On Feb 25, 2012, at 9:01 PM, ss wrote: > > > There was a time maybe from the 1800s to the early 1900s where "science" > actually believed that humans occured in "races". Races were not defined on > any > objective metric but usually on physical characteritics like skin color and > shape of nose or some feature visible to humans. Shape and size of nose > became > an impotant way of recognizing superior and inferior races - with Aborigines > and people of African origing occupying the lowermost rung. >
I find it not too difficult to understand how people 100 years ago could believe in "races"; what's frustrating to me is to see how hard it is for humans to get past this notion today. I like to consider myself an enlightened non-racist, but I confess that I was surprised to learn recently that "negroid"-looking people from Africa and someplace else (I forget where -- Papua New Guinea, perhaps, or someplace there) who to the proverbial naked eye resemble each other had (statistically speaking) less in common with each other than either "race" had with the typical european. So, again, I can understand how people predisposed to racist thinking would assume that Africans and New Guineans (or whatever) were of the same variety of "other." I expect some part of this "otherness" detection is hard-wired. What's harder for me to understand and abide is "scientific" racism in 2012, when the information is available to any moderately intelligent person of good will to demolish such nonsense. I live in the USA; was born & raised here. What's odd, depressing, and curiously interesting to me is that although there are people in this country from all over the globe, Americans with virtually every genetic marker borne by humans on earth, the "race question" in the USA pretty much still revolves around "black" and "white"'; that is, European and African. Really, it's as if people who came from (or whose ancestors came from) India, North America, China, Japan, Viet Nam, Laos, Mexico, Peru, Indonesia, etc, etc, etc don't even exist when the subject of "Race in America" comes up. Truly, this is odd. For example, I, a typical "white" european-American, personally know Indian-Ameican, Native Americans, Chines-Americans, Japanese Americans, Laotian Americans, Mexican Americans, Peruvian Americans, Indonesian Americans, and more. And also, of course, some African Americans. Hispanic Americans, I believe, outnumber (or soon will outnumber) African Americans. So why does discussion of race in America always come down to "white" (European) and Black (African)? I've been thinking a lot about this lately. And I've come to a few (entirely non-original) conclusions, among them that the toxic mix of the institution of African slavery, the Civil War & its aftermath, and evangelical so-called "Christianity" combined to form a toxic racist contamination that this nation is only now, 150 years after the Civil War, finally capable of addressing. The more I read about the Civil War, the psychological challenge faced by the defeated South, and the rise of "born again" racist "Christianity" as a response to this defeat, the close I come to thinking I have some kind of handle on what country I actually live in. This has become a hobby horse of mine; of the 50 books I've read over the last year or two, about 35 have been on this general subject area. Wether we *will* address the origins and nature of American racism and get beyond our horrible history remains, in my opinion, to be seen. On this topic, on some days I'm optimistic, and on other days I think we're terminally fucked. Kind regards, jrs
