Can Ethnicity can be a choice? Can race?

[Rustler]

race is a manmade construct. Humans are part of the same species with characteristics that could be attributed as "tribal"

once you debunk the "1/8th" rule race construct falls apart.

tru enuff

 

[pcgeek11]

When Bruce became Kaitlin she was lauded at every level for appearing in her underwear on a magazine. Lady out west Identifies with being black and attempts to rectify perceived injustices (runs NAACP chapter) and is deemed insane. While I think she is somewhat imbalanced as shown by dubious email threat claims, the whole world jumping on her for following her heart seems strange.
Want same sex partner? (Rosie O'Donnell) Hero
Want other sex partner but want the trappings of opposite sex (Bruce Jenner) Hero
Want to be different race? (Rachel Whoever ) You must be crazy. I can't decide if it is racist or sexist?

A lot of people think they are all stupid and crazy. I know I do.

 

[pcgeek11]

A transwoman (That is someone that was born male but transitioned to female) that is sexually attracted to women call themselves lesbians, not male, for sexual purposes. They are functionally homosexual (although many prefer the term queer).

That is laughable! A lesbian trapped in a man's body. What a load.

 

[Dr. Zaus]

That is laughable! A lesbian trapped in a man's body. What a load.

Have you considered that said 'load' is not something most folks who go through this are perpetrating upon you?

It's not like their far-fetched reality is something they created just to screw with you; they just exist with minds that significantly different from you own.

Why is the presence of incomprehensible individual differences so hard to respect? I have no idea how or why my wife thinks what she does sometimes; but I get that she exists and it's putting me on.

Imagine a world where trans-gendering is much more common but lesbianism is as rare as being trans-gendered is in this world. In that world you could have easily said "a woman attracted to other women. What a load."

And meant the same thing for the same reasons.

Doesn't that give you pause?

 

[pcgeek11]

Have you considered that said 'load' is not something most folks who go through this are perpetrating upon you?

It's not like their far-fetched reality is something they created just to screw with you; they just exist with minds that significantly different from you own.

Why is the presence of incomprehensible individual differences so hard to respect? I have no idea how or why my wife thinks what she does sometimes; but I get that she exists and it's putting me on.

Imagine a world where trans-gendering is much more common but lesbianism is as rare as being trans-gendered is in this world. In that world you could have easily said "a woman attracted to other women. What a load."

And meant the same thing for the same reasons.

Doesn't that give you pause?

No, Actually it doesn't.

 

[inachu]

No matter how many psychologist you throw at this. Even if everyone on earth was a psychologist. No matter what they say you will always be the color you were born as.
DNA does not lie. But people do.

 

[SMOGZINN]

No matter how many psychologist you throw at this. Even if everyone on earth was a psychologist. No matter what they say you will always be the color you were born as.
DNA does not lie. But people do.

DNA is less important than you seem to think. It is but a template, the final product is the work of millions of other factors. Skin color is literally subjective.

 

[Dr. Zaus]

No, Actually it doesn't.

Why not?

DNA is less important than you seem to think. It is but a template, the final product is the work of millions of other factors. Skin color is literally subjective.

Fro example, there was a time in the US where the Italians were considered non-white; same with the Irish, who are, objectively, the most white.

 

[Rebel_L]

DNA is less important than you seem to think. It is but a template, the final product is the work of millions of other factors. Skin color is literally subjective.

Why not?


Fro example, there was a time in the US where the Italians were considered non-white; same with the Irish, who are, objectively, the most white.

It seems fairly clear that neither of you are happy with the definitions that other people in the thread use for the terms male/female/ethnicity/race. In order for the discussion to actually be a discussion you have to give your definitions of the terms.

From the sounds of it you think of the terms as all abstract with no actual possible set of criteria. Yet I cant see the use for the words at all if they have no actual definition, and rather than arguing that we should abolish the words from our vocabulary as they can no longer have a definition you seem to be arguing that we continue to use them, but with no actual definition.

 

[Caravaggio]

DNA is less important than you seem to think. It is but a template, the final product is the work of millions of other factors. Skin color is literally subjective.

