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let's rap about race


rafsemens

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is race a social construct too 

does liking young thug make me black

please help

Pretty much since we have gene clusters as the scientific concept.

 

Now the diff between sex and gender doesn't have to be seen through the lens of queer theory or whatever. Imagine there are only straight people identifying as the sex they have in their pants, "gender" is still useful. The idea is that you're of the male sex (i.e. you have a dick and all that) but it is important to see how there are performative elements that are socially learned and enforced (i.e. not innate), historically situated and how they influence the way you behave (maybe in acquiescence but also in opposition). These change over time and cultures (i.e. men from the Arabian peninsula holding hands like little fairies but it being a totally manly thing to do over there).

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Nah, there are objective differences between races, not only regarding social constructs but physical characteristics 

 

The question of choosing which characteristics to choose and of those standing in liminal spaces still remains. Ethiopians might have been classified as very different than western Africans or Arabs might be considered white in one system of classification (you can't check "Arab" as a race in the USA AFAIK) but be the Arab panethnic group in a more sophisticated one. Americans see Latinos as different from them Whites but Europeans see Spaniards as Europeans. If you're a mixed race black in Brazil you'll be called White while Obama is called Black in the states. In reality there are various systems of classification we refer to when we mention "race" and we might not agree on the one to use. Some of the posters here would freak out if I posted an Indian chick in the Asian girl you would wife cause they think azns are yellow people. The idea of race is truly more complicated than you would think, not that I assume you've ever bothered to think but hey.

Edited by Fuuma
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race is not only about skin color though

His point is that race exists solely as a social construct, not as something that exists in the physical world. Obviously there are a set of traits used by one group to identify another group. The example of Barack/drake being white in some places is good so think about that.

 

 

sex vs gender is basically similar to race vs culture. one is what you are and what is what you act.

 

 

Not quite because race is so subjective whereas sex is objective.

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^ How so? Race is only subjective through a deconstructionist lens, and if that lens is applied, the whole point is inevitably mute. For example, what does it actually mean to be Chinese? Who decided who was Chinese and who was Mongolian and the difference between the two hundreds of years ago? Valid questions if you deconstruct what race actually means, but in our society those are really culture questions. Then again, the difference between the two really just boils down to ethnicity, which is different than race.

 

for example, if rafsemens went up to a group of black people and tried to identify as black as well, not just as having similar interests, mannerisms, or beliefs (culture), but tried to pass it off as actually being the same race, he'd probably get beat up, ignored, shunned etc.

Edited by Kaf
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^ How so? Race is only subjective through a deconstructionist lens, and if that lens is applied, the whole point is inevitably mute. For example, what does it actually mean to be Chinese? Who decided who was Chinese and who was Mongolian and the difference between the two hundreds of years ago? Valid questions if you deconstruct what race actually means, but in our society those are really culture questions. Then again, the difference between the two really just boils down to ethnicity, which is different than race.

 

for example, if rafsemens went up to a group of black people and tried to identify as black as well, not just as having similar interests, mannerisms, or beliefs (culture), but tried to pass it off as actually being the same race, he'd probably get beat up, ignored, shunned etc.

 

Race is cultural with a big C, in fact there are various racial classifications. As pretty much everyone already knows in 2015 Africa has greater genetic diversity than the rest of the world combined cause we came from there but most stayed and all that. If you go with some hardcore classification taking into account this shit you'd get weird race classifications that no one cares about.

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I once had to take this upper div Anthro class about race and gender, and the main point they were trying to get at was that both ideas are social constructs. Like for example, pink was thought to be a very masculine color in the Western World prior to WWI, but nowadays its seen as feminine. Also most parents tend to reinforce what they believe a "boy" or a "girl" should like (i.e. we have a son so let's buy him toy cars or we have a daughter so we're going to paint her nursery pink). Another interesting discussion we had in that class was about Sickle Cell disease. In America this disease is largely associated with being African American, as in people believe the disease is caused by your "race." Then several years ago there was a case of a white girl having the disease and the doctors were dumbfounded. It turns out that the disease actually stemmed from your ancestors living around swamp areas. The girl with the disease ended up having Greek ancestors so then it made sense. But for years doctors believed that "race" was the cause of the disease. Very interesting stuff indeed.

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