Do "races" exist?

[robbo203]

There is an interesting discussion going on here


http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/f...mpaign?page=17

What are your thoughts on the matter?

[Flying Purple People Eater]

No.

There is only one homo hominid in existence at this point in time - Homo Sapiens Sapiens. The others either interbred with Homo sapiens and/or died off, as was the case with the denisovans, neanderthals and hobbits.

[DROSL]

Yes, human is a species. We're all equal, but saying where all the same race is denying facts. No political correctness for me.

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

Race is a social construct, but social constructs do have a certain kind of "existence" too. In other words, it has as much existence as money, the state, and religious self-identity

[Flying Purple People Eater]

Yes, human is a species. We're all equal, but saying where all the same race is denying facts. No political correctness for me.

There's no political correctness about it. Every human being on the planet is a member of Homo Sapiens Sapiens - this is a scientific fact. The difference between separate ethnic groups is far too minuscule to class human groups as different species (races) or even subspecies.

But of course you wouldn't know that, what with your non-existent knowledge of scientific peer reviewed anthropological knowledge and evidence. After all, scientific facts are simply 'political correctness'.

Tl;dr : It's not 'politically correct' to realise that separate homo races do not exist in the modern day - it's just plain correct. As I mentioned earlier, other homo genus members have either interbred with, been killed off at the expense of, or directly gave rise to Homo Sapiens Sapiens, which exists at all corners of the globe, from inuits to melanesians to somalians to englishmen to arabs to hungarians to russians to san to hausas to mexicas to scandinavians to finns to han to.... well, you get the point.

I have grown to fucking hate the term 'political correctness'. It sounds like the sort of shitslinging phrase you'd expect out of the degenerate American political atmosphere.

[robbo203]

Yes, human is a species. We're all equal, but saying where all the same race is denying facts. No political correctness for me.

Thats one way of looking at it. However, one of the problems that was brought up in the discussion on the forum mentioned above was the so called "boundary problem". If we take skin colour as a racial indicator, for example, at what point can one say one belongs to this "race" and not another? Skin colour is a spectrum and where you place your cut off points would seem to be arbitary. This has to do with the debate about nominalism versus realism. There is also the point that humanity today is largely the product of intermingling and intermixing over huge periods of time.

But assuming it is possible to objectively talk about there being races, the big question is what significance ought we to attach to the existence of such "races". The protagonist on one side of the debate on the SPGB forum seems to be saying that human being display a marked tendency towards tribalism and this tends to conform a pattern of racial differentiation. To put is crudely and simplistically , white people overwhelmingly associate with an intermarry with white people and black people overwhelmingly with black people. There is, in other words a systematic cultural preference or bias at work here based on race .


My counterargument to this would be that this overlooks the factor of probability which tends to reinforce existing patterns of population distribution. So for example if you are a black person living in a black community then the chances are that you are more likely to associate and marry with black folk and so perpetuate the pattern. Ditto with white folk. However, there is not some driving genetic compulsion to do so which is what the above individual seems to be saying. It is something that we have become culturally habituated to do

[Jimmie Higgins]

I'm not really sure what part of that discussion is being pointed out. The segregationist's arguments?

Those arguments conflate appearence or physical characteristics with contemporary ideas around "race". Yes, there are biological trends in physical characteristics, but "race" as a modern social phenomena is not the same thing. Yes people have divided up and been divided up, but the argument also assumes that certain physcial characteristics is how people would "naturally" divde themselves when the categories that are implied by different physical characteristics change and it isn't historically consistant - people have divided themselves up in any number of ways, modern concepts of "race" are much different.

To talk about race in biological terms would be meaningless on a biological level because as people have said, humans have pretty small genetic differences (short time on the planet and very mobile) compared to other animals, even chimps and so on. To talk about race this way in social terms would also be meaningless since people are not necissarily consistantly oppressed by physical characteristics or geographical considerations. Just for example, people in the medditerranian are probably more physically similar to eachother than people they might be ethnically and racially grouped with.

