h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

No, but you'd probably be looking to try the sandpaper test*.



* That was a joke, please don't hurt me.

You're right, GodBen. Some people do place an importance on skin colour, as if it mattered. It doesn't.

They did have big problems in South Africa, trying to define who was Black and who was White.

I wonder if there will be racists when we're all coffee coloured, cafe noir on the equator and au laite towards the poles. Will we find excuses to keep up national barriers. Will we fly a flag with a coffee bean on it.

>>The point I was making about the St George flag or a Saltire is what message does it send if you put up a flagpole in your garden and fly your flag. In Scotland does it say to the English you're not as good as me.

I think it's an easy cop out saying I'm proud to be English that's why I fly this flag, I think the enclusive message is nearer the truth. I can fly the flag and you can't. And at the end of the day it was only an accident of birth that lets you define your race, whatever race is.
<<

Wandering, you'll probably have to explain it a bit more - I'm not British and race/ethnciity has different meaning in the Pacific.

I can't see how a Scot flying a Scottish flag is a sign that they think they are better than me or anyone else

If you think that race is an accident of birth that's one thing (I still don't believe there is such a thing as race). But if you are talking about ethnicity then it has as much to do with what your people believe, how they live, what they value etc. These are all very important things that help define us as humans.

For people who are the dominant culture of the country they live in, understanding their own ethnicity as one amongst many (rather than the dominating one) is a very important way of disbanding institutionalised racism. If you don't understand who you are, how can you let other people have their own identity?

Yeah, probably so WA.

How useful are the terms white and black anyway? Some people have touched on the fact that it's all pretty subjective anyway. I knew a girl from Brazil once, who was very amused by the fact that while being 'white' at home, when she entered the USA she became a "person of colour" (this being the current vogue term).

Would be interesting to send two people through a city, one a Black guy with a t-shirt saying "Proud to be Black" and the other a White guy with a t-shirt saying "Proud to be White". Seeing how people would react.

Kea, I think we are singing from the same hynm sheet. Nationalism, or pride in your country, I think is often used as a veil to disguise racism. The British National Party is found of flags and proud to be British but it's just a front to abuse Asian immigrants and residents.

OK, Wandering, I see what you are meaning. What intrigues me is how the English reclaim their cultural identity if the BNP are stealing the icons. It seems that in their haste to distance themselves from the BNP some English are saying there is no such thing as Englishness. Or am I misunderstanding this?

I don't get the impression that they are saying there's no such thing as Englishness - more that what 'Englishness' means is being re-evaluated. Which makes sense, given that so many of the old traditions are gone, which would once have been thought of as integral to the concept. I'd find it hard to make the claim that Englishness in 2005 is the same thing as Englishness in 1940, say. Customs are different, language is, food is, music, and so on. The only meaning still constant is 'bearing some connection to England'. Even then, what the 'connection' is is debatable.

I think its a bit like the swastika.

Originally a symbol in hinduism it now has a resonance it will probably never lose so that a lot of people will now see it and think first or only of the Third Reich.

My impression is that Englishness and the flag of St George are in the process of being 'reclaimed' from the far right. Look at the number of flags that appear when there's a football match on the horizon. That would *never* have happened ten years ago. It's growing, and I think it's largely a positive thing.

There is such a thing as Englishness, and I discovered it when I went to live and work in Scotland. When in England, identity is often a matter of English regional identity rather than national identity. Particularly Yorkshire, Lancashire, London, Cornwall, etc etc. Or broader - cloth cap wearing notherner or shandy drinking southerner? But once I went to Scotland, I felt English. Or should I say Aaennggllllesshh?

But Englishness is complicated. But then so is every culture - it has dominant and minority voices. If any culture or nationality looks monolithic and united, you've missed the minority voice.

Bit of a ramble, but there you go....

We live within a hegemony - a ruling state or ideology that succeeds largely through defining what it isn't. In the UK, we might talk about black or 'urban' music, or films that target women as being (excuse me) 'chick flicks', but generally language doesn't define male, white, middle-class culture because that's taken to mean the 'norm'.

Within this, then, we might define a racist (or sexist) to be someone who interprets 'normality' as 'right', and anything outside of the norm as somehow less worthy.

"A professor of biology at Fairleigh Dickinson University in Teaneck, N.J., Graves argues that science cannot account for the racial categories used to classify people. In The Race Myth, released last summer, he goes a step further to describe racism as an unintended consequence of evolution and offers creative, innovative ways to bring true equality to America. Graves’ previously published book, The Emperor’s New Clothes: Biological Theories on Race at the Millennium (Rutgers University Press) won critical acclaim. In that book, Graves maintained that debunking the idea of race as biologically determined is an essential first step to eliminating racism.


Or for a longer explanantion try this.

http://www.multiracial.com/abolitionist/word/loucas.html

Race does not exist but I have to use the word because the idea exists. Maybe I should call it the R-lie in the same way as I refer to the bigG.

