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non_radical_centrist  2mo ago (astralcodexten.com)   2513 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.

Do you also dispute the wavelength basis of color? It fits in perfectly:

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

Put plainly, everything is a fuzzy socially-defined category, even the categories used in the hardest of hard physics. Bringing up this argument for genetics only is an isolated demand for rigor.

I am not sure what your counterargument is for. I am not disputing the existence of genetic variation in different populations. I am pointing out race (mostly Western system) is a social construct. I am not even disputing the utility of these categorizations. I am just saying Scott makes the conflation that social construct means it doesn't exist.

For your example... Color is a spectrum. It's not that one color definitely ends here and starts there. Language is a limiting factor. There are terms for different types of colors that aren't existent in Anglo Saxon. Useful categories, but doesn't mean they aren't socially defined. Socially defined doesn't necessarily mean there are no differences between a certain part of the spectrum compared to the other.

Though I understand you are just using an example, it's not a very good one since genetic differences between races aren't always clear. I am pretty sure ethnic differences are larger within one race than between different races. Way less clear than physical phenomena in hard sciences. Defining it by skin color or certain phenotypes is just one way of doing it.

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I mean everything is a social construct. Rape is a social construct. Property is a social construct. Google is a social construct. The Internet is a social construct. Love is a social construct. Anti-racism is a social construct. Yet we still have uses for all of these, they're in fact extremely important, and can debate the way we act on them in the exact same way Scott is doing. It's reasonable to say that I probably shouldn't consider the entirety of San Francisco to be "my property", even though it's a social construct, because it's not very useful and may have negative effects. It's similarly reasonable to say that maybe it's better to consider "race" to just mean "ancestry" than to jump between "group membership/identity social construct" and "ancestry" depending on the situation, leading to the plight of the professor in the OP.

I am just saying Scott makes the conflation that social construct means it doesn't exist.

I don't think he is?

I am pretty sure ethnic differences are larger within one race than between different races.

You mean genetic differences. There are a lot of technical arguments here but ... sure, why not. There are many white people with lower IQ than the average black person. This doesn't mean that the average black IQ isn't lower than the average white IQ, and it doesn't mean that doesn't have a genetic component to its cause.

I don't think he is?

https://open.substack.com/pub/astralcodexten/p/how-should-we-think-about-race-and-list-share-cta&comments=true&commentId=51163221

You mean genetic differences. There are a lot of technical arguments here but ... sure, why not. There are many white people with lower IQ than the average black person. This doesn't mean that the average black IQ isn't lower than the average white IQ, and it doesn't mean that doesn't have a genetic component to its cause.

Do you have any strong evidence that controls different factors (socioeconomic, historical, cultural and even diet) for the claims of IQ? When I looked, most of these differences between IQ are overblown or if the data does show differences, it often is more complex and can't be taken by face value. This isn't exclusive to just IQ of course but even other traits like skeletal structure and even height.

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