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

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/10357018.stm

How exactly is this racist?

Anti-nationalist, certainly.

It has bugged me for a while now that "race" in popular usage has diverted from any kind of sensible biological classification where it has incidentally been reduced to such unimportance, it is essentially meaningless to speak of "racial differences."

Can we just be clear that whatever this kind of behaviour is, discriminatory, or petty jealously or block-headed-dumb or whatever, it isn't about race?

Is it even anti nationalist? I mean...
If I walk out wearing an 'England' football shirt, or a 'man United' football shirt (not that I'm ever likely to do such a thing...) then that isn't racist or any kind of anti-nationlist, but it is accordign to that article, as wearing such a shirt as a pro* 'england' shirt could just be blatent incitement to force a scottish or Welsh person to beat you up.. I don't think the problem lays with whatever your shirt or tee shirt might say, it probably lays with the kind of people who think being a violent thug and beating others up for no good reason is... well a good enough reason

So considerate of your regional maroons to self-identify by wearing special t-shirts. It makes it so much easier to know whom to avoid.

Hi Clive

Is there a sensible biological classification?

You can say that these over here are on average darker or lighter or whatever than those people over there but as long as there is no clear dividing line then there is no reason to accept the concept of race at all.

Human nature includes a powerful slant to tribalism and that's where the idea of race comes from. It's more cultural than real.

It's too bad that sport has to be all about nationalist struggle, a bunch of human vuvuzelas, all blaring noise and no information.

Here in Canada we have official multiculturalism which to me just means trying to counter evil racism with good racism. I can't see how something imaginary can be good.*













*except when I'm home alone and I'm imagining that whatshername who works at the bank has stopped by.

>Is it even anti nationalist?<

Well I was struggling to think what it was, I concede even that may be totally inaccurate.

And you're right to turn it on it's head and point out the basic idiocy of it all.

My basic point was that "racism" in this article is a complete non-sequitur.

>>You can say that these over here are on average darker or lighter or whatever than those people over there but as long as there is no clear dividing line then there is no reason to accept the concept of race at all<<

Don't panic we agree. I was trying to avoid expounding at length on genetic drift and cladistics and alleles and population genetics. The concept is and ought to be dead. I meant to discuss race in biological terms (the only sense in why it *could* have any validity) shows it to none - and yet it persists, which was my complaint, and in ways seemingly wholly unconnected from anything sensibly biological.

race has become the buzz word to cover, race, nation and ethnicity,

when i get verbally abused at workser, that sort of thing i have to fill in a racist incedent report form, there is no ethnic abuse form

PCjobsworth

Now that is weird.

Well, it's not really weird. "Race" is a very shaky concept in science. There's no more scientific meaning to "race" than there is to "nation".

within the language of 'diversity' a lot of the meanings have become blurred or non pc or offensive, so race and racist is now used as a catch all

Oh, and sorry for butting in, Clive. I just got here and thought I'd post.

Hmm, the thing is that while "race" has no scientific meaning as genus or species do - people sometimes act as though it does have a scientific base. And that means that while it's useless as a category for scientists, it still affects society.

In the first couple of decades of the last century, it was common enough to come across phrases like "The French race", "the English race", and so on.

Hiya KB, we're speaking the same language. If you start to interrogate many of these concepts they break down: nationality, race, to a lesser extent ethnicity, but frankly the usages are so confused it's not that much better.

The Beeb Article, just struck me as a totally illegitimate use of the phrase.

The other week in college was "Celeberate Diversity Week" and a big 10 foot display had sprung up and there were posters and leaflets galore.

I picked one leaflet up, it was was evidently a group production and in the context of what we've been discussing and just as an example of how race is still being talked about - I can't decide - is the word "race" being rehabilitated and undergoing some kind of refresh new re-definition; or is it just being used incorrectly, in the sense we seem to agree about that what 'race' is, is something not terribly significant but society lags behind biology in realising this, or something else entirely?

Here is the text from the leaflet:

---------------------------

What does it mean to be mixed race in the UK?

Due to the diverse nature of Britain's heritage, including invasions and migration, a large proportion citizens could be described as mixed race. This includes Saxons, Normans, Vikings and Romans.

In the past two hundred years there has been a large number of migrations from countries such as Africa, The Caribbean and Asia. There has been much speculation around the true numbers of individuals in the UK. In 2001 for the first time the government included a category within the census of "mixed parentage" This meant that people did not need to tick either,


Issues within Education.
------------------------
DFES conducted a study in 2004 which found that educational achievement of pupils of dual heritage to be below average. The group is more likely to experience racism from teachers as well as black and white schoolmates.

There is also a tendency for teachers to perceive dual heritage pupils as coming from unstable backgrounds and also that such pupils would suffer from unstable identities.

Pupils from dual heritage backgrounds are also more likely to be excluded from school.

However these could stem from a perception of dual heritage students behaviour within classrooms. Some teachers view mixed race students as being challenging and rebellious.

