From my new Taki's Magazine column:
Denunciatory reviews of Nicholas Wade’s book A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race, and Human History have typically fallen into two general categories:
• Well, nobody believes that race has no biological reality and is just a social construct, so the first half of the book, while accurate, is unnecessary.
• Race has no biological reality and is just a social construct!
It’s characteristic of the dumbing down effect that race has on intellectual discourse that it occurs to so few that race can be a biological reality that has been constructed by social decisions.
Advocates of the dogma that race is merely a “social construct” point to the artificiality of the traditional American “one drop of blood” rule for defining blackness. Yet it’s likely that the one-drop rule itself helped construct the American genetic reality of a bimodal distribution of black and white genes, in contrast to the more evenly blended Latin American populations.
Read the whole thing there.
Obama is just as white as he is black even though he is of course all black.
ReplyDeleteI was struck by a comment on an earlier thread:
Lorazapam said...
Also, for those saying he doesn't look half Asian again aren't around California university towns much. The most "Asian" hapas are usually half Chinese, esp the northern ones with the strong eye folds. Half Japanese often have pale skin, freckles, and in rare cases sandy brown hair and dark green eyes. Half Filipinos sometimes look Hispanic to an inexperienced eye, and half Thais look a bit middle eastern. Thais themselves are mixed Caucasian East Asian, so a half thai will be majority Caucasian.
5/24/14, 5:37 PM
This is similar to my own observations. Hapas seem to come out in certain ways.
More research is needed. ;)
Even if something is a social construct, that doesn't mean it's merely made-up stuff that can or should be changed at will or ignored when desired, but somehow that's usually the implication when someone claims that something is a social construct.
ReplyDelete"Who reproduces with whom is course a social question."
ReplyDelete?
Live in Orange County, few have black ancestry. Same goes for Maricopia Arizona and San Diego California. There are in the OC and SD a lot more people with half-asian than black.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.facebook.com/notes/zachary-george-najarian-najafi/reconstructing-america/753532984698542
ReplyDeletetypical pc drone
I made a comment about that in an earlier thread. The one drop rule was a social construct that kept gene flow almost exclusively white to black. If you hadn't discouraged whites from breeding with quadroons there would be a lot more than 0.1% in American whites, especially old stock
ReplyDelete"I made a comment about that in an earlier thread. The one drop rule was a social construct that kept gene flow almost exclusively white to black. If you hadn't discouraged whites from breeding with quadroons there would be a lot more than 0.1% in American whites, especially old stock" - and looking at latin america, also prevented the rise of a massive mulatto class.
ReplyDeleteAlso of note, know how whenever a person does well, sometimes someone will remark "Oh, so and so is really good at (blank-fill) it must due to their whatever side."
ReplyDeleteWell, as the violent crime continues to increase and as it is nearly 70% committed by blacks, and blacks are about 99.7% sub-saharan African (non-white)....you can't blame it on their white side since DNA shows that most don't have that side in their genes.
Re: crime, it's all theirs via genetics and can't blame whites for it.
Also, wonder if the 'talented tenth' has a much higher percentage of white DNA in their genes as opposed to say, Rachel Jeantel?
Not saying that they've got tons of Shermans in their genes but wonder if the white mixture tends to be higher among the talented tenth?
If race is merely a social construct and does not exist, then the US can abolish Affirmative Action and repeal all laws relating in some way to this figment of imagination, right?
ReplyDeleteSince it doesn't exist, the justification created to uphold these laws has been removed entirely; now we can repeal them and live in a total colorblind society, right?
I mean, since race doesn't exist from a scientific standpoint?
Or is consistency too much to expect?
""""""""""""""Half Filipinos sometimes look Hispanic to an inexperienced eye"""""""""""""""
ReplyDeleteRight, and that's what some thought regarding Sterling's good friend.
Oh. Sorry.
Genetic testing indicates this White is 6% African and 2% Indian (Dot). Color me not amused and bummed with my ancestors.
