Monday, April 29, 2013

Ebony and ivory

Racial belonging, either claimed or assigned, is sometimes absolutely clear, but sometimes fuzzy. At the fuzzy points it becomes obvious that race is not only genetic and geographical, but also political and local, dependent on which categories you use and why you use them.

Barack Obama, for example, as much genetically White as he is Black, is Black.

So the borders can never be decided "objectively" and once-for-all, even by genetics.

But that does not make the categories meaningless, as some perfectionists like to pretend. If only objectively decided and hermetically sealed categories were real and important, we'd be reduced pretty much to writing mathematics.

IMHO, and for the sake of my fantasied Alternative Republic, you're White if your predominant genetic loading is from haplogroups in Europe.


White = European (or descended unmixedly therefrom).

That makes it clear for a lot of people.









But where does Europe end? That's a matter of convention, as many borders are. Since Whiteness is not only genetic but cultural and political, for my purposes, Europe (with the exception of parts of the Balkans) ends where Christianity ends and Islam begins. Russians and Armenians and Georgians are Europeans. Turks and Chechens and Khazaks are not.


In a Black vs White race riot, though, Dhokar Tsarnaev, Alan Dershowitz and me are all on the same side. At least as far as the Blacks would be concerned.

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3 comments:

Anonymous said...

If you want to mess with a black person, ask them what their black/white percentage is. Then do a haplogroup test. There are black people who thought they were all black, but were shocked to discover that they were actually 40% to 60% white! Which, considering the history of race "relations" (wink wink) in this country, is not totally surprising.

Race membership is fairly easy to establish, but cultural membership is harder. Unless you are born into a community with certain traditions, you cannot really be said to belong to it without initiation into the group. Thus, if I were to convert to Mormonism, because it has a very distinct cultural dynamic, I would have to embrace that culture and learn it to truly belong.

That's what PC prevents, that acceptance into the American community via assimilation, which entails acceptance of the group's history, traditions, and values. Individuals whose native cultures make that difficult or impossible should be discourage from joining.

-Sean

OreamnosAmericanus said...

The effect of PC thinking in White countries is that people should be welcomed in inverse proportion to their similarity to the native population.

The more alien a group, the more incumbent upon the White countries to invite and accept them, to prove that the Whites are not racist.

It's nuts. And worse.

Anonymous said...

Compare and contrast...

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/00/Roman_Empire_Trajan_117AD.png

- The Bishop of Portland

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