(Placed in GD due to the subject matter; mods kindly move if appropriate)
So there has been a good amount of discussion and evidence presented that the term “race” has no biological validity in regards to humans. Our species, being so clinal and widespread cannot be accurately separated into such nice categories and thus race is an archaic and loaded term that should be done away with. Given that this is scientifically accurate, how should we then present physical descriptions of people? While This man and This man are undoubtedly the same species, they present very differently. Surely we should have some sort of shortcuts we can use to describe them physically when necessary that are not loaded. So if we assume that the old racial terms are socially as well as biologically invalid and carry too much baggage, where then do we go?
We can start using simple numberical metrics to describe skin tone, hair color and texture, and body build, in the same way that we use height and weight now.
We can’t assume that. The question amounts to “if we don’t permit ourselves to describe individuals by their individual characteristics, how can we distinguish them?” We can’t.
I love watching overly-PC people struggling to point out a person at the opposite corner of a crowded room, when that person is a member of some ethnic minority. “You should talk to Joe - he’s over there - the… guy with the blue shirt [realises that half the people in the room have blue shirts].. standing next to the… chair …”, when “You should talk to Joe - he’s the Indian guy over there” works just fine.
What if Joe’s actually Pakistani and he overhears and this offends him
But yes, agreed, there’s nothing wrong with using ethnic/population group descriptors for people. It’s a useful shortcut, and it’s only when this phenotype description is assumed to be more meaningful for anything else, that problems occur.
I don’t think using things like skin color or eye shape in physical descriptions is any problem whatsoever, it’s when you use race as a primary attribute for describing a whole person. If you’re trying to describe someone so they can be picked out of a crowded room, race is perfectly okay to mention, but things become a little more dodgey if you’re trying to explain someone’s career, interests, ambitions, hobbies, etc. and you throw race in there as a primary defining attribute when you wouldn’t for a white person (or whatever the default race is in your neck of the woods).
The notion that “race” is a social construct based on superficial characteristics does not eliminate the usefullness of those superficial characteristics for description.
Many years ago my 7th grade English teacher went on about how proud she was when her daughter tried to describe a friend to her and didn’t mention skin color. I say tried because it apparently took the daughter quite some time to make it clear to her mother which friend she was talking about. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with using skin color as a physical descriptor.
I agree as well; but apparently defining when the shortcut is appropriate is a highly subjective process as we’ve seen on here any number of times. What some people would find to be meaningless is pretty serious to others. I’ll note that we’ve yet to have some of the touchier Dopers weigh in yet so perhaps we’ll go forward a bit with that later.
DrFidelius suggests an objective metric for skin tone or ethnicity. Might that be an easy solution?
I think when you start getting into the frequently-stereotyped/caricatured specifics, you’ve gone too far - “Nappy-haired Hos” wasn’t just offensive for the “Hos” part.
Hence my joke about the Pakistani…
I’m pretty touchy (about racists), and I have no problem being described as Brown, or Coloured. If I were in America, I’d even get used to being described as Black (although I tend to get pedantic about it on here, as there’s a distinct (cultural) difference in SA and I like educating people)
It’s hard to see it being adopted casually, though - people are better with subjective than objective measures, I think.
Now, I said nothing about ethnicity, just skin tones and textures. As for it not being used because we are better with subjective descriptions, perhaps we can add it in as a app to our SmartGoggles, so that as they record our every visual experience the different people we see can be categorized effectively.
In a post racial world I would describe the first person as blond, light skinned with a slight mustache, while I would describe the other person as dark skinned, heavy set and bald. I could probably also say that the first person may have had Northern European ancestry, and the second person likely had some African ancestry. No racism required.
This is feasible. Describe a “black” person the same general way you’d describe a “white” person. It’s okay to note relative skin color – I’ve described “white” people as “the one with the ruddy face,” for example – what’s objectively wrong is to assume that has anything to do with “race” (or even ethnicity, really.)
Well, as suggested above, it’s perfectly okay to note individual characteristics. What’s wrong is to assign those to some artificially created group. For example, the Khoi-San peoples live in Africa, and look pretty different, physically, from the Bantu peoples. But the Khoi-San were driven onto marginal land by the Bantu expansion, and it’s scientifically and historically inaccurate to lump them in with the Bantu as one “race.”
Well instead of using simplistic terms of “races”, we can idenfity the various human physical types (which for various reasons have fallen into disrepute), I for example am a Nordsinid. Example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpine_race
I’d like to hear the SA terminology. In my neck of the woods, “brown” denotes south Asian or Middle Eastern ancestry, “black” denotes African ancestry, and “coloured” is an outdated version of “black”. What terminology do you use?
I had to cover for someone early in the morning, so I took my son with me to make sure the building was open for everyone. It was 7 am. As kids trickled in, I asked him, “Anyone else?” and he said, “I just let in two Chinese girls.”
First - they were Mexican.
Second - don’t identify (loudly, of course) kids by their skin color.
When I tried to explain this to him, he looked really confused. “What’s wrong with calling someone brown?”
I’ve noticed as a white person that it can make me uncomfortable when someone uses race as an identifying marker (I guess because there are so many ways to do this, e.g., That black chick with the EBT card versus That black man standing in line in Aisle 4). I guess it’s because identifying people by their race/skin color/ethnicity is usually done in a negative context. But I get really irritated when my students do this when referring to a white person. “Oh yeah that white kid?” or “That white teacher?”