Whoa there! "literally subjective"??
A step too far, I think.
I went on a diving course in the Maldives. I was whitish pink when I set out and came back a sort of blistered reddish, pale brown. But never black-brown like the local scuba-boat crews. They had thousands of years of DNA-produced adaptive, evolved, extra melanin production. Back home I went all pink again. My holiday had not changed my DNA.

Miss Dolezal has probably 'browned-up' with melanin tablets, skin sprays and hair curling techniques. Yet her DNA is unchanged.
But I am warming to her project, and the NAACP has made an important statement in her defence. They say that "skin colour is not a criteria (sic)" for a post in their organisation.
And they are right to say that. She seems to have done good work in Spokane.

Better a (slightly confused) white woman accepting of darker skinned peers, who identifies with the marginalisation and reduced status of 'coloured' people, than a malevolent 'white' psychopath who goes into a Southern church to slaughter darker-skinned people worshipping within.
Just because of their DNA-controlled melanin production.

 

[SMOGZINN]

It seems fairly clear that neither of you are happy with the definitions that other people in the thread use for the terms male/female/ethnicity/race. In order for the discussion to actually be a discussion you have to give your definitions of the terms.

From the sounds of it you think of the terms as all abstract with no actual possible set of criteria. Yet I cant see the use for the words at all if they have no actual definition, and rather than arguing that we should abolish the words from our vocabulary as they can no longer have a definition you seem to be arguing that we continue to use them, but with no actual definition.

Some of the words have meaning some don't.

Race, as it refers to people, has has no useful definition and should be purged from our language.

Ethnicity has a specific definition, and when the word is used with that meaning is a useful word. Ethnicity is about belonging to a social group and has little or nothing to do with biology. Ethnicity is not exclusionary. A person can belong to dozens of different ethnic groups. Unfortunately, in common parlance, people more often than not use it as a synonym of race.

Male/Female is useful, but the definition is not quite what people think. Male/Female is not a dichotomy, they are the extreme ends of the spectrum of sexual morphology. Change the morphology, change the sex. I would also mention that currently our culture is struggling with the terminology to describe various points on the sexual morphological spectrum. There are lots of competing words and definitions. There is still work to be done before we settle on a set of words and syntax to use.

Gender is even more complex than sex, gender can be more thought of as sexual ethnicity. It is the sexual group you identify with and it is not a linear spectrum between male and female any more than cultural ethnicity is a spectrum between white and black. Like sexual morphology above, we are still working out the language for this, and how it interacts with sexuality.

I believe that the problem most people have with these things is that they want them to be simple and they just are not. Most people want to be able to point at everyone else and know what group each person fits into, all the while being must too deep and complex themselves to fit neatly into any such box.

 

[pcgeek11]

Why not?

Fro example, there was a time in the US where the Italians were considered non-white; same with the Irish, who are, objectively, the most white.

Because I really do not care about it. People that think that:
'
They are a woman or man trapped in a mans or woman's body are delusional.

People that are caucasian and claiming to be a black person. Delusional and or just stupid.

 

[pcgeek11]

Some of the words have meaning some don't.

Race, as it refers to people, has has no useful definition and should be purged from our language.

Male/Female is useful, but the definition is not quite what people think. Male/Female is not a dichotomy, they are the extreme ends of the spectrum of sexual morphology. Change the morphology, change the sex. I would also mention that currently our culture is struggling with the terminology to describe various points on the sexual morphological spectrum. There are lots of competing words and definitions. There is still work to be done before we settle on a set of words and syntax to use.

Gender is even more complex than sex, gender can be more thought of as sexual ethnicity. It is the sexual group you identify with and it is not a linear spectrum between male and female any more than cultural ethnicity is a spectrum between white and black. Like sexual morphology above, we are still working out the language for this, and how it interacts with sexuality.

I believe that the problem most people have with these things is that they want them to be simple and they just are not. Most people want to be able to point at everyone else and know what group each person fits into, all the while being must too deep and complex themselves to fit neatly into any such box.

What is this a joke? That is the silliest thing I have read in quite some time.