The arguments against immigration that go with that poster's views are pretty good evidence why their assumptions should be rejected because that's where the logic leads... "socialist chauvanism" to put it lightly. Revolutionaries should seek to eliminate racial oppression and the power dynamics and divisions due to "race" as a social phenomena. This does not mean mandating some melting pot or demanding that people not hold onto specific cultural tradditions or likes. But I think it does mean that workers need to be able to work together for common interests and that eliminating divisions in the way society treats different parts of the class is a major part (and benifits both the oppressed and non-oppressed workers because racial oppression is often tied to pressing down wages and so on). Capitalism destroys any organic "grouping" of people by region because it cuts people's ties to the land and sets them off to sell their labor. This means that it is inherently reactionary to then demand some labor "go home" and furthermore it strenghtens the hands of domestic employers to blame lower wages on immigrants or migrants. strenghtens the state's ability to spy on people and repress them.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

I was studying 1920s America the other day and this came up as a topic, so i've a good example for you guys to ponder:

In 1920s in the Deep South, there was a family who were designated as Mulatto (mixed-race) - due to the racists being very concerned with racial purity, people's exact racial specification according to the race laws was noted in the Census of 1920.

The same family moved to Philly in the 1930 census and was designated as black, because those outside the south were not that into racism, and weren't fussed about designating people according to race laws - they just said they were black.

So, we have a case where the same people in the same country were designated as different races for the same survey, simply because of the laws that applied where they live. Anybody who denies, in the face of such clear evidence, that race is a social construct, really ought to think long and hard about the implications of their thinking for race relations.

[synthesis]

I was studying 1920s America the other day and this came up as a topic, so i've a good example for you guys to ponder:

In 1920s in the Deep South, there was a family who were designated as Mulatto (mixed-race) - due to the racists being very concerned with racial purity, people's exact racial specification according to the race laws was noted in the Census of 1920.

The same family moved to Philly in the 1930 census and was designated as black, because those outside the south were not that into racism, and weren't fussed about designating people according to race laws - they just said they were black.

So, we have a case where the same people in the same country were designated as different races for the same survey, simply because of the laws that applied where they live. Anybody who denies, in the face of such clear evidence, that race is a social construct, really ought to think long and hard about the implications of their thinking for race relations.

I hope I don't come across as a defensive American here, but this has nothing on Nazi Germany. You could literally buy your way into reclassification; that's what the Wittgensteins did.

[robbo203]

There's no political correctness about it. Every human being on the planet is a member of Homo Sapiens Sapiens - this is a scientific fact. The difference between separate ethnic groups is far too minuscule to class human groups as different species (races) or even subspecies.
.

In fairness to the other side of the argument no one is suggesting that different human groups constitute different species. Races do not equate with species. So you are raising a straw argument here.

Of course. there was a time when race was indeed equated with species by polygenists - particularly in the 18th and 19th century when the old medieval Great Chain of Being was gradually transmogrified into a distinct racial hierarchy under the influence of materialist philosophy and evolutionism. Ironically the rival monogenist camp which claimed that all humans had the same orgins and were essentially similar was primarily inspired to do so out of religious convictions in order to avoid the disturbing implications that the rise of evolutionary thought presented. Such thought suggested that the "lower races" constituted an intermediate species that linked "human beings proper" with the great apes and monkeys. For that reason, and in response, the monogenists emphasised the uniqueness of all human beings and their separateness from the rest of creation by virtue of their possession of a soul. They did not wish for human beings to be sullied by association with the animal world as the materialists seemed to want to do..


This whole debate between monogenists and polygenists was precipitated by the outward expansion of European societies and their encounter with new strange exotic cultures in the remoter corners of the world. These different perspectives represent different ways in which individuals sought to accommodate and deal with "problem of the savage" as it is called within the theoretical framework of the time.

Today, of course, that particular debate no longer exists. Just about everyone, bar the odd nutjob , would accept that all human beings without exception belong to the same species

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

I hope I don't come across as a defensive American here, but this has nothing on Nazi Germany. You could literally buy your way into reclassification; that's what the Wittgensteins did.

Indeed, though of course it would be naive to assume that this didn't occur in America, too. There were, I believe, plenty of reclassifications, particularly between White and Mulatto 'races', according to social status, wealth, ability to influence, ability to keep family heritage secret etc. I believe that, in general, around 1920 the threshold for being non-white was having at least one black great-grandparent, i.e. being at least 1/8 black.

Of course as well as Nazi Germany, South Africa's apartheid system operated perhaps one of the most crass systems of racial segregation and classification by race in modern memory, with again the ability to 'become white' through various nefarious means.

