Race isn't completely arbitrary. It's basic evolutionary theory. Living in different places develops different features. These features helped survival in one way or another and became typical for certain areas. A native of Japan does not look like a native of Uganda. That's the hard, physical reality. Though of course many people are hard to place in one race or another.
They're hard to place because race isn't anything more than a social category. Having a certain skin color or certain facial features is not a
race in any scientific sense - there is zero genetic or physiological basis for race which can be articulated.
Also, it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with survival. Natural selection won't remove benign traits, and regardless the genetic drift between all humans is relatively small. It's small enough
The following comparison may sound offensive. Apologies if so.
Different dog breeds are a thing. Very obviously. Crossing breeds will produce a mongrel who is hard to categorise. That does not mean dog breeds are completely arbitrary. Of course, human variation is more complex than that of dogs, considering we don't have kennel clubs to impose certain ideals, but the principal is the same.
Here's another argument: Just because there are blurred lines between races does not mean races do not exist.
Dog breeds are pretty much primitive genetic engineering and are once again something that can be placed at the foot of human categorization. All this tells me is to make sure fascists can't get their hands on gene engines lest they try to do the same to human beings. Regardless, the
dogs do not seem to recognize their breeds in any way even with our engineering - which makes sense, because race is a social category. Were it only that we had the wisdom of dogs.
These two arguments are not of much meaning, since you can't define what race is in any objective way, which I know you cannot do since there is no scientific basis for it. This can be seen in how you leave unsaid any conclusion beyond "race exists" - you're not getting cold feet on me, are you?
The idea wasn't invented in the late 1600s. It began to be explored in a scientific manner at that time. Something doesn't need a modern intellectual framework to exist. For instance, did the world explode into roundness as Galileo/Ptolemy began spreading their ideas? No. Sailors knew just by observing the curvature of the earth, but Galileo in particular helped develop a scholarly discussion surrounding it.
Sailors also thought there were sea monsters and that the boat would be cursed if you let a woman onboard. Casual observation does not have rigor whether it is correct or not.
Likewise, before racial science began down its largely-misguided path, the medieval world explored concepts of race. Usually in an equally misguided way - namely by portraying them as monsters. Mongols, Jews and black people were all discussed and categorised as distinct races.
Before this, the Ancient Greeks had a fairly decent concept of race. They believed that it was tied to the environment.
I think one of the main things to consider is that race didn't matter as much in the more distant past. You lived in your polis, village, town, tepee, hut and interacted with foreigners only rarely. When you DID interact with other races, it was like Xenophon meeting the Carduchians in the retreat of the Ten Thousand - they were "a fierce, war-loving race, who had never been conquered. Once the Great King had sent into their country an army of 120,000 men, to subdue them, but of all that great host not one had ever seen his home again."
Even were the ancients completely ignorant of race - which they obviously are not - that's no reason to assume that it does not exist. We understand selection and the formation of races in a way which was impossible at their time. They saw races, named them monsters, and that was all.
We see races. Understand how the environment led to certain mutations and differences. Then we categorise.
And they were wrong then, too! The ancient Greek-Roman race pseudoscience didn't call everyone monsters - in particular, they thought people from Africa were the best doctors and philosophers, but too meek and peaceful to resist them. Conversely, the pink-skinned barbarians to the north were somewhat monstrous, but made good tools for the Empire once conquered and civilized - that warlike Germanic blood, you know?
Yes, it is only on the fine waters of the Mediterranean that you can get the just-right porridge combination of knowledge and war, and thus through the race enigma form a rightful racial hierarchy of people only from the city of Rome, the true master race of the world unless you also move to Rome too.
And boy do we categorise badly, with generalisations galore. But at least we know there is SOMETHING there to categorise in the first place.
one day, we will uncover the true astrology, since we have learned so much about the misguided false astrology
Similarly, transgender people are just people. The difference between male and female, despite physical differences, is minimal. What is desired is to be treated a certain way. Someone whose sex is male wants to be treated like someone whose sex is female. Hence dressing in certain ways, walking and acting certain ways, having surgery and taking medication to prevent beard growth. (Actually not sure about that last, but I think that's part of the process?)
To sum up, I guess:
Race is physical. But it has cultural implications which some wish to appropriate.
Sex is physical. But it has cultural implications which some wish to appropriate.
So, to ask my question again, why say that transgender-ism is a thing but transracial-ism is obviously something to be ridiculed? Both seem to be exactly the same to me, just applied to different physical attributes.
For one thing, it's gender that trans people are trans over, not sex.
And for another, because people don't wither and die if someone tries to force them not to be black, because people don't do that sort of thing, because race is a social category and gender isn't.
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Topic: Things that made you go "WTF?" today o_O (Read 14939029 times)