What is your stake in the view that "race is culturally constructed" and that "gender is culturally constructed"? — Bitter Crank
Race is real and isn't determined by culture; it's inherent in the genetic makeup of a person. — Bitter Crank
Culture is also real, and is learned. There isn't a genetic link between race and culture. There are links of learning and environment, however, between race and culture. People tend to behave like those around them--that's cultural.
Maleness and femaleness are real and are biologically determined. Men are males, women are females. Both males or men, females or women, have certain sex-linked characteristics and traits, and both males or men and females or women learn an array of culturally specific roles in connection with their sex and gender.
All humans inherit tendencies to behave in various ways, and also learn behaviors in early life. Some of the behaviors are "stereotypes", a term applied to specific types of individuals or certain ways of behaving intended to represent the entire group of those individuals or behaviors as a whole. So, girls playing with dolls and boys with trucks are "stereotypes".
A "role" is culturally defined manner of behaving. "The stereotypical male role in a family is to provide financial support and leadership." A "role" may also be biological. The male "role" in reproduction is inseminating females. The female "role" in reproduction is bearing off-spring. The male may play the role of "family defender" because biologically he is bigger and stronger than the female (usually). The male may also play the role of care-giver, which is a role usually assigned in stereotypical fashion to females.
It's just an inconvenient fact of life that roles, stereotypes, biology, and culture are braided together. With some effort the specifics can be teased apart. We struggle to do this all the time. "Was so-and-so born with high intelligence (genes, biology, prenatal environment, etc.) or is so-and-so very successful as a result of obsessively hard work? Or in joke form, "If you're so smart, how come you are not rich?" — Bitter Crank
What stereotype is the social role of consumer built on? What immediate environment is the social role of consumer derived from? None and none, respectively. Anybody with any traits and background can act in the social role of consumer. — WISDOMfromPO-MO
Social roles are parts in the screenplay called society. — WISDOMfromPO-MO
Increasingly the latter are customers rather than patients — WISDOMfromPO-MO
Race is real and isn't determined by culture; it's inherent in the genetic makeup of a person.
— Bitter Crank
All of the evidence that I have seen says that that is false. — WISDOMfromPO-MO
What is socially constructed is not the skin and hair colour and nose shape but the importance of these things in influencing our judgements and categorisations unjustly. This in turn focusses our attention on skin and hair colour etc. When someone says 'race is determined by culture not genetics' I think the charitable way of reading this is that the racial basis of prejudice, hatred and discrimination and thence of the study of and focus on racial differences is entirely arbitrary. If we have any charity left and I hope we do. — Cuthbert
Biological reality, as I understand it, is that we are overwhelmingly all the same and that the biological differences between us, as an instructor I had in a college geography class once put it, "are miniscule". — WISDOMfromPO-MO
The distinctions identified in race, whilst having no bearing at all on personality, did once indicate very strongly the cultural heritage of that person and so what adopted values they may have. — Pseudonym
Nowadays, thankfully, this is becoming so much less the case that to read anything into race would be unfair stereotyping, but our history of oppression and its legacy still means that someone's skin colour gives a statistically more significant indication of the sorts of challenges they've had to face in life than their ear lobes. — Pseudonym
It's not just arbitrary. It meant something significant about cultural heritage a hundred years ago, and shameful though it is, it still means something about one's history today. — Pseudonym
The "consumer" is an economic stereotype made possible and created by industrial society. "Consumer" started to become popular around 1900.
Prior to the deployment of various labor-reducing devices using electric motors, automobiles, and so forth, men and women devoted most of their time to producing. Men worked in production jobs (farm or factory, mostly) and women produced food, clothing, and some domestic goods at home. A woman often prepared food from a kitchen garden and used eggs from a backyard henhouse. Food was prepared from simple raw ingredients.
The industrialization of the home converted women from producers to consumers. One drove to a store and bought bread (didn't make it), canned fruit (didn't preserve it), meat (didn't kill it), and ready-made clothing (didn't sew it). The woman shopped for and "consumed" household goods, as well. Families consumed housing and transportation.
"Consumer" is now applied to everybody, even mentally retarded individuals who "consume" custodial care services, so the term has approached meaninglessness. But if you set aside these nonsensical uses, the term is still meaningful.
The economic role of consumption (by consumers) is a critically important element in the modern economy. Something close to 3/4 of the GDP is derived from the acts of buying stuff that define the role of consumer.
In many ways, being a "consumer" is a degraded role, a shrink wrapped stereotype. — Bitter Crank
It is not "producer versus consumer". It is "frugality versus consumption ".
And it is an integral component of capitalism, not a latent effect of industrialization. — WISDOMfromPO-MO
Just a dental reflection on race differences. — Bitter Crank
no concrete evidence from history, anthropology, biology or any other authority has been presented in support of this "race signifies biology and culture" assertion. — WISDOMfromPO-MO
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