Your response is not up to the standards of the Discussion Club. Do not repeat it.

Perknose
Forum Director

 

[Murloc]

I think ethnicity is a choice in the sense that you can integrate into one, as an individual or as a group.

And race doesn't always enter this equation: consider the azerbaijani people.
They are a Turkic ethnicity, but they are persians/iranics who were turkified in the 13th century or so after turkic invasions, so genetically they're iranians.
This doesn't make them be considered as non-turks by other turks and persians call them turks, despite the fact that their looks (thus their race in a genetic sense) are clearly iranian.
Turkey is mixed race too, it has a bit of everything.

America is weird because the past segregation created communities separated by skin color, so people don't really have a choice in their ethnicity, speaking the dialect doesn't make you african american and "acting white" doesn't make you white.

 

[Dr. Zaus]

Because I really do not care about it. People that think that:
'
They are a woman or man trapped in a mans or woman's body are delusional.

People that are caucasian and claiming to be a black person. Delusional and or just stupid.

I pointed out precisely why you are wrong; Really just ignoring that and saying "well that is stupid" is not a counter argument. A black person is not white because we define them as such; just like Italians and the Irish before them. It's all just what society chooses to call someone.

 

[mattpegher]

Gender dysmorphism is at least in theory possible as male and female traits, attractions, roles etc, are likely created by the mix of neurotransmitters in the brain and the size and predominance of certain cellular structures of the brain. Current neuroscience supports this possibility and it the primary reason that gender dysmorphism is not considered a psychosis.
Ethnicity and race are not defined in any scientific terms, but each could be subdivided into two separate categories.

The genetic patterns that regionalize your ancestry that lead to a multifactorial presentation of certain physical traits, ie blonde hair, dark skin, eye color etc. This would be closer to the idea of race.

The cultural behaviors, trends and customs that your predecessors have taught you. This is where ethnicity and culture blend, and I think where one could claim affinity for a culture that is different than that of your parents or your upbringing.

As for the young lady in the news that claims an affinity for African American culture, I would suggest that one does not need to identify ones self as born into that culture in order to feel most comfortable within a specific culture.

 

[Guurn]

Some of the words have meaning some don't.

Race, as it refers to people, has has no useful definition and should be purged from our language.

Ethnicity has a specific definition, and when the word is used with that meaning is a useful word. Ethnicity is about belonging to a social group and has little or nothing to do with biology. Ethnicity is not exclusionary. A person can belong to dozens of different ethnic groups. Unfortunately, in common parlance, people more often than not use it as a synonym of race.

Male/Female is useful, but the definition is not quite what people think. Male/Female is not a dichotomy, they are the extreme ends of the spectrum of sexual morphology. Change the morphology, change the sex. I would also mention that currently our culture is struggling with the terminology to describe various points on the sexual morphological spectrum. There are lots of competing words and definitions. There is still work to be done before we settle on a set of words and syntax to use.

Gender is even more complex than sex, gender can be more thought of as sexual ethnicity. It is the sexual group you identify with and it is not a linear spectrum between male and female any more than cultural ethnicity is a spectrum between white and black. Like sexual morphology above, we are still working out the language for this, and how it interacts with sexuality.

I believe that the problem most people have with these things is that they want them to be simple and they just are not. Most people want to be able to point at everyone else and know what group each person fits into, all the while being must too deep and complex themselves to fit neatly into any such box.

"We at Johns Hopkins University—which in the 1960s was the first American medical center to venture into "sex-reassignment surgery"—launched a study in the 1970s comparing the outcomes of transgendered people who had the surgery with the outcomes of those who did not. Most of the surgically treated patients described themselves as "satisfied" by the results, but their subsequent psycho-social adjustments were no better than those who didn't have the surgery. And so at Hopkins we stopped doing sex-reassignment surgery, since producing a "satisfied" but still troubled patient seemed an inadequate reason for surgically amputating normal organs.

