Look, here's an analogous argument to the OP: "Without the sun, there would be no people. With no people, there would be no racism. Therefore, the sun is the root of racism".

Its that fucking stupid.

I'm going to keep repeating this until it seeps into your head: Racism is premised on differences deemed signifiant and not difference simpliciter. The 'deeming' is not biological but social and political. — StreetlightX

I get what you mean. It's not just a question of whether differences exist or not. It's also about whether people deem the difference to be, as you said, significant. I fully agree with this and fdrake's video post clearly demonstrates that race is an arbitrary concept with the caveat that it only looks like that based on genotype and not phenotype. The video clearly reveals the basis of racism as based on phenotype (external, physical appearance) and then demonstrates that these physical differences don't have a counterpart in genotype based on which all races are more similar than different. Clearly, racism is not a socio-political phenomenon as you claim: I've never heard a racist ask for social status or political affiliation before they start being racist.

If racism prevention is the goal, people could be encouraged to be aware of how they feel about differences. Give space to feeling uncomfortable.

Not realizing that the discomfort is coming from an aesthetic clash can feed scapegoating and other causes of racism. — frank

Differences in phenotype - physical appearance - seems to be key to racism. I maybe wrong but don't racists compare some races to monkeys and apes in order to show their superiority and the inferiority of the other races? I reckon that in the remote past, when we were still hunter-gatherers, monkeys and apes were tough competition; after all they are either more agile or physically stronger. :joke:

The video clearly reveals the basis of racism as based on phenotype (external, physical appearance) and then demonstrates that these physical differences don't have a counterpart in genotype based on which all races are more similar than different. — TheMadFool

You're actually so fucking stupid. Fuck. You think the Germans murdered the Jews because they didn't look like them? Based on 'phenotype'? Fuck you're an idiot. Just fuck off.

Look, here's an analogous argument to the OP: "Without the sun, there would be no people. With no people, there would be no racism. Therefore, the sun is the root of racism".

Its that fucking stupid. — StreetlightX

Strawman!
:lol: It's not that stupid. You ignore the fact that the domain of the necessary condition of the ability to see differences is limited to humans and what constitutes being human. I make no claims about anything beyond humanity.

You're actually so fucking stupid. Fuck. You think the Germans murdered the Jews because they didn't look like them? Based on 'phenotype'? Fuck you're an idiot. Just fuck off. — StreetlightX

Phenotype includes a lot of things other than what is obvious such as color of the skin, etc.; phenotype includes the color of your hair, the shape of your nose, your height, etc. and somehow the Jews couldn't fulfill the Nazi criteria for being classified as Aryan.

It's not that stupid. — TheMadFool

I'm afraid it is. There are differences in eye colour, we can see them, people talk about them, they are genetic. I have blue eyes, my wife has brown eyes. Nobody cares. It's the caring about skin colour, the assigning of meaning to it that stands in need of explanation.

The original racism is royalty - that bloodline of superiority that is attempted to be justified by special marks of the body and refinements of mind and spirit. It's bollocks of course. The caricature of the Jewish nose is used to justify the hatred, it is not at all the origin.

Differences in phenotype - physical appearance - seems to be key to racism. — TheMadFool

Usually. But Irish people look exactly like English ones. German Jews look pretty much like Germans. The meaning attached to race can contain non-phenotypic characteristics. Look to context.

Ok, if we could all just calm down. :hearts:

@TheMadFool Necessary conditions aren't always explanatory. Legs don't explain why people like jogging and the ability to notice differences doesn't explain why racism exists. You're looking for an explanation at the wrong level. But if you want to continue to do so, I suggest the rest of us bow out now and just let you.

Because the Nazi 'criteria' were not phenotypic you fucking retard. — StreetlightX

You seem to be very knowledgable on the issue but I think you overlooked an important American hero, the great Athlete Jessie Owens (1930 -1980). The following is a passage from the wiki entry on Jesse Owens, and his story is testament to the fact that racism is, to a large degree if not completely, based on phenotype.

He was the most successful athlete at the Games and, as a black man, was credited with "single-handedly crushing Hitler's myth of Aryan supremacy", although he "wasn't invited to the White House to shake hands with the President, either" — Wikipedia

Do you suppose Hitler, and therefore Nazis, thought Aryans were superior based on anything other than phenotype? You yourself recommended fdrake's video to me; the message in the video is if we use the criterion of genotype there is no way we can justify a any subdivision in the genotype continuum on rational grounds. In other words, in a biological, scientific sense, since genotype is useless for the race concept, it follows that race, to exist as a meaningful concept, must be phenotype-based.

The meaning attached to race can contain non-phenotypic characteristics. Look to context. — frank

Read my reply to StreetlightX.

But if you want to continue to do so, I suggest the rest of us bow out now and just let you. — Baden

I'm looking for a cause for racism and it seems quite obvious doesn't it to look in the direction what an essentially discriminatory mindset, racism, points towards - differences and our capacity to perceive them.