ReplyDelete" and blacks are about 99.7% sub-saharan African (non-white)....you can't blame it on their white side since DNA shows that most don't have that side in their genes."
ReplyDeleteMost do have it in their genes, from 47% to 5%. Steve's point was that of black genes, 99.7% are found in a person who considers themselves black
" Also, wonder if the 'talented tenth' has a much higher percentage of white DNA in their genes as opposed to say, Rachel Jeantel?
Not saying that they've got tons of Shermans in their genes but wonder if the white mixture tends to be higher among the talented tenth?"
Of course it does, they weren't called high yellows for nothing. Pigmentation doesn't correlate 100% with ancestry, so I bet you'd find that high achieving dark skinned negroes would be more european derived than their skin tone suggests. In the absence of 23andMe though, paper bags will be a decent heuristic.
Still till this day Liberals and Blacks on the internet still love to post the bogus false statistic that 30 percent of Non Hispanic Whites have between 2% to 20% Sub Saharan African admixture. That myth has been debunked.
ReplyDeleteIf a self identified Non Hispanic "White" person had as much as 20 percent Sub Saharan African admixture , he or she would look like the average Puerto Rican in phenotype for example and would look distinctly different your typical run of the mill Non Hispanic White American.
Genetic testing indicates this White is 6% African and 2% Indian (Dot). Color me not amused and bummed with my ancestors.
ReplyDeleteIt is my understanding that these tests aren't all that reliable so perhaps you should bummed with the testing company. Did they report margins of error?
As a typical male, the notion that gender (a social construct) trumps sex (biology) doesn't get a lot of real world traction.
ReplyDeleteAll human culture is a social construct, except we are still animals and must come to terms with nature.
This is too obvious to mention, but it seems to not be obvious to people stuck in post modernism. Who have devoted their lives to the blurry edges.
The lack of popularity of gender studies on campus has to be seen to believe. Students want to get jobs or qualify for professional schools. They also want to get drunk and hook up. In my limited personal experience, anyway.
A year or two ago I tried to write up something about the emerging meme that 'race is a social construct'. That was going to be the first video in a series.
ReplyDeleteI did a bunch of research. My video series was intended to be serious and scholarly. But I failed. I never could get enough substance about 'social construct' to refute it. The whole 'race is a social construct' argument is hollow. It sounds like thinking but that's an illusion. It's sophistry.
It is remarkable how many people cite that phrase as if it meant something.
Several YouTubers will define the concept for you. There are several videos that try to make this concept real for non-sociologists.
They tell you that a pink baby outfit for a boy and a blue outfit for a girl (or is it vice versa?) is arbitrary. The color's connection to the sexes are artificial.
Is there anyone on earth who didn't understand that? If so check into an institution at once.
This apparently is what passes for a 'big idea' in sociology. I once took a course in 'General Semantics'. It too was filled with portentous truisms and simple observations spoken as if they were deep insights.
The 'social construct' believer's say that race isn't a real biological category. One suspects that they know very little biology. Currently there are 25 different biological definitions of 'species' in Wikipedia. The taxonomic categories in biology are a lot less simple than 'constructivists' want to think. They think species are real, sub-species are real, but races are somehow unreal. They say taxonomists made up the terms species and sub-species to classify animals but made up the term race only to justify the African slave trade.
This of course is just crazy. It is a deliberate lie.
Pat Boyle
How doggy are cats? How catty are dogs?
ReplyDelete"""""""""""""""How catty are dogs?""""""""""
ReplyDeleteNot at all.
Now, how catty are women, well, that's another issue entirely.
Genetic testing indicates this White is 6% African and 2% Indian (Dot). Color me not amused and bummed with my ancestors.
ReplyDeleteWhy? You wish you didn't exist?
Race is biological and social. It just happens, however, that the racialists use biological differences as a social construct to justify segregation and genocide.
ReplyDelete