It now appears that our long-ago decision was a wise one. A 2011 study at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden produced the most illuminating results yet regarding the transgendered, evidence that should give advocates pause. The long-term study—up to 30 years—followed 324 people who had sex-reassignment surgery. The study revealed that beginning about 10 years after having the surgery, the transgendered began to experience increasing mental difficulties. Most shockingly, their suicide mortality rose almost 20-fold above the comparable nontransgender population. This disturbing result has as yet no explanation but probably reflects the growing sense of isolation reported by the aging transgendered after surgery. The high suicide rate certainly challenges the surgery prescription."
I'm including this because it shows how muddy the water is even for scientists trying to help people.

I think the person in question has confused liking certain aspects of a culture with being a member of a race (which means nothing scientifically). If she felt like misrepresenting herself as a member of a race (whatever that means) was the most certain path to a job then we as a society have other issues.

 

[Moonbeam]

I judge people on two things, I think, on whether at root they want other people to feel better and on the wisdom they exercise toward that aim. I guess this may depend on the quality of their empathy. Race, gender, and sexual orientation aren't too important to me. My feeling is that all these things become an issue, are forced to the fore as societal concerns because of bigotry. Unfortunately, with bigots, all the proof of the correctness of their opinions always comes down to an inner certainty they are right and which they can rationalize to infinity. They excel at identifying stupid except in its ultimate form.

 

[Rebel_L]

Some of the words have meaning some don't.

Race, as it refers to people, has has no useful definition and should be purged from our language.

Ethnicity has a specific definition, and when the word is used with that meaning is a useful word. Ethnicity is about belonging to a social group and has little or nothing to do with biology. Ethnicity is not exclusionary. A person can belong to dozens of different ethnic groups. Unfortunately, in common parlance, people more often than not use it as a synonym of race.

You seem to have quite a negative bias for the word Race. While I have some understanding that this would be so for someone who has had occasion to have a lot of negative dealings with the word, it is a very neutral word in some circles. The definitions are many in the first dictionary I peaked into (including one that actually makes it a synonym for ethnicity). For me I do see a difference in the two as per my definitions earlier. For your definition of ethnicity I notice you use the term "belonging" to a social group. Is this intentional vs the use of "identify" that you use for gender. Belonging to a group is usually only considered once the group accepts you. This would imply for the OP question that no you can never choose an ethnicity, but rather that an ethnicity can choose you.

I terms of broad sense of how race and ethnicity function in my eyes it would be like this. Ethnicity or cultural background can give useful information on things said person may find offensive or to be the proper way to act and as such can be helpful when dealing with others. Of course before one has the chance to get to know someone pretty much all of the info we can gather is visual. Clothes combined with genetic characteristics is where our first guesses come from. This of course not by any means a guaranteed identification, but still overall useful. In places where the different cultural groups have mixed more the genetic traits do become less and less indicative of what kind of life someone may have lead and I do think as this mixing becomes more common globally it will eventually be useless in that regard, but still useful at the present time.

Male/Female is useful, but the definition is not quite what people think. Male/Female is not a dichotomy, they are the extreme ends of the spectrum of sexual morphology. Change the morphology, change the sex. I would also mention that currently our culture is struggling with the terminology to describe various points on the sexual morphological spectrum. There are lots of competing words and definitions. There is still work to be done before we settle on a set of words and syntax to use.

Gender is even more complex than sex, gender can be more thought of as sexual ethnicity. It is the sexual group you identify with and it is not a linear spectrum between male and female any more than cultural ethnicity is a spectrum between white and black. Like sexual morphology above, we are still working out the language for this, and how it interacts with sexuality.

These two terms are far more difficult to deal with as far as I can tell. These terms have changed far more in the last while that the other ones. When I was in school gender and sex where synonyms, yet that would no longer be the case in a current thesaurus. I would say that would describe as the extremes or a large scale seem to occupy something like >99% of scale (if the numbers I found quickly are correct). I would describe it more like a scale with small not well defined area between two commonalities. If the two ends of the scale were not so readily recognizable by sight and play such a large part in coupling I would think this categorizing would be left mostly to the medical field only (who as far as I recall from my old textbooks have always had terms for the various variations in sexual morphology). I believe the stereotypes that have been and continue to be propagated from where one belongs in the sex scale have really hindered the equality of the sexes. There are some generalizations that one can get from the biological differences between the two opposite sides, but anything that attempts to split the world into such few categories and then try's to draw meaningful conclusions from that are doomed to failure.

