Talk:Race (human categorization)/Archive 4

message: ::P0M: I will make the matter as simple as I possibly can. Please tell me whether the following sentence is true or false: "One cannot determine that some person is a member of race X unless one first has a criterion for race X membership." 
:::Yes, this is vey simple and I appreciate your effort.  I apologize that I cannot answer as simply, but I do hope I will be clear (and if not, please accept in good faith that I have tried and feel free to ask a follow-up question).  I will answer in some detail becase I feel obliged to answer you personally, but also because the purpose of thse talk pages is not to support personal debates but rather to help improve the page as a whole.
:::1 I consider this a meaningless question.
::P0M Some sentences are true. Some sentences are false. And some sentences, as Richard Feynman was wont to say, "Are not even wrong." I think those three alternatives about do it. Please give me another example of a "meaningless question".
:::I consider this a meaningless question because 
(1)I think that the assumption that people belong to races when there are clear (definable) criteria for membership is wrong, 
and (2)because I believe that the search for clear definable criteria is although important of very limited use and often distracts us from other, more important question about race.
::::P0M:Somebody decides "Moran is a member of the Foobarian race." When asked why, s/he says: "Moran has one blue eye and one green eye." When asked to explicate the reasoning behind this conclusion, s/he says: "My mama taught me this: 'If a person has one blue eye and one green eye, then that person is a Foobarian.' Moran has one blue eye and one green eye, therefore he is a Foobarian."  There is nothing logically wrong with that argument. In fact, if the definitian of "Foobarian" is "has one blue and one green eye," then it is a trivial deduction. The problem comes when this idiot is going to shoot me because everybody knows that Foobarians are the spawn of the devil. 
::::P0M: If people do not belong to races when there are clear (definable) criteria for membership and certain people fit those criteria, then under what circumstances do people belong to races?  (Obviously, being careful thinkers we will deny that one can add characteristics that are confidently asserted but never tested.)
::::P0M: I think it is an undeniable fact that people do think they know a "Foobarian" (pick your favorite minority group -- and remember that there are no majority groups in the world) when they see one. But they don't come into the world with an appetite for Foobarians the way my horse came into the world with an appetite for grass. They have to learn, somehow.
:::2 for those people who believe that race has some ontological reality, or for one whos task it is to count members of different races, I recognize that the answer would be "true."  
::P0M: That is more of an answer that I can recall ever getting from you. Thank you. (And I am not being sarcastic.)
:::You are welcome (of course, it is neverthelss not my answer!) 
:::3 However, I do not believe that race is ontologicaly real nor am I interested in counting people who belong to different races., I believe that race is socially constructed and how people understand the word "race," how they divide the world up into different races, and what are the principls of inclusion or exclusion into or from one race or another interest me. 
 
::P0M: That is what I think, too, so why are we fighting? "How they divide the world up into different races, and what are the principles of inclusion or exclusion into or from one race or another interest me" -- that is exactly what I have been saying needs to be there before somebody "identifies" a person "as a member of the hated foobareese" (to quote another contributor). 
:::And I do not agree with you that people actually have clear definitions of what a partiocular race is before they identify someont as belonging to that race.  They may, but I do not believe this is necessarily so.
::::P0M: Of course they do not have clear ideas, in the sense that they've explored their ideas well enough to know where the pitfalls are. But they do not, in general, act like the student in Japan did. I was totally blown away, at first, because to label me for no apparent reason seemed to be a manifestation of insanity, an irrational judgment based on no evidence whatsoever. How would you explain it if somebody came up and started spraying you with aerosol cooking oil and shouting, "Get it! Get it! It's a Martian."  
:::So that is one fundamental disagreement between us.  But I believe the more fundamental disagreement is, you somehow seem to think this issue is important for the first paragraph of the article; I do not believe it is necessary for the first paragraph of the article.  I will go only so far as to say that people use "race" to identify people.  I will make no claims as to what principles they use to identify specific races, nor what principles they use to identify race at all (because I do not believe there exists one set of uniform homogfeneous consistent principles).
::::P0M: I can't accept the statement that "people use 'race' to identify people" because you cannot use something that does not exist. In other words, because you can't identify someone (metaphorically, pop somebody into the Foobarian holding area in the zoo of all humanity) unless there is a race to identify them with (a real holding area in the zoo). And I don't want to assume the unreal. The reality is that probably every person who who categorizes somebody as a "Foobarian" has his/her own idiosyncratic "principles", and that is a major source of error in thinking and resultant human misery.
::By speaking of "identifying" somebody as a "foobareese" (in the damnable first sentence) the impression is created that the foobareese exist as some discoverable and even self-declaring entity "out there." 
:::I have never considered ourselves to be fighting. 
:::3 (continued)I believe that people use race and racial classifications both strategically (in terms of some political calculation) or sentimentally (in order to express metaphorically, their understanding of history and their place in history); I therefor believe people use the word "race,' as well as the names of specific races and the criteria for inclusion/exclusion, in ways that are inconsistent yet still intelligible and perhaps predictable, and I am intersted in making sense of the changing strategic and sentimental ways people use these words, and the condutions under which they use them.
::P0M: As I read those words I feel compelled to put scare quotes around every occurrence of the word "race" that occurs -- because your form of speech implicity grants them reality, even though that now seems not to be your intention. 
