The Shooting Gallery: Police Violence MEGATHREAD

[PDH]

Sigh. As I have posted before, from a dictionary:

Race (noun) a group, especially of people, with particular similar physical characteristics, who are considered as belonging to the same type, or the fact of belonging to such a group

Racism (noun) the belief that some races are better than others, or the unfair treatment of someone because of his or her race

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/race
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/racism

THE VERY DEFINITION OF RACE INCLUDES THE "CONSIDERED AS BELONGING TO THE SAME TYPE" ASPECT. You'd have to live in an alternative universe to claim that there are no such groups. In this very thread people have talked about blacks, whites etc. Those groups exist, and it is bizarre to claim that they don't. I don't know if y'all are collectively trolling me. People may, in the future, stop considering different groups of people to belong to the same type, but to claim that we are there today is insane.

If race doesn't exist then racism makes no sense. How do you treat someone unfairly because of their race if race doesn't exist?

I know that grumbler has a weird position on these matters, even if his Marty-level "analogy" is new. The rest of you though? You actually don't think blacks get treated differently from whites in the US when it comes to for instance cop interactions?

But Brain, that is a social and not a biological definition of race.  It is changeable (indeed it has changed over time), not uniform, and dependent on the society in question defining it.  Race is a concept, it is defined by biology, it is not what the social definition of the "human races" are.

I am not sure why you seem to think that a social construct, evident and acted upon through historical and present situations, is not real even if it is fictive.

[PDH]

And Grumbler, I use race because at the present there is evidence of H. Sapiens having genetic flow with other strains of H. Sapiens in the past - and they are taxonomic difference between the strains (both genetic and morphological) that may well merit such differentiation but do not merit being a separate breeding unit.

[The Brain]

Sigh. As I have posted before, from a dictionary:

Race (noun) a group, especially of people, with particular similar physical characteristics, who are considered as belonging to the same type, or the fact of belonging to such a group

Racism (noun) the belief that some races are better than others, or the unfair treatment of someone because of his or her race

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/race
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/racism

THE VERY DEFINITION OF RACE INCLUDES THE "CONSIDERED AS BELONGING TO THE SAME TYPE" ASPECT. You'd have to live in an alternative universe to claim that there are no such groups. In this very thread people have talked about blacks, whites etc. Those groups exist, and it is bizarre to claim that they don't. I don't know if y'all are collectively trolling me. People may, in the future, stop considering different groups of people to belong to the same type, but to claim that we are there today is insane.

If race doesn't exist then racism makes no sense. How do you treat someone unfairly because of their race if race doesn't exist?

I know that grumbler has a weird position on these matters, even if his Marty-level "analogy" is new. The rest of you though? You actually don't think blacks get treated differently from whites in the US when it comes to for instance cop interactions?

But Brain, that is a social and not a biological definition of race.  It is changeable (indeed it has changed over time), not uniform, and dependent on the society in question defining it.  Race is a concept, it is defined by biology, it is not what the social definition of the "human races" are.

I am not sure why you seem to think that a social construct, evident and acted upon through historical and present situations, is not real even if it is fictive.

I am using "race" in the normal, dictionary meaning of race, when you talk of humans. I have never claimed to use race in some other meaning of the word.

I don't follow the last sentence. I am not the one claiming that the race construct isn't real. It's the opposite! I am saying race (as defined in the dictionary, see above) exists. It's other people who claim that race doesn't exist.

[PDH]

Then why do you have trouble when people say that race exists, but it is only a social construct?  If you do not, then this has just been another case of Languish masturbating over semantics.

[The Brain]

Then why do you have trouble when people say that race exists, but it is only a social construct?  If you do not, then this has just been another case of Languish masturbating over semantics.

If people say that race exists then they agree with me. My beef has been with claims that race doesn't exist. A claim that would, among other things, make a mockery of very real experiences of racism.

I certainly hope that this is all Languish semantics masturbation! And my guess is that it is.

[grumbler]

Sigh. As I have posted before, from a dictionary:

Race (noun) a group, especially of people, with particular similar physical characteristics, who are considered as belonging to the same type, or the fact of belonging to such a group

Sigh.  As i have posted before, the fact that a group is "considered as belonging to the same type" is a meaningless statement in terms of actually defining race in any objective fashion.  "Race" is, as the dictionary makes clear, a subjective matter based on on what you "consider" a group to be.  As your own sources says, it is

any group into which humans can be divided according to their shared physical or genetic characteristics:

.

Racism (noun) the belief that some races are better than others, or the unfair treatment of someone because of his or her race

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/race
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/racism

An -ism is a belief in something.  While most people who consider themselves racists do so because they have a concept of racial superiority, racism can come from just the belief that races exist in objective terms, especially the belief that you can tel a person's "race" just by looking at them.

