Race versus culture

[Seleucus]

Selecucs,
When you said a "convert to Islam" did you mean you?

If not are you lying to her that you will convert or is she colluding?

I'm a convert on paper. I was forced to to marry. As far as exoteric Sunni Islam goes, I spit on it. Sufism of course is fascinating.

[Seleucus]

Yep, they speak Semitic languages and most likely European peoples are a branch off of the Semitic race as can be established either linguistically since both Indo-Europeans and also Semitic languages, as well as Caucasian languages use grammatical gender, so we can infer they are closely related, or we can just look at them and see their narrow heads and pointy noses, or we can look at haplogroup which cinches it. ...

A shared language doesn't make a race.

Obviously Indians, Nigerians and Americans do not constitute a race, meanwhile, in 2017, there is still overall a very close concordance between race and language. In the main it is Austonesian people who speak Austonesian languages. As a race they have short necks, long fingers, round eyes, flat noses and brown skin, you can identify them that way. They came across from the Chinese mainland to Taiwan about 5500 years ago. They have a big amount of haplogroup M so must have come out of India a long long time ago. That's the race of the Austonesians, they spread across the South East Asian archipelago from Hawaii to Madagascar on their outrigger boats and menacing their enemies with cannibalism. They eventually adopted Hinduism and then in the large Islam. Behold the race, the language, the culture and the religion. Am I "racist" for stating these obvious verifiable facts?

[Belinda]

It's a cosa nostra thing.

I agree. A culture group or a race are gangs.

Tribalism, now. Are you yourself tribal, or universal, Seleucus? Your preference for what you call "race" and Europeans in particular begins to sound tribal.

I'm tribalist. That's why I say it isn't exactly unfair if a Muslim doesn't want to hire anyone non-Muslims to work in their bakery. Since it isn't my tribe, I'll object, but certainly I won't hire Muslims to my organization either, obviously I screen the CVs for Muslim names and hijabs in the photos.

You may be excluding Muslims from your organization (sic)because of local conditions. If you lived in the UK you would almost certainly hire a Muslim as your doctor, nurse, pharmacist, dentist, vet, shopkeeper, or restaurateur and so on.


You are wrong about culture group as synonymous with gangs. Not every culture of belief includes the belief that people with the wrong amount of skin pigmentation are unwelcome in the society. Not every culture of practice is against the hiring of Muslims.

Don't you live and work in Saudi Arabia? If so I am surprised that you dare to express the tribal and anti-Muslim beliefs that you do.

[Seleucus]

You are wrong about culture group as synonymous with gangs.

I'm confident a culture group is pretty much a gang. I'm open to hearing other perspectives, but, it looks like a rather solid case...

Don't you live and work in Saudi Arabia? If so I am surprised that you dare to express the tribal and anti-Muslim beliefs that you do.

I have discussed my fears about discussing atheism and Islam in other threads in the past here on this forum.

[Belinda]

Seleucus wrote:

Boaz wrote a whole fat book on it, Race, language and culture

Boas was writing about physical anthropology quite a long time ago. Genetics has gained more knowledge since. I knew an eminent anthropologist who, in his early student days, in the 1920s was set to measuring skulls

Seleucus wrote:

More likely its you who has become twisted if you don't love your kinfolk:

That's not nice, Seleucus. I do in fact feel a sentimental attachment to Scottish people, even although I am happy in England.

[Seleucus]

Seleucus wrote:

Boaz wrote a whole fat book on it, Race, language and culture

Boas was writing about physical anthropology quite a long time ago. Genetics has gained more knowledge since. I knew an eminent anthropologist who, in his early student days, in the 1920s was set to measuring skulls

Boaz was writing about language and culture, have a peek through the book. Physical anthropology is the topic only up to page 229 of almost 700 pages. I'm certainly no expert on Boaz, I became aware of this book because like him, I'm an anti-Whorfian.

[Seleucus]

More likely its you who has become twisted if you don't love your kinfolk:

That's not nice, Seleucus. I do in fact feel a sentimental attachment to Scottish people, even although I am happy in England.

Seems we agree then about this point of nostalgia for homeland and kinfolk and mother tongue and familiar faces.

