestors left sub-saharan Africa have a barely detectable amount of Neanderthal DNA. Outside of that, there's really not enough DNA variation to create sensical groups out of.

2

Race is a made up concept, the only thing strange is you denying it

There are no consistent genetics markers to identify people by race. Even crazy things like the ability to use oxygen better found in the Himalayan population is also found in high altitude African and South American countries.

Dog breeds are not a "race" of dogs they are all fucking dogs. Just like human beings, we all share 99% the same genetic code.

Let's just pretend you are right for a second (you are not). Where is the blood test to prove what race you are!?

Even the genetic testing companies admit it is just for entertainment and they are guessing, because the same genetic code a person in Norway has also shows up in the Pacific Islanders.

You don't have to believe me, but you could believe just about every scientist who is an expert on this topic.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/race-is-a-social-construct-scientists-argue/

"What the study of complete genomes from different parts of the world has shown is that even between Africa and Europe, for example, there is not a single absolute genetic difference, meaning no single variant where all Africans have one variant and all Europeans another one, even when recent migration is disregarded,"

So to sum it up. You are full of shit and you need to stop believing in bullshit propaganda.

2

Genomics can help to delineate the boundaries of ethnicities. This is useful because people of different races in a shared/neighbouring ethnic regions such as around the Mediterranean often share far more genetic similarity than they do with people of the same race in northern Europe or sub-Saharan Africa. The concept of race has always first and foremost served privileged groups and oppressed groups, often along ethnic lines, but not always. A great example is how pasty ass Irish people were once not considered "white". The genetic argument is typically cherry-picked to reinforce these power structures.

1