this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2024
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collapse of the old society
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People should stop using a term 'race' for humans because there's no scientific evidence that humans have races.
Being white or black doesn't have anything to do with having different race in biology. It's just a skin color that is different.
I think the closest term for genetic and environmental (cultural?) differences in human population would be phenotype, and these definitely exist. But keep in mind I do not know much about biology, so I might be wrong here and there, I only rephrase Wikipedia.
While I dislike the concept and you're right that it's a made up construct, I need to mention that made up constructs still impact our lives. A phenotype is just a phenotype until it costs you a job or makes your home value go down. At that point, race is something you have to confront simply because racists exist.
The problem is, humans instinctually categorize people because it's easier to process. This can be as reasonable as knowing a person in a uniform works at a place, or life saving like identifying someone shady, who very well might harm you. If the phenotype of skin color ends up associated with something incorrect or misleading, however, you then have a very benign thing (appearance) leading to very real outcomes (racism).
Hope that makes sense. Race is stupid, but people judge others for all sorts of things. Otherism is very real.
This is such an interesting topic!
I completely agree that race as an idea as steeped in false science and racism, but I always find it really difficult to consider race when it's used as a positive force as well- movements like US civil rights have massively reduced racism, partly by using race as a concept (such as black pride).
On the flip side, neoliberalism often advocates "color-blindness" as an idea (don't acknowledge/consider people's race) which is a great ideal, but in practice often seems to amount to turning a blind eye to on going racism.
Colorblindness has its roots in white settler colonialism over Native Americans, including the schools they made them go to. This helped settlers assert their claim to these lands.
That's why it's not as common in the south, where it was important to hilight race to assert control over black people.
The historical context of race is what still affects people to this day.
I think ethnicity and intersectionality are a better thing to focus on when around others (more socially acceptable and less threatening/charged), along with individual experience. Race is just one way to look at somebody but there's many many other layers and they all work together.