Perhaps I'm just not being very "nuanced", but aren't we all part of the same race (HUMAN) anyway?

i Perhaps I'm just not being very "nuanced", but aren't we all part of the same race (HUMAN) anyway?

well now CanFarce 101, your not trying to say that a buick and a ford are one and the same thing, are you??

Are we talking about plain brown rappers here?

Speaking of so-called "race" relations and Mr. King's birthday, last Wednesday, I stumbled upon Professor K.C.Johnson's "Durham in Wonderland" site - durhamwonderland.blogspot.com - about the situation in Durham, North Carolina, at Duke University, regarding felony charges that had been raised against some of their students. I spent some hours at Professor Johnson's site and at various other sites available from the links there, at Google, and otherwise, and so acquired a reasonably detailed understanding of the situation.

It was good timing. On Friday District Attorney Nifong asked the Attorney General to recuse him, since then the AG has taken over the case, North Carolina congressmen of both parties have gotten in on the matter, and last night 60 Minutes broadcast a new episode on the matter (they did one on October 15 too). The latest 60 Minutes episode wasn't too bad, though they unfortunately did not address the malfeasance of the Gang of 88.

Today is Martin Luther King day in the United states. As Professor Johnson notes: "Remember, again, what occurred in this case: a prosecutor deliberately exploited racial tensions, and profited politically from doing so. On this day, of all days, that record should outrage everyone."

As I became aware of the scope of the problems highlighted by this situation, I naturally kept an eye out for the kind of detailed summary of the history of the failures that I could recommend to my friends as background for understanding the issues in this matter. Last night I found a link that does a very good job of presenting an accurate review of the history of the matter as I understand it (up to late last week), even if said site is not necessarily politically correct in it's interpretation of all of the issues at hand. It's: vdare.com/stix/070113_duke.htm

The reason I mention all this is that what we have in this case is a majestic failure of the public systems that we stand on in pursuit of our quality of life. It is very important that we study this kind of failure, in order to understand how to better our systems and our lives in the future.

Racism, like sexism, is a terrible thing. We must strive to judge each and every individual on the basis of their specific personal behaviour, on the basis of actual evidence; not on the basis of superstition, or "culture", or some sort of generalization based on some sort of genetic history that no individual has control over, such as being born with red blood.

Making a cognitive adult decision to join the Marxists, or to engage in barratry or champerty, are separate matters. And when on top of that, the very academia and state systems we empower to fight bad knowledge instead engage in it, we have to say no to the enemies of good.

GYM:

No, I'm not trying to say that, but really aside from skin tone and subtle physical/biological characteristics we're all pretty much alike, and part of the same species.

I don't really see a purpose other than divisiveness to keep grouping persons based on their "race"; apart from slightly different physical characteristics, a human being is a human being. Cultural differences are what matter as they are based on the actions and ideals of said people.

I see "race" more akin to 'we're all Fords except some might be blue, others silver, perhaps some have different trim'. But in the end, a Ford is still a Ford.

language evolves just like biological entities.

thus in my dictionary a 'n*gg**' is anyone regardless of race, colour, or culture who is treated like negroes were in the deep south until the 50s and 60s.

you do not have to be black to be a n*gg**.

you dont have to be white to be racist.

What we're asking here is whether race has an ontological origin. As such, this is a metaphysical question, and regrettably we allow no other possibilities for proof other than a scientific model. Whereas the metaphysical question of whether race is an ontological beingness in its own nature would lie outside current science, or science's direction to qualify with veraciy.

The Hindu caste system is seen as cultural, but culture is not regarded as an anti-essential or non-essential factor in the Hindu metaphysical construction that finds validity in the caste system.

So the oldest living tradition in the world, the Vedic system and it Hindu ramifications, has metaphysical correlates by which its determination of casts occur. Their philosophy purports to be based on actual cognition and not extrapolation. And since the "cognition" finds that a person's role in life is determined by virtue of non-temporal, metaphysical correlates, someone who is supposed to be a shoemaker is born into a family of shoemakers and therefore does not have to go through agonizing years trying to figure out what they want to be.

Buddha of course came along and challenged this edifice in many ways, but that would take us too far afield of this subject.

The point is that here we have a world view that sees a metaphysical and ontological correlate relative to the role one plays in society.

So it is not dismissible to assume that there is no predetermining factors in respect to race that lie outside of current science's ability to advise on the subject.

