Interview with john a. powell
Race-The Power of an Illusion
Read this. I find it to be interesting. He spouts truth. He spoke at the Freedom Center last night, however I missed it due to a dodge ball game.
Friday, February 8, 2008
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7 comments:
I think that if a person is going to argue that race is a baseless social fabrication which has no basis in biology yet has implications in social situations which negatively affect peoples labeled to be of different races then they ought to have the balls to create a new word to talk about it.
If one's posisition is that the phrase "black man" doesn't really mean anything and it is a harmful label fabricated onto society with no basis in biology then using the phrase "black man" to describe a, well, black man, just makes you look like a damned idiot.
"Since race is constructed, it's constructed differently in different places and in different times. For example, in the Dominican Republic, children with the same biological parents can be of a different race. That's not possible in the United States, but there a light-skinned child of the same biological parents can be white, and a dark-skinned child with the same biological parents can be black. You have a similar situation in Brazil. Again, it just shows how the way different countries and different people do race changes."
Fine, but then WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT BLACK PEOPLE?
If you admit that the term is flawed then stop using the term.
Make a new term to describe the group of people whom you argue are not a group yet obviously think are a group.
"There's this curious thing about the way we've defined race in the U.S., where a white woman can have a black child, but a black woman can't have a white child."
Yes, race doesn't make any sense; saying that a child of a black woman is black but a child of a white woman can be black or white is nonsense. It is harmful to society. The labels of black and white are flawed.
SO
STOP
USING
THEM
JACKASS
You, John A. Powell, are obviously comfortable with language and verbosity.
Construct a useful phrase to refer to this group of people who are not a group yet are a group as a result of social constructs which have no meaning but are real.
J. I often wonder what its like in your head.
try reading it again. this time turn off the hate. just read what he is saying, not what you think he is going to say.
try again.
Quote 1
"If you think about the United States in the 1700s and 1800s, who was black or not was a matter of state definition. You could be black in one state, cross the state line and you're no longer black. Some states said if you look black, you're black. Some states said if you have one-quarter black blood, you're black. Some states said if you had one-sixteenth black blood, you're black. Some states said if you have one drop of black blood you're black, so if it was simply a biological fact you couldn't have all these different ways of thinking about race.
Since race is constructed, it's constructed differently in different places and in different times."
Meaning: Race has no biological component by which one may assess membership of a given race. Race is arbitrary. We fabricate criteria by which a person is or is not a member of a race.
Quote 2
"Hundreds of polls have shown that most black Americans prefer to live in integrated neighborhoods."
OK.
By what means was "black american" defined in those polls and how is that definition somehow more useful and less worthy of spite than the arbitrary definitions of the 1700s and 1800s.
By faulting the arbitrary use of labels in the 1700s and 1800s he is demonstrating how race actually works. It is not biological or empirical. It is a social fabrication.
But he THEN uses a poll which, by his definition, selects an arbitrary and random grouping of people and uses them to indicate the opinion of "black people".
One cannot decry the idea of race for its arbitrary and flawed definition and then turn around and present a poll of "black people" as meaningful given that it has no meaning given that "black people" is an arbitrarily defined category.
To utilize a poll of "black people" he must accept that "black people" is a meaningful category into which certain people are placed. If the category is meaningless so too is the poll. If the poll is meaningful then so too is the category.
He is saying that it is defined. the defined nature is this country is absurd, but it still means somthing because society dictates that it does. individuals can throw out the meaning, but society has not. he adresses this. did you not read it in its entirety?
I don't think this guy knows much about biology. Frankly, race does have a biological component.
It isn't just coincidence that "Blacks of exclusively West African ancestry make up 13 percent of the North American and Caribbean population but 40 percent of Major League baseball players, 70 percent of the NFL, and 85 percent of professional basketball."
Along the same lines, "Whites of Eurasian ancestry, who have, on average, more natural upper-body strength, predictably dominate weightlifting, wrestling and all field events, such as the shot-put and hammer (whites hold 46 of the top 50 throws)."
Also, East Asians tend to be slower and weaker than whites and blacks, but maintain an advantage in agility, making them better gymnasts, figure skaters, and divers.
While it can be hard to define the hybrid races that have come to exist as our world effectively grows smaller due to technology
and growing populations, people of different races are still very much genetically different, and therefore there is a biological basis in defining races. To say otherwise is to fabricate lies to support a thesis.
also quotes in last post were taken from an essay entitled "The Story Behind the Amazing Success of Black Athletes" by Jon Entine.
"While it can be hard to define the hybrid races that have come to exist as our world effectively grows smaller due to technology
and growing populations, people of different races are still very much genetically different, and therefore there is a biological basis in defining races. To say otherwise is to fabricate lies to support a thesis."
God, you're like one of those people who say, who say things like "People from China usually have black hair."
And that makes you a fucking racist. You and your empirically verifiable observations of reality.
God!
Fucking racist.
I bet you're a sexist too. I bet you would say something like "A woman does not have a penis."
God. I can't stand people like you. Because you, you observe the world in which you live and you make statements supported by those observations. You don't start out with a baseless assumption and then argue towards that end despite your observations of the world in which we live.
GOD!
"individuals can throw out the meaning, but society has not.
Let's play a game. It's called "support the idiotic thesis." In this game we get pissed off that some people are still racist while other people don't give a shit about race and, say, vote for Obama because of who he is rather than the color of his skin.
So then when we have a group of people who care about race AND a group of people who don't care about race we decide that "society" as a whole has the viewpoint of the assholes who care about race.
Because it makes our argument more rhetorically compelling.
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