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Nexus X HumectressRecently, in the main N-AM group someone asked this question:
“Is race “real”, or a social construct? What does science and biology show? If real then are the White Nationalists correct in their views? If a social construct then are the Anti-racist SJW types correct?”
This was my response:
“In a social context, I’d say race is like religion. It’s a real as you want to make it. Definitely a social construct in that sense. From a purely scientific perspective, “race” is a continuum that contains many variables, not absolute or easily quantifed categories. The real question that makes race controverisal from a scientific perspective involves claimed differences in intelligence. That’s really what the argument is about. Do differences in intelligence exist, and if so are they genetic or environmental or both? Some IQ testing seems to indicate such differences, althought there is also evidence that IQ is elastic for both individuals and populations and impacted by social factors such as malnutrition. Also, high IQ does not equal high functioning. Therefore, racial/IQ determinism like many race realists promote misses the mark, I think (it’s like the Marxist view that all of history is economic categories fighting for power, or the vulgar economism of many neoliberal and libertarian economists). For instance, in the USA Nigerians have basically achieved the same model minority status as East Asians even though according to race realist theory they’re not supposed to. Also, I consider transracialism to be a legitimate personal identity. There is plenty of historical precedent for members of different tribes being adopted by other tribes and subsequently adopting the norms, appearance, and practices of their new tribe. In early American history, there were whites adopted by American Indian tribes, for example (and vice versa).”
Attack the System
Categories: Race and Ethnicity
Not much vice versa. Ward Churchill even wrote that there were hundreds of whites who escaped colonial capitalist settler towns and cities to join Indian tribes and not a single example of vice versa. There probably were vice versas, but damn few.
Well, the whites in early America didn’t really think of themselves as tribes with specific and unique identities in the same way as the Native Americans. Mostly, they just thought of themselves as English, although some early settlers were of other nationalities like Scottish, Irish, German, Dutch, French, etc. Intermarriage would have been the equivalent of adopting someone from another tribe for white settler communities. There were certainly marriages between Native Americans and English settlers. Although the historical records on this are spotty, I would image that interracial, inter-ethnic, inter-tribal marriage was for more common among lower-class whites, Native Americans, and also Africans as they were all in closer proximity to each other. The culture of the elite among the English settlers was more insular.
Most people aren’t consciously ‘racialist’ or think about race until they come into contact or are forced by circumstances to interact with members of other races in large numbers. This is when someone realizes they are ‘black’ or ‘white,’ as far as others perceive them in spite of whatever particular cultural or ethnic identities they may normally identify with. Ethnicity and culture are basic human identities. I would add, ‘tribe’ to that category as well. This is the foundation. Racial identity occurs subconsciously and on larger levels when speaking of mass societies.
I deny that really quite “white” people do exist anywhere on Earth. They are all more or less “coloured” people! – J. M. Zube, 9.12.19.