Neither did I, about the Bushmen.
Err, no, I never claimed this.
Well, yes. Obviously. If someone is very intelligent but lacks some faculty, I could have a fairly low opinion of their overall intelligence. Like savants or tax lawyers.
Errm, do you have me confused with someone else, perhaps? I’m not arguing on the same side as Pedant.
I found that post rather confusing as well. Perhaps, my esteemed friend, we have reached the end of the thread, where everyone yells at everyone about whatever.
So are you part part Bushman or part Khoikhoin? The answer is relevant to determine the validity of your statement I quoted first.
Part Khoekbhoen. Not half, though, just part.
How so? The differences between Khoekhoen and Bushmen are cultural, not racial.
More to the point, is The Flying Dutchman actually Dutch? He claims to be.
Yet your in your arguments you feel the need to apply your opinions on the relative intelligence of various ethnic groups, and thus do disservice to your argument.
And, more intriguingly, can he fly?
So what. You won’t insult me, an ethnic Dutchman by insulting the intelligence of the French.
On the SDMB, culture *is *race. Just ask anybody.
I never argued that there was a largely genetic basis for the delta, that’s the difference. I’m not denying that there may be group clusters of “smarts”.
No. But I might use “Frenchman” as a stand-in for “European” when comparing one to a Taiwanese. And I’d expect, say, a Belgian to defend the Frenchman’s intelligence in that argument from some sort of shared ethnicity. That’s what I mean.
Only, it isn’t. Culture does actually exist, for one thing.
Oh, I agree with you. But ask anybody. Race is a cultural construct. That’s the party line.
Just for the heck of it, if race does not exist, what does "racial’ mean?
If dragons don’t exist, what does dragonbane mean?
I don’t know. I’ve never heard of it, and it isn’t in Webster’s online dictionary. I do know it has fuck-all to do with real dragons.
“Racial” means “of, relating to, or characteristic of race or races.” If there are no races, then nothing is racial. At least nothing real is.
Actually (dragging out another horse to beat), I was taught in anthro grad school that studying “culture” was now considered passe for kind of the same reason that “race” is. Both are constructs that are difficult to define and impossible to measure.
Hey, I’m just reporting what I was told.
Believe it or not, I actually wrote a paper on this topic in grad school. I surveyed the cultural anthropology literature to try to determine exactly how the words “race,” “racial,” and “racist” are used. If figured if anyone knew, a bunch of anthropologists should.
Not really. How the words were used were all over the place. There was nothing coming close to a consensus. I ultimately came up with 11 different categories of how they were used.
Physical anthropology is a bit different, of course. Except for a few old holdouts, race as a biological concept is old hat. You’ll see them kind of sneak around it, of course, especially in forensic anthropology where “race” is an important identifier. You’ll often see other terms used, like “geographic ancestry,” but this is pretty much what people mean when they say “race.”
ETA: Sorry for the double post.
Admittedly, I’m still undergrad, but my archaeology texts are still pretty full of the idea of culture. Of course, it’s a much more material concept in archaeology, and sometimes phrased in different ways, like “ceremonial complex” or the like, but not passé. Yet.
Chef Pedant,
Why this concentration on skin color? It would seem that there are millions of different genetic differences that one could look at to see if they correlate with performance. Perhaps detached earlobes are associated with swimming ability, perhaps being able to roll your tongue is associated with stock brokers, and having type A blood is associated with musical ability.
The reason we use race as a defining line is because its obvious and it has been used in the past for discrimination. But generically there is no more reason to believe it has a role than any of the other things above. And in fact for basketball ability I bet that the genetics ob being freakishly tall is much more likely to correlate well than will blackness.