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I appreciate the discussion around Trump lately, but I've had this idea in my head that I can't shake, so I guess I have to post about it now. It's about liberalism again.
When I get bored at work, I tend to surf Wikipedia for historical and cultural tidbits. One of the things that dizzies me is taking a look at the various ethnic groups of Asia. There are an insane amount of them in India, in China, in Russia, in Southeast Asia, and most of them have their own language. A shocking amount of diversity. Even more shocking is learning of the occasional huge impact of former ethnicities -- I had never heard of the Circassian genocide before bumping into it on Wikipedia, nor of the Moriori genocide in New Zealand, nor of most of the stateless peoples fighting for their own nation. It makes a nation like Japan seem somewhat boring, since it was mostly one ethnicity just interacting with itself instead of duking it out with dozens or hundreds of other ethnicities in a massive historical cultural bloodbath.
Where this ties into America, and liberalism: America, for the most part, has had all its ethnicities jumbled together. It was really, really great at integrating people in the melting pot. I am, by blood, Irish mixed with German, but I hold no allegiance with Ireland or Germany. I, and most white people I know, would describe themselves as American, if anything. But seeing this culture war flare up and the value differences becoming obvious makes me think: what if the rise of social justice politics has absolutely nothing to do with liberalism? Maybe we're seeing the rise of a new ethnic group, not based on shared genetic traits, but on certain cultural traits being emphasized more than others, as has happened thousands or millions of times in history?
If that's what's happening, then we might say that liberalism is not entirely at fault for the rise of progressivism (or whoever you blame for causing this rift). Liberalism is more of a new thing, but diversification of ethnic groups is far older. I would argue that this stratification has been intensified by the internet and television and other mass communications enabling people to self sort into their own groups, regardless of geographic distance. Perhaps you might also say that liberalism gave more of an equal playing field for cultures to fight it out amongst themselves, thus accelerating such diversification. But it may have been inevitable.
This has been the case for a long time — the thing is that genetic distance within, say, white people is much larger than the genetic distance to a black person. I mean, the only genes that differ are essentially about some obscure pigmentation. As far as the science of the human genome goes, "ethnicity" has always been a cultural thing, not a genetic one.
Is this true? I would think the genetic distance between two Europeans to be smaller than that between a European and an SS African. The last common ancestor between any two Europeans is much more recent than between a European and a Sub-saharan African (something like 1,000 years ago vs 80,000 years ago).
I think the person you're replying to is talking about within the US, where supposedly most "African-Americans" have at least some white ancestry, and they seem to be comparing against the largest genetic difference you'll find between white Americans, not the average or most common case. Certainly the context of the larger conversation is about something that primarily applies to the US.
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