In the same way as i would rather not use the R-lie word Id rather not be party to ethnic or raciall monitoring but theya re there to reduce very real inequalities based uponthe R-lie.

It would be a long winded time explaing my non beliefe in the part human part piscine tempts and destroyers of sailors. Who can both breath air and underwater but cant live out of water.

Or I could just say there are no mermaids, but we do need the Commission for Racial Equality.

one love

I don't see how understanding the political message of a party means that you are inherently racist. I certainly don't subscribe to the idea that belonging to the BNP means you are a racist.

Under that basis, belonging to or supporting Greenpeace means you don't own a car, won't eat certain tuna fish and wear certain clothing.

It's an ideology and a support structure for those who share certain ideas. Yes, primarily, the BNP is related to racist causes. However, much like Veritas and some of the more right-wing Conservatives, their ideas are projected in certain ways and under certain terms to legitimise them, regardless of their racialist undertones.

Left-wing political parties can also be charged with over-accentuating some issues and rights to the extent that the problem becomes obscured with concerted effort to change for the good.

I abhor racism and all other detrimental opinions and expressions against those because of something they cannot prevent being (female, elderly, gay, from another country, overweight, under 5'5"). However, it is the way in which you fight against these (pre)conceptions which is the key.

Racial history in the US is a key point of fact. Look how far racial issues have come since the Martin Luther King era. Probably not as far as we'd all like but look how long it took to get to King himself!

Cultural and Socio-Political change and enlightenment is the sole area of life which is lax at present. We move on so much in technology, science and entertainment fields but it still bemuses me that so little is done to bring communities together.

>>I wonder if there will be racists when we're all coffee coloured

Java man.

There'll certainly still be prejudice of some group or other by another group.

Hello all

An interesting, though somewhat chaotic debate you've got going on here. It seems to me that there are several questions being discussed simultaneously: How to define a racist, what 'race' actually is, the BNP, what 'Englishness' is, etc.

Not being English (or even Anglophone) it's probably best if I leave those last two subjects alone. However, I do think that I (having studied biology) can clarify some things about what 'race' is, and what its importance might be.

Webster's Dictionary (sorry, don't have the OED) defines 'race' as: 'A distinct group of people, the members of which share certain inherited physical characteristics [...] and transmit them'. Apart from the fact that they should have said 'individuals' instead of 'people', since it also applies to dogs, thrushes or rhododendrons, it's a reasonably useable definition. However, it is still quite vague and leaves a lot of room for interpretation. How, for instance, 'race' differs from 'subspecies' or 'variety' (if it does at all) isn't clear.

Traditionally, the human race is divided in three races: Caucasian, Negroid and Mongoloid (those are the official names, please don't lambast me for using them ). There is an argument to be made that Australian Aboriginals, South-African Bushmen and a few other small ethnic groups actually constitute a fourth (and possibly fifth) race (Australoid/Khoisanic). The differences between the races are mainly found in skin coloration, hair texture and color, and facial features.

Note that these differences are all literally superficial, and can easily be explained as adaptations to the environment. (The darker your skin, for instance, the better you are protected against ultraviolet radiation, and thus against skin cancer. If the hole in the ozone layer keeps getting bigger, it's the people with the darkest skins that have the best chance of survival...) Also note that a condition like sickle cell anaemia is NOT a race related adaptation. Any group of humans, living in an area where malaria is endemic, will be subject to the same environmental pressure. People with SCA are better protected against malaria (which is deadly, and SCA isn't), and that's why the genes remain and spread in such a population.

It's also good to realise that the Caucasian race is rather varied in appearance: Moroccans, Indians (as in 'people from India', not 'native Americans', who belong to the Mongoloid race), Fins, Saudis and (almost) everyone inbetween are all Caucasian. That should give you some ammo in discussions about race and racism.

Finally, a few numbers: As has already been noted, humans share most of their genes (the poster said 99,9%, I heard/read it was 99,8%). Important fact: By far the most of those genes code for things like embryonic development, production of enzymes, proteins and other biochemical processes in our bodies. (Which is why the overlap with other species is so large. They need those same proteins, enzymes, etc, too.) Something like skin colour is regulated by, if I remember correctly, a complex of about ten (yes, 10) genes. The Human Genome Project has determined that humans have 30.000-40.000 genes. Let's say we have 35.000, and that the difference between us is 0,2%. That would mean all six billion of us (or are we with more already?) differ in about 70 genes on a total of 35.000. So, IMO anyway, anyone saying that those 70 are more important to define us as humans than the other 34,920 should get his/her head examined. We need ALL those genes to be human.

To round off, one more remark: If the Out-of-Africa theory of human evolution is correct, we're all descendent from African ancestors; they just left the continent (if they ever did) in different times and under different circumstances. In other words, to paraphrase John F. Kennedy, every human being can say: 'Ich bin ein Afrikaner!'

Nite Owl

Oops, that should be 34.930. Sorry.

marking