[Belinda]

Seleucus wrote:

Boaz wrote a whole fat book on it, Race, language and culture

Boas was writing about physical anthropology quite a long time ago. Genetics has gained more knowledge since. I knew an eminent anthropologist who, in his early student days, in the 1920s was set to measuring skulls

Boaz was writing about language and culture, have a peek through the book. Physical anthropology is the topic only up to page 229 of almost 700 pages.

Your point was that physical attributes fit with cultures of belief and practice.

BTW did you know that in bay or chestnut horses white legs are a sign of weakness in the legs?

Seems we agree then about this point of nostalgia for homeland and kinfolk and mother tongue and familiar faces.

Yes, many people do so.

[Seleucus]

BTW did you know that in bay or chestnut horses white legs are a sign of weakness in the legs?

No, I didn't know that. I wish I knew more about horses. I suppose the race of horse I would most like would be the Arabian?

[Belinda]

BTW did you know that in bay or chestnut horses white legs are a sign of weakness in the legs?

No, I didn't know that. I wish I knew more about horses. I suppose the race of horse I would most like would be the Arabian?

It was a joke, silly! About a superstition.

As for Arabian horses, those have been bred from original warm blood strains to breed true and improve other breeds where desired. . The breeding of domestic animals is artificial selection in action. Humans are artificially selected for breeding only insofar as cultural practices encouraged inbreeding.

[Londoner]

For those of use who use these words like "race", in India you have Dravidians in the south. They are the dark short ones. In the north you have Aryans who are tall and fairer and have pointy noses, they migrated into the region sometime after 3500 BC according to anthropologists and linguists like Anthony and Mallory who are the current reigning experts on things Indo-European.

But they are not as neatly sorted into types as you describe. There are people outside the south of India who are also short and dark. And there are people who are outside the north of India with pointy noses. So, even assuming you think it sensible to split people into races based on such superficial characteristics, you can't get a fit. 'Dravidian' describes a group of languages, not a race. If you accept that, then some Dravidians do not have dark skins. But if you think having a dark skin defines 'Dravidian', then that blows your cod anthropological theory, as some 'Dravidians' live nowhere near south India.

But the main trouble is that having a pointy nose simply means you have a pointy nose. It isn't the marker for some more fundamental difference. You can sort out the world according to nose shape, or eye colour, or lactose tolerance or anything else if it floats your boat, but that won't turn the groupings into 'races'.

And, up in the north-east you actually have Negritos, this was a wave of black people who also inhabit the Andaman Islands and are largely an uncontacted tribe, and they can also be found in the interior of Malaysia. By haplogroup, the Negritos are related to the Capoids/San/Bushmen/Pygmies however you want to call them. That's just the facts, not really sure how it could be denied?

They are not the facts. The Andamanese look somewhat like African pygmies, but are more closely related to neighbouring people. And that is the problem with your theories; you want to group people according to what they look like, but a similarity in appearance is not a marker for a general genetic similarity. Features like skin colour are trivial, they change quickly.

If you wanted to base your racial theories on overall genetic differences you could - but you won't because it would come up with results that you don't like!

[Seleucus]

BTW did you know that in bay or chestnut horses white legs are a sign of weakness in the legs?

No, I didn't know that. I wish I knew more about horses. I suppose the race of horse I would most like would be the Arabian?

It was a joke, silly! About a superstition.

As for Arabian horses, those have been bred from original warm blood strains to breed true and improve other breeds where desired. . The breeding of domestic animals is artificial selection in action. Humans are artificially selected for breeding only insofar as cultural practices encouraged inbreeding.

I wonder if each breed has its own language and culture and religion?

[Seleucus]

For those of use who use these words like "race", in India you have Dravidians in the south. They are the dark short ones. In the north you have Aryans who are tall and fairer and have pointy noses, they migrated into the region sometime after 3500 BC according to anthropologists and linguists like Anthony and Mallory who are the current reigning experts on things Indo-European.

