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o_O.Q on 22 February 2018
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sundin13 said:
o_O.Q said:

1) "And a number of diseases are significantly more common among the Finnish than any other population."

yes which is one aspect of what makes a race, but like i amazingly had to explain to the other guy we take several factors into consideration when making these distinctions

we don't call a platypus a bird just because it lays eggs for example

i asked you before and you refused to answer me, but i'll ask again... are you claiming that black people and asian people are the same?

 

2) "Race is not a characteristic which holds a broad context of relevance."

well if you ignore the fact that it impacts all interactions between people, yeah i guess you could say that

let me ask you a question if a black guy robbed you and you were asked to describe the person would allow this silly ideology to stop you from using his race as an identifier?

 

", however, the reason why it matters when certain groups of people don't vaccinate their children is because of a concept called herd immunity. "

honestly i had never looked into that, so at least i've learned something here

 

" It still doesn't make any sense."

well i'll drop it, the more relevant parts of the conversation were addressed above anyway

1) Are Asian and Black people the same? No. Are Finnish people and French people the same? No. There is no biological reality of race. That does not mean variation does not exist across the species, it simply means that such variation is not in the form of distinct races, and as such, distinct races are not an accurate representation of that genetic diversity. There is a variety of allele frequencies across the population, however, genetic diversity within humanity exists in the form of a cline. This means that genetic diversity is a fairly continuous spectrum, not something that can neatly be divided up by any natural biological principle. Again, for more on this, look up the post that I linked which goes into detail about why "race" is not a biological classification. 

2) The broad importance of race is that of a social construct. That is largely what this conversation was about. Whether or not the importance of race is real or whether it is socially imposed. As for the hypothetical of being robbed by a black man, I would describe his physical characteristics, not use his race, as I don't know his race. Even still, not really sure what that hypothetical really has to do with my point.

"Are Finnish people and French people the same? No."

you couldn't tell the difference by just looking at them, its kind of disingenuous to imply that the differences are anywhere close to being in the same ballpark

 

"I would describe his physical characteristics, not use his race,"

ok so you wouldn't just call him a black man, can you give me an example of how you would describe him?

 

"not really sure what that hypothetical really has to do with my point."

well as far as i know any normal person would just use the person's race (black) to describe them, isn't your argument that they shouldn't do so since race does not exist? how is that not therefore relevant?