We have to be cautious if we decide to dismiss "race" as a valid description and put it into the idea of strictly a cultural phenomenon.

About 20 years ago, some clown got a lot of mileage in Marxist circles when he wrote a book titled something like "When Race Trumps Class." And Marxists would like nothing better than to be able to unfold some of these ideas into their definitions of "class" and the necessity of the "class struggle" with all of the spikes on the bitter road that that leads to.

Finally, I will say that the intellectuals surrounding James Baldwin and other black intellectuals prior to the civil rights era were already leading to a disenfranchisement of segregational politics and economic exclusion.

If laws pertaining to black exclusion had simply been removed from the books, there were many businesses and universities and organizations ready to jump on full equality as soon as it was possible. Instead of forcing the matter, had the US simply removed obstacles, full status with American possibilities would have occurred anyway, but without the hostility and the Democratic party's power politics that flowed out.

It would have been nice to be able to avoid all the hostility and have complete economic and social integration without the fractionalizations that have come to pass.

Canforce, physiologically we may all be part of the human race, but there are certain types of behaviour that cry out for some idividuals to lose their membership card in the human race.
And the bad ones can be found within every culture and nation on earth. No, we are not all the same, and we never will be.

The problem with the Ford analogy is that machines don't have volition. Humans do. Therefore, no matter what one's gender, or so-called "race" or "caste" or "culture", what matters is what one decides to do. If one decides to do good, fine, if one decides to do bad, not so fine.

We can debate the nature of good and bad forever, and I expect humans will, but it remains the case that there are ancient fundamental principles such as "the golden rule", and that there are good humans and bad humans and most of us who are some of both, independent of gender, race, caste, or culture.

Apparently some people would rather hang out with some bad people just because they are of the same gender, race, or culture. Not me. I'd rather hang out with good people, independent of gender, race, or culture.

I guess I just don't see it as an ontological problem -- we all exist qua H. Sapeins Sapiens. I think it's more of an axiological problem.

I've come to see that the racial and cultural differences between groups are miniscule compared to the huge personality differences between individuals of any race or culture.

A hypothetical race made entirely up of people with my personality could never coexist (comparatively speaking) like we all do today with another hypothethetical race of my brother's personality because of the vast differences.

(Yeah, but we try our best too.)

Vitruvius, I always enjoy your posts, and never fail to be edified by them.

I like your reference to this from an axiological point of view. I think that Values could act as a reference here.

However, I have the impression that we are ultimately being asked questions that can only be truly answered by understanding the real nature of race and culture. "Is there really race" can only be answered if we know what race is. And the idea that if race is not actually real in some provable sense, and merely cultural... then we are seeing culture from the point of view of reductionism when a basis for that reductionism has not been established.

This, to me, brings us into the kind of metaphysical conundrum that abortion does. We are asked to determine whether a metaphysical precorrelate to the fetus exists or not. In as much as our current model of arbitration is the scientific one, we ultimately fall back on arguments between religion and science, neither being able to establish their claim to the satisfaction of the other.

I think that ultimately many of our questions finally wind up at a metaphysical frontier that we have no orthodox answers for. My view is that there may be additional ways to establish a satisfactory answer for some of these questions. We've all just had big arguments about whether Saddam Hussein was evil. But science doesn't believe in evil, and psychology rarely believes in evil, and so we are left not really knowing what this "evil" might be unless we have a religious orientation.

So I think the questions we're dealing with ultimately lie in this realm.

But what the hey, what do I know? I'm just an old, beat-up redneck trying to get by...

no greg in dallas your a progressive relativist and hey its an easy way to cop out.I think where all guilty of that on occasion

Joe Canuck, I agree entirely with your posting at 11:51pm. I believe I was not clear, and miscommunicated what I meant to say (I was too hasty in my original postings trying to catch tonight's episode of 24 ;)). I meant say I believe race is irrelevant, and that it comes down to the actions people make in this world. All people regardless of race have the capability to make all variety of choices in life, good or bad.

Vitruvius, what you said in your 11:55pm post also closely mirrors my view of this issue. That people should be judged based on their actions, and that ultimately people of any "race" are capable of making the same decisions as people of another "race", we are all equal in this sense.

I sometimes have difficulties conveying my ideas and do not have the same way with words that some have on here, but I hope this posting clears up my original two sloppy posts. Gonna go look up the definitions of "ontological" and "axiological" now. ;)

And I, Greg, always enjoy your posts too, it's a pleasure to see you 'round these parts.