The definition of gender as you describe it is to me a very bad thing. First we have the category of sex to which we assign stereotypes based on traditional patriarchal thinking, and then we go on to entrench those stereotypes in the concept of gender and tell people they should pick one to identify with. To me that is just a way to enforce and continue the existence of the stereotypes from the first category... stereotypes that as a society we have been trying to slowly work out of the system all together. It would seem a far far healthier thing to let people be as they wish and stop trying to stuff people into molds that we say we are trying to get rid of.

I believe that the problem most people have with these things is that they want them to be simple and they just are not. Most people want to be able to point at everyone else and know what group each person fits into, all the while being must too deep and complex themselves to fit neatly into any such box.

From a classification point of view where you draw on stereotypes to make early assessments of people, complex is bad. Add in that detailed information of sex or gender (past a clothed visual) are generally not available until you have gotten to know someone fairly well and that, at this point, the stereotypes loose all value they might have had. You end up with a classification system that can only discern two sexes with any reliability and the exceptions are such a small fraction of the people you meet that it becomes a dichotomy for any practical purpose. Anyone not interested in the topic beyond the stereotype assessments will not have or value a more in depth assessment on the topic and likely resent anyone trying to make it more complex for them.

 

[Codewiz]

So I can't answer the question but I can give my perspective as my wife and I are parents of one white child and one minority kid.

We are a transracial family. We cannot ignore race. We are forced to see how people treat our children different based primarily on the color of their skin.

These are things my wife and I never had to consider growing up white people. Race was a non-issue in our life. The same as what most white people experience.

My wife and I are obviously not racist as we chose to bring a child into our lives that has a different complexion than us. I fully expect our oldest son to internalize some of the sentiments related to the fact we are a transracial family. Is he going to identify with his brother's race? To some extent, I believe he probably will. He isn't going to say he is that race but he will have a better understanding of how society treats people of different races because of what our family experiences.

If I try to hide or ignore racism related to my youngest son, I will be doing him a disservice. I have to equip him with coping mechanisms to function in a world where racism still exists. Otherwise, I am doing him a disservice.

 

[Caravaggio]

So I can't answer the question but I can give my perspective as my wife and I are parents of one white child and one minority kid.
......
..If I try to hide or ignore racism related to my youngest son, I will be doing him a disservice. I have to equip him with coping mechanisms to function in a world where racism still exists. Otherwise, I am doing him a disservice.

You are doing good work. Hang on in there. You have my complete admiration. Tell him the truth and explain why it is that way.

 

[piasabird]

White guy born in Africa.

My wife is Korean and her father was born in North Korea.

My son and daughter born in the USA.

3 Continent family.

 

[flexy]

I am thinking that the abstruse idea of being able to choose your race/ethnicity is borne of the ill obsession of your society with being PC.

Saying that you have a choice of your race and ethnicity is basically rejecting that someone is "forced" into a race/role....which of course would not be PC

US society is so obsessed with PC that something even if absurdly wrong has preference over simply admitting that, YES, for example people are indeed born, say, black...that people are born a certain race.

It's denial of the most obvious and the illusion of that it is a choice doesn't change this.

 

[dank69]

I am thinking that the abstruse idea of being able to choose your race/ethnicity is borne of the ill obsession of your society with being PC.

Saying that you have a choice of your race and ethnicity is basically rejecting that someone is "forced" into a race/role....which of course would not be PC

US society is so obsessed with PC that something even if absurdly wrong has preference over simply admitting that, YES, for example people are indeed born, say, black...that people are born a certain race.

It's denial of the most obvious and the illusion of that it is a choice doesn't change this.

I think it is more about letting people be who they want to be. Who is anyone to tell someone else they can't be who they want? Who did the Spokane lady harm that would require us to stop this behavior?

 

[mammador]

anybody can change culture. race, no, unless there's some cosmetic surgery/DNA engineering only the OP knows of and nobody else does.