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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 14, 2025

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Okay, but we're right here, right now, and last I checked we're a long, long way from being separated into different human sub-species. We interbreed without real issue, genetic distance is pretty close compared to, say, our former cousins the neanderthals or whatnot, and we don't really inhabit different ecological niches or anything either. Sure, we have a few random health quirks like disease resistance, predisposition to certain conditions, etc. but these are pretty minor overall.

What do you call the child of a Dane and a Yoruba? Why do we call a black Brazilian Hispanic? What about someone with more indigenous heritage from Chiapas in Mexico? Or half Inuit? What about Zohran Mamdani, who was born in Uganda to Indian and African-American parents? Do we still care about English vs Irish vs German vs Slavic vs French heritage differences within the "White" category? What about Palestinians vs Persians vs Turks vs Afghans? How close are they? Are they Asian? MENA? Something else, or are more specifics needed? The problems go on.

The fact of the matter is that particularly in America, where intermarriage rates are rising for almost every category, the underlying categories will increasingly be revealed as fundamentally flawed. The fact of the matter is that modern racism grew up partly out of the Transatlantic slave trade, but also out of the Enlightenment-era emergence of early forms of modern nationalism. The people and society who began to spread what we now would label racism (we're talking ~1700s) hadn't even figured out evolution yet, and wouldn't for over a century, so they hardly were working from scientific principles to begin with! Yet for some reason a lot of people seem to be so fixated on perpetuating those same thought patterns despite their obviously poisoned and low-quality origins. Now given, there's still some debate, but by and large the evidence and scholarly (by actual scholars not the performant ones) suggests that most people do indeed think about race differently today than they used to, and it's mostly driven by a white vs black paradigm and its influence on Western thought.

What do you call the child of a Dane and a Yoruba?

Mulatto.

Why do we call a black Brazilian Hispanic?

Negro(their preferred term for themselves- call them preto and they'll whoop your ass).

What about someone with more indigenous heritage from Chiapas in Mexico?

'Illegal' in the most common case, but if you're looking for a racial description probably 'Mayan' or 'Indian, feather not dot'.

Or half Inuit?

Half-caste

What about Zohran Mamdani, who was born in Uganda to Indian and African-American parents?

Desi

We interbreed without real issue,

The modal point for this is about Europeans and West Africans who aren't very far apart. I'd be curious to know about how good most genetically distant populations, Mbuti pygmies and Australoids fare in that respect.

Btw we don't know really that there was reproductive barrier with Nearderthals, after all, we have some of their genes. Maybe it were cultural values against mixing.

and we don't really inhabit different ecological niches

neither did Neaderthals.

etc. but these are pretty minor overall.

They were significant enough that Europeans didn't go in Africa interior before they invented treatment from malaria and Austronesians could not establish structure where they kept Africans as slaves. Africans, on their own hand, could not just take technology they gained from others and use it to expand (like Europeans took gunpowder and compass invented by Chinese and used against them).

Something else, or are more specifics needed? The problems go on.

You can argue whether Missouri is a tributary of Mississippi or vice-versa or what is the actual border between Europe and Asia but it does not disprove geography.

How close are they?

If you have geniune interest in this question, you can look in literature estimates of genetic differences between some populations. There are algorithms like ADMIXTURE which take genetic information as input and do cluster analysis, and produce results pretty much like that a 19th century racist would have made.

hadn't even figured out evolution yet, and wouldn't for over a century, so they hardly were working from scientific principles to begin with!

This is irrelevant. Gunpowder, sails and compass were used without any scientific basis for them in centuries. People drew maps assuming flat Earth. etc etc. These pre-evolution racists might just assume that God or gods made differences between races.

the underlying categories will increasingly be revealed as fundamentally flawed.

This experiment has been already run in Brazil. No. On reverse, Brazilians are much less happy to brag about how they do not believe in races, than Americans.

I'd be curious to know about how good most genetically distant populations, Mbuti pygmies and Australoids fare in that respect.

There's plenty of partly-aboriginal people running around in Australia. They just look white. And there's an entire ethnic group(cape coloreds) descended from Dutch-Khoisan crosses in South Africa.

Did you read what I wrote? There is concept of ring species in biology, where pop A can mate with B without issue, B can mate with C, but A has problems mating with C. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixation_index Fst between Papuans and Mbuti Pygmies is 0.46, between Papuans and English - 0.16

Good post. I am not sure what causes EverythingIsFine to argue this out. It feels like a steelman of the "race isn't real" thing I see on reddit, but there's only so much you can do with something that's totally false on the face of it.

You may have difficulty determining the difference between a bred-for-competition German Shepherd and a bred-for-work German Shepherd, but that doesn't mean there's no difference between a New Guinea Singing Dog and a dingo. They can interbreed, sure, but there are significant differences. Distinguishing Koreans from Japanese or Frenchmen from Englishmen isn't particularly enlightening to me, but the broader you get, the more that distinguishing between races makes sense to me. I would also agree that culture is a significant factor, too.