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Comment by gozur88 | Hacker News Reader

>First, historically, race was only firmly established as a legacy of the colonial era.

I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. Are you saying a Roman in Africa didn't notice the guys around him had black skin?

>For example, in the colonial era, how was it decided in Louisiana if one man was black or not? The answer is, less than 1/32 of his ancestry must be of "black blood"[0]. This sort of thinking and arbitrary ruling is how race was established as a social construct.

This is non-responsive. You're talking about the legal response to race, which is irrelevant to the question of whether race actually exists.

In fact, you've written nothing that addresses the point. When a white guy and a black guy are walking down the street, do you have trouble when someone asks you to point out the white guy?

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>I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. Are you saying a Roman in Africa didn't notice the guys around him had black skin?

"Romans in Africa vs. black skin" is actually a different point. Differences existed between people, but the notion of "race" did not. I'm trying to explain what the history of the notion of "race" was, because we take it for granted now. If you would read the history of race, especially the colonial time around the 17th to 19th century[0], you can see that that is when the notion of "race" as we know it really started to develop as a result of anthropological studies and colonial goals (but NOT genetic, modern scientific studies).

This is an example of how arbitrary and socially constructed race is.

Not sure if you read my second paragraph, but I wrote this: "In modern science we know that there is enough variation in people that it is basically impossible to concretely associate certain genes with certain races[1]."

You seemed to be convinced that "race is a social construct" has no scientific basis, but my argument is that there is no strong basis for race in science. The only alternative choice then seems to be social.

The term "race" was most likely coined by Immanuel Kant, in German as rassen, to name his view that there were actually different kinds of people. The more common view before Kant was that environment shaped people.

It's not really true that race is a "socially construct". It's a specific belief about the nature of human beings, attributable to a specific person.

As a fun side note, being "racist" means believing that race is a real thing. It has nothing to do with what one thinks of different races, how one feels about them, or whether or not one feels differently about them at all. Just be living that "race" names something true about humans makes a person a racist.

First, white and black are not races.

Many Mexicans and east Indians look visually similar to each other that people confuse they for the other. But one is Hispanic and the other is not.

>First, white and black are not races.

Yes, no kidding.

>Many Mexicans and east Indians look visually similar to each other that people confuse they for the other. But one is Hispanic and the other is not.

True, but irrelevant. All I need to do to disprove "race is a social construct" is come up with a single case where it's obviously not the case.

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