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non_radical_centrist  1mo ago (astralcodexten.com)   2495 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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There is a simple explanation as to why the White Nationalists are more tolerant than other groups: There is nothing to be gained by being White. You only give up any chance at getting Affirmative Action benefits as well as the amorphous social benefits that come with being part of a minority. In fact, the more Whites there are, the more the burdens of affirmative action are spread, whereas more minorities means that the benefits of AA are spread more thinly. The incentives to have strong or weak barriers to entry are obvious.

So there is a simple option to solve this whole issue: Stop discriminating against and debasing Whites. Stop giving tangible and intangible benefits to non-Whites. If there is nothing to be gained from being non-White, there is no point in having "hard-and-fast rules" and we can go back to "letting communities make decisions".

Also, a minor point:

"An 18.001 year old has a relationship with a 17.999 year old (who claimed to be 18) and is prosecuted for statutory rape."

There is a solution to that called Romeo and Juliet laws. They allow some age difference if both parties are close to the cutoff point.

There is a simple explanation as to why the White Nationalists are more tolerant than other groups

Um... really? in the story, Indians accepted Elizabeth with supposed 1/8 ancestry. I do not think White Nationalists would accept a person who has only 1/8 of white ancestry...

Depends really. How many of the other Indians in the story were also 7/8 white? She might not have actually looked any different than the rest of them.

American Indians are very European by ancestry. It isn't unusual at all to have people who look white despite having two Indian parents, to say nothing of Indians with one white parent/grandparent. Lots of famous Indian Chiefs had white mothers.

It's a big reason why the Indian population has been falling in the USA. Some Indian from the reservation moves out, marries a white person; and, has white looking children, who just get absorbed into the white majority as another white person with some story about an Indian ancestor.

Why hasn't this happened to the ADoS? Were the miscegenation restrictions different depending on the race of the non-White partner?

It has and is happening in ADoS. It's just there are lots more black people in the USA then there are Indians, especially in the deep south where most live. I see lots of very white looking black people who still identify as black and are culturally very black. And many have been absorbed into white majority once they start looking white enough.

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