[Mars]

Um... nationalism is not discriminating from people of specific nations... just thinking that your nation is better in some way than everyone else's.

[Akalabeth Angel]

Damn Sagittarians!

[Spicious]

Um... nationalism is not discriminating from people of specific nations... just thinking that your nation is better in some way than everyone else's.

Can you describe a way in which that actually differs from discrimination?

[General Battuta]

Good discussion, but, uh, thread split?

[karajorma]

I'll leave the topic here a day or so then move it to Gen Dis if it is still active.

[Meleardil]

What are you saying? Races don't even exist...claiming the existence of races automatically means declaring himself a racist...the only differences between populations of humans is the way they adapted to different environments...there are no races...

What are you talking about? Humans are a single species. Right. On the other hand races do exist. There are physiological and psychological differences among humans as a result of adapting to different environments, difficulties and cultures. Humans are not generally equal. They cannot be! You cannot treat the same way healthy people, blind people or another with Alzheimer, yet nobody screams racism there. Admitting that races exist and that people are different is not racism!

We do discrimination on purpose! For example someone who cannot qualify for driving license is forbidden to drive. Is that discrimination? Of course it is, and a good one. Shall you get your master degree on the university, if you fail all your exams? No??? Another discrimination? The hell yes! Based on physiologic, mental and cultural conditions. So, please, don't fall for magic buzzwords.

Racism is different. Racism is when you claim superiority based on simply being in one race, and declare that everybody else is inferior. I think you have a semantic problem here, a problem created on purpose... saying it more plainly: for political purpose.

To say a rather stupid example: dogs are one species, they can interbreed, and have the same general qualities. Would you declare that all dogs are exactly the same, no matter if one is a Saint Bernhardshund and the other is a Chihuahua? You can't claim that one is any superior to the other, but differences shall be obvious.

I don't feel the pressure being politically correct when I say the truth. Political correctness is the invention of politicians for safely setting taboos for the general population. If you have doubts, than read, learn, use your mind and common sense, but for God's sakes don't repeat the popular catchwords without criticism.

[Colonol Dekker]

I'll leave the topic here a day or so then move it to Gen Dis if it is still active.

I'll give it a close watch.

[General Battuta]

What are you saying? Races don't even exist...claiming the existence of races automatically means declaring himself a racist...the only differences between populations of humans is the way they adapted to different environments...there are no races...

What are you talking about? Humans are a single species. Right. On the other hand races do exist.

I like the spirit of what you're trying to say, but you're wrong a fundamental (but difficult) point: races don't exist.

This is because the biological differences within races are greater than the biological differences between races. So everyone blends together into one grand spectrum; there are no distinct groups.

You can have a world without race without resorting to delusions of political correctness. All you need is scientific fact.

[BlackDove]

LULZ RACISM SRS BUSINESS!!!!!!

The reason why I think Diaspora is such a ****ty name for this is because they would use the word once per minute back in the good ole days of Yugoslavia going to ****, so the fact that we were all splitting up was some kind of a diaspora (when the people were moving to the regions that were claimed for them) which resulted in the morons on TV using the word excessively in order to sound like they deserved their jobs (which they didn't).

But that's no fault of the word or name per-se. Just the asshattery of my childhood. When you take that out, it's probably a good find.

But that doesn't make me hate you less. I still hate you pretty hard.

[Meleardil]

You can have a world without race without resorting to delusions of political correctness. All you need is scientific fact.

That whole biological definition is pretty much undefined. Or lets say in other words: the definitions are fluid.

Just one example: Seagulls. Have you heard about the Atlantic barrier? If you start from Europe and slowly go east, the genome of the species slowly changing, but the gulls can breed with each other. Until you reach the other side of Atlantic. Those cannot breed with the European version. From one point of view they are the same species, from another they are not. and it is not even the definition of races, but species!

What I was talking about previously is the difference between talking about races and being a racist.

[General Battuta]

Right, I'm saying that races aren't defined biologically because they don't exist.

What you're talking about with regard to the gulls is called ring speciation.

[Meleardil]

If you put it that way, than you are right of course. Just one question: is there a proper terminology to point out subspecies, if the usage of race is forbidden? I am willing to learn the proper words.

[Mongoose]

When you say that "race doesn't exist," though, that kind of glosses over the fact that there are well-documented medical variations between people whose ancestry arises from different portions of the world.  For example, just in this country alone, studies have shown that African-American males seem to be more genetically disposed to heart disease than Asian-American or Caucasian males; I would assume that this could be attributed to the natural variations in genetic makeup that resulted from disparate populations of people interbreeding over hundreds of years.  You certainly can't deny that people who have an ancestry completely confined to Southeast Asia don't have notable genetic differences from those whose ancestry lies in sub-Saharan Africa, and that both of them aren't likewise different from a person whose ancestors were natives of Central America for thousands of years.  As superficial as it may seem, physical appearance does tell a genetic story, which is why people from fairly insular cultures with little outside marriage tend to share certain common (though not ubiquitous) physical traits.  In a way, the culture of the modern world has started to reverse this process; with the explosion of global commerce and the natural population movements that follow, different genetic ancestries start to be blended together back into the one big "melting pot" that we all branched out from in the first place.

