Race is a social construct

[sqbr]

EDIT: this is a criticism of race as an "objective" biological categorisation. I do have arguments against (or at least about) race as a social phenomenon, but they are outside the scope of this "short" post. Sorry for being unclear!

A while ago there was a post on debunkingwhite challenging people to talk on their ljs about how race has no basis in biology. I added it to my "queue of topics to make thinky posts about" (I find it best to let things stew for a while there, and anyway was feeling sick and stupid ¹) and today got around to reading other people's responses.

Anyway, I reserve the right to make a long thinky post later, but this post and comment in particular really helped crystalise it for me personally:

So. Human beings are not genetically uniform. Different populations have observable genetic differences in their average makeup (ie the percentages present of various genes) and these result in observable differences (and presumably, also more subtle ones we haven't noticed) in things like skin colour, susceptibility to particular diseases etc.

There is also the historical/social concept of "race", which divides the world into fairly strict categories (asian, african etc) based on physical, geographical, and cultural markers, and which associates various traits (intelligence, criminality etc) to each race.

These two divisions, the genetic and the racial? Have pretty much no relationship to each other what-so-ever.

A fact which I have long thought that everyone who makes generalisations about "black people" needs to be hit over the head with is this: there is significantly more genetic variation between groups of black africans than there is within the entire rest of the world. If we were to divide the world into fairly broad genetic "races" in any objective way, we would have a hundred or whatever² african groups, and one "Other" group, which would cover asians, europeans, arabs, native americans etc as one big effectively homogeneous group.

Instead, "race" as it is constructed in practice is a historical artifact of colonisation and conquest and was created to separate the haves from the have-nots, like the class divisions in the feudal system. It has no basis in biology. Does this mean "race" doesn't exist? No, it exists as much as any other socially constructed category, like class, nationality or religion³, and like them it has major effects which can't be ignored. It just doesn't make any sense as a biological categorisation.

It's also worth noting that while average genetic differences do exist between certain ethnic groups, the spread of genetic diversity inside those populations is much larger than the differences between populations and so means diddly-squat at an individual level (and racism usually relies on making assumptions about individuals)

(1)Sidenote: it may be a coincidence, but I took sonnlich's advice to take zinc tablets and I feel SO much better.
(2)Number chosen at random since I can't be bothered looking it up. Most of the other posts went to effort of giving references, I say lazily :)
(3)I'm not talking about religious belief, I'm just saying there's no bioliogical difference between, say, catholics and protestants. Religious belief as a social construct is a very interesting topic but again, well beyond the scope of this post!

Comments

Re: My problems with your actual opinions

[mporter.livejournal.com]

Aggregated reply to both your comments:

I frankly wasn't sure about your first point. I felt like there were implicit premises that I'd have to unearth and then examine before I could even respond, and just didn't want to do that. However, I've now made a little progress in that regard. You said (paraphrase): people think group prejudice ("sexism/racism etc") is just a social justice issue, but actually it's a cognitive dysfunction as well.

Those -ism words combine two meanings: belief in a group difference, and prejudice against members of a group. If one could be sure that only the second meaning were intended, and that we were merely being called upon to oppose misogyny and race hatred, it would be a lot easier to support such a statement. This is a chronic semantic problem; how often do people say "I'm not racist/sexist but..."? In the end you stipulated that you mean unjustified prejudice, but prior to that it did look as if you were saying: belief in group differences = cognitive dysfunction.

Regarding whether presumption of equality or presumption of inequality is the bigger cause of cognitive bias: that may depend on time and place. One supposes that historically the latter has been far more common, but modern society, at least legally and intellectually, believes group differences are not innate, and were produced by cultural and historical processes that need to be undone. I have come across the suggestion (http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2008/06/ol9-how-to-uninstall-cathedral.html) (see the reference to "Inner Light") that the modern presumption of equality is just a form of Christianity: "all humans must be neurologically uniform because we all have the same little piece of God inside us". It offers an interesting perspective: that all the democracy, socialism, anti-discrimination of the last few centuries had its origins in a religious doctrine of radical spiritual equality, now secularized and ubiquitous. In that environment, incorrect presumption of equality may be the bigger risk intellectually, because it's the default assumption.

That is not to say that it's more likely to produce bad effects. To me, a society based on a mild presumption of equality certainly feels more civilized than, say, a caste-based one. I would think that societies built on hierarchy are inherently prone to all the miseries of regular revolt, and not just in modern times, even if the upper classes genuinely have some of the superiorities ideologically ascribed to them. After all, to grab a bigger piece of the pie, you don't need to be capable of making it, just capable of appreciating that you would be better off if you had more. And also, some fraction of people who are told they are superior are liable to abuse the position; and history also doesn't suggest that humanity at large is especially good at getting its stereotypes right... But I haven't finished thinking this through.

Re: My problems with your actual opinions

[alias_sqbr]

I frankly wasn't sure about your first point. I felt like there were implicit premises that I'd have to unearth and then examine before I could even respond, and just didn't want to do that. However, I've now made a little progress in that regard. You said (paraphrase): people think group prejudice ("sexism/racism etc") is just a social justice issue, but actually it's a cognitive dysfunction as well.

Well, that's fair enough, but you should have said so, then I wouldn't have interpreted your reply as a response to point one rather than a "Um, I don't know about that, but as to your second point..".

I still don't think you get what I was saying, but I'll admit that "racism" and "sexism" are such broad and inconsistently used terms I should have been more clear. In this context, I was talking about subconsious bias, as in the examples I gave here. Namely, when something like race or class affects a persons judgement about other unrelated aspects of another and they're not aware of it. This is quite different from a rational decision based on evidence.

I agree that aspects of left-liberal thought are strongly influenced by their protestant roots, but since I think all philosophies are influenced by their roots (and think christianity has a lot of good points in with the bad) don't see this as a big deal, any more than the protestant roots of capitalism and the rights of the individual.

It's entirely possible (albeit, in my opinion, implausible) that there is social pressure in our society to see people as more equal than they really are(*). And yes, being incorrect is "harmful". But since the tendency to see people as overly unequal has caused MUCH more actual physical and psychological harm, and also (as far as the evidence I'm aware of) causes significant cognitive bias when the assumption of equality causes none...I'd say it still wins overall by a giant margin in the "causing harm" stakes.

(*)I mean, I think that pressure does exist in small pockets here and there, but not on anywhere as a large a scale as it's inverse

Re: My problems with your actual opinions

[mporter.livejournal.com]

Well, you can certainly find people willing to attribute vast quantities of historically recent nastiness to "equality bias": mass murder in socialist states, postcolonial political violence, criminal violence in mixed-race societies. The idea seems to be, not just that the Inferior People (I speak ironically for the moment) can't govern themselves, as individuals or as a society, but that the ideology of equality actually encourages their rampages, because it says that their relative lack of success must be due to something other than their own qualities.

Like you, I'm Australian and this is all very far from my experience. But when I read about the criminal inferno in South Africa, or the ethnic gangs of the United States, or the various atrocities committed in the name of socialism, it certainly gives me pause. It is at least logically possible for a doctrine of equality to have the described effects. The question is whether that possibility is just science fiction, or whether it does have something to do with the real world we are presently inhabiting. This conversation has got me to the point of explicitly formulating the question, but I'm still working on the answer.

Re: My problems with your actual opinions

[alias_sqbr]

Well, you can certainly find people willing to attribute vast quantities of historically recent nastiness to "equality bias

*blinks*

You know that never occurred to me *looks at the world from a very skewed perspective for a moment*