But they are not as neatly sorted into types as you describe. There are people outside the south of India who are also short and dark. And there are people who are outside the north of India with pointy noses. So, even assuming you think it sensible to split people into races based on such superficial characteristics, you can't get a fit. 'Dravidian' describes a group of languages, not a race. If you accept that, then some Dravidians do not have dark skins. But if you think having a dark skin defines 'Dravidian', then that blows your cod anthropological theory, as some 'Dravidians' live nowhere near south India.

But the main trouble is that having a pointy nose simply means you have a pointy nose. It isn't the marker for some more fundamental difference. You can sort out the world according to nose shape, or eye colour, or lactose tolerance or anything else if it floats your boat, but that won't turn the groupings into 'races'.

Well this is all well established by haplogroup studies so I'm not sure what to tell you. Obviously there is a bit of fuzziness. Race and language are pretty closely linked. Do you speak a Dravidan language? If you want to put it in a frank way, what is the relationship between IQ and blond hair, and what is the relationship between IQ and nappy hair. Is that what you wanted?

https://news.osu.edu/news/2016/03/21/bl ... elligence/

And, up in the north-east you actually have Negritos, this was a wave of black people who also inhabit the Andaman Islands and are largely an uncontacted tribe, and they can also be found in the interior of Malaysia. By haplogroup, the Negritos are related to the Capoids/San/Bushmen/Pygmies however you want to call them. That's just the facts, not really sure how it could be denied?

They are not the facts. The Andamanese look somewhat like African pygmies, but are more closely related to neighbouring people. And that is the problem with your theories; you want to group people according to what they look like, but a similarity in appearance is not a marker for a general genetic similarity. Features like skin colour are trivial, they change quickly.

If you wanted to base your racial theories on overall genetic differences you could - but you won't because it would come up with results that you don't like!

No, the Negritos of the Andaman Islands are related to the Africans, obviously not to the neighboring Burmese. That's what I've read, if you have read otherwise please go ahead and link me the pdf and I will promptly peruse it. If you were having a quick skim of wikipedia you may have not read carefully enough, it said: "Malaysian Negrito tribe", not Malaysians, who are in the main of the Austronesian race. Haplogroup D is found in Africa and in the Andamanese, pretty obvious from looking at them. They are straight out of Africa 65,000 years ago, no admixture of Denisovan.

[vegetariantaxidermy]

Cherry picking. My intent was irony. 'En masse'. Why would you expect an indigenous people to instantly adapt to, and understand, a completely alien culture? That hardly makes them inferior. What would you do?

We've discussed this more than once so I assume you know my view is that culture is probably sufficient to explain such effects, no need to appeal to genetics. As far as inferiority goes, there seem to be inferior cultures, Gypsy is one, and African American is another. Cultures can get bogged down with bad habits.

What's your superior culture then? Perhaps people don't want you in their countries.

[Arising_uk]

The 248,000 people who immigrated into the UK in 2016 were brought by conquest and slavery? Or do you mean Aristotle moved to the Macedonian court because he was conquered and enslaved? What, no he wasn't? It was "brain drain".

And the slaves?

Oh? Remind me, what is the life expectancy of men in the UK, and remind me of the life expectancy of men in Indonesia? Remind me of the rate of typhoid? Remind me of the amount of rubbish in the streets and on the beaches...? Remind me of the perceived corruption index...? Remind me of the average traffic speed at rush hour in the capital...? Remind me of the state of the mass transport system in the capital city -- or if there is one at all...?

How about just reminding you what England was like a few generations back.

Since race and culture are still pretty tight in 2017 it makes only a slight difference between the one and the other position.

Given the total of all non-white immigrants make up not even 14% of the UK I'm not exactly worried.

This is a great question that would unfortunately involve too much personal information to answer. An interesting one because it touches a few topics that intersect with this discussion. To some degree we have a choice of what race and culture we desire to identify with. If my grandparents come from 4 different countries, which one do I consider my ethnic and racial identity and why? And secondly, the question of (deleuzoguattarian) territorialization, how do we come to call some place home? Even a place where we have never in our lives been too? Even a place where we would probably be considered utter foreigners? How does that happen? I think it's by coming to know the names of the birds and the plants, by coming to know the myths of the land and the people. Touch the earth and the soil and have it under our nails, drink the water, eat the produce of the land...

So bugger all to do with race then.