[Ford Prefect]

I don't know where this thread came from, but it's one giant facepalm.jpg.

[Jeff Vader]

I don't know where this thread came from

From the Diaspora board.

Still, funny stuff.

[TrashMan]

People sooooooo love overreacting to things it's not even funny anymore.

there's absolutely nothing wrong with noticing differences or grouping/describing people based on those differences.
Heck, if someone called me white (whitey or any derivation thereof), or christian why would I be offended? I am those things!

So what's will all the overreacting.
Saying someone is black or a jew is not racism. (not unless you claim that all blacks or jews are stupid, inferior or similar crap).

[General Battuta]

When you say that "race doesn't exist," though, that kind of glosses over the fact that there are well-documented medical variations between people whose ancestry arises from different portions of the world.  For example, just in this country alone, studies have shown that African-American males seem to be more genetically disposed to heart disease than Asian-American or Caucasian males; I would assume that this could be attributed to the natural variations in genetic makeup that resulted from disparate populations of people interbreeding over hundreds of years.  You certainly can't deny that people who have an ancestry completely confined to Southeast Asia don't have notable genetic differences from those whose ancestry lies in sub-Saharan Africa, and that both of them aren't likewise different from a person whose ancestors were natives of Central America for thousands of years.  As superficial as it may seem, physical appearance does tell a genetic story, which is why people from fairly insular cultures with little outside marriage tend to share certain common (though not ubiquitous) physical traits.  In a way, the culture of the modern world has started to reverse this process; with the explosion of global commerce and the natural population movements that follow, different genetic ancestries start to be blended together back into the one big "melting pot" that we all branched out from in the first place.

Yes, yes, all true, but the differences within these groups are larger than the differences between them.

So no meaningful barriers can be drawn.

So, in the end, race doesn't exist after all, in spite of these concentrations of ailments or traits.

People sooooooo love overreacting to things it's not even funny anymore.

there's absolutely nothing wrong with noticing differences or grouping/describing people based on those differences.
Heck, if someone called me white (whitey or any derivation thereof), or christian why would I be offended? I am those things!

So what's will all the overreacting.
Saying someone is black or a jew is not racism. (not unless you claim that all blacks or jews are stupid, inferior or similar crap).

So long as these superficial physical descriptors (black, white) are not tied to any deeper meme complexes, I agree with Trash.

In fact, I prefer the term 'black' to 'African-American' because it seems more equal to 'white'.

[Aardwolf]

I hate it when people redefine terms to make them something that they're not.

[Mongoose]

Yes, yes, all true, but the differences within these groups are larger than the differences between them.

So no meaningful barriers can be drawn.

So, in the end, race doesn't exist after all, in spite of these concentrations of ailments or traits.

Not to doubt you, but do you have a source on that?  I mean, I'm not saying that genetic diversity doesn't also exist within one geographical group, but the fact that you have pronounced physical and physiological differences between members of disparate cultural groups would seem to me to reflect correspondingly disparate specific genetic paths.

[General Battuta]

They're not actually different. The spread within groups is greater than the spread between groups.

Think of them like pools of paint that have all run together. You can say 'hmm, this patch is a little shinier, this patch is a bit more brown...but there aren't really any individual pools.'

My source? Erm, off the top of my head, the cover article in Discover, National Geographic, and Scientific American a couple times in the past few years. Lemme check JSTOR and see if I can dig up a few articles on that.

Ah, here we go! Beautiful:

The straightforward biological fact of human variation is that there are no traits that are inherently, inevitably associated with one another. Morphological features do vary from region to region, but they do so independently, not in packaged sets. "I tell my students that I could divide the whole world into two groups: the fat-nose people and the skinny- nose people," says Norm Sauer. "But then I start adding in other traits to consider, like skin color, eye color, stature, blood type, fingerprints, whatever. It doesn't take long before somebody in the class gets the point and says, 'Wait a minute! Pretty soon you're going to have a race with only one person in it.' "

Indeed, despite the obvious physical differences between people from different areas, the vast majority of human genetic variation occurs within populations, not between them, with only some 6 percent accounted for by race, according to a classic study done in 1972 by geneticist Richard Lewontin of Harvard. Put another way, most of what separates me genetically from a typical African or Eskimo also separates me from another average American of European ancestry.

From Discover Magazine, 1994.

And no it's not dated because it's from 1994. This is a pretty stable field.

Now, if you read the article carefully, you'll find the answer to the common objection that some races are medically different -- i.e. blacks have higher rates of sickle-cell anemia. This is not because of race but because of geographical clusters of single allele differences.

And no, a single gene change does not mean 'race' even when it's linked to skin color, again for reasons in the article. Please read it before responding!

EDIT: didn't mean to aim any snark or confrontational attitude at you, Mongoose; you were very polite.