My perspective on this matter comes from two sources: (1) my mom's catholic insistence that god created all people equally, which fits in very well with my notion that you can't tell about someone based on how they were created, you can only tell based on how they've behaved since then, and (2) my old beat-up libertarian trying to get by attitude that while people should be as free as possible as individuals, so then they should be judged based on their responsibility in handling that freedom, from an axiological perspective.

I should probably mention at this point, for those who aren't familiar with the term axiology, that it is described at Wikipedia - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axiology - as follows: "From the Greek axia (αξια, value, worth), it is the study of value or quality. It is often thought to include ethics and aesthetics -- philosophical fields that depend crucially on notions of value -- and sometimes it is held to lay the groundwork for these fields, and thus to be similar to value theory and meta-ethics." In short, axiology is the study of what is valuable?

Is the notion of "race" valuable? And if so, how much? If one goes to answers.com and looks up "race", one will find the following provisos from The American Heritage dictionary:

"The notion of race is nearly as problematic from a scientific point of view as it is from a social one. European physical anthropologists of the 17th and 18th centuries proposed various systems of racial classifications based on such observable characteristics as skin color, hair type, body proportions, and skull measurements, essentially codifying the perceived differences among broad geographic populations of humans. The traditional terms for these populations -- Caucasoid, Mongoloid, Negroid, and in some systems Australoid -- are now controversial in both technical and nontechnical usage.

"The biological aspect of race is described today not in observable physical features but rather in such genetic characteristics as blood groups and metabolic processes, and the groupings indicated by these factors seldom coincide very neatly with those put forward by earlier physical anthropologists. Citing this and other points -- such as the fact that a person who is considered black in one society might be nonblack in another -- many cultural anthropologists now consider race to be more a social or mental construct than an objective biological fact."

The National Geographic's mitochondrial DNA analysis project certainly seems to be leaning in the direction of denying any sort of notion of racial purity: tinyurl.com/gpqgp

So perhaps it is the pragmatist coming out in me. I doubt we will ever have definitive answers on metaphysics, we will probably always be stuck with plowing through the orthodox ontology du jour as we ever make Occam's razor sharper. Meanwhile, life goes on, and that's where axiology brings it all together. It's the ancient battle between the utilitarians and the humanists, between Bentham and his nephew Mills, and I must say I've got one foot planted firmly on each side of the debate ;-)

(PS & OT: Greg, you may be interested in these articles on the Texas City matter we discussed some year ago: tinyurl.com/w6kqw )

I realize that we're talking, in part, about the legacy of Mr. Martin Luther King's birthday, not Mr. Abraham Lincoln's, yet I should like to point out that Mr. King was in part standing on the shoulders of previous great Americans and other students of the evolution of civilization, as epitomized in this speech given by Mr. Lincoln on July 10, 1858:

"Those arguments that are made, that the inferior race are to be treated with as much allowance as they are capable of enjoying; that as much is to be done for them as their condition will allow. What are these arguments? They are the arguments that kings have made for enslaving the people in all ages of the world. You will find that all the arguments in favor of king-craft were of this class; they always bestrode the necks of the people, not that they wanted to do it, but because the people were better off for being ridden.

"That is their argument, and this argument of the Judge is the same old serpent that says you work and I eat, you toil and I will enjoy the fruits of it. Turn in whatever way you will -- whether it come from the mouth of a King, an excuse for enslaving the people of his country, or from the mouth of men of one race as a reason for enslaving the men of another race, it is all the same old serpent, and I hold if that course of argumentation that is made for the purpose of convincing the public mind that we should not care about this, should be granted, it does not stop with the negro.

"I should like to know if taking this old Declaration of Independence, which declares that all men are equal upon principle and making exceptions to it where will it stop. If one man says it does not mean a negro, why not another say it does not mean some other man? If that declaration is not the truth, let us get the Statute book, in which we find it and tear it out! Who is so bold as to do it! [Voices -- "no one," &c.] If it is not true let us tear it out! [cries of "no, no,"] let us stick to it then, [cheers] let us stand firmly by it then. [Applause.]"

/End Lincoln quote

Here's a modern-day Lincoln/King that my fellow Canadians may find interesting, Mr. Clarence Louie, chief and CEO of the Osoyoos band:

tinyurl.com/hn474
tinyurl.com/keklc

Compare Mr. Louie's dialectics to those that you have heard from the argumentum ad misericordium ambulance-chasers in the Canadian version of the race-baiting problem. Compare Mr. Fontaine and Mr. Jackson. Same? See. You think I'm saying this because of my visible genetic characteristcs? Go look up Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams, Bill Cosby, and Chris Rock.