And an essentially fitness-oriented mindset in one sense highlights our ability to move our body. But to look to biology to explain fitness fads would be to look in the wrong direction, right? Ok, that's my last effort on this anyway.

I'm looking for a cause for racism and it seems quite obvious doesn't it to look in the direction what an essentially discriminatory mindset, racism, points towards - differences and our capacity to perceive them. — TheMadFool

Of course. Although difference can also be attractive, as in viva la difference.

Racism therefore has to have causes other than difference and our ability to perceive difference.

I get what you mean. It's not just a question of whether differences exist or not. It's also about whether people deem the difference to be, as you said, significant. I fully agree with this and fdrake's video post clearly demonstrates that race is an arbitrary concept with the caveat that it only looks like that based on genotype and not phenotype. The video clearly reveals the basis of racism as based on phenotype (external, physical appearance) and then demonstrates that these physical differences don't have a counterpart in genotype based on which all races are more similar than different. Clearly, racism is not a socio-political phenomenon as you claim: I've never heard a racist ask for social status or political affiliation before they start being racist. — TheMadFool

This whole thread is forgetting the concept of kin selection.

Kin selection is the evolutionary strategy that favours the reproductive success of an organism's relatives, even at a cost to the organism's own survival and reproduction.

In other words, favoring those that share your genes is an evolutionary strategy. It is a strategy by natural selection to encourage the appearance of difference groups (mutation and genetic drift) for competition between different groups. Without differences, natural selection has nothing to select against or for.

Thousands of years ago, the world wasn't as homogenous as it is today. While humans evolved from a certain stock stemming out of Africa, they spread across the globe - encompassing different environments. Like every other species that spreads out and becomes separated from the original strain, they change differently over time. These differences allow natural selection to encourage competition between the strains, and even other species. If there were no differences, then natural selection would have nothing to select for or against. It's just that not enough time has passed to make the different strains of humans incompatible to procreate. Once human populations became homogenous we began mixing up our genes into the same pool again, whereas prior, we have separate pools. These pools are what your genealogy tests show that your ancestors are from.

So just like many evolutionary strategies, like the male strategy to be promiscuous, cultures try to either inhibit or promote (as in the case of kin selection) these evolutionary strategies we've been designed with.

Racism is a category error in that some culture have instilled the idea that other races are even more different than what their genetic differences represent - like blacks are criminals and whites are racist. This doesn't mean that we aren't different. It's just that our difference weren't enough to make us separate in the eyes of natural selection.

But then humans are part of the selective process of natural selection. Just as predators are selective pressures on their prey, humans can select other humans, while weeding out others.

Like I said, our gene pools weren't separated long enough in evolutionary time to become distinct species. Several thousand years is just a blink of an eye to natural selection. That is why when the world became homogenous, we didn't have a problem mixing our genes back together.

Necessary conditions aren't always explanatory. Legs don't explain why people like jogging and the ability to notice differences doesn't explain why racism exists. You're looking for an explanation at the wrong level. But if you want to continue to do so, I suggest the rest of us bow out now and just let you. — Baden

It looks like you're explaining things at the wrong level. Sure humans have legs, but they also have brains. Both of which were designed by natural selection. Some brains like to make their legs run, some don't. I'm guessing there are evolutionary advantages for those that like to run over those that don't. Joggers stay fit, non-joggers don't. Those that stay fit have a higher chance to pass their genes down to the next generation. Brains and their minds and how those brains establish preferences for other particular humans (kin selection), or for running over not running, are products of natural selection (evolutionary psychology).

We're evolved to prefer jogging? :ok:

By the way it tends to be in developed countries with the smallest families that jogging is most popular and undeveloped ones with the largest ones that's it's least popular. So, there's another social pretzel for you to transform into an evolutionary donut.

Do you really think natural selection would promote non-jogger genes in the pool of a hunter-gatherer society?

Today, most of the societies are not hunter-gatherer, so non-joggers can get by just fine by doing other things that enable them to pass on their genes - like writing computer programs.

You don't see fat cats in nature. You see fat cats in the homes of humans who overfeed their cats without making them exercise. Those fat cats can still pass on their genes. In the wild, there are no fat cats. Hmmmm.

Hunter gatherers didn't go jogging, dude.

And there are no "jogger" or "non-jogger" genes.

And this thread gets funnier by the minute.

What's funny is the response of so-called quality posters on this forum to racial topics on this forum. It's like Jekyll and Hyde with the sudden rash of insults and ad hominems dominating (and is often the only content of their entire post) their responses.

It's just like the responses you see of the fundamentally religious and the transgenders - these verbal attacks and insults you get when you question their view of the world. It's sad to see intelligent people act this way.

If you don't want to take on what I said about evolutionary psychology and kin selection, then fine. Any other response is missing the point of that.

