What is the deal with anti-race mixing?

Erm, why? :/

Also why? :/

"Everything else being equal, white people tolerate extremely cold days better than black people, and blacks tolerate extremely hot days better than whites."

I don't know about that. I'm white and I much prefer extreme heat to exteme cold. Then again, I don't have a lot of body fat to insulate me.

Typically/on average: There's individual variance .

edited 3rd Dec '11 3:44:21 PM by SavageHeathen

This thread just continues to prove the fact that race is a social construct and there's no simple way to split people into races.

Race isn't a social construct, it's a biological trait.

Racial identity is a social construct.

Human races are a social construct.

Well, race is biological. I can objectively say that someone is of African descent, or of Asian descent, or North American, or European, or South American, or whatever.

The connotations are entirely a creation of symbolic-interactionism, however.

People need to stop confusing "race" with ethnicity.

White, black, red, purple, these are crayons. These are insufficent words to describe melanin content. It is not real.

African American, Irish American, Chinese, Native Peruvian, these are ethnicities as well as cultural groups.

Race and ethnicity are distinct? I didn't know that.

Hm. That's good to know, I suppose. And Knowing Is Half the Battle.

No, USAF, ethnicity is a biological construct, but skin color, not being homogenous across areas like continents, and the fact that ethnic groups that share skin tones can and do wildly vary in other biological aspects point to race being a social construct. Sorry.

It's like, uh...you look at someone and go 'asian', identifying their race. Someone else looks at them and goes 'Korean', identifying their ethnic group. Now, the ethnic groups of korea, china, and japan look similar enough to an outside that we lump them together, but they're actually visually distinct, to one who knows what to look for. Moreover, quite a few of the 170 RUSSIAN ethnic groups look nothing like those ethnicities we've already identified, even though all those ethnicities are asian. Suddenly, a member of an indian ethnic group comes along...

Also, someone who's Korean probably won't like being called Japanese, considering all the...bad blood.

You get the point? Additionally, ethnic groups can and do mix, and enough mixing will lead to people who you can't pin down as any specific ethnic group.

edited 3rd Dec '11 4:37:59 PM by Katrika

"I can objectively say that someone is of African descent, or of Asian descent, or North American, or European, or South American, or whatever."

You could say that, but unless you knew the minutiae of their ancestry, you wouldn't necessarily be right. Intermixing has been happening for millennia. Someone being born in one place doesn't mean that they can't have ancestors from halfway around the world.

edited 3rd Dec '11 4:56:15 PM by kashchei

Well, my point isn't that we should categorize people by race or ethnicity or anything of the sort, or that it should matter. My point is simply that we can't simply say that it's all social construction, because it's ultimately rooted in something biological.

Though according to the scientists we'll all effectively be one race/ethnicity/whatever by the close of the century, so...

Surely by the close of the millennium?

I dunno, they were talking about this back in '06-'07, so perhaps they've revised the prediction. That, or I'm remembering incorrectly, but I know it was within a reasonably short timeframe, a century or two at most...

No, that's pretty unreasonable. Seven-eight generations is not enough for racism and prejudice to die out, especially when there are still countries where one ethnic group composes 90% of the population. And unless there is a mass migration of blacks, Hispanics, and South- and East-Asians to mainland Europe apart from France and Germany, I don't see how these populations would become homogeneous.

edited 3rd Dec '11 5:22:25 PM by kashchei

Well, this wasn't attesting to racial prejudice at all; it was just talking about biology.

~shrug~

I may just be remembering the prediction's timeframe incorrectly. :/

How can you look at a dude and say Korean?

Look at a random Euro: Until they open their mouth, you might be able to tell if they're northern european or southern european, perhaps if they are or not eastern european, and not much else.

I don't think you can physically tell a Spaniard from an Italian, a Greek or a Portuguese, a German from a Dane or a Pole or a Brit... You could more or less pinpoint the region, but I don't think you can guess the precise country.

"Well, this wasn't attesting to racial prejudice at all; it was just talking about biology."

Biology doesn't exist in a vacuum. For humans to mix, they need to be willing to mix.

~shrug~

I dunno how they determined such a thing. Maybe they were looking at trends and projecting them forward. I personally remember thinking it was rather ridiculous at the time, too, so it's not like I'm trying to defend it as super-plausible or anything. I just remember reading the theory.

They've failed to account for culturally influenced sexual selection: Globalization might well make us all a single meta-ethnicity, but it's going to take at the very least 300-500 years.

It's very unlikely that everyone will ever be of a single race without the presence of incredibly severe selective pressures. That's just not how genes and alleles work.

@Pink I should kill you and feed you to my neighbor's dog. >:T

Sounds about right.

Interesting note: I just saw my first interracial couple in an advertisment on tv. K-Mart just showed a Caucasian woman and a Black man exchanging nuzzles as he gave her a necklace.

Apparently that is also one of the most common interracial parings.

^^Race is very much a construct. Ethnicity isn't. They're not the same thing.

Race is more or less the habit of groups of people to lump other groups of people who look sort of similar into the same category.