We have to treat people based on how they behave, based on classic notions of axiology, not on how they look or whether or not they identify with some set of traditions commonly known as some sort of "culture" to some degree.

Canforce, I am on the same wavelength as you now.
Sorry I misinterpreted your original remarks.

There's a certain element of truth to what this author is saying. For example ask yourself why a person with one African grandparent and three caucasian grandparents is referred to as "black" in our society.

American Blacls are far worse off than when MLK was leading a cultural revolution. King wanted Black culture to rise to persue excellence and stand toe to toe with middle America.....he also wanted the ruling elite to lay off the exclusivity of the learning institutions that would make this possible.

So...decades after King's assassination, black culture has devolved to a permanent inner sity under class...no spiritual or cultural strength with it's brains and will kicked out by drugs...a total vicitim of the welfare plantation the Dems have scripted for it.

If Black America had followed King's lead they would comprise a large portion of middle class suburban voting blocks and own the Dem party by now ... and have had presidential candidates...but no, the Dems remain rooted in southern white small town political "boss" leadership....not a Black in sight...why is that??? I thought the Dems were the party of the black man? Or do they supply the welfare to run the inner city plantation and harvest votes there every 2 years?

OT but: Kate, congratulations, Greg Westons column today in the sun mentions SDA and the cartoon, milk cow. He says that comment is the kind that could sink a campaign.

Ford, GM, Toyota who cares? Wheels, tires, doors, seats. They all built by folks of varying "colour", "culture", "race".

King's statement "Judge a man not by the colour of his skin, but by the content of his character", will always stay with me.

The other stuff divides us.

OT, but LGF ( http://www.littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/weblog.php ; Undercover Mosque) has got some videos up that EVERYONE should see. This is what the RoP says behind closed doors.

Well, I think that the definition of 'race' as a biological reality is long proven invalid.

The biological reality does indeed show that we are one species (homo sapiens sapiens) but, like all basic species, biological variations develop as adaptations to the environment. These variations of body type (compare a 'Nilotic height with a 'San' height), skin colour, eye shape etc are superficial characteristics because they can disappear after a few generations of breeding.

But the basic attributes of body structure, ie, so far, none of these variants of homo sapiens has sprouted horns or wings, and of cognitive ability to reason - remain homogeneous. We are one species. That means one 'race'.

Behavioural characteristics are learned; that's because our species, unique in the world, relies almost exclusively on learning for its knowledge base. Our species unlike all other animal and plants of the world, isn't born with knowledge; we have to learn 'how to live'. That means that each population, living in a particular environmental region, must develop a stable long term knowledge base able to carry its population through many generations. Our species cannot exist if it has to re-invent that knowledge base every 25 years.

Then, another interesting characteristic of groups, whether human or animal, is that when you move into a situation where all, most or even some of the knowledge base is learned - you move into a requirement for a group-based mode of living. That's because no single individual stores all the knowledge. The 'knowledge-bank' is held within all members of the community.

That sets up a requirement for a hierarchy of authority (of knowledge). Is the young twit over there to be acknowledged as the one with the most valid knowledge? Or the old elder in that tent? Every society will set up rules of authority. That's found in, of course, human groups but also animal groups, eg a dominant lion, elephant, horse.

So, large populations are going to set themselves up into hierarchies of knowledge. This works very well - it thereby sets up some knowledge as 'inviolate' and long term; other knowledge as more short term. And, a small percentage will be 'foools' or 'insane' or 'seers' or 'magicians' or scientists.

Now - can these different hierarchies be populated according to merit? Or by hereditary rights? The latter will permit an extremely stable society for no really new idea can become very powerful. But if the society requires a flexible knowledge base, it has to have its 'authority to define knowledge' - peopled by merit rather than birthright.

That's always difficult; it's more difficult psychologically, to admit that HE is smarter than I am. But, a democratic society has to operate in such a psychologically and emotionally traumatic way, in order to maintain the robustness of its knowledge base.

In the 19th c, we saw the theories that viewed our species as 'evolving'; ie, the actual physical characteristics were defined as evolving, so the 'whites' were defined as 'more evolved' than the 'blacks'. Then, this was fine-tuned into national definitions (making the gross error of linking a political construct with a biological reality). So, if I recall correctly, Italians were inferior to the English. These theories were, of course, all armchair theories.