Differences in phenotype - physical appearance - seems to be key to racism. I maybe wrong but don't racists compare some races to monkeys and apes in order to show their superiority and the inferiority of the other races? I reckon that in the remote past, when we were still hunter-gatherers, monkeys and apes were tough competition; after all they are either more agile or physically stronger. :joke: — TheMadFool

Phenotype - observable characteristics of organism.
Humans - organisms.
Racism - uses observable characteristics of humans.
Racism - requires specific differences in observable characteristics of humans in compared aggregates? No.
Racism - renders those aggregates relevant or stipulates them to exist through other means, which usually have no basis in the facts of human biology.

Let's take a case where the prejudice would be related to a biological fact. Let's say that we're eugenicists and we decide to kill all the people with the mutation that causes sickle cell anemia. Why? Because they have sickle cell anemia. Is that enough of a reason? No, we have to flesh out why that's a relevant selection criteria for killing people, and why we should kill people for the mutation at all. The mutation didn't cause us to want to kill them, the criteria we adopted did. Not the biology, the social stuff.

And this thread gets funnier by the minute. — Baden

What else could a thread called "The Roots of Racism" become today?

Hopefully the silliness would be confined just to race & gender issues and the typical 'culture war' talking points, but I'm afraid it will radiate to other topics too.

So, there's another social pretzel for you to transform into an evolutionary donut. — Baden

:lol:

:up:

And an essentially fitness-oriented mindset in one sense highlights our ability to move our body. But to look to biology to explain fitness fads would be to look in the wrong direction, right? Ok, that's my last effort on this anyway. — Baden

By the way it tends to be in developed countries with the smallest families that jogging is most popular and undeveloped ones with the largest ones that's it's least popular. So, there's another social pretzel for you to transform into an evolutionary donut — Baden

Do you or do you not believe the Darwinian Theory of Evolution? If you don't then I have nothing to say but if you do then it follows that every trait that we possess must've been those selected for by environmental pressure and I can think of no greater force on our evolutionary development other than the need to avoid predators and the need for food.

Of course. Although difference can also be attractive, as in viva la difference.

Racism therefore has to have causes other than difference and our ability to perceive difference. — frank

I think it's a widely held belief that diversity in a gene pool is healthy; if we're all identical, a single disease could wipe us all out. Imagine an animal that feeds exclusively on bamboo; the extinction of bamboos would then mean the animal too would disappear. This outlook is well-supported by the ecological principle of maintaining diversity in ecosystems - it's a much more robust arrangement for living systems that are under constant pressure from the environment.

The same benefit of enhanced survivability may apply to the diverse races of homo sapiens; unfortunately, all races seem to share the same disease susceptibility barring some like skin cancer which occurs more frequently in white people.



In my humble opinion, kin selection would be meaningless without some degree of homogeneity in the community an individual belongs to and some heterogeneity to contrast that against.

Not the biology, the social stuff. — fdrake

Social differences were race-based weren't they and race, as you agree, is all about, as you put it, observable differences. When racism took root it wasn't on social differences as is evidenced by the fact that despite variety in the socio-cultural milieu in the African continent, all Africans were lumped together as an inferior race.

Social differences were race-based weren't they and race, as you agree, is all about, as you put it, observable differences — TheMadFool

Nah. Did you watch part 2 of that video I linked?

Races are "buckets" of people. Let's take "the Aryan race" and "the Jews".

The character of a bucket is how it is determined who goes into each bucket. Races are buckets.

If you take "the Jews" and "the Aryans" - these have been an interbreeding population with shared traits. It's continuous variation and gene exchange and everything available for one group is available for another. If you wanted to "bucket" humans into Aryan and not Aryan, the cut off point would be more like going to a wallpaper shop and selecting a skin colour, a nose size, a hair type, a history... Then using those to define "Jewish race" rather than finding "Jewish race" as a category rooted in biological difference from "Aryan race"; such a distinction does not identify human population with a distinct character driven by biological differences. What decides who goes into the "Aryan race" bucket is social stuff, not finding a genetically distinct sub population whose genetic differences are driven by biological difference makers. Social stuff "looking at" bodies and bucketing them based on social principles - stereotyping, mythmaking, storytelling, politics...

Did you watch part 2 of that video I linked? — fdrake

No.

This means that how it is decided who goes into each bucket is predominantly a social artefact rather than a genetic or phenotypic one. — fdrake

Kindly explain what you mean by social artefact?

Kindly explain what you mean by social artefact? — TheMadFool

Here you go. Will make it clearer.

Social stuff "looking at" bodies and bucketing them based on social principles - stereotyping, mythmaking, storytelling, politics... — fdrake

Yes. Looking at bodies. Phenotype.

To make matters explicit and hopefully not offend anyone in the process, let's look at common racial slurs:

Nigger: late 16th century: from earlier neger, after Latin niger ‘black’

Olympics 2008: Spain's eye-catching faux pas

Are the above in any way not about phenotype ?

Yes. Looking at bodies. Phenotype. — TheMadFool

An Aryan and a Jew have a baby, is it an Aryan or a Jew? How do you decide?