Racist-oriented people - those who assert that races are real, verifiable, & meaningful classifications- need to perform some mental exercises - primarily, "lumping & splitting". "What is White"? "What is Black"? "Why the heck do some think it matters?" Racist thinking tends to avoid trying to figure out what the racist individual real…
Racist-oriented people - those who assert that races are real, verifiable, & meaningful classifications- need to perform some mental exercises - primarily, "lumping & splitting". "What is White"? "What is Black"? "Why the heck do some think it matters?" Racist thinking tends to avoid trying to figure out what the racist individual really means by parsing the data. How about "White people are made up of these ethnic groups: Northern European, maybe some mid-latitude Europeans, some of them southern Europeans, maybe some of them peoples further east, & . . . ". And maybe, "Black people are composed of lots of those folks endemic to Africa, & some of those people still inhabiting Australia, & . . . dang, help me out here". Where do Middle Eastern people "fit"? What about Asians, SE Asians, Indigenous "Americans"? I see I might have left out "the Jews" (another highly diverse people lumped into a simplistic category - a lumping, rather than a splitting?) Categorizing people by trying to squeeze them into tidy boxes doesn't work. Racists really mean "Black people are them who don't act like us." Which brings us to culture & behavior & language. Anthropologically & historically human beings are not peanut M&Ms & can't be seriated into a spectrum composed of sub-groupings. Genetics is a messy business; the same has been said about evolution. I wonder why. Whenever I hear someone ignorantly say "white people" or "black people" I know they're racist & I'll demand they explain what they mean by those terms. I might be white-Caucasian raised in one of the most WASP-laden communities in the nation (think of the film about anti-Semitism, "Gentleman's Agreement"), but it doesn't mean I only espouse the values attributed to other people with white skin or Caucasian features. How can I like Jazz or Blues if I'm truly "White"? In nature, variability rules.
Racist-oriented people - those who assert that races are real, verifiable, & meaningful classifications- need to perform some mental exercises - primarily, "lumping & splitting". "What is White"? "What is Black"? "Why the heck do some think it matters?" Racist thinking tends to avoid trying to figure out what the racist individual really means by parsing the data. How about "White people are made up of these ethnic groups: Northern European, maybe some mid-latitude Europeans, some of them southern Europeans, maybe some of them peoples further east, & . . . ". And maybe, "Black people are composed of lots of those folks endemic to Africa, & some of those people still inhabiting Australia, & . . . dang, help me out here". Where do Middle Eastern people "fit"? What about Asians, SE Asians, Indigenous "Americans"? I see I might have left out "the Jews" (another highly diverse people lumped into a simplistic category - a lumping, rather than a splitting?) Categorizing people by trying to squeeze them into tidy boxes doesn't work. Racists really mean "Black people are them who don't act like us." Which brings us to culture & behavior & language. Anthropologically & historically human beings are not peanut M&Ms & can't be seriated into a spectrum composed of sub-groupings. Genetics is a messy business; the same has been said about evolution. I wonder why. Whenever I hear someone ignorantly say "white people" or "black people" I know they're racist & I'll demand they explain what they mean by those terms. I might be white-Caucasian raised in one of the most WASP-laden communities in the nation (think of the film about anti-Semitism, "Gentleman's Agreement"), but it doesn't mean I only espouse the values attributed to other people with white skin or Caucasian features. How can I like Jazz or Blues if I'm truly "White"? In nature, variability rules.
I'd also like to refer the reader to this analysis of the algos used to amplify right-wing extremism & racism on social media. https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1629846761278779395.html