However there is evidence to suggest that dual heritage backgrounds are now accepted by mainstream culture. "ethnic ambiguity" is now celebrated within multi-cultural groups casting off old stereotypes.

Data from the 2001 census demonstrates that Britain has the highest number of inter-ethnic relationships in the world.

In 1997 it was estimated that one half of black males and one third of black females were in inter-racial relationships.

During the 1990's the number of dual heritage individuals grew by up to 75%

This totalled 10% of the UK ethnic minority.

Dual Heritage is now the third largest ethnic group and statistical trends show that within 10 years it could be come the largest.

Over half the the UKs dual heritage population is under 16. These figures are seen by some researchers to indicate growing public acceptance of inter-racial partnerships.




- - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Question: Is there any substantial fault in describing someone's race, their ethnicity and that they may have parents from different group as equivalent? Becuase what struck me about this leaflet rightly or wrongly was the way it danced between describing inter-racial relationships and inter-ethnic ones and throws in heritage and skin colour just to complete this picture. I suspect, I may be wrong, that this is confused not to mention confusing but what do you guys make of it? And is this the same kind of problem that belabours the BBC article?

And you're not butting in - it's what journals are for!

>> Question: Is there any substantial fault in describing someone's race, their ethnicity and that they may have parents from different group as equivalent?

My language usage sympathies are with anyone who tries to use words according to their dictionary definitions. That said, the term racism ought to be reserved for actual issues of race.

We are all of the same race, which has, or at least used to have, the biological definition of subspecies. We are all members of the same human subspecies or race, homo sapiens sapiens. The other homo sapiens race or subspecies with which we once coexisted, homo sapiens neanderthalensis, ceased to exist quite some time ago, although recent evidence found neanderthal dna remnants in some human populations. (Ref: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8660940.stm )

Since there is only one human race, can we truly express racism in a biological sense? No. For this reason, I don't foresee a broad market for t-shirts bearing anti-floriensis slogans. (There might be a small specialized market among biologists for t-shirts bearing pro-floriensis sentiments.)

How about racism in another, non-biological sense of the word race?

Under Merriam-Webster's 2nd entry for the noun race is
a : a family, tribe, people, or nation belonging to the same stock
b : a class or kind of people unified by shared interests, habits, or characteristics

And under the 3rd entry is
c : a category of humankind that shares certain distinctive physical traits.

So linguistics provides definitions of "race" and "racial" unsupported by biology. No surprise there. Biology is a relatively recent human endeavor, unlike warfare.

We humans can perceive differences between ourselves and others on the basis of race in the sense of family, tribe, people, nation, physical traits, shared interests, habits, or characteristics. We can start to believe we are somehow superior to others based on these perceived differences, these racial differences. We can convince ourselves that others are less deserving.

Should we act on such beliefs, should we cause someone detriment or injury because we see them as racially different, that can be correctly called racism.


HN

a very thougthful and might I say witty (pro-floriensis t-shirts! ) reply to my question. Thank you. I shall take some time to mull over it.


But if I might dash off an immediate response, which was hovering in my brain as I finished reading it. Concerning this:

>>So linguistics provides definitions of "race" and "racial" unsupported by biology. No surprise there. Biology is a relatively recent human endeavour, unlike warfare. We humans can perceive differences between ourselves and others on the basis of race in the sense of family, tribe, people, nation, physical traits, shared interests, habits, or characteristics. We can start to believe we are somehow superior to others based on these perceived differences, these racial differences. We can convince ourselves that others are less deserving.

Should we act on such beliefs, should we cause someone detriment or injury because we see them as racially different, that can be correctly called racism.<<

So provided we restrict ourselves to reasoning from the imperfect and barbarous past, racism persists as legitimate?

I suppose my argument is that the biological understanding is - by dint perhaps of it's very modernity - superior and should be privileged in our discourse to the misunderstandings preserved in linguistics.

Also can I quibble human race / human species?
There is one species of humans, granted, and there variances within that accord broadly with geographical and national constraints of population isolation so there regions of genetic alleles that are divergent but similar and probably the result of a mix of selection pressures and sex selection. So in this sense we have a worked out understanding of human variance in terms of species and sub/species - what is gained with co-joining of this as equivalent with race? It seems to me superfluous.

<<- what is gained with co-joining of this as equivalent with race? It seems to me superfluous.>>

but would you want your daughter marrying one

Good post Happy

Now I want a T-shirt that says 'Floresiensis, We may be Little, but we're Small'* but they might not come in my size.

According to Howjsayit http://howjsay.com/index.php?word=floresiensis&submit=Submit the first s is pronounced ess and not zed.


*apologies to Stuart Maclean

Ooo I'd quite like one of those* teeshirts too... or maybe a 'homo erectus is a beast'.... or some such

Or

Homo Erectus
The Cousin We don't Talk about