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Comment by klodolph | Hacker News Reader

This is what people mean when they say than the science of “race” is inherently flawed. American notions of race are based on these definitions of political convenience from centuries ago, and those old political decisions have gotten absorbed into culture and seem “obvious” to people inside the culture, even though they are arbitrary historical decisions.

(Europe has its own, different notions of race which are equally “obvious” to Europeans.)

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When you say things like "American notions of race", I think it's good to point out that much of that is specifically codified in government policy and regulation.

American notions of race when referring to the citizenry is quite different than the constructs the government puts us in. We have mixed-race marriages between people of already mixed races, genetic testing that undermines any illusions of a concept of "racial purity", and if your family has been in America for more than say, four generations, you probably have family lore of interracial marriages and dalliances. There are also broad studies[1] indicating some boilerplate assumptions of mixed race.

So maybe better to refer to the American government's notions of race when we're thinking about the checkboxes, because that's who publishes the stuff. Many, many American citizens have views that are no more nuanced than this narrative, but I think that's decreasingly the case, and enough so that painting "American" views on race with such a broad brush is.. overly broad. If you're sensing some defensiveness here, I think it's frustration that we all know the checkboxes are inherently flawed, they don't reflect lived experiences, but somehow we as a country keep having this national conversation that can't get outside the boxes. Very frustrating.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4289685/

Everything is arbitrary at the end of the day. Where does "Asian culture" end and "European culture" begin? Does that mean there is no asian culture or culture at all? Clearly something is going on when you compare someone from a Kenyan village to someone from Tokyo. The difference is maybe as stark as the difference in their continents.

Saying something is fuzzy is not the same thing as saying it's arbitrary. Everything in life is fuzzy except made up abstractions we define to not be so. That doesn't mean concepts and categories themselves don't have meaning or "exist".

> Everything is arbitrary at the end of the day.

It’s a question of degree. Race is just too fuzzy / too arbitrary. If you want to do science and ask questions about ancestry, you ask questions about ancestry. Race is too much of a social / political construct, and the actual “definitions” of race are too arbitrary and mired in history to be useful to most scientists (with obvious exceptions, like sociologists studying race).

“Asian culture” is pretty damn broad anyway. Asia accounts for nearly 60% of the world’s population, so any inferences you make about Asian culture, generally speaking, are going to be nigh worthless.

That's my point: asian cultures very broad, but you still know exactly what I mean when I say asian culture. It exists in some sense.

Science isn't the only determinant of what is real. Asian culture is real in its own sense, even if it resists scientific understanding. Likewise for race: when I say a white person, you know pretty much exactly what I mean, so it's real (even if it's fuzzy).

if something is filled with error, the better way is discard it and restart the research.

Properties exist, but their use to create classifications is arbitrary, and using those arbitrary classifications to justify anything else is invalid.

"Something is going on when you compare a gyro and a falafel."

Congratulations on spotting that. Sure, their bread wrapping is different and their fillings are different, and yet they are also both just food with the same essential fillings-in-bread form, and there is no justifiable reason to use the differences to decide who gets treated well and who doesn't.

Obviously I'm not saying racism is justified or whatever. I'm just saying race is obviously real in some sense, even if it's fuzzy.

US still has explicitly racist policies. For instance:

To apply for Hawaiian homelands land lease you may be: any descendant of not less than one-half part of the blood of the races inhabiting the Hawaiian Islands previous to 1778.

Guess who was shipwrecked in the Islands before 1778? Spaniards. You think someone with Spanish/Euro "race" blood can get a Hawiian Homelands lease? Fuck no.

Also see racist policies of American Samoa.

Every phenotype based circle around a human population tagged as being of a separate race is arbitrary and without basis in biology.

Yep.

This said, at least in my case (in Europe), I grew up learning that there is no such thing as "human races". I only have the concept of races in biology, and therefore I don't use that word for humans. So that's a difference I would see with the US (where "human races" is a concept that does not seem negative).

The difference is that in Europe being part of a "race" had no legal impact. This is a (dumb) classification, that's all.

We do not have positive discrimination that gives privileges to style reeves in the US. And since your race is apparently declarative, I wonder, as a white blue eyed guy, of I could identify as an Afro-American and make use of them?

> style reeves

What does this mean?

Sorry - that was the autocorrect. I do not remember what I wrote but I meant that in Europe we do not have a race classification that allows for formal privileges because you are classified (or self-assessed) as a specific one - something like extra points when getting to a school or something like that

> And since your race is apparently declarative, I wonder, as a white blue eyed guy, of I could identify as an Afro-American and make use of them?

I mean, race is a social as well as political construct so... you can try.

I am not sure if "race (human categorization)" [1] is a thing in Europe. At least it's not really a concept for me. I only know "race (biology)" [2], so if you talk about human races, my first reaction will be to say that "there are no human races".

Actually, if a European talks about human races, to me it quickly sounds racist (coming from older people it will just sound colonialist/old school, and a little bit racist, I guess). Whereas it seems like it is a common concept in the US, and not necessarily negative.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_(human_categorization) [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_(biology)

It's not declarative. In Hawaii it's decided by a committee, if they decide you're the wrong race your ("homeland") land lease will be rejected. I'm unsure of how it works for property ownership in American Samoa, but it is probably similar. (In Hawaii racism only determines a fraction of the land however, in American Samoa I believe it is most the land).

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