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non_radical_centrist  2mo ago (astralcodexten.com)   2512 thread views

How Should We Think About Race And "Lived Experience"?

astralcodexten.com

I'm generally a fan of "blurry" definitions where something can qualify as X if it fulfills a few of many criteria. I think trying to create hard rules around blurry areas like race and culture is fool's errand, and Scott does a great job laying out how overly strict definitions can go wrong.

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People use the claim “there’s no such thing as biological race” for a lot of purposes, mostly to confuse and deceive people, but here it’s worth focusing on the tiny sliver of justification for such a claim: the biological clustering of populations isn’t exactly 100% the same as socially-defined racial categories

Scott seems to not understand. Race is still a social construct. There are genetic variations among different populations, but this doesn't mean the categories of race are not socially constructed. Who decided we are going to define one race white and another black, based on skin color? He uses the example with Jews, but this makes no sense since their categorization of race is different from the Western categorization. These racial categories have a purpose and are useful for a variety of reasons, but he's not making a convincing point that racial categories are not socially defined. Certain racial categories are fuzzier and an American invention: whites and blacks.

Scott agrees with you, except for the assertion that biological race is entirely useless. Biological race is what ancestry.com identifies you as when you do a DNA test. It's different but has substantial overlap with cultural race. Biological race is, usually, less useful than cultural race, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist like how, say, a biological Star Wars fan doesn't exist. There are lots of genes associated with certain geographic regions and cultures, there aren't genes particularly associated with liking Star Wars.

There are lots of genes associated with certain geographic regions and cultures, there aren't genes particularly associated with liking Star Wars.

Only because they haven't been selected for. If anything- but I digress.

We should expect to see alleles associated with, among other things, industriousness, parental investment, general levels of aggression, punctuality, cognitive ability, sexual fidelity, impulse control, and many other things which have been selected for. I also contend that at some point we'll figure out the alleles for all sorts of various aesthetic preferences, and even preferences for narrative tropes. At which point it will indeed be possible to score someone's propensity to enjoy Star Wars. Although, the franchise is a mixed enough basket by now that it'd be fairly messy. After all, most people prefer some Star Wars to other Star Wars.

I also contend that at some point we'll figure out the alleles for all sorts of various aesthetic preferences, and even preferences for narrative tropes.

I might be wrong, but I expect that a lot of that has a very large influence by the environment. If you had a perfect understanding of the influences of human genes, you could probably make a slightly better than chance guess at whether someone would be a Star Wars fan if you knew their genes, but it really wouldn't be useful to create a genetic "Star Wars fan" category because it would be very divorced by the actual reality of which people enjoyed Star Wars.

If you had a perfect understanding of the influences of human genes, you could probably make a slightly better than chance guess at whether someone would be a Star Wars fan if you knew their genes

Maybe consider that we can do much better than that just based on whether the person has a Y chromosome!

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