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	iwanttobeasleep 2007-09-23 03:50 pm UTC (link)
	Considering you can be racist against Jews, (who are, yes, simultaneously a religious AND ethnic group, but still) it's no surprise that there's confusion. And race is a meaningless social construct anyway, so why not give people some leeway about what they can apply racism to? (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	katarin 2007-09-23 09:17 pm UTC (link)
	IAWTMFC! (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	amymccabe 2007-09-24 12:21 am UTC (link)
	??? Apparently I am not up on my net lingo. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

katarin
2007-09-24 12:34 am UTC (link)

It's netspeak for I agree with this most fucking comment because I was agreeing with giving leeway to the word used to apply to racism because in the end, it all comes from the same place. I'd also go on to talk about how it's significantly less than helpful to quibble about whether one can be racist against Muslims when discussing people being racist against Muslims but I've sworn off unfunny SRS BZNS race discussion here on one of the wank comms so you'll have to do without.

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	amymccabe 2007-09-24 12:47 am UTC (link)
	Okay. Listen, you are right. I have a pet peeve about language sometimes, but you're right. Bigotry is a lot bigger issue than correct vocabulary. I'm sorry if I insulted you. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	amymccabe 2007-09-24 12:48 am UTC (link)
	Or rather offended you. And since I just did the very thing that pisses me off so much, I fail at life today. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	katarin 2007-09-24 01:00 am UTC (link)
	Seeing as I did engage in SRS BZNS unfunny race discussion when I even made a post about not doing that in this comm, looks like we're both kind of faily. Thank you for recognizing how much more important bigotry is than the words used to describe it. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	judyhazeleyes 2007-09-25 07:05 pm UTC (link)
	If I may permit myself to look woefully uneducated for a moment, who's the hotness in your icons? She's puuuurty. (Reply to this)(Parent)

amymccabe
2007-09-24 12:20 am UTC (link)

Ah, but you can't be racist against Buddhists or Christians. It just annoys me a bit. If you are going to argue against bigotry (a worthy thing to argue against), you should use the correct terms and not sound like a moron. It is one those "hey, get off my side you are making us look stupid" things.

And yeah, race is a meaningless social construct (or at least it should be meaningless). It makes about as much sense as discriminating against people with brown hair.

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mistress_mab
2007-09-24 04:35 am UTC (link)

I'm not sure I understand what you mean about race being a meaningless social construct (or that it should be). Would you mind clarifying? I'm sincerely interested, but if you'd rather not get into it here, I really do understand.

It makes about as much sense as discriminating against people with brown hair.

Which is just dumb, because it's those ginger heads that everyone hates. /sarcasm

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forevagreeneart
2007-09-24 01:05 pm UTC (link)

Well, since it doesn't look the OP will respond, I can take a stab at it, though I'm not really an expert.

Basically, what the person above is saying is that race has no more of a genetic basis than hair color or attached/detached earlobes. There is, in reality, no more of a genetic difference between a Greek person and a white person than there is between two white people. However, humans (being the stupid creatures that they are) have decided to divide people up by certain sets of common physical characteristics and define them as a certain race. For example; if your eyes tilt upward and your skin has a golden tone to it, you're Asian.

P.S. If I'm wrong here, someone please correct me.
P.P.S Please forgive my weird grammar, I haven't spoken English for a month.

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	goblin 2007-09-24 02:17 pm UTC (link)
	So basically it makes more sense to divide everyone up into "tall" "medium" and "short" races than to do it based on nose width. The point of this whole argument is that the methods human society use to decide race are incredibly arbitrary and meaningless. Inevitably, some dumb ass learning this in Soc 101 decides this means there's no such thing as racism. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

panthea
2007-09-25 03:12 pm UTC (link)

I always like to drag out the Brazilian definition of race at times like these (half-remembered from a long-ago anthro class, but if I've ever got it wrong, no one's enlightened me yet)-- entirely dependent on your hair, eye, and skin color, and nothing whatsoever to do with, say, ancestry. So you could be considered a different "race" from your parents just because you're blond and they're not.

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	amymccabe 2007-09-24 01:26 pm UTC (link)
	Basically some studies have shown that genetically is non-existent. Race has no influence over how genetically close or distance you are to a person. If you want, I can hunt down a few of the studies later. (Reply to this)(Parent)

iwanttobeasleep
2007-09-24 08:44 pm UTC (link)

What everyone else says, and in addition "race" greatly oversimplifies. Pretty much all Europeans (and people of European descent) get classified as "white", but there's a shit load of difference in terms of culture and even overall appearance. Likewise, "black" encompasses people from Africa and their descendants on other continents, but it would also include someone from Jamaica and other islands, where again, there is little connection culturally or even in overall appearance (other than skin tone). Add to that the classification of people who are part of more than one "Race" and how people who are half or even a quarter black still count as black (see: Tiger Woods), and race becomes so muddled it's meaningless.

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