Here’s the thing: we all don’t actually know what it means. And that’s perhaps the best clue that it’s an ill-defined social construct instead of some bright-line genetic divide.
In Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II’s immortal Show Boat, a despicable river rat reveals to the local sheriff Julie’s shame: although she appears to be white, and is married to a white man, her mother was Negro. The sheriff reluctantly arrives to arrest Julie for miscegenation, because, as he explains, “One drop of Negro blood makes you a Negro – at least around these parts.”
(At the risk of being accused of posting a spoiler for a show eighty years old, Julie’s husband Steve saves the day: just before the sheriff boards the river boat, he pricks his wife’s hand and sucks a bit of her blood into his mouth. And when the sheriff arrives, he defends his marriage: it’s not miscegenation, he says, because he too has “more than a drop of Negro blood in him.”)
So that was the standard along the Mississippi River in 1887.
Clearly it’s not the standard now.
What changed? (Hint: “The genetics” is not the right answer.)
Would you say I’m of loose morals? I need a reference.
Well, we know you don’t think knowing stuff is important.
There there. There there.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen Der Trihs say something that was anti-woman, but his attitude toward women and his endless litany of complaints about society’s unfairness to men are very creepy in the usual MRA way.
“Here’s the thing: we all don’t actually know what it means. And that’s perhaps the best clue that it’s an ill-defined social construct instead of some bright-line genetic divide.”
My point is that by using an ill-defined social construct does NOT equal racism. Shouting racism over the use of such a social construct may well be ignorant, incorrect, inaccurate or a lot of other things, but not necessarily racism. Flinging the race card around trivializes racism and it is not as though there was not plenty of real racism to throw that flag on.
It’s probably time you acknowledged that MrDibble didn’t say using that construct it’s racist. He said using it in a particular set of circumstances is racist.
“Anyone who ever says anything remotely scientific-sounding, that uses the commonly used races, is a racist”
Another poster paraphrased from medical literature (ill-defined social construct) African Americans have a higher prevalence of sickle cell anemia.
That is remotely scientific sounding and while it may technically be incorrect, perhaps inaccurate genetics-wise or perhaps even ignorant, but equating every inaccurate use of the term is NOT racist. That is simply too broad a brush.
I understand MrDibble’s argument against those using quasi-science in a racist way, but merely improperly using a word, which clearly does have at least some context in common usage goes to far and is slinging the racist insult trivially.
I think his last statement makes my point. In a very specific context, yes, MrDibble may well have a point, but broadly slinging racist out over any use of the term Black in context with ANYTHING scientific is overboard. The term racist is simply too loaded to be used so trivially.
I think you’d have to try pretty hard to prove him wrong. Since I went to the trouble of continuing to read the thread you couldn’t be assed to link to, I saw armedmonkey tried to find an exception and the best he could do was say something that wasn’t really scientifically accurate. And John Mace found an exception with word games. I’m not sure either one of those examples disproves his statement.
Yeah, well, calling people “shriekers” who post entirely in lower case text, with conventional punctuation, is a bit overboard as well. I’m just sayin’.
If anyone who ever uses anything remotely scientific sounding along with black is racist, then that is a very large club.
Racist is an offensive term and should be reserved for real cases. Trivially slinging it around and especially using such broad strokes is being insulting.
Actually, that was the point of my posting it here. You have yet to come up with any example even close to what may be called “shrieking” when it comes to those you oppose, and it’s your thread?
In light of my experience with racists like brazil84 and Chief Pedant, I’m not uncomfortable with the idea that people who use the word that way are racists. Some of them even like it when you call them racist because it gives them a chance to proclaim that they are above such meager things and are mere students of siense (not to be confused with real science, because they don’t know what the fuck that is). Morons who need a fancy excuse to say ‘nigras is dum!’ don’t get a lot of opportunities to act haughty.
I shudder to think where we would be if not for all these people who live to protect us from overusing the word racism.
They know it is very, very insulting. It has the power of a charge of “pedophile”. Now you would think that knowing this that these people would want to err on the side of caution, and use it, as you say, for clear cases. But the truth is different. They want to use it as cavalierly as possible. To the point of making a mockery of the word.
[QUOTE=Mr. Dibble]
In this context, no, there isn’t. Quite simply, it’s racist to group people into races* , in-and-of-itself. If it’s racial, it’s racist.
as opposed to ethnicities, valid biological populations or specific genetic groupings. Which races aren’t.
