The Rev

I think the idea of racism should be expanded. That is, "racism" shouldn't simply be a word we associate with race-oriented bigotry, but rather, a word we associate with the very idea that race exists at all.

Based on my understanding, race is nothing more than arbitrary differences in appearance that have become favored in particular regions of the world. For example, the tightly-curled hair, dark skin, and wider nose of "black people" are features that are no more meaningful than the brown hair of one "white person" and the blonde hair of another. We just chose these particular features (maybe because we associated them with cultural differences, perhaps) and decided that they were somehow biologically significant, when, in fact, they're totally arbitrary.

So, to identify a person, or even oneself, as a member of a particular race is to subscribe to philosophy that certain arbitrary features are biologically significant; this philosophy being race-ism. Now, this doesn't mean I'm a dick if I say I'm "a white guy". It just means that I follow a fallacious belief about people's appearances.

The problem, of course, is that this philosophy draws us into groups that are opposed to one another: into "us" and "them." And in a world that already has a vast surplus of such cultural devices, one based on a fallacy just seems pointless.

So, while you are all still my niggas, you are just members of the human race to me.



The Rev

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m0rb1d

well put sir

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SageTree

Thanks Rev.

I've been checking 'other' for years now

I wasn't there when all my grannies and pappies got it on (thank god) so I couldn't tell ya what any of their stories were, who their partners where, and where they came from either.

I know in PA my family started settling there in 1730, which historians have said, increases my chances by 100% that I have a native family member.

My great great great god knows how many, was shipped through Barbados as a slave, albeit from England. What's his story and who came with him up here, how long had that person been on the island. Were they second generation?

Too many variables to put a label on what one thing I am. Now if it was, mark how dark your skin is from 1-10 and kept race out of it we could start having melanin-ism!!!!!

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The Rev

No, never have. It looks interesting, but not really related to what I posted about. Why did you happen to mention it?



The Rev

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bubbler211

the fact that you cant tell infants apart at the moment of birth is rather interesting
human babies all look the same in the nursery for the 1st few hours

Roach

perhaps @ the moment of conception.

but @ the moment of birth you can definately tell a chinese baby from an african american one....

if not you should definately check into a better hospital.

hijabihippie

Sorry, Rev. Right author, wrong title.

Have you ever read Henry Louis Gates, Junior's book Race, Writing And Difference?

The Rev

No, but it looks interesting. I put it in my cart at Amazon.



The Rev

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Beyonder

Very well put, Rev. What really drilled the way home for me, which changed my knowing about me being essentially an african though I don't look that way, was clicking through the timezones on the map over at the genographic project:

https://genographic.nationalgeograph.../en/atlas.html

I think it's a wonderful site, educational in the sense that it doesn't promote mere knowing but actually improves understanding.

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He who lets the world, or his own portion of it, choose his plan of life for him, has no need of any other faculty than the ape-like one of imitation. He who chooses his plan for himself, employs all his faculties.

-John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

I must create a system or be enslaved by another mans; I will not reason and compare: my business is to create.

-William Blake

Xil

Race does have some pretty big implications though that can't be denied.

Random example: I worked at a summer camp and a lot of camps for special needs kids came through. The sickle cell kids all had one thing in common (besides being some pimpin kids), they were all black. I can't say, though, that the cancer kids all had brown hair or the muscular dystrophy kids all had blue eyes.

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