[Rational Radical]

Wow,it bugs me that even leftists can be so ahistorical and anti-science at times. As the other posters have alluded to,it's been debunked in anthropological circles several times showing genetic commonalities found through out the planet,and the roots of classifying groups who share phenotypic traits as races is directly linked to the beginning of the "New World" or European imperialist powers' development of capitalism,resulting in enslavement/colonization. race is a social construct specifically created to conquer people for imperial expansion,that should be understood and no "discussion" at least among revolutionaries and historically literate people should be had.

[RedAnarchist]

Humans are 99.9% genetically identical, so race only exists as a social construct.

[robbo203]

Of course as well as Nazi Germany, South Africa's apartheid system operated perhaps one of the most crass systems of racial segregation and classification by race in modern memory, with again the ability to 'become white' through various nefarious means.

Coming from South Africa myself, I can endorse that sentiment. I recall reading about what was called the "pencil test" in an IDAF publication which was particularly applied to "Cape Coloured" or "Mixed Race" people for the purposes of classification/reclassification

The Afrikaners - mainly descendants of the original Duth settlers - constitute about 60% of the white population. There was a long history of miscegenation between the Boers and indigenous peoples like the Khoi as well as slaves brought in by the Dutch East India company, Out of this emerged the present day "mixed race" population

Studies suggest that amongst the Afrikaners themselves about 5-10% of their genetic heritage is traceable to black orgins. (see this for example http://africanhistory.about.com/od/s...ikanerGene.htm Under apartheid race was a matter of perception as much as anything. If you looked mixed race you were classified as such.

Occasionally however you would have a genetic throw back. A nominally white family would produce an offspring that had the appearance of a mixed race person such as the crinkly hair. Thats where the pencil test would come in. The authrorities would stick a pencil in your hair and ask you to bend over. If it fell out, you were a white; if it stayed put, you were mixed race. Surreal as it sounds its a fact

The consequences for the families concerned were needless to say often traumatic. Familes were split and children sent to separate schools etc and from there, moved on to live sepaare lives. Ironcially this could happen amongst some of the most staunchly pro0Nationalist Party white families. One can only imagine the kind of tortured soul searching it must have occasioned

[DROSL]

There's no political correctness about it. Every human being on the planet is a member of Homo Sapiens Sapiens - this is a scientific fact. The difference between separate ethnic groups is far too minuscule to class human groups as different species (races) or even subspecies.

But of course you wouldn't know that, what with your non-existent knowledge of scientific peer reviewed anthropological knowledge and evidence. After all, scientific facts are simply 'political correctness'.

Tl;dr : It's not 'politically correct' to realise that separate homo races do not exist in the modern day - it's just plain correct. As I mentioned earlier, other homo genus members have either interbred with, been killed off at the expense of, or directly gave rise to Homo Sapiens Sapiens, which exists at all corners of the globe, from inuits to melanesians to somalians to englishmen to arabs to hungarians to russians to san to hausas to mexicas to scandinavians to finns to han to.... well, you get the point.

I have grown to fucking hate the term 'political correctness'. It sounds like the sort of shitslinging phrase you'd expect out of the degenerate American political atmosphere.

Which is not a race. It's a species. What's so damn hard to understand about that.

[#FF0000]

Which is not a race. It's a species. What's so damn hard to understand about that.

"Races" are entirely social constructs. There is no scientific basis for "race" as a biological category, as Star Linn explained.

What's so damn hard to understand about that?

[DROSL]

human groups as different species (races) or even subspecies.se

All the problem is right there. There's a hierarchy of the animal kingdom, you can't change stuff. Species are not races.

here's the scientific classification.


If we want to stop racism, like I do, we should stop giving this much power to a simple word and just get over it. We're different physically, but that doesn't make us any less human.

And I think my usage of the term "political correct" was rightfully used.

[DROSL]

"Races" are entirely social constructs. There is no scientific basis for "race" as a biological category, as Star Linn explained.

What's so damn hard to understand about that?

That's what I'm trying to say since the beggining. Races aren't species!! I think I did not compose the sentence correctly, It may have confused some people.

[DROSL]

I also think the term "race" has been changed into "people"

[#FF0000]

That's what I'm trying to say since the beggining. Races aren't species!! I think I did not compose the sentence correctly, It may have confused some people.

Yes, we know that races aren't species. We are saying that "races" do not exist beyond as socially constructed categories.