:::Perhaps we differ as to what we mean by "real."  If you use "scare quotes" to sugges that I do not intend to give them reality, then I object because I do very much intend to give them reality.  I believe they are real in the same way that Captain Ahab and nuclear bombs are real -- social constructions that are products of the human imagination yet which have a profound impact on how we life.
::::P0M: The X race and Captain Ahab have the same ontological status, as far as I can tell, and the same goes for jackalopes (a chimerical creature said to resemble a jack rabbit with antelope horns). You could search the whole world for a jackalope and only find one in the shop of a defrocked taxidermist. Nuclear weapons, however, can be found all over the place (if you have the right passes, security clearance, keys, etc.). If somebody says that that I am a member of the detested Foobarian race, then s/he had better have a complete list of the characteristics of Foobarians and check me for them one by one. 
:::4 The above is my own point of view, but I believe it reflects the point of view of most other scholars in the social, human, and natural sciences.  I believe that the above point of view must be represented in the article.
::P0M: I agree. So why frame the whole discussion in a way that mitigates against your getting your own point of view expressed clearly enough that the justice of your position speaks for itself?!?!
:::because of NPOV policy
::::P0M: You aren't making it a neutral article if you privilege the "reality" of race by a conceptually foggy argument that suggests that fictions are real.
:::5 It is my sense that JDG holds a very different point of view.  I believe that JDG would answer your question "true," though I hesitate to speak for him.
::P0M: I totally don't follow you. I mean that I can understand why JDG would likely accept it. But I can't see why you cannot accept the sentence as true. I'll tell you a story. I was residing in an international student dorm in Japan one summer.  Another foreign student confronted me one day: "You're Jewish!" I said, "No, as far as I know, I'm not Jewish." "I know you are Jewish!", he said defiantly. I thought to myself, "Well, I am of the clan of Albert Einstein, then. So be it." But I was puzzled by his assured "identification" of me as Jewish -- until it occurred to me that I had been amusing myself playing my favorite tunes on the recorder (flute) in my room the previous day, and had played Hatikva and Shalom Shavarim. My point is that said student had a definition, a list of defining characteristics, in his mind, and when he discovered that I fit his definition he made his triumphant accusation. Absent the definition or the musical performance he would never have gone Hitler on me.
:::I understand that someone else had a definition according to which you are Jewish.  I think a discussion of this definition as well as other definitions,  and the historical context in which they devloped, is (as I am written numerous times!) the legitimate topic of an encyuclopedia article.
::::P0M: O.K., and the student's position is a prime example of what is bonkers with all of this. You can say that the student alleged that I was Jewish, you can say that he misidentified me as Jewish, but you can't say that he identified me as Jewish (unless you know much more about me and my family than I do).  In Japan his mistake was a source of great amusement to me, and a lesson in human frailty. In Germany in 1943 his mistake would have had me deeply frightened. There isn't even any racial definition or principle or whatever you want to call it that I would fit. But people will pick on a few superficials that match what they want to find, and they will kill you for it.
:::5 (continued):In any event I believe that JDG speaks for a group of people, many of whom are biological scientists, who although in the minority are substantial, and that this article should represent their view as well.
::P0M: That's fine with me. I think I know what you mean, and whether it applies to JDG or not, it would be correct to explain that some people understand things that way.
:::6 I believe that the first sentence of the article, indeed the first paragraph, must introduce the article in a way that privileges neither of these two views. Slrubenstein 
::P0M: I'm lost again. Are you saying that admiting that people have to have something in mind before they identify somebody as blasted foobarian thus privileges JDG's point of view? Your point of view? 
:::Sorry, you have entirely lost me.  I do not know what you mean by foobarian privileges.  What does this have to do with an aticle on race?  By the way, I believe that the current first paragrapph of the article introduces both JDG and my views equally well.
::::P0M: "Foobarians" are members of the dreaded and hated Foobarian race. Members of the Foobarian race are known by their possesion of the marker characteristics one blue eye, one green eye, and left-handedness. 
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[User:Patrick0Moran|P0M]]: Mentioning JDG reminded me that I had asked him:
:: Not talking directly about the editing of the article, but just to clarify in my own mind what you just said, JDG, let me see whether I've got [your position] straight. There have been several ways, over the course of history, that race has been used to speak of the group differences perceived or believed to exist among individual members of a given genus and species. For instance, in the case of human beings, some people might be deemed members of a race on the grounds of skin color, some people might be deemed members of a race on the grounds of religious affiliation, some people might be deemed members of a race on the grounds of country or region of origin, some people might be deemed members of a race on the grounds of tribal affiliation, some people might be deemed members of a race on the grounds of sentiment toward some group or ideal, etc., etc. And eventually we get down to relatively recent events and find that some people might be deemed members of a race on the grounds of their genetic inheritance. I'll leave it at that for the nonce.P0M
:Is there a question somewhee in here? Slrubenstein
::P0M 22:10, 16 Dec 2003 (UTC)
replies: text: Ah, yes, a clear question -- of xourse like you I await JDG's answer.
P0M: I think we have not heard from JDG since I asked him those questions, so there are two items up for his comment now.
P0M 01:57, 18 Dec 2003 (UTC)
thread_title: Brass Tacks (1)