THE VERY DEFINITION OF RACE INCLUDES THE "CONSIDERED AS BELONGING TO THE SAME TYPE" ASPECT. You'd have to live in an alternative universe to claim that there are no such groups. In this very thread people have talked about blacks, whites etc. Those groups exist, and it is bizarre to claim that they don't. I don't know if y'all are collectively trolling me. People may, in the future, stop considering different groups of people to belong to the same type, but to claim that we are there today is insane.

The term that you are looking for here is "genetics."  People with different expressed genes have different looks, abilities, etc from others, and people with the same expressed genes share some of those traits.  You'd have to live in an alternate universe, though, to believe that there is a defined set of characteristics that define some unknown number (how many are there, Brain?) of races.  My family shares certain traits.  Are we a race?  Redheads are "CONSIDERED AS BELONGING TO THE SAME TYPE" as you  shout.  Are they a race?  If so, why?  If not, why not?

If race doesn't exist then racism makes no sense. How do you treat someone unfairly because of their race if race doesn't exist?

You cannot be this dumb.  Races don't need to exist in any objective sense to have racism.  If race doesn't exist, people can still believe that it does.   If god doesn't exist, people can still believe that it does.   If magic doesn't exist, people can still believe that it does. 

I know that grumbler has a weird position on these matters, even if his Marty-level "analogy" is new. The rest of you though? You actually don't think blacks get treated differently from whites in the US when it comes to for instance cop interactions?

I don't know why you chose the "races exist" hill to die on when your own arguments utterly lack any logical connection to the objective existence of race.  I know that you love to make ad hom attacks like these, but I won't reciprocate.  I know that the reduction of your arguments, at last, to ad homs is the sure sign that you have run out of intellectual arguments but won't concede the debate.

So let's just stay intellectual for a moment, and let you answer the following questions:

1.  How many races are there?

2.  How do we reliably assign people to their proper races?

3.  How do we assign the proper race to a newborn whose parents come from what you consider different races?  If the child is then "mixed race," then aren't we all "mixed race" as far as we know?

[The Brain]

grumbler, you are completely lost in space and have apparently not the faintest idea what I'm talking about.

[grumbler]

Grumbler, my point is that biologically, the term "race" is a concept that is used, defined, and makes sense.  However, also in my point was that for the concept to work, it has to be all H. Sapiens as a "race."  The concept of "sub-race" is used to describe phenotypes expressed over time in regional variance that in no way affect the larger "race" as they are not genetically different - they can breed, have viable offspring, etc.

My joke, of course, was that the "whites" are (if the idea of "sub-race" is to be used) is the sub-race to the traced mitochondrial origins that comes from Africa.

Every H. Sapiens alive is a member of a race.  One race.  Any idea of separate races is a social construct.

I understand the argument that humans belong to a "human race," but, again, this is just a social construct as well. 

[PDH]

Ok, biological race for humans only works for the entire species, including extinct branches, with H. Sapiens sapiens being a race because it is the flow-to strain for other strains in the evolutionary sense.  In essence, the species and the race are now identical but only because other strains are gone - and those had morphological and genetic differences that may well merit being taxonomic differentiated.

What is defined as race most commonly is a social construct that does not have a biological basis, and so is fictive (not existing in society before, existing now in society).

Therefore, race is a social construct as it is commonly used, and so it is possible to argue (depending on point of view) that race does not exist and it does exist at the same time.  It seems Grumbler is arguing to use the word species here, which is also true but it is not quite a fine enough tool when talking taxonomy (if that is important).

Masturbate away.  All of you.

[PDH]

I understand the argument that humans belong to a "human race," but, again, this is just a social construct as well.

I would argue, as an anthropologist in a former life, that is is important to differentiate Species -> Race -> Strains when talking about Homo Sapiens.  Note, I am arguing for past strains, there is no evidence of modern strains (unless Bigfoot does live in the Santa Cruz Mountains).  H. Sapiens are a strain in a race, and given the so recent past where other strains existed it is important to keep that notation.

[DGuller]

So race is a social construct, what exactly is a meaningful "therefore" here?  What would race being a biological construct allow for than race being a social construct wouldn't?

[HVC]

Other examples of social constructs: language, countries, money. It's real because we make in real. Saying race doesn't exist is like saying money doesn't exist. I mean it's true in the most semantic sense, but I can still throw a quarter at your face.

[viper37]

Pike commanded American Indians against the US Government.

Clearly worthy of a statue, helping the little guys resist the Empire's encroachement of their territory.   

[Valmy]

Pike commanded American Indians against the US Government.

Clearly worthy of a statue, helping the little guys resist the Empire's encroachement of their territory.   

That's what I was saying

[Valmy]

Other examples of social constructs: language, countries, money. It's real because we make in real. Saying race doesn't exist is like saying money doesn't exist. I mean it's true in the most semantic sense, but I can still throw a quarter at your face.

The claim is that race is based on biology. It is not it is based on arbitrary social definitions. And those arbitrary social definitions are very important to our society but that is all they are.

I don't understand how a physical quarter is money. It isn't. It is a round disk of metal and yes you can throw round disks of metal in somebody's face. It doesn't work differently than another disk of metal because we decided it is worth 25 cents.