Then, this most unscientific view disappeared (although there are certainly deadheads who still believe in them)..and in the 1940s the domination of 'Culture Makes The Man' theories appeared. So, race as a biological reality disappeared and race as a cultural construct appeared. And, then, it was claimed that you can 'control' all social behaviour by 'education'. This theme, control by education, becamse dominant in the postwar years.

Then, when it became clear that people were simply not 'behaving' the way they were educated to behave..postmodernism moved in with its 'ah heck, we give up; whatever you do, man, is just fine'. Knowledge as a developed, learned construct, disappeared in a blink, and individual feelings became the only criteria of behaviour.

I think that we haven't yet fully examined the role of knowledge within a society - and how that knowledge is developed and maintained with in requirements for both stability and flexibility. And, we haven't examined the difference between the actions of the individual and the actions of the collective. ...all quite complex and no easy answers.

MLK would not be proud of his people today. Jessie and Al go around screaming MLK gave us pride, but what have they done with that pride. Katrina is a perfect example of their dependence on the welfare state. They need a leader that can tell them, quit being a victim, you are better than that and can do more. Bill Cosby was reviled for his stmts that it is the black that is the cause of their problems. Now they have someone, Obama, who is sending a different message, and Jessie and pals do not like it because it will take power away from them. The biggest problem is with all the immigration from other black countries, it is hard to tell who the real Blacks, that are decendants of slaves in America, are. In my opinion the majority of the black
population are afraid to stand up and be somebody. Instead they sit on the sidelines and think the success of some will rub off on them. But, because of the fear of being called a racist or bigot, no one will tell them the truth. Jessie and Al have been the biggest stumbling block for blacks to succeed since the death of MLK.

I just had to post these two links under race-

http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2007/01/16/tech-skull.html

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/COLDbrezhnev.htm

....."In my opinion the majority of the black
population are afraid to stand up and be somebody. Instead they sit on the sidelines and think the success of some will rub off on them. But, because of the fear of being called a racist or bigot, no one will tell them the truth. Jessie and Al have been the biggest stumbling block for blacks to succeed since the death of MLK....."

It was only a year or so ago that Bill Cosby said that and got roundly slagged by the gang of "Victim Pimps" who rely on the sustained cult of n1gg@rhood to justify their existence ( and line their pockets )....that group includes the Al Sharptons and Jesse Jacksons along with a host of Liberal Democrats who are white....After all you can't very well play the saviour of people who are strong and independent !

On a simpler level, the current reference to blacks as African Americans does not make sense to me.

What if you and your family immigrated to the US from Brazil? Why if you are black are you automatically refered to as African?

Would the arguement be that at some point all blacks had their ancestal beginnings in Africa?

If so do we call people from Brazil, African Brazillians? How about blacks in Sweden?

Or if we consider the non religious assertation that Africa was the cradle of civilization, then shouldnt we all be called African?

There is no such thing as the human race. Humans are a species. Canines are a species and the different "breeds" of dogs are the biological equivalent of the different races of people. What are the visible differences between the different races? Sometimes they are hard to put into words, but most people can look at a line up of people and classify them, even if they can't explain the differences. Its the same with dogs. we recognize Different breeds (the french word for breed is "race") even if we would have a hard time explaining to someone the difference between a Belgian sheppard and a German Sheppard.

People are also prepared to accept the fact that different breeds of dog have different characteristics. We even go so far as having laws banning dangerous dog breeds. Those same people would think you were horrible for stereotyping the races. We stereotype human races the same way we stereotype the dog breeds - long term observation of the characteristics that make them different. Biologically, different breeds of dog, are exactly the same as different races of people.

mbaron

No, mbaron, you are quite wrong. Why? Because you are equating one species with another species.

The human species is not the same as the dog species. The human, alone of all species, has a knowledge base that is primarily learned. The dog has a knowledge base that is predominantly genetic with only a small component learned.

So, you can't come up with the fallacious conclusion that the varieties of human TYPES have innate genetic behavioural characteristics. Dogs do; you can get TYPES or breeds of dogs that have different behavioural characteristics. You don't have TYPES or breeds of humans with different behavioural characteristics. In every society, there are smart, dumb, shy, mild, aggressive peoples.

No such thing as 'breed' or 'type' or 'race' in our species.

Try again.