This is sophistry. Race is a real biologically-rooted concept. What you call it is irrelevant.
For most people self-described race is about 99% accurate. These terms map onto real historical genetic clusterings, which were accurately described in prior centuries.
We also now have machine-learning tools that can accurately identify someone's race from X-rays and other medical imagery. In fact these tools are so accurate that even when the images look to a human like nothing more than a grey box, these tools can identify the subject's race.
Of course population genetics are real. That’s why I advocate for it.
“Race,” however, is an arbitrary descriptor largely determined by legal rulings, eg. It also comes larded with heavy historical, cultural, and political baggage, which is why it should be scrapped and replaced with the less fraught, more scientifically exact field of hereditary population genetics.
Thank you for making my point for me — even if you did so by missing it, then launching into a misplaced screed because the title of the essay convinced you that you already knew what it said, and so it was appropriate to dump your racialist apologia.
And that’s what it is: an apologia. Because while I naturally recognize the variances in hereditary genetics, I also don’t find them dispositive of very much.
The left owns racialist politics. To defeat such collectivist impulses, you take the power away from the categories they seize upon.
Sadly, too many people from the alt-right are as committed to racialism as are leftists. Which makes sense, because they’re no different than other identity politics blocs. They just have the sadz that they’re on the bottom wrung of the intersectional totem poll.
Live by racialism, die by racialism.
The only sophistry here comes from alt-right collectivists laying claim to conservatism when they are no different, at base, than La Raza or black separatists.
I pointed out the facts that "population genetics" is more-or-less interchangeable with race in the overwhelming majority of cases for most typical conversations, and that we have sophisticated tools that can determine race with uncanny accuracy from medical imagery -- And yet you are characterizing this as a "racialist screed" and "alt-right collectivism"?
It doesn't seem worthwhile to engage in someone who immediately jumps to such bad faith polemics, and doesn't speak well for your argument.
Engagement is entirely up to you. I wrote the essay, posted it, and allow comments on it. If you don’t like the tenor of the reply after leading off by accusing me of “pure sophistry,” that’s a *you* problem.
As for your argument, I responded substantively to it: “race” is vulgar, arbitrary, often defined by legal whim (see the Phipps case references above), and comes prepackaged with baggage that is too easy to politicize. That today the left has taken a *fact* of hereditary genetic population differences and turned that into a model for grievance politics, is proof enough the category is corrupted and does not need saving or championing.
And yet you seem committed to both.
Thus, I concluded — plausibly, though I’m more firm in my convictions about what kind of argument I’m dealing with — that the category of race is more important to you than is unity and functioning pluralism.
This makes you a racialist, and your apologia a racialist screed. Ironic. Isn’t it, that your concern with my response is with the way it characterized you?
This is sophistry. Race is a real biologically-rooted concept. What you call it is irrelevant.
For most people self-described race is about 99% accurate. These terms map onto real historical genetic clusterings, which were accurately described in prior centuries.
We also now have machine-learning tools that can accurately identify someone's race from X-rays and other medical imagery. In fact these tools are so accurate that even when the images look to a human like nothing more than a grey box, these tools can identify the subject's race.
Of course population genetics are real. That’s why I advocate for it.
“Race,” however, is an arbitrary descriptor largely determined by legal rulings, eg. It also comes larded with heavy historical, cultural, and political baggage, which is why it should be scrapped and replaced with the less fraught, more scientifically exact field of hereditary population genetics.
Thank you for making my point for me — even if you did so by missing it, then launching into a misplaced screed because the title of the essay convinced you that you already knew what it said, and so it was appropriate to dump your racialist apologia.
And that’s what it is: an apologia. Because while I naturally recognize the variances in hereditary genetics, I also don’t find them dispositive of very much.
The left owns racialist politics. To defeat such collectivist impulses, you take the power away from the categories they seize upon.
Sadly, too many people from the alt-right are as committed to racialism as are leftists. Which makes sense, because they’re no different than other identity politics blocs. They just have the sadz that they’re on the bottom wrung of the intersectional totem poll.
Live by racialism, die by racialism.
The only sophistry here comes from alt-right collectivists laying claim to conservatism when they are no different, at base, than La Raza or black separatists.
I pointed out the facts that "population genetics" is more-or-less interchangeable with race in the overwhelming majority of cases for most typical conversations, and that we have sophisticated tools that can determine race with uncanny accuracy from medical imagery -- And yet you are characterizing this as a "racialist screed" and "alt-right collectivism"?
It doesn't seem worthwhile to engage in someone who immediately jumps to such bad faith polemics, and doesn't speak well for your argument.
Oh? I guess we “sophists” have thin skin, then.
Engagement is entirely up to you. I wrote the essay, posted it, and allow comments on it. If you don’t like the tenor of the reply after leading off by accusing me of “pure sophistry,” that’s a *you* problem.
As for your argument, I responded substantively to it: “race” is vulgar, arbitrary, often defined by legal whim (see the Phipps case references above), and comes prepackaged with baggage that is too easy to politicize. That today the left has taken a *fact* of hereditary genetic population differences and turned that into a model for grievance politics, is proof enough the category is corrupted and does not need saving or championing.
And yet you seem committed to both.
Thus, I concluded — plausibly, though I’m more firm in my convictions about what kind of argument I’m dealing with — that the category of race is more important to you than is unity and functioning pluralism.
This makes you a racialist, and your apologia a racialist screed. Ironic. Isn’t it, that your concern with my response is with the way it characterized you?
If you squint, there’s a lesson in there.
You’re welcome.
Thank you for this.
I wish that those who most need it will read and understand it.
My expectation, though, is that we will be seeing this on MLK day for years to come, as being both still true and still needed…