Forty Two wrote:Brian Peacock wrote:Forty Two wrote:There are blondes, brunettes and redheads, even though at the margins, it can sometimes be difficult to tell if a person is fits in one of those groups. They're still humans, though. These are not "myths."
Nobody thinks that blondes, brunettes and redheads are races, and yet people can be bigots about 'dumb blondes' and gingers as being one of Satan's minions.
Sure, but being a bigot is not the same as being a racist. I just used the example of hair color to show how a category can have less than bright lines between them without ceasing to exist or being relegated to myth. it was an analogy.
Brian Peacock wrote:
If one did live in a society where gingers were traditionally treated as second-class citizens then whether one was of the full-ginge or of the strawberry-blonde would be important. The classification of people into discrete groups according to the colour of their pubes is just as arbitrary as classifying people into discrete races according to some vague (and often unspecified) notions about what typifies this-or-that class or subset thereof.
Arbitrariness does not render a classification "mythical." There are redheads. But, when redhead stops and brunette begins is not exactly clear. There is general cultural agreement on what a redhead is, but there may be hair colors that appear close to the line to one person and on the other side of the line to another. Yet, we still have groups with different hair colors.
What should we say? There's no such thing as hair color categories? We can't come up with criteria to exactly determine when honey blonde is actually on the reddish side of the line, so hair color categories are a myth?
What you talkin' 'bout Willis? The scary-quoted myth is that race denotes discrete classes of humans. Did you read my earlier post when I talked about noting differences and commonalities as being different that classifying people into discrete classes? You started off saying that some particular, but wholly undefined things are 'racial classification specifiers', specifically (and tautologically) the things which label the class being the very things which determine the class. Then you reduced to a plea that something-or-other makes a race a specific class, although you won't or can't say what that or they might actually be, only adding that racial classifications represent real, bounded classes because the law relies on them (although you've provided no support for that). Now you've slipped into saying that race distinctions are essentially arbitrary and fuzzy - but no less real for that. You've busted your own myth that races are discrete classes but are still arguing that races are a real; discrete classes, just ones with fuzzy edges. If race distinctions are arbitrary then what are you arguing against? If races are real then why are you reluctant to provide or demonstrate the conditions which, when met, place one person into a particular race-group and thereby exclude them from all other race-groups?
I'm now going to ask you the same question I've been putting to you over the last few pages, and have just asked again, but put a different way. Let's assume for the sake of argument that races are real and that one individual is a typical member of a race-group and that another, while still being a member of that same group, is atypical. On what basis do we classify the atypical individual into the class exemplified by the typical member?
If you're inclined to repeat that races are real, but fuzzy because people are different by different degrees, then I will just take it that you're unwilling to engage on the